Scotty Mills, United States Navy, shares his experience and part in the history of the Fall of Saigon, including rescuing Vietnamese refugees during the liberation. Marketta Davis/


The anguish and anger that spread across the American citizenry during the evacuation of our South Vietnamese allies from Saigon on April 30, 1975, are still vivid to Hoang Ngoc Linh and Scotty Mills, two Pensacolians who lived it.

"As I get older, I'm amazed and bewildered to think what it took just to survive," said Linh, who was among the tens of thousands fleeing to U.S. Navy ships in the harbor seeking refuge. Linh had worked as a translator for the United States during the war. Her boss warned her a few days before the evacuation that she should leave the country quickly.

Mills was a sailor aboard the aircraft carrier USS Hancock, who was helping the desperate expatriates escape a homeland overrun by communist forces. "All that day, and I even think the next day, we had helicopters coming in. There would, maybe, be 10 or 15 people at a time coming in. The total number of people that we got aboard the Hancock at that time was about 2,500," he said.

The memories of Linh and Mills underscore the tragedy of Vietnam, which ripped the families of Linh and others from their homes and cost the lives of more than 50,000 in the U.S. military. Linh lost family members and friends. Mills lost shipmates, crews on planes that flew air strikes from his carrier.

Still, amid the sadness for Mills, there is pride of a job well done: saving many who had befriended this nation's military and fought side-by-side. "We were there to help those people," he said. "That's what American servicemen do."

For Linh, the end of life as she knew it led to a new one in the United States. She migrated gradually from Guam, to Hawaii and then Eglin Air Force Base, later settling in Pensacola.

Such stories are being gathered by WSRE, the Pensacola PBS station, on its website: "We're encouraging people to share. After 40 years, it's important to understand this pivotal time in our nation's history," said Jill Hubbs, a spokeswoman for the station. Her father, Navy pilot Cmdr. Donald Richard Hubbs, was lost in Vietnam.

The evacuation is being commemorated in a new documentary film, "Last Days of Vietnam," which will debut in Pensacola on March 24. A trailer of the movie, directed by nationally known documentary maker Rory Kennedy, can be found on with this article.

The sort of images depicted on the film are vivid to Mills, 78, who retired from the Navy to Pensacola in 1981. He said the Hancock reached the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam in late April 1975 when Saigon was being overrun. He participated in one of the most historically familiar moments during the evacuation: pushing from the Hancock into the sea an empty American helicopter that had brought refugees to the ship.

The UH-1, which had been given to the South Vietnamese military, is the subject of iconic photos and news media video from April 30. After the aircraft was overboard, sailors began to cheer, which might not seem a logical reaction in retrospect, but it was spontaneous at the time. "They felt liberated" too, Mills said. "They knew they had a job to do, and they did it to the best of their ability."

There were also some Americans who had rescued and later married Vietnamese people. Many refugees tried to bring their belongings aboard, everything from jewels and bags of cash to a motor scooter.

Still, Mills and the other sailors knew Saigon and the rest of Vietnam were gone. "It was over," he said with tears in his eyes during a recent News Journal interview. "There was remorse. After all that had happened, the things we tried to do. We lost. America lost."

Yet Mills is proud of being part of the American commitment to help as many of its friends as possible to safety. The Hancock embarked on a three-day voyage to the Philippines.

Mills described the refugees' devastation at losing their homes, family members and all their possessions. "You could tell it," he said. "You could look at their faces. There was that kind of lost look: where are we going to go now, what are we going to do?"

With the 40th anniversary of the evacuation approaching, Mills said it doesn't get easier this time of year when television and other news media inevitably recall the event. "I'm an old man. And it's never easy because you look at it and you think, 'we failed, we failed those people.' Not the Hancock, not the men on board the ship. They did not. They did their job."

Linh is grateful to those who helped her. She was in her early 20s when she barely made it out of Vietnam with her two small children and her mother. "I was afraid all the time, but especially at the airport (Ton Son Nhut Air Base), shielding them from gunfire."

