Message from Nam (49 page)

And three months later, in August 1974, Nixon resigned, and Ford became president, and the
Times
asked her to come home, and she refused. She was writing beautiful pieces from Viet Nam, and she seemed to have no interest in any other subject.

She spent Christmas in Saigon again that year, her second since she’d been back. Her brother had given up on her completely by then. And Ed Wilson was intrigued whenever he saw her byline. Her pieces were brilliant, but she seemed obsessed with the country she had gone to as a girl, and which had wounded her, and so many others, so badly. And by then, even Joey was beginning to wonder. Maybe she just liked it there, and maybe she couldn’t face the fact that his father was dead, maybe she was more than a little bit crazy, as his parents suggested. He hadn’t seen her in almost two years, but the funny thing was, as he secretly told his grandmother sometimes, he still missed her. He wondered if she’d ever come back, but he wasn’t sure anymore. He was almost thirteen, and his father had been missing for almost five years, gone from him for ten. It was a hell of a long time to carry a torch for someone. But Paxton didn’t seem to want to give up, no matter what, even if it killed her.

And every now and then, someone would recognize a photograph she showed them. But she never really knew if they told the truth, or lied, or wanted a tip, or a reward, or just wanted to please her. It was impossible to tell. But the one thing she could tell, and wrote about in the
Times
, was that South Viet Nam was in big trouble. And she wrote about the Americans secretly promising to get a million people out of South Viet Nam before it fell into Communist hands, which it was becoming obvious that it would soon. And when it did, she knew she’d have to go home and leave Tony there, whether he was alive or not. She would have to go then, and give up. But in the meantime, she just couldn’t.

In February 1975 things got tough, and in March they got tougher. Refugees from the North were streaming into Saigon, and farther north, over a million refugees fled the Communists and entered Da Nang, as Hue fell, and North Vietnamese rockets ripped across the city and into the civilians. People were crying and running and falling, and bleeding. Children were lost and trampled by the crowds. And Americans were told to get out, and Paxton with them. The Teletypes into the AP office were going crazy. Everyone had to get out, the Teletypes said, once Hue had fallen. But three days later, people were jamming airports, docks, and beaches trying to get out of Viet Nam by any means they could. And for the last few days, Paxton forgot her futile search and once again turned correspondent.

On Easter Sunday, Da Nang fell to the Communists, and in April the Americans began to pack up, and Paxton with them. It was time to go. It was just a matter of days before it would be all over. The country that had once been so lovely and had cost them so much was about to fall, and secretly everyone knew it.

The Americans still in Saigon were getting anxious about getting out before the Communists arrived, and the Vietnamese who’d been too closely linked to the Americans were panicking that they would be the victims of reprisals. Fifty thousand American and Vietnamese managed to leave during April. But over a million Vietnamese had been promised that they would be able to leave for the States, and in the last weeks of April it became obvious that this was impossible, and very few were going to make it.

Paxton was warned again by the
Times
to get out, but after contacting the ambassador, he promised her a seat in the very last plane, no matter what, and with one bag packed, ready to go, she continued her coverage of the fall of Saigon, with her own camera. She had totally abandoned her search for Tony by then. She had accepted it at last. He was dead, and the people in the countryside who said they had seen him had lied. They had said what they thought she wanted to hear. And as the last days of Saigon came, she knew that he had to be dead now. And she was so exhausted by then, she couldn’t think about him anymore. All she wanted was to get back to the States, to a clean bed, a safe town, and see Joey.

On April twenty-fifth, President Thieu left for Taiwan. And on April twenty-eighth, the Communist troops faced the South Vietnamese Army at the Newport Bridge, at the gates of Saigon. Paxton was staying in the embassy by then, waiting for the very last bulletins. And if she had to go, she wanted to be one of the very last to leave Saigon.

And in a gentle rain on the twenty-ninth, the embassy aides solemnly announced that Option IV was going into effect. It was about to be the largest helicopter evacuation on record. The million Vietnamese that had been promised asylum were being abandoned, and only those the Americans could get out by helicopter would, but it wouldn’t be many. All day Paxton watched the operation begin, as helicopters carried refugees and Americans to waiting carriers offshore, and the Communists continued to rocket the Saigon airport.

In eighteen hours on April twenty-ninth, Paxton reported later, seventy U.S. choppers ferried people between the embassy and the waiting carriers. One thousand Americans, and six thousand Vietnamese got out. Not the million that had been promised.

