Early on a cold Saturday morning this past January, I went out alone for a run on the Western States trail near my home. I wanted to recon the area between Green Gate and the Auburn Lake Trails aid station with the intent of spending some time on Main Bar Trail (Map). I wasn’t completely familiar with the trails and the terrain, but as I parked at the trailhead, I met two other runners who were heading out in the same general direction. They offered to show me where I wanted to go.
As we ran, I noticed one of them was wearing socks with a USMC logo, so I asked him about them. He told me he got them at the Marine Corps Marathon and since I had just run that marathon a few weeks before, the conversation took off. He turned out to be Ken Crouse, husband of Ellen Crouse. (Ellen was the race director for the 2007 Run On The Sly.)
It turned out both Ken and I were Marines about a decade apart, him during Vietnam and me during peace. Since his experience was much more exciting than mine, I was interested to hear about it. I have said before that I think trail runners tend to have unusual depth of character. Over the course of a couple miles I learned that this trail runner was actually one of the very last Marines out of Vietnam when Saigon fell on April 29th of 1975. He explained how a small group of Marines provided cover for the helicopter landing area.
In keeping with Marine Corps custom, some of those courageous Marines were rewarded for their bravery by being thrust into an even worse situation. They were actually left “stranded” in Vietnam. The helicopters performing the evacuations were getting pounded by so much enemy fire, they eventually didn’t come back at all.
An American reporter named Roy Rowan was one of the people evacuated that day so long ago. In 2000 he returned to Vietnam to retrace his steps. In an article that appeared in Fortune Magazine, Rowan described what he saw that day by writing:
For the next 15 hours on that sweltering April 29, 1975, lumbering Sikorsky helicopters packed with evacuees shuttled back and forth from the embassy roof and the parking lot at Tan Son Nhut air base to a U.S. Navy flotilla cruising off the coast.
When I finally reached the air base on the western edge of the city, pillars of black rose from the hangars. Seconds later, a tremendous explosion shook the ground as a North Vietnamese shell hit the terminal building where we were supposed to await our turn to fly out.
Hundreds of U.S. flak-jacketed Marines, lying prone on the ground, ringed the helicopter pad. They were hard to see because their camouflaged uniforms blended with the tropical greenery. I almost tripped on a rifle barrel poking out from under a bush as I raced for one of the Sikorsky Sea Stallions, its ramp down and its rotors slashing the air impatiently.
Young Ken Crouse was amongst those Marines performing similar duties at the American Embassy. You can read his own words here. He was evacuated aboard one of the very last helicopters. He told me it probably wasn’t the last helicopter to lift off from Vietnam, but it was definitely one of the last three.
When the helicopters quit returning, a small group of Marines from the Can Tho Detachment was stranded. They worked their way to the coast, got boats, and transported themselves out to the fleet. I had never heard about this before, which is kind of unusual among Marines. Usually stories like this become legend in the Corps. Maybe it has just taken this long for the story to be told.
The last two casualties of the Vietnam War were both Marines assigned to the embassy security detachment who had been detailed to provide security at the Tan Son Nhut air base. At about 4 AM, a rocket landed between Lance Corporal Darwin L. Judge and Corporal Charles McMahon. Their bodies were not recovered from Vietnam until 1976. Lance Corporal Judge was a classmate with Crouse at Marine Security Guard School in Virginia.
Nowadays, Crouse resides in Northern California. He has run the Western States 100 Mile Endurance run, and he occasionally provides comments to online running forums, usually signing on under some variation of the screen name “Saigon 1975”.
Fast-forward almost a full year… to last week when I attended the funeral of a 37 year old Sheriff’s Deputy who was killed in Sacramento on December 19th. The Sheriff’s deputy had something in common with Crouse. He was there in Saigon on April 29th, 1975. At five years old, Vu Nguyen was loaded on an American helicopter by US Marines and evacuated out of the country to a ship off the coast along with his seven brothers and sisters.
There were a lot of people evacuated that day. The thing that caused me to think about Nguyen and Crouse in such a connected way was this: During the funeral, several of the speakers made a point to mention that the helicopter that evacuated young Vu Nguyen did not return to Saigon again after it landed aboard the ship. It had taken so much incoming fire as it left Saigon that it could not return, leaving those Marines Crouse told me about to fend for themselves.
In the years that followed, Nguyen lived his life in a way that honored the courageous sacrifices made by those Marines on April 29th, 1975. He graduated from California State University with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. Then he graduated from the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Academy, with the distinction of being the most outstanding recruit in his class.
There are traditionally four awards given at the police academy graduation. They are Best Overall Academic Score, Best Overall Range Score, Most Inspirational Cadet, and Outstanding Cadet. Nguyen received three of the four, including Best Overall Academic Score, Most Inspirational Cadet, and Outstanding Cadet. In Marine-speak, Nguyen was the “Honor Man”.
On December 19th, 2007, Nguyen made a vehicle stop on a gangster he recognized. The driver fled on foot and Nguyen gave chase. During the foot pursuit, Nguyen was shot in the neck. He died from that wound.
At the funeral, Sacramento County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Mark Iwasa said this about him: “Honor… For some, it is something you do… For others, it is something you say… For Detective Vu Nguyen, it was simply who he was.”
Sheriff John McGinness said this: “In an instant, his valor cost him his life.”
By the grace of God and a few United States Marines Vu Nguyen escaped from Vietnam with his life. And then he willingly gave that life in service to the citizens of the United States.
Every man dies. Not every man truly lives.
It all struck me hard.
If you cared enough to read all that, read this.
