Chapter 40: Escape

I WAS TOLD I’d have better luck writing a letter than trying to call Oman from the embassy. Phone lines were jammed with users and the top embassy and military officials had priority.

After creating a hundred passports and visas on Friday, I wasn’t sure I’d brought enough supplies with me to meet the demand. I had a gross of each color and design of passport, and a couple of gross of templates. I’d brought a dozen 160-packs of film. As consulate employees brought me applicants to get their visas, I managed to get them to spend a minute so I could get them ID badges. It was probably a waste of time, but the more employees who had badges, the more easily they would be recognized.

The common factor among everyone who came through to get a visa or passport was that they wanted to leave Vietnam, and passage out was at a premium. There were quite a few American businessmen and contractors who brought Vietnamese wives and children with them.

China and I went to dinner in the cantina and then sat out by the pool that evening while I wrote individual letters to each of my wives and my children. China said I shouldn’t seal them because they would be censored before they left. But I’d been a diplomatic courier for two years and had seals for the service. I used a seal to close each envelope and then used the embosser my boss had given me to crimp the letters. They were addressed to my individual family members at the American Embassy in Muscat, Oman. I might not be able to do this regularly, but I wanted to be sure that each member of my family knew exactly how much I loved her. Next, all I needed was a courier.

The next evening, China and I once again talked until late, just enjoying being in someone’s company as we told each other about our lives.

“My mother was employed by the embassy in 1953. There were not many Americans staffing the embassy at that time. My mother spoke and could read and write English, French, and Vietnamese, so she was hired as an interpreter.”

“How about your father?”

“He was an American on guard duty at the chancery. It was not uncommon for liaisons to form between national employees and Americans stationed here. It still isn’t. I don’t think he ever knew my mother was pregnant. He was moved to his next assignment and my mother lost track of him. He never wrote back.”

“So, you were born here in Saigon, but have an American father?”

“I was born in the chancery infirmary.”

“The embassy is considered US land. That means you were born in America with an American parent. You should be a natural citizen.”

“Perhaps, if my birth certificate had survived the bombing in ‘66. I stayed with the embassy when the new chancery was built and was educated by volunteers. I’ve lived within the compound ever since.”

“We need to apply to the ambassador for a citizen passport.”

“The current ambassador is not fond of Vietnamese employees or even the Vietnamese spouses of Americans. I doubt he would approve such a thing. Now tell me about your family.” She seemed to dismiss the idea pretty quickly. I filed it away in the back of my mind.

“Well, my family is quite unusual. I have three wives and two children.”

“Is that legal?”

“No. We simply all live together. I don’t have a legal marriage with any of them. But I love them to the end of the world.”

We talked well into the night before stumbling to our rooms and sleeping until we had to get to work in the morning.

“Did you hear?” Ken asked at the door to my passport office.

“Hear what, Ken?” I asked. He was carrying his shoulder bag and looked like he was ready to leave.

“The plane we flew in on ... Last night it was loaded with 300 babies and at least forty caretakers and medical personnel. It crashed shortly after takeoff.”

“Oh, my God! Was it shot down?”

“No word on why it crashed. They’re still rescuing people from the wreckage. At least there are survivors. I don’t know how many.”

“You look like you’re packed to leave.”

“The general and I are headed to the airport. We’ll probably be on the next baby flight to Manila.”

“Take care of them, Ken.”

“I’ll do my best. I just stopped by to see if you had any messages to send home.”

“Yes. In fact, I was hoping to find a courier. You know my family is in Muscat, Oman at the embassy.”

“Give me a phone number. We’ll have better luck making a call from Manila or if worse comes to worse, from Washington.”

I quickly scribbled our phone number at the embassy in Muscat. It was Saturday. There wasn’t much chance anyone would be there today, but he might be able to reach someone on Sunday.

“Good luck, Nate. The general just said to tell you to get as many people as possible out of the country. I’ll see you Stateside.”

Ken took my envelopes and headed for the parking lot where the green bus was loading up with people headed to the airport.

We didn’t have as many people in line on Saturday because the consulate was technically closed on the weekend. They were still letting people in who had appointments. With as many people as we were supposed to process, I was surprised they weren’t keeping the embassy open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, but I guess people get tired and need to rest. I was the only one who had only been here working for two days.

