Goodbye, Saigon, Goodbye

When it finally arrived, the day that the G.I.s called X-plus-60 was hot and mildly anticlimactic. On the withdrawal deadline two months after the Paris truce signing, the U.S. military command in Viet Nam was closed down in a simple midday ceremony in a parking lot near Saigon's Tan Son Nhut airbase. No U.S. military band was available for the occasion. Loudspeakers blared out a recording of The Star-Spangled Banner, and a color guard rolled up the blue flag of the command under which 2,500,000 American G.I.s had served since 1962. Ellsworth Bunker, a distinguished career diplomat who had served as U.S. ambassador to South Viet Nam since 1967, also furled his flag last week. President Nixon accepted the resignation with "deepest personal regret," and named former ambassador to Italy Graham Martin to the post.

It took 19 flights to lift out the 2,500 American servicemen who still remained in the country on the last day. At about 5:20, a chipper North Vietnamese colonel stationed at the rear cargo ramp of a hulking U.S. Air Force C-141 transport presented a bamboo scroll painted with a Hanoi pagoda scene to an embarrassed American sergeant, whom he thought to be the last departing American. Moments later, Army Colonel David Odell, the Tan Son Nhut base commander, shouldered through the crowd and stepped to the boarding ramp; he had been having a final glass of champagne near by. Though the 825 American members of the Joint Military Commission were to stay on in Viet Nam for another two days, Odell could tell his grandchildren that he was officially the last man out.

By 5:30, the C-141 carrying Odell and 55 other departing servicemen was airborne. Outside the Tan Son Nhut gates, a crowd of newly unemployed Vietnamese base workers were busy hawking chairs, tables and canned goods that had been freshly looted from a G.I. mess hall. It was not an inappropriate finale; the last days of the U.S. military presence in Viet Nam were one great, giddy scramble. TIME Correspondent David DeVoss reports:

After four years of being urged to stay out of Viet Nam's larger cities, there they were: the last U.S. servicemen, buzzing about Saigon on driver-pedaled cycles, flirting with bar girls, buying souvenirs and generally staging the biggest shopping, sex and sightseeing spree ever seen in the city.

For many of the G.I.s, the departure proved an emotional experience, carried out in the dark recesses of bars like Randy's Randa-Vous and the Snake Pit. "All my goodbyes are taken care of," said Army Specialist Four Nelson Coffey, 29, of Portageville, N.Y. "I've paid my girl friend's rent till the end of the month and given her a couple hundred piasters so she'll survive. I guess if she can't hook up with a civilian soon, she'll go back to the rice paddies."

At the last minute, about 400 other G.I.s were frantically trying to arrange to get their fiancees and wives back to the States. The waiting room at the U.S. Consulate in Saigon was packed with nervous Vietnamese women and mixed-blood children, all lined up to receive U.S. visas.

One Vietnamese entrepreneur, known to G.I.s as "Miss Lee," talked about the future of her business--Saigon's Magic Fingers Steam Massage and Barber Shop. At one time, Miss Lee had 60 girls at work; now she has only seven. "Everything fini," she lamented. No one seemed more downcast than "Momma Bich," who played hostess during the 1960s to some of the wildest parties ever seen in Saigon's back rooms. U.S. Special Forces troops used to lavish $1,000 apiece on parties that lasted a whole weekend. Now fat and aging (she is 32), Momma is left with $30,000 in lOUs from G.I.s and a flood of bittersweet memories. "I love Special Forces men. They are all crazy and never care about tomorrow. They go into field and maybe die. I stay here and get drunk and maybe die."

At the "Pentagon East," the sprawling U.S. military headquarters in Saigon, the only thing working was the air conditioning. The eerie silence, broken only by the clacking heels of an occasional soldier, resembled a scene from the last reel of On the Beach. Desks, chairs, maps and bookcases remained in place, but many of the offices were empty. Most of the 1,200 civilian bureaucrats and technicians who will eventually occupy the building were already on the job, but they slept, played chess or just looked out the windows at the crumbling concrete bunkers, now covered with bougainvillea.

Once a charming French city of 500,000, Saigon reeks of the war that has officially ended. On Vo Tanh Street, west of Tan Son Nhut, paraplegic war veterans sell stolen army uniforms. Their wives and daughters are for sale on Cach Mang Street. Now that Saigon is jammed with more than 2,000,000 refugees, for whom there are no jobs, crime is becoming epidemic. Murders have increased by 50% since 1970, and robberies have jumped 60%.

The last of the departing G.I.s went, like tens of thousands of their predecessors, through Tan Son Nhut's Camp Alpha. The camp has a capacity of 1,800, but in the last days there seemed to be about four times that many soldiers. Bags and bodies were everywhere. Recent arrivals stripped to their skivvies and sat in the sun. There were plenty of diversions: a swimming pool, a movie and an Alpha Club that featured the Dreamers' show band. But most G.I.s just waited, playing chess or pool or saying one final goodbye to girl friends. For $2, a harried Vietnamese artist would personalize Samsonite luggage by painting the owner's name and a Vietnamese dragon on the side.

Civilians. The exit at Camp Alpha is marked with a sign that says, "Through these gates pass the world's best soldiers." Outside, crowded brown Army buses took the G.I.s on a four-minute ride to the waiting planes. One of these buses passed a disorganized column of 17-year-old Vietnamese recruits, marching from boredom to exhaustion. "You're on your own now, fellas!" one soldier yelled.

Back in Saigon, there are now only 159 U.S. Marines guarding the U.S. embassy, but there are 9,000 American civilians still in South Viet Nam, about 3,000 of them looking for work. Saigonese call them "the new carpetbaggers." They can be seen sipping beer on the terrace of the Continental Palace or walking on Tu Do Street in flowered, flared pants and "Keep On Truckin" T shirts. In just three months, International Personnel Services has recruited 500 customers. Says its manager, E.V. Nickerson: "There are a lot of Americans looking for work, and most of them don't know how to express themselves in writing. For a $100 membership, we write a resume and help a member find a job." Why do they stay on? Nickerson shrugs. "They like the life, the low taxes and the women."

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