April of 1969. On his second Southeast Asia tour, he participated in the saigon evacuation, flying the last 11 marines off of the roof of the American Embassy on the morning of april 30, 1975. We will hear more about that evening. Hes a graduate of the Army War College in carlisle, pennsylvania and the National War College in washington, d. C. He later served as a marine corps chair on the faculty of the Naval War CollegeTeaching National military strategy. In 1993 to kansas city and was assigned as the commanding officer. He later retired in 1996. Ladies and gentlemen, please help me welcome colonel Thomas Holden the stage. [applause] col. Holden thank you. [applause] thank you very much. Its a pleasure to be here. Aboutk to you tonight some of my experiences. As i start, i want to first say, i want to speak on behalf of all the marine pilot that participated in operation frequent wind when we evacuated the embassy in cambodia. Airelicopters took to the and accomplished that mission. We had some great marine corps pilot making that happen. Unfortunately, like a lot of operations, it did not go without a mishap. Evacuation, just before they started with the helicopter extraction, we lost one. Arines at guard post they were both killed instantly when a rocket hit their guard post. We also lost a ch 46 during the evening. Will talk more about that two men were aboard that aircraft and they were lost at sea. We got the crew rescued. A littleike to start bit about the history of that time. We had an election not long before. President nixon had vowed to end the war in vietnam. He was true to his word. He and dr. Kissinger worked hard at doing that. Peace3, they signed a with honor treaty. Similar with what we had in korea. The northwood space the north would stay north, the south would stay south. Prisoners of war would come home. Everything was supposed to stay like that. Anytime a violation by the north vietnamese would mean a complete reversal. Nixon said he would send the bombers back in and attack again. I think that they believed him. Reports were that the north vietnamese were terrified of next and. They listened to every word he said. The problem was, when he resigned and left the white house, the north vietnamese immediately took action and launched an attack along the main quarters of South Vietnam, coming south. Westpac, irned to was assigned to a ch 46 squadron. However this works. Make, itsting it to not coming forward. Im not real good with technology. This age 46s with squadron. I had no indications that we would be going back to vietnam. We were very happy with doing our mission. Theres a funny thing on the screen here. They go. Ok. Thank you. Thats the age 46 that you see there. We used it on the evacuation. We were happy campers. We were flying all over the pacific. This was taken in the philippines, heading out to a carrier. Everything was going well for us. On april 4, i have been gone for a while. I came back to the United States for a short vacation. When i got back, we were told immediately on april 4 to get everything you have, loaded up, fly out to the uss midway which was sailing south. About 70 miles at sea. We would land on it and that would take us down to the philippines. From there, we would do some additional work. , stationed in the onal and open a la kinowa, all flew out to the midway and landed. We spent 2. 5 days doing nothing but eating in the galley and having a great time. It was a great ship. Very happy to be on the midway. Once we got to the philippines, they said, get on your aircraft and fly to the airfield. We did that. The next day, the uss hancock hres another picture of the 46. Doing operations select what we did. H 53 was the other aircraft we were with, a heavy hauler. This is the uss open a la. It was sailing around with the hmm for 62. 462. We got aboard their in the philippines. 63 squadron. Lete h composited with some cobras and heelys. Squadron dids, our not have enough pilots back in those days. We were short and pilots. We brought some guys from five or six earlier. They were flying copilot, which is dangerous. Thats the only way we could get every aircraft going onto the ship. The other thing that was odd, the senior leadership, we had three majors. One came from the maintenance squadron. A wonderful man who had been the maintenance officer at the headquarters of the maintenance squadron. We had a cobra pilot, a joubert junior major. We had another major who was also with the cobras. He had been their operations officer. We had a Safety Officer from the air group. Who is going to be in charge and go to meetings and do everything you have to do a budget aboard ship . We decided we would make the junior officer the commanding officer. The way we did that, the reason for that, he had a letter that was very valuable. How many marines do we have in your tonight . Quite a few. You all know what office hours are, nonjudicial punishment. He had a letter that allowed him to do that. We needed to be able to come if we had a trooper that did not do the right in, we had to have the ability to hold him accountable. We made him the commanding officer. Tookaintenance officer care of the maintenance issues and worked with the ship the best he could. We did not take a lot of maintenance parts with us. We were supposed to be gone 10, 15 days and come back. We did not think we would need a lot of stuff. By that time, the aircraft were running pretty good. The ops officer became our operations officer. The senior major became the laundry officer. He backed off on some of this stuff. He thought we were doomed to failure. He was a downer. We did not want to see him a lot. We lived aboard ship. H 46 communityhe of helicopters were not the best of friends. We respected each other. Day, them, back in the 53 cost a lot of money. If they got shot up, they had to answer for it. We did not have a lot of them. We needed that aircraft for the heavy lift. If we lost a 46, no big deal. We can always replace it and the crew. The 53, you can imagine how we let them know what we thought. Kept us out of a lot of the information that we needed. South. Ed peninsula. Off the waiting for things to slow down. Us toil 10, they diverted cambodia. We went over there. The operation order was set. The 53s were going to run that mission