While we were working, during the day, news continued to filter in. They said 130 people had died in the crash, including ninety-five babies, but they’d saved 170. It really put a damper on people’s enthusiasm for getting the babies out of Vietnam. Flights were scheduled daily, and Sunday’s would include many of the survivors of the Friday flight.

No one came into the compound on Sunday except the people who lived there and provided essential services like food. There was still a crowd who gathered outside the gate waiting for it to open on Monday. It was quiet and we all gathered in the commons where Radio Saigon played through the speakers. The station mostly played popular music and broke each hour for news. The news was pretty bland. The crash of the Babylift plane was hardly mentioned. We found out UCLA won the NCAA basketball championship again and that Bobby Fischer refused to play Karpov in a chess tournament.

Then music played again.

I don’t know what possessed me, but I took China’s hand and started spinning her in dance moves I hadn’t used in way too long. Gloria Gaynor sang “Never Can Say Goodbye” and China picked up the dance moves pretty quickly. That was followed by Barry White singing a new one called “Just Another Way to Say I Love You.”

As we danced, others who were hanging out at the pool got up to dance as well. It was good to just unwind when we knew the war was closing in on Saigon.

Monday, one of the passport agents came in with a client and plopped in a chair beside us while she bemoaned the current situation.

“You might as well keep all the passports with their applications here until the ambassador gets back,” she said.

“Where’d he go?”

“He has a house about half a mile from here. Oh. He’s sick. The embassy doctor has gone to call on him. It’s bad enough trying to get the seal applied to passports and visas when he’s here because he is so busy and won’t give the seal to anyone else. He’ll never catch up on a backlog.”

“The deputy doesn’t have access?”

“In my opinion, the ambassador doesn’t trust anyone with anything.”

“Well, we’ll keep them all organized and ready to go,” I said. “I hate to have people waiting for them, but I suppose there’s nothing we can do.”

“You’ve already made it a lot better for people. None of these people would stand a chance of getting a passport within six weeks if we were sending them offshore to be manufactured.”

“I’ll do the best I can,” I said.

She left and I worked with China to set up a system for keeping the passports or visas with the applications. Usually, they would go to the ambassador or to a consul general to be sealed, then would be sent back to the passport agent, who would call the client and deliver the document.

That night, I looked at nearly a hundred passports and visas in our makeshift file box. I’d have to figure out what to do once I found out how seriously the ambassador was ailing.

We found out on Tuesday. The ambassador was down with pneumonia. The doctors reported that he would be bed-ridden for a few days, but he was strong and would be back to work the next week.

In a week, I could have nearly a thousand documents that needed his seal. I went to see David.

“Why don’t you have the seal, David? That’s usually the province of the consul general,” I said when we got together.

“Yup. That’s right. Only not in Vietnam. The ambassador has a list of people he wants to make sure have visas and he’s been checking every one of them. I’ve seen him toss perfectly good applications in the wastebasket.”

“If you contact Mr. Martin, I’m sure he’ll authorize another seal,” I said cautiously.

“I’ve put in a request. You see, once you are in an embassy, you are under the management of the ambassador or deputy chief of mission. Even the defense attaché is under the orders of the ambassador. We’re making a plan, though, to get more families out. Stand by for that.”

Tuesday evening, I looked at the box of completed visas and passports awaiting the seal and made my decision. I retired early that evening. China seemed tired, too, so didn’t complain about heading for her room. About midnight, I made my way back to the consulate and slipped into my production room.

I started with the passports. These were for American citizens. Many were either born in Vietnam, or had dual citizenship with one of the other nations represented here. The French embassy was right next door, and even had a gate between the consulate and their chancery. I separated the passports and applications out of the box, and started using my State Department seal to validate the last page of the booklet.

It took about an hour to work my way through the passports. Then I slipped up to the consulate passport office and dropped the batch of them in the lead passport agent’s inbox.

Then I went to bed.

I didn’t feel guilty about stamping the passports. Mr. Martin had specifically authorized me to do so. I was cautious about it because I didn’t want to draw the ire of the ambassador. If he gave me a specific order to not validate any more documents, or worse yet, confiscated my seal, I would have to stop. I wanted to get as many Americans as possible out of Vietnam—and that included their families, whether citizens or not.

Wednesday we were back at work and processing more applications than ever. We worked from eight in the morning until half past eight at night. China ran out early in the afternoon and got us sandwiches from the cantina. We got a hot dog after work and drank a beer, then headed to bed.

