More photos from the Convoy of Tears

.........the leading part of our convoy got through the ambush point under a screen of supporting fire. But the tail end had to leave the road and pass through the jungle. I was in the tail end. Communists armed with our weapons and Communist B-41 rockets and AK-47 rifles shot into the convoy, while their artillery struck from all directions. Many trucks were hit by shells and burst into flames and exploded. The trucks were crammed with women, children, and old people. They fell everywhere. Those who walked fell to machine gun bullets. Their blood flowed in tiny streams. The roaring artillery, crackling small arms, screams of the dying and crying of the children combined into a single voice from hell.

The Rangers resisted all night, permitting the tail end of the convoy to flee into the jungle. At last, 200 of us succeeded in climbing up Chu Del hill, about six miles from Cheo Reo, 210 miles north of Saigon. Helicopters contacted us and moved in for rescue. The operation was difficult, because Chu Del is a narrow and steep hill. Finally, in an operation that evening and the next morning, 200 people were lifted out and rescued."

 ^{More heart rendering stories @} 

 "A pregnant lady" – abandoned by her lover to face her fate.

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I have three pages of four from a Saigon English language newspaper I carried with me on the evacuation and I have no idea in the world what happened to the fourth, but it is a heartrending account of a Vietnamese reporter who was in the midst of this disaster. His continual recitations of  the Americans, Koreans and others who had lost their lives in the defense of South Vietnam which had now been for naught is depressing to say the least.  One of the most powerful pieces I have ever read and it kills me to this day whenever I think of it. 

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 Some 400,000 civilians, 60,000 ARVN, and 7,000 Rangers began the attempted escape to the sea.
 

By the time that the last straggling men, women, and children had reached Tuy Hoa on the coast; 300,000 civilians, 40,000 ARVN, and 6,300 Rangers were missing, never to be accounted for.

 

 

 

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