completely. The distance from the ship to the Landing Field was on hundred 30 nautical miles. The 46 would have to refuel when we got there in order to get back to the ship. We ran search and rescue off the coast of cambodia. Should an age 53 go down en route or get shot down, we could rescue the crew and rescue the aircraft if we could. Once cambodia was done, it was done really efficiently, wheres my numbers here . Americansere was 289 that came out. That was it. We did not bring any cambodians out. They wanted to stay. They did not believe that they should leave their country. It was theirs. They were going to stay and see what they can do. Most of them were killed. They did not survive the takeover. We went ahead on the ship, went back around. It was 289 people that came out of that evacuation. We moved back to South Vietnam and the ship circled an area. We had two battalions with us. Second battalion, fourth marines, a battalion from the ninth marines. Discussion big whether we should have an amphibious landing. Whitmire, a wonderful senior officer who was the commander of the seventh fleet, said he would have nothing to do with putting more americans back into vietnam. Our mission was to get everybody out. That came to an end real quickly. We cap sailing around. Every day, we would get up around 4 00 in the morning. Expecting, todays the day. Nothing would happen. We would say ready to go until 2 00 in the afternoon. We would go back to our bunks and wait and wait until the next day would come along. The same thing over and over. 29, they started taking rockets at the air base. The heavy lift air force aircraft could no longer do evacuations of the vietnamese and americans out of that site. All fixeded to stop wing evacuation and activate the free cool wind operation order and do everything by helicopter. This is the American Embassy seen here. Every pilot had a picture of it. This is the other thing. There is the landing zone on top of the embassy for our 46 is. The big aircraft had to land down here. This tree had to be removed. We got it down within about 12 hours. The marines that were onsite there. They were ready to go. I can tell you right now, the street out here, and other streets around here, walltowall people. Everybody was trying to get in. Everybody wanted a right to freedom. It was a mess. The other problem we had was communication. My son, who some of you know served in the marine corps, to call me. He read a few books about vietnam. He was he would say, thats all fiction, isnt it . How did you fly at night . I said, it was easy. In the moonlit night, it was easy. We would use our navigation aids to get to where we wanted to go. He said, how did you do that without night vision goggles . He was astounded by that. He would say, you went into the jungle . How did you know where they were . Did you have gps . [laughter] had distance on the attack and radio that would give us summary miles out. Figured we were within a five mile area. We would look for a strobe light on the ground. Thats where we had to be. The marines on the ground you to take the strobe and put it in a helmet. As we went around, once we saw it, we knew we were on a flight path to pick up the wounded individual. You did not have to worry about seeing a lot. Generally speaking, the marines would try not to put a tree in your glide path. That would ruin your whole day. They wanted to get out as badly as we wanted to get in. It worked out pretty good. Day, my son has a problem with that. Hes always had night vision goggles on his helmet. Hes always had gps. We started flying. The other issue, communication. No cell phones. We did not have cell phones. E had a radio uhf was primary. We would leave the ship. We have the Helicopter Direction Center give us a steer towards vietnam. We would pick up the air force direction center. They would tell us where to go and all this good stuff. We started the operation. We were supposed to start at 12 10. The confusion was, what is l our . The navy and army have different designations for l our. It was screwed up to begin with. By the time we got there, it was 3 00 in the afternoon. One thing happened that was really unforgivable. They a message came in to say, we are going to start this operation right around noon. The guy was going off shift. Another guy was coming aboard. Took the messages, filed it away. The next guy went through stuff. It did not go through the flash message basket until an hour or two later. There was the message that said, the operation starts at 12 10. Right now, it is 3 00. You can imagine how we had to scramble. Everybody on the ground was ticked off. We did not get the word correctly. We thought it would go like phnom penh. The 53s started out beautifully. They went in where they were going to pick up some vietnamese and americans to start bringing them out to the ship. We had 44 naval vessels in about a 10 nautical mile area. It was really packed out there. A beautiful sight to see. I dont know if we will ever have that many navy ships in one location again. We have the uss midway, of course. The uss hancock. The uss coral sea. Carryingcraft carriers fixed wing aircraft. , itoddity about the midway had 10 air force helicopters aboard. The air force flew these aircraft down from thailand all the way down and around the peninsula and came aboard the navy ship. This had not been done before. Its a terrible time to practice it right when you need everybody working. They did a marvelous job. The navy learned how to work with them. They do have peculiarities. Some are good, some are bad. We made it happen. Everything was going well. They went in and do their did their part of the mission. , we hadon that day doctors and everything. I was going to orbit. There was an aircraft that went down and needed extra evacuation could evacuation. It was time to, come back to the ship. We only carry one hour and 40 minutes of fuel. We had to get gasoline. We landed on the hancock, refueled. Pointame clear at that that this line of people needing evacuation was endless. It looked like it would never stop. They were lined up for miles. It was like going to a trump rally. [laughter] we said to myself, this is crazy. What we started to do, we made a command decision. We will not use the searchandrescue mode