"Finis! Finis!" the South Vietnamese police officer yelled, his arms flailing wildly, his eyes crazed with fear. He raised his pistol to his head and pulled the trigger.
As he lay mortally wounded in the downtown Saigon square, hundreds of his comrades stripped off their uniforms in a desperate attempt to blend in with their victorious northern Communist foes.By then, the sole remaining American allies - 11 Marines - already had scrambled aboard the final helicopter leaving the besieged U.S. Embassy.
Twenty years ago, on April 30, 1975, a dispirited South Vietnam surrendered to North Vietnam, its lifeline of American blood dried up, its supporting U.S. war machine turned off.
The U.S. toll: 58,153 dead. The Vietnamese death toll: 1.1 million Communist fighters, 223,748 South Vietnamese soldiers and nearly 2 million civilians, according to Vietnam's official casualty report, which was released April 3.
The end came in chaos - with South Vietnamese clawing frantically at the U.S. Embassy's chain-link gate, thrusting their babies at American strangers with bags of gems and gold, desperately trying to bully or bribe their way onto the departing helicopters.
Any plans for an orderly evacuation collapsed in panic and bedlam, and hundreds of Vietnamese allies promised safe passage were left behind.
"It still leaves a bad taste in my mouth 20 years later," says Col. Harry G. Summers Jr., then an American negotiator in Saigon. "It was just disgraceful. It was the Vietnam War in microcosm. Good intentions but fatally flawed execution. The whole thing was just tragedy working itself out."
The beginning of the end came with the dawn of April 29.
For more than three hours, from 4:10 a.m. to 7:15 a.m., North Vietnamese gunners rained rockets and artillery shells onto Tan Son Nhat Air Base, home to the U.S. Defense Attache's Office, the so-called Pentagon East.
The last two Americans killed on Vietnamese territory, Marine Cpls. Charles McMahon Jr., 21, of Woburn, Mass., and Darwin Judge, 19, of Marshalltown, Iowa, died in the assault.
The relentless barrage hastened orders from Washington to pull out all Americans and as many as possible of the Vietnamese thought to be marked for death or prison.
Operation Frequent Wind was the biggest helicopter evacuation in history. The Marines carried 1,373 Americans and 5,595 Vietnamese and other foreigners to safety aboard U.S. carriers in the South China Sea, logging 1,054 flight hours and 682 sorties.
But back in Saigon - immediately renamed Ho Chi Minh City after the legendary Communist leader - all was disintegrating.
The vastly outnumbered South Vietnamese soldiers deserted by the thousands, fleeing with their families. Some were firing their rifles in the air, yelling at the Americans, "We want to go, too!"
"They were nothing more than hoods . . . running around with weapons, not even defending their own country," said one of the 11 final Marines, Sgt. Maj. Terry Bennington, now 42.
Across from the U.S. Embassy, the crowd stripped and stole dozens of abandoned embassy cars. They looted the apartments of departing Americans of furniture, bathroom fixtures, air conditioners, typewriters, books, radios, stereo equipment and food.
As hundreds of South Vietnamese stampeded the embassy gate or tried to scale the surrounding 14-foot wall to reach the helicopters, Marines and civilians beat them back with anything they could find.
"I will die if I stay," screamed a teenage girl.
Col. John H. Madison Jr., a U.S. negotiator who attempted to calm the mob, reported to Washington that "the situation was clearly beyond control of the Marine guards who began to resort to force. This, in turn, tended to intensify the panic."
Summers, a noted military strategist and author, said in a recent interview that he was furious some Vietnamese were left behind because of the lack of direction.
"I went to Hanoi a week before the fall of Saigon, knowing we were going to get the terms of the U.S. withdrawal. And I asked the embassy what my instructions were, since I had diplomatic status. And the answer was, `Damned if I know.' And I said, `What am I supposed to do?' And he said, `Well, do the best you can.' "
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As the end of the war neared, North Vietnamese leaders rejoiced at their command headquarters.
"There are few moments in life when one is so happy that they want to cry," Lt. Gen. Tran Van Tra, the commander of the Communist forces, recalled in a 1983 account of the Ho Chi Minh Campaign.
"I suddenly felt as if my soul was translucent and light, as if everything had sunk to the bottom," Tra wrote. "The war was nearly over. It had been a long, fierce war, and many of our comrades and compatriots were not around to share that happy moment. They had fallen so that we could enjoy that moment."
The collapse of South Vietnam actually began nearly two months before its surrender with a Communist strategy that forced South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu into a fatal decision.
In a surprise attack March 10, North Vietnamese forces captured the provincial capital of Buon Ma Thuot, the southern anchor of South Vietnam's defenses.
Thieu, up against a larger, better-equipped foe and facing the imminent end of U.S. military aid, ordered his forces to abandon the sparsely populated highlands and withdraw to the more easily defended coastal cities.
Thousands of South Vietnamese soldiers and civilians fled by car, truck and foot, clogging major highways and putting themselves in harm's way from North Vietnamese guns and lack of food and water. Hundreds died, their bodies along the roadsides attesting to the cruelty of those final days.
The northern cities fell next, including the old imperial capital of Hue and the country's second-largest city, Da Nang. Central coastal cities then were abandoned without a fight.
President Nixon had begun a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam in 1969, culminating four years later with the signing of the Paris Peace Agreement. Under terms of that accord, which ended direct U.S. military intervention in Vietnam, North Vietnam released 591 American prisoners of war over the next three months and the United States withdrew its last 23,000 combat troops.
The agreement allowed the United States to maintain 50 military attaches and 1,200 civilians at Pentagon East and 150 Marines at the U.S. Embassy.
As conditions worsened, the United States hurried to evacuate 226 Vietnamese orphans, but Operation Babylift ended in tragedy. The Air Force C-5 carrying the children made a crash landing April 4 after a lock system failed and the doors flew off the plane; 135 people died, including 76 orphans, and more than 100 children were injured, many suffering brain damage from the lack of oxygen.
Thieu fled the country April 21. In a tearful and bitter farewell address, he said the United States had broken a pledge to intervene if North Vietnam violated the 1973 agreement and had "led the South Vietnamese people to death."
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Once the evacuation finally was completed, the 11 remaining Marines locked the embassy's oversized oak doors and took refuge on the roof. It was seemingly endless hours before the final CH-46 helicopter headed their way.
"As we were taking off, the South Vietnamese had made it to the roof," Bennington said. "So it was pretty hairy there at the last moments."
As the Marines soared over Saigon, they watched the North Vietnamese begin their final attack. The Communists rolled into Saigon in tanks and armored vehicles and raised their flag over the Presidential Palace.
On the first floor of the palace, a Communist search team pulled back a curtain shielding a government conference room. Inside, the South Vietnamese Cabinet sat around an oval-shaped table.
"You've been surrounded!" team member Pham Duy Do yelled, pointing his rifle. "If anyone has a weapon, throw it down and surrender!"
"We have been waiting for you so that we could turn over the government," responded Duong Van Minh, who had taken over as South Vietnam's president in his country's final days.
"You have nothing left to turn over," a Communist political officer told him.
The war had ended.