I was up at midnight again and went back to the office. I sorted through the applications for unwed parents of children. The agents who were in charge of interviewing and filling out the templates chatted quite a lot when they brought a customer to get the last phase completed.

“Marriage certificates are going for around $2,000 out there. Used to be $20,” one said. “Not everyone can afford it and we’re holding a lot of applications pending a certificate. Mr. Conklin said the ambassador isn’t sealing the visa of anyone claiming to be a common law wife. Certified with proof of spouse’s citizenship or no visa.”

“That’s insane,” I said. “A lot of those common law marriages have children.”

“He says we don’t yet have authorization to transport any Vietnamese refugees to the US, so no visas. I’ll just bet they’re sending many people on from the DAO to places like Guam, Manila, Hong Kong, or Taipei. It just depends on who is being paid for what.”

“Tell the other passport agents to clip a note to any application of a common law spouse and children that has a husband vouching for them. I’ll make sure I accompany them to the ambassador when he returns,” I said.

Like any war-torn country, I suppose, desperate people were willing to take desperate measures. That included sleeping with the soldiers, diplomats, or any other savior who could take them to safety. Americans were all too willing to fuck their way through Saigon’s women looking for the hope of salvation.

I know that’s bitter and I don’t want to sound like I believed all Americans in Vietnam would sleep with any native girl who spread her legs. The guys I’d met, workers in the consulate, the embassy, the CRA, or the Marines were all decent people. I don’t think they’d intentionally knock up a Vietnamese woman and then abandon her. I’d been away from Ronda for a week and the rest of my family for five weeks. It drove me half crazy at night thinking of them. I could only imagine what the guys who were gone for a year or two felt like. I wouldn’t blame any of them for seeking comfort when there were so many willing comforters available.

And I didn’t believe the war automatically made every Vietnamese woman available. I think desperation set in with poverty and displacement. There were over two million people in the greater Saigon area—a million more than ten years ago. And more people were flooding in each day. The PAVN was definitely moving southward and every mile they moved sent another wave of refugees toward Saigon.

“There’s good news in terms of stepping up the evacuations,” Bruce Lindstrom said. He was the principal senior agent who brought a line of people for visas.

Foreign nationals all had to be escorted when they were in the consulate, so the agents had set up a system of holding a dozen or so applicants at a time in the office and then just one agent leading a pack of them to my office. We could seat and shoot a dozen applicants in fifteen minutes or less. China took care of attaching the application form to the finished document and filing it to go to the ambassador.

“We always want good news,” I said.

“We’re stepping up the frequency of flights at Tan Son Nhut—that’s the airport you came into when you arrived. The Defense Attaché Office is located there, which is a pretty good-sized compound where our Marine Security Guard is bunked and there’s a theatre and gym. That sort of thing. Anyway, it’s being activated as an evacuee holding facility. They aren’t turning anyone back at the airport and telling them to come again tomorrow like we still are here at the embassy. They check in and are led to an area where they wait until the next available plane. Once they’re in, the only way out is by plane.”

“It will be good to step up the frequency of people getting out of here,” I said.

“Oh, you want to know the kicker, though? We’ve got around 2,000 American government workers in Vietnam. That doesn’t include contractors and businessmen. We’re trying to ship them out as quickly as we can, but almost the same number arrive each day as leave.”

“What? Why in God’s name is anyone coming here?”

“For the work you’re doing,” Bruce said. “They’re coming back to try to get their families out.”

“I hope we can help them.”

“Scuttlebutt has it that the CG has acquired the State seal to validate visas. Stacks of them are showing up each morning. Not at the rate you’re producing them, but it isn’t at a standstill.”

“I wouldn’t spread that around,” I said. “It seems that some things might be better left unknown, like how he got the seal.”

“Right you are. Okay, folks, we have your contact info and as soon as your papers are validated, we’ll call you. Let’s head back to the gate in an orderly fashion.” He led his charges away and another agent arrived with another dozen applicants.

I continued to go into the office around midnight each night and stamp fifty to a hundred passports and visas. I delivered these to the principal passport agent and then slipped back to my room and to bed. I kept the seal in my courier bag, along with various supplies that I always carried, including film for my Nikon and for the Polaroid unit.