anymore. We will start going into the embassy, picking up people. We went back and forth. You pick up people, refueled, its called daisy chaining. You try to keep the two aircraft together the best you can. We always landed on the roof. It was neat the first couple times. The Security Guard came into the aircraft, he asked me, do you want pistols . I said, no. Ive got one. He said, do you want pistols . He showed me this box full of pistols. Everybody getting on aircraft are frisked. I said, the lid up. He did. Everybody came out of that operation with a full bag of nine millimolar millimeter brownings. Some of them, very nice. [laughter] that was one of the benefits. We kept flying. The weather was really bad. It started out ok. The ceiling kept coming down. The operation planned call anything above 3000 feet is a little bit nerveracking. Thats a long way to fall if things come apart. We tried to go down early, down to 3000 feet. Below what the other traffic was. We finally talked to the 50 threes. You are wasting a lot of time climbing up all the way to that altitude. Get your people look to 3000 feet. Go out over the water. Eventually, they did. The other problem was, the air force was trying to keep track of everything. The loads of people coming out, who is where, whats going on. Their communication wasnt too good. They werent ready to handle 77 helicopters. It just wasnt possible. A couple of the cobra pilots who were down low, circling around the city, literally took over. They said, we know which landing zones are open. We will guide you in. Contact us. They took over. The operation really took off. We were able to be more efficient. It worked really well at that point. Another thing is operational concerns. My squadron did not get all the briefings that the 50 threes got. , how maye questions people are we going to be picking up . No one had a clue. It could go on forever. That was a big problem. The other big issue was, is anybody going to shoot at us . No one knew. One reason we went to 6500 feet inbound was because we thought, if they are going to use a missile, we could see it coming at us early enough to take defensive measures against it. That was not much of that particular stage. We did not have a lot of antimissile capability. Those were issues that would really get to us as we were flying along, especially when it got dark. Are we going to fly at night . . We had asked to fly at night to train because most of us have not had a night flight for 60 days. Especially off of a carrier at night, its really difficult to see sometimes. You want to be ready. We were not allowed to do that. The ships did not want to operate at night. That was turned down. The weather really got bad. That was starting to force everybody down lower. The other issue that became a real problem that night, as we came out, was finding fuel. You had 77 aircraft out there, flying out to the ships. They have to get gas each time they land. We did not have enough feeling points. Refueling points. One of my friends went to a landing ship dock which has two spaces in the back for helicopters. He was ready to flame out and loses aircraft. He landed right next to the ship in the water. Waves until an aircraft would leave so we could jump on the deck and get fuel. Whoe was a cobra that night literally could not find a place to land. They crashed into the sea. Both pilots got out and were rescued by about from the u. S. s curse. Refueling was a big issue. The embassy here was going to be a secondary point of departure for evacuation. It was supposed to be americans only. We figured there might be about 200 americans coming out of there. It turned out there were 2000 vietnamese there. Not just americans. They were all mixed in. The ambassador was an interesting fellow. Ambassador graham. I dont know what he was thinking or what he intended. I know he was conflicted. He had lost his son in vietnam who was killed a couple years earlier. I think he had a real passion for vietnam. All these vietnamese had worked for him and the United States. He felt he had to take care of these folks. They were his responsibility. He figured rightly. If they get captured by the north vietnamese, they would be killed or sent off to education camps. He just kept delaying his departure. He went in twice to get the ambassador. The investor refused to go up to the top deck to get into the aircraft. He got back to the command ship, the admiral was out there to greet the ambassador. All these vietnamese get off. The admiral asked, wheres the ambassador . Hes refusing to leave. He literally would not come out of the embassy. He was really upset when the rockets hit and we had to switch helicopters. He drove all the way out there to make sure that he was being told the truth. He came back in. Finally, at 4 58 in the morning, lady ace was flying. He flew 18 straight hours. Kamen, landed. Told the ambassador, you better get on board now. This is the last aircraft. He will get a couple more for the rest of your security detail. Thats it. Finally, the ambassador took the flag and everything you needed. He departed. The problem we ran into, no one is that when he got back to the command ship, he first called the tigers out. That was the call sign for the ambassador. When he landed on the blue ridge, he said, we are done. Signaldy took that as a that the operation was complete. At this point, people had already started shutting down his of exhaustion. Most of us had been up since 3 00 the previous morning. Some longer than that. The air force guys had artie shut down. They have a very strict aircrew requirement. They were all tied up at the time. I had come back a little after 10 00 that night. We landed. When we were sitting there looked off to the right. We saw this flash. Aircraft flewe into the water. We knew there was an accident. We had one problem. Everybodyt get have stopped to watch what was going on. I could not get the crew chief and refueling crew to break the hose loose. My wingman got his loose. He flew over. 70 yards from the ship. He landed in the water. He was able to see the crew men. They had their pain flares out. They were shooting them at the helicopter. He was able to land in the water and drop his cargo door and drag andman with broken legs damage to their bodies. We saved them. O