The Foreign Service Journal, March 2003

our South Vietnamese allies and of the United States would be swept away from our region — indeed from all of the northern half of South Vietnam. But at the least, from the onset of the offensive, it was clear that the military initiative was in the North’s hands and that there was no early prospect of a southern counteroffensive — though consulate management vetoed reporting this, apparently because such judgments would not have been well-received by embassy leadership in Saigon. And quickly enough it became apparent that the South Vietnamese not only were retreating on a wide front, but were on the verge of being routed. In these circumstances, early and effective planning for an evacuation should have been our priority. The mindset coming from the embassy, however, was to project full confi- dence in our allies. This in turn was taken to mean that evacuation plan- ning and implementation should be downplayed. Efforts at evacuation began, but without full urgency. Early on April 1, we learned that the South Vietnamese military com- mand had departed Nha Trang. We left helter-skelter the same day, improvising a helicopter landing area at the consulate and taking those Vietnamese employees with us who had the good sense or good fortune to be near at hand. As we departed, Nha Trang was falling into chaos; I vividly recall marauding South Vietnamese soldiers pointing their weapons at us as we chop- pered away. In Saigon, we were greeted by cheerful embassy dependents who appeared to have little sense of what we had just been through — or that they would be going through the same in short order. Ambassador Graham Martin received us at the embassy, affirming bravely that a reduced South Vietnam — “Cochinchina” — would be viable. I was invited to stay on in the embassy, but sensing that our evac- uation from Saigon would be at least as improvised as our departure from the north, I chose to leave as soon as I could assemble a new wardrobe (my possessions having been left behind in Nha Trang) and acquire a plane ticket. The lesson here is the obvious one, that policy goals and evacuation planning may appear to conflict, posing difficult choices. My own view is that by failing to give evacua- tion the priority it deserved, we made the wrong choices in Vietnam in 1975. Indeed, I believe we made wrong policy choices in Vietnam going back to the 1950s, but that is another story. David Adamson Washington, D.C. Starting Off with a Bang On June 16, 2001, my husband and I left our life in Los Angeles to go to Washington, D.C., where I would begin my new career in the Foreign Service. Three weeks later, I was given my first assignment: Islamabad. We were scheduled to leave for Pakistan on the first of November. However, following the events of Sept. 11, I was notified by my career development officer that Pakistan was under ordered depar- ture status, and since my position was classified as non-emergency, I would remain in Washington until further notice. My first assignment in the Foreign Service, and I was evacuat- ed before I even got to post! By December 2001 the ordered departure was lifted for employees only; family members remained under evacuation. It was hard leaving my husband M A R C H 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 49