At dinner time, I wandered around the compound taking pictures, including getting China to pose for me.

“Nate, I am not dressed nicely for a picture,” she complained.

“China, you are so beautiful, no one will notice how you are dressed,” I answered. They were more likely to notice that I was shooting 35mm transparencies and not my usual black and white. I had only one camera with me—the department’s Nikon. I had two lenses. But shooting candids wasn’t my specialty.

“Let me go change clothes so you can have a nice photo of me. Please?” she asked.

“Okay. I can see you have your heart set on something. Change clothes and we’ll find the perfect place to take your picture.”

I didn’t know where that would be. Natural light was a memory. Now the embassy compound was lit with a few pole lights that wouldn’t qualify for streetlamps in most places I’d visited.

When China returned, she was stunning. She’d freshened her makeup as well as putting on a lovely traditional Vietnamese dress. It was yellow with a floral design and she wore a strand of white beads with it.

“That’s beautiful, China. I haven’t seen you wear anything traditional since I got here.”

“I don’t usually wear traditional clothes because people ... I like to be seen as a westerner. But I do have one or two pretty things.”

“Let’s find a place with enough light that I can get a good picture.”

We hunted around for several minutes and I took another picture with the banyan tree in the courtyard, but I wasn’t confident of any of them.

“I have better light in my room,” I said. Granted it was incandescent, but it was bright.

“Oh, so do I! Take my picture there!”

We headed back to our rooms and China opened her door. The room was pretty basic, but I zeroed in on the mirror right away.

“That’s a beautiful mirror.”

“It was my mother’s. It’s one of the few things I have of hers.”

I positioned her in front of the mirror and after a few tries and trying a couple of different filters, took the perfect picture.

I was falling further and further behind in terms of the number of passports and visas we were holding and the number sealed and sent to the agents. The ambassador was back at work and we started sending a hundred of the cleanest and least problematic visas to him in hopes that he would simply seal them and have done with it. Mostly, it worked pretty well, but by the end of the week, it was obvious that I was not leaving after two weeks of work.

That was confirmed on Friday when I received another shipment of templates, film, and covers. A note from Mr. Martin simply said, “Use as needed.”

The pace of processing applications and generating visas and passports picked up substantially that week. It was now clear that the area north of Saigon was being evacuated. Americans from Da Nang were arriving in Saigon or farther south.

The consulate and all American personnel had been evacuated from Nha Trang. The consulate had been forwarding applications and trying to round up all the Americans and their families who were located up there. All these place names meant nothing to me but China would point a direction and indicate how many miles that way the place was.

April seventeenth and eighteenth, the population of the embassy compound went down as several hundred people considered to be in sensitive occupations—both American and Vietnamese—were bused to the DAO and given priority flights out. They were flying some pretty big aircraft out at the time. I know a couple of 747s were still flying in and out. It didn’t take many planeloads to get those who worked in intelligence, the defense attaché’s office, and similar jobs out of Vietnam.

Air America planes were also being used to move people out of Vietnam and either to Thailand or Manila. They were mostly all smaller planes, similar to the one that had been retired and became transport for Ronda and me. I whispered a prayer for my family again that day.

Sunday night, I was in my office reviewing and stamping visas when my door opened and the ambassador’s secretary, Edna Lim, walked in.

Oops. I’d been caught.

“Thank God it’s true,” she said, closing the door behind her. She came straight to me and dumped a huge stack of papers on my table. They still smelled of mimeograph ink. “We can’t clear people quickly enough to review every visa application. We can’t even get people processed quickly enough for you to take their pictures. These are affidavits of support. They were drawn up by the defense attaché. They declare that a non-citizen dependent of an American is sponsored and will be cared for and supported by that American.”

“That’s great, Miss Lim. Will it get them on an airplane?”

“The DAO says they will honor them,” she said. “However, they would carry more weight—look more official—if they had a State Department seal on them. Mr. Hart, I’ve heard more passports and visas have shown up in the consulate than the ambassador could possibly have approved. Since I deliver the non-validated documents to him and he gives me the validated ones to deliver to the consulate, I know for a fact it is far more. You were sent here under the direct order of the Secretary of State, according to Deputy Assistant Secretary Martin in Passport Services. You don’t report directly to anyone here in the embassy or consulate. If you have the means to seal these documents, I can have another five hundred or a thousand to you each night.”