Between Last Days of Vietnam and Too Big To Fail, documentary films all of a sudden get serious attention.
I was reading up on the latter story, while being a part of the former.
In fact, a few days that led up to “the last days” of the US Embassy, I had invited a friend to join me in line for a visa application.
We never got to ask our questions or get a blank form.
I still have one of the forms, filled out by my sister, but unprocessed.
Despite the 24-hour curfew, everything that moves, moved: feet, bikes, cars, buses, barges and helicopters – as shown in the documentary.
Then the pushing of people at the gate and the shoving of choppers off the deck.
Guns were tossed to the side before owners were allowed aboard the Kirk, or Midway, or others of the full-alert 7th fleet.
Glistening bars of gold inside a half-opened Samsonite brief case was the sole belonging of the passenger ahead of me.
Or duffel bags filled with by-then-illegitimate currencies were tossed to the deep blue, stacks of them at a time, hovering over the Pacific like spirit money commemorating the death of South Vietnam.
My neighbor asked if I had a spare set of clothes. He just got off his shift and helped push to sea the very chopper he had worked on just days earlier.
He did not have to wait long: in another three days, upon arrival at Subic Bay, he would then receive his blue jeans and white T-shirt along with a coke and a sandwich.
I read in Goodbye Saigon, that the Embassy gardener roped up his twenty-strong family for fear of getting separated.
When forced to choose only a few, the marine guard simply said, ‘I could not’. They unfortunately suffered the same fate with those already in the compound (the Korean consulate folks even got drunk on what’s left at the Embassy bar, hence did not get on the last chopper – reserved strictly for Ambassador Martin and the folded American flag) .
I spent four fitful-sleep days, subsisting on a few oranges, inside the belly of the fish. Unlike my air-force neighbor, I only got a coke and a sandwich – without the jeans and T-shirt.
Talking about class service.
As to TOO BIG TO FAIL. By now, the SOBs of Wall Street have gotten back their entitlement attitude no matter how many Occupy movements have arisen since.
We all took it sitting down, our strength sapped before the fight: Too big to fight.
I did not realize then (75) and even later (09) , that the US would walk away from whatever it could, and wouldn’t when it couldn’t.
It by default did rope in a few hundred thousands of us, just to later see a hundred times more American out of work , permanently (automation, offshoring, increased productivity, aging America, the rise and reign of software).
Then I realize what a price to pay for those blue jeans, T-shirts, cokes and sandwiches.
Some non-fiction stories are worth retelling since they are way better than fiction. Just make sure you don’t find yourself on the wrong side of history – twice.
Thang Nguyen 555 