Her memory includes riding in a convoy of buses, "At Tan Son Nhut, we were on the fourth bus. We were told to be quiet, jump off and get on the plane. Then the Viet Cong attacked and hit the first bus in our convoy. The military personnel said 'No Go' and the waiting plane took off without any of us. We waited for three days before another rescue chopper came back."

When a helicopter did arrive to rescue them, "I handed my kids up and got myself in the aircraft. My mother's turn came to get up. I tried to get her up, but the people on the ground grabbed her feet and would not let her go." Panic had gripped many who sided with the crumbling South Vietnamese government.

The fear spread that every rescue aircraft would be the last. Linh's helicopter was full without her mother being able to get on board. She recalls being told, "'You'll have to leave her there.' My mother fainted, and I did the stupidest thing ever. I got off the aircraft to help her and it flew away with my children on board."

Three days later another helicopter arrived to take Linh and her mother to a civilian freighter, the Pioneer Commander, waiting offshore. There they were reunited with Linh's children.

Linh, who was born into the war era, said it was all she ever knew: "I just wanted to survive for my children and keep my family together." Through all the fear and pain, she did that.

Looking back, Mills sometimes isn't sure how to feel. "I look at it and all I can say is, there I am. That's my part in history."

Timeline of American involvement in Vietnam

1956: United States forces begin training South Vietnamese troops after the French military pulls out follow their defeat by guerillas at Dien Bien Phu.

1957: Communist Insurgency into South Vietnam: Communist insurgent activity in South Vietnam begins. Guerrillas assassinate more than 400 South Vietnamese officials. Thirty-seven armed companies are organized along the Mekong Delta.

1959: US Servicemen Killed in Guerrilla Attack: Major Dale R. Buis and Master Sergeant Chester M. Ovnand become the first Americans to die in the Vietnam War when guerillas strike at Bienhoa.

1962: Vice President Johnson tours Saigon: During a tour of Asian countries, Vice President Lyndon Johnson visits Diem in Saigon. Johnson assures Diem that he is crucial to U.S. objectives in Vietnam and calls him "the Churchill of Asia."

1964: Debate on Gulf of Tonkin resolution: The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is approved by Congress on Aug. 7 and authorizes President Lyndon Johnson to "take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression." The resolution passes unanimously in the House, and by a margin of 82-2 in the Senate. The Resolution allows Johnson to wage all out war against North Vietnam without ever securing a formal Declaration of War from Congress.

1965: The U.S military presence tops 200,000.

North Vietnamese launch tet offensive: In a show of military might that catches the U.S. military off guard, North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces sweep down upon several key cities and provinces in South Vietnam, including its capital, Saigon. Within days, American forces turn back the onslaught and recapture most areas. From a military point of view, Tet is a huge defeat for the Communists, but turns out to be a political and psychological victory. The U.S. military's assessment of the war is questioned and the "end of tunnel" seems very far off.

1969: Policy of "Vietnamization" announced: President Richard Nixon's Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird describes a policy of "Vietnamization" when discussing a diminishing role for the US military in Vietnam. The objective of the policy is to shift the burden of defeating the Communists onto the South Vietnamese Army and away from the United States.

1973: Cease-fire signed in Paris: A cease-fire agreement that, in the words of Richard Nixon, "brings peace with honor in Vietnam and Southeast Asia," is signed in Paris by Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho. The agreement is to go into effect on Jan. 28. Last American troops leave South Vietnam.

1975: Last Americans evacuate as Saigon falls to communists: South Vietnamese President Duong Van Minh delivers an unconditional surrender to the communists in the early hours of April 30. North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin accepts the surrender and assures Minh that, "...Only the Americans have been beaten. If you are patriots, consider this a moment of joy." As the few remaining Americans evacuate Saigon, the last two US servicemen to die in Vietnam are killed when their helicopter crashes.

Source: The Public Broadcasting System

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