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Last week we covered Mark Haws’s childhood, his recruitment story, his early experiences in boot camp, his time as a supply officer, and his time on the Marine Corps football team. This week we will be covering Haws’s experience in the Fall of Saigon, the last major event of the Vietnam War.
In February 1975, rumors began to circulate among troops that the U.S. was planning on sending troops back into Vietnam. Over 100,000 Americans and Vietnamese allies were stuck in and around the South Vietnam capital of Saigon with Northern forces pushing further towards the city every day. American military leadership feared that a communist takeover would lead to reprisal attacks and massacres of Americans and their allies, so to prevent it the U.S. organized a full evacuation of the city for all at-risk citizens.
Weeks of airplane evacuations got most of the at-risk people out of the country, but on April 28th the North Vietnamese forces (Peoples Army of Vietnam or PAVN) pushed close enough to put the nearby airbase under artillery fire. This ended the plane evacuations and forced the U.S. to find another way to get the around 7,000 people still in the city out before the PAVN closed in completely. Multiple plans were proposed but the leadership chose to go with a helicopter evacuation.
At the time Mark Haws was stationed on the USS Okinawa, an aircraft carrier in the US’s 7th Naval Fleet. Recalling his time on the ship Haws stated that he hated ship life and the close quarters restrictions it put on him. The Okinawa was at sea for 62 days during the weeks before and after the Fall of Saigon and Haws and many other Marines weren’t used to life at sea for that long.
A few days before the evacuation the Marines were given a quick briefing on what their job would be. Haws and his fellow Marines would fly into Saigon via helicopter, set up a perimeter at a few selected evacuation sites, and help protect and guide evacuees into helicopters which would take them out to a carrier in the U.S. fleet. Because of his lack of experience, Haws didn’t think he would be chosen to go into the city, but the night before the operation an officer told Haws that due to a shortage of Non-Commissioned Officers he would go into Saigon.
Haws and the rest of the evacuation personnel flew into Saigon early on the morning of the 29th. As they landed, Haws and the rest of the Marines saw burning buildings and heard the sound of gunfire and artillery off in the distance. Haws stated that, “The next 12 to 14 hours without question would be the most intense of my life. What would happen to the Vietnamese people trying to leave? What would happen to the women and children left behind? We were never going to get them all out”. Haws and the other Marines spent the day escorting evacuees to helicopter sites. Since most of the military age men in Vietnam were fighting in the war, most of the evacuees were women and children. Haws remembered the chaos of the day very clearly even 50 years later. One piece of the day that especially stuck out to him was the scared mothers who tried to hand off their infant children to strangers near the front of the lines to make sure their children made it out.
At a point in the evacuation the U.S. leadership began to hear reports of possible North Vietnamese sniper positions in the city. To keep the evacuation safe, the Marines on the ground were sent around to various locations in the city to clear out buildings from possible snipers. According to Haws, checking the buildings was an incredibly intense task. The Marines knew that there had to be a PAVN and Viet Cong presence in the besieged city, they just didn’t know where. Haws described the tension of clearing out a grocery store, going from aisle to aisle not knowing if there was an enemy soldier around the corner. Haws and his unit found many AK-47s (the North Vietnamese’s go to rifle) lying around, but luckily they encountered no PAVN or Viet Cong soldiers.
Near the end of the day, Haws and his unit were one of the last groups left in the city. The city was a ghost town by this point and the PAVN had moved in close enough that helicopters were shot at when they tried to come back in. Multiple helicopters tried to come in, but Haws could see that tracer rounds from small arms fire was being shot at the choppers forcing them to turn back. Finally, as night was falling, a Navy pilot got through and got Haws and his unit out of Saigon in time.
Due to the chaos of the evacuation, Haws was dropped off on the aircraft carrier the USS Midway rather than the ship he arrived on, the Okinawa. The rooms below deck were filled with refugees and sailors so Haws, some of the Marines, and many of the refugees had to sleep on the flight deck on sheets of bubble wrap that night. Haws had hated ship life before Saigon, but after that day he was more than happy to be back at sea.
The next morning a fleet of South Vietnamese helicopters arrived at the 7th fleet looking to get out of the country. The helicopters were piloted by South Vietnamese soldiers who often had their families on board with them. The Navy took on the extra helicopters (most of which the US bought for South Vietnam) and brought the new refugees below deck.
At one point a Vietnamese pilot in a Cessna began flying laps around the USS Midway looking to land. The flight deck was filled with people and helicopters, so the Navy tried to guide the Cessna pilot to land in the water where a small boat and crew were waiting to pick him up. The pilot refused to land in the water and dropped a note taped to a stone stating that he had his wife and children on board. The Captain of the Midway, Capt. L.C. Chalmers, was ordered by his commanding officer to have the Cessna land in the ocean to avoid a costly accident, but Captain Chalmers refused to put the pilot’s family at risk and had his men push the helicopters off the deck and into the sea to make room. Despite the carrier’s flight deck not being made for this type of aircraft, the Cessna landed safely and the pilot (South Vietnamese Major Buang-Ly) and his family made it out.
Overall, the helicopter evacuation (AKA Operation Frequent Wind) was a success. Almost 7,000 Americans and South Vietnamese civilians were escorted out of Saigon through helicopter and more than 130,000 were evacuated or self-evacuated in the days before and after the Fall of Saigon. Four American soldiers would lose their lives during the operation, Charles McMahon and Darwin Judge were killed by PAVN forces in Saigon (they would be the last American ground casualties in Vietnam) and William Nystul and Michael Shea were presumed dead when their helicopter crashed during a nighttime mission.
Many readers might wonder why there wasn’t more aggression from the North Vietnamese forces to prevent the evacuation. Most U.S. Military leaders agreed that the Northern forces were likely more than happy to the see the Americans and their allies leave after more than a decade of hard fighting and were hesitant to make the U.S. think twice.
Most of the 130,000+ refugees who left Saigon were briefly located to Guam where the U.S. Military processed and housed them for a short period of time. After processing, most of the refugees were relocated to various cities in America.
After the Fall of Saigon Mark Haws, then only 20 years old, was released from his two-year tour. Mark struggled to find a direction for some time until he returned to the Marines in 1976. It was during this second tour that Mark met his wife Karen at El Toro Air Base in California. Karen was one of the very few female Marines during that era and as a result had to persevere through many challenges and inequalities. Mark has worked in the car leasing industry for most of his post-military career. He and Karen have lived in various cities and states throughout their lives, but they recently settled in Lac qui Parle Village.
After his experiences in the Vietnam War, Mark came away with the perspective that war is horrible and should always be prevented. Haws believes that the easiest way to achieve this goal is to pick good leaders who can and will avoid violent conflict.