There were buses around the city to bring people to the embassy grounds, but there was so much panic that the buses got bogged down and never got anywhere, and people began running through the streets, screaming and hysterical, and everywhere there were lost and abandoned children. Paxton tried to go out at noon to help some of the people in the streets. She could get nowhere. You couldn’t move in the frantic crowd. The embassy gates had been forced open hours since, and crowds of people were on the embassy grounds trying to force their way onto choppers. They were the people of the city, the country, the mountains, some Americans, mostly Vietnamese, desperate to escape the Communists before they took over. She knew she had to go soon, and as she headed back through the embassy compound, she felt her arms and body clawed as she tried to go back the way she had come to where she knew the ambassador was waiting. And then suddenly an arm pulled at her, it was a man, an ancient Vietnamese dragging her with him as he forced his way along, and she saw as she tried to wrestle away from him that he was barely conscious. He smelled terrible and he looked worse, and he was caked with mud as she fought free of him and he lurched forward again into her arms. And then she saw … it wasn’t possible … it couldn’t be … it was a cruel joke … she had finally lost her mind in the midst of the fall of Saigon.

“No …” It wasn’t. She only wanted it to be.

The man said something to her in Vietnamese as he straightened up again, and instinctively she reached out to him and he started to collapse in her arms, but she knew then without a doubt. It was Tony.

“Oh, my God …” People were pressing all around them to get on the helicopters, and most of them weren’t going to make it. “How did you get here?” she asked, still confused and stunned as she stared at him, trying to be sure she hadn’t dreamt it.

He said something in Vietnamese again, and then listening to her, he knew. He didn’t know who she was, but he knew she was American and he was safe now, as she guided him forcefully to one of the buildings.

“First Sergeant Anthony Campobello, Cu Chi Base, Viet Nam,” he recited as she dragged him physically toward where they were loading the choppers. They couldn’t wait anymore. And she had her story. She wasn’t staying there another minute with him. She had to get him out, before someone stopped them.

He had a vicious gash on one arm, and then he looked at her oddly, and tears began to slide down his cheeks as she half carried, half dragged him toward the choppers.

“Come on,” she shouted at him over the racket, as someone tried to force a baby into her arms. But she wasn’t taking anyone but him. She had fought too hard and long for this. She had looked for him for five years, and so had his son while he waited.

“Tony, come on!” He started to collapse before they reached the chopper, and they had to climb a narrow stair, which she wasn’t sure he could still climb, and she couldn’t drag him, and there was no one there who would have helped her. “Dammit … lift your feet … come on, climb …” She was screaming at him, and she was crying too. But he was crying with relief. It had taken him two months to come down from his hiding place in the tunnels he had found and used until he reached the outskirts of Saigon, and now he had just made it. And she was there, and he didn’t understand how or why he had found her. But it didn’t matter anymore. She was there. And they were together, even if they died now.

“This man is a POW!” she shouted at someone who didn’t care, and then suddenly a strong pair of arms dragged him up and free of the crowd and pushed him into the chopper, and suddenly with a huge push, she was in it just behind him, and they were pulled to safety as they headed to the open seas, and she was suddenly reminded of the Dustoffs that had saved the wounded men. And now they were free, as Viet Nam shrank slowly behind them. There were people still screaming as they left, people crying, people begging. People who would die and be killed. But she couldn’t help them anymore. She had written about them. She had been there off and on for seven years. She had done everything she could for them. And it had been too long. It had cost too much. Too many had died. But at least not Tony. She looked at him in disbelief as he lay in her arms, battered, bruised, scarred, almost unrecognizable. But it was he, and he smiled at her as they began their descent toward the deck of the carrier and safety.

“Where the hell have you been?” he grinned with his dirt-covered face. He had lived in tunnels he had made and found and used for the past two years, and he had survived by wiles and horrors she couldn’t have dared to think of. And now, by sheer miracle, by nothing more than chance, or the hand of God, he had found her.

“I’ve been looking for you,” she said softly, gently brushing the dirt from his face. He had hidden in a wagon full of earth and dirt on the way into the city. “I’ve been looking for you for a long, long time, mister …” And so had Joey.

“Welcome home,” a voice said, as someone helped them down. “Welcome home!” the voices said as they were welcomed to safety from the chopper, and Tony stood there and cried as she held him in her arms, and their flag soared overhead, and he whispered in the din.

“I love you, Delta Delta …”

At eleven o’clock the next day, on April 30, 1975, Saigon fell, and the South Vietnamese surrendered to the North. The battle we had fought for and with them for so long was over.

And on the USS
Blue Ridge
, Paxton and Tony steamed toward home, and their son, and the world they had lost for too long. A world they had all but forgotten. But Nam was gone now. A distant memory … a nightmare … a dream. For them, and everyone else, now, it was finally over.

Published by
Dell Publishing
a division of
Random House, Inc.

Copyright © 1990 by Danielle Steel

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