The Liberty Gazette
February 13, 2018
Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely
Mike: Captured in an iconic snapshot is a “Huey” helicopter landing on a roof in downtown Saigon. UPI photographer, Hubert van Es, immortalized the scene on April 29, 1975, hours before the city fell. A line of people clawed their way up a ladder, desperate to board—their last hope of escape. The van Es photo became symbolic of the entire evacuation.
The Vietnam War was in the news daily, but early on, the innocence of childhood shielded me. I played with my G.I. Joes, dug foxholes, and engaged in mock battles. I must have been shot a thousand times.
For a fourth grade school assembly celebrating Armed Forces Day, we were encouraged to bring something symbolic to honor those serving. My neighbor had been in the Special Forces in Vietnam. I didn’t really know where it was, and the meaning of war was not yet within my understanding. Yet I swelled with patriotic pride when he let me wear his green beret to school. That bonded me to the cause—the fight for freedom.
When I entered junior high, men a few years older than my brother were dying in that far-away place. A youth advisor at church had recently returned from Vietnam. Preparing to pray for the soldiers still there, he played a recording of a battle he was in. Shouting and screaming were interrupted by rapid gunfire as bullets struck nearby. When the recording ended with a crack, he explained the tape recorder microphone had been hit. I got a little older that day. I knew if I was called, I would go.
Mid-way through freshman year, the Paris Peace Accords were signed and we thought the war was over. Then the North Vietnamese violated the treaty, attacking after the U.S. withdrew. We didn’t go back. I felt we betrayed the trust of the South Vietnamese people.
My junior year, as the communists breached Saigon, Operation Frequent Wind evacuated thousands. Because the airport was heavily bombed, helicopters took people from landing zones throughout the city out to ships.
The Pittman Apartment building was one of those landing zones. It isn’t on any tourist map. TripAdvisor refuses to publish anything about it. We didn’t ask any locals where it was—they live under a communist regime. But I had researched and had an address.
Before me, the shabby nine-story structure was diminished by a skyline of modern glass-walled buildings. The roof-top looks like it does in the photo. The evacuation signal played in my mind—Bing Crosby’s “A White Christmas.” Here I stood, where mothers with babies had fled, soldiers with guns had aimed, and frightened families had fought their way to the building in hopes of escape. In the streets around me, South Vietnamese troops had abandoned their uniforms to protect themselves, as tanks rolled into the city.
This is the far-away place of my impressionable youth; the building in the photo, a piece of history that, though I lived on the other side of the world, was part of me.
ElyAirLines.blogspot.com
Mike: Captured in an iconic snapshot is a “Huey” helicopter landing on a roof in downtown Saigon. UPI photographer, Hubert van Es, immortalized the scene on April 29, 1975, hours before the city fell. A line of people clawed their way up a ladder, desperate to board—their last hope of escape. The van Es photo became symbolic of the entire evacuation.
 |
| Photo by Hubert van Es. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31234270 |
For a fourth grade school assembly celebrating Armed Forces Day, we were encouraged to bring something symbolic to honor those serving. My neighbor had been in the Special Forces in Vietnam. I didn’t really know where it was, and the meaning of war was not yet within my understanding. Yet I swelled with patriotic pride when he let me wear his green beret to school. That bonded me to the cause—the fight for freedom.
When I entered junior high, men a few years older than my brother were dying in that far-away place. A youth advisor at church had recently returned from Vietnam. Preparing to pray for the soldiers still there, he played a recording of a battle he was in. Shouting and screaming were interrupted by rapid gunfire as bullets struck nearby. When the recording ended with a crack, he explained the tape recorder microphone had been hit. I got a little older that day. I knew if I was called, I would go.
Mid-way through freshman year, the Paris Peace Accords were signed and we thought the war was over. Then the North Vietnamese violated the treaty, attacking after the U.S. withdrew. We didn’t go back. I felt we betrayed the trust of the South Vietnamese people.
My junior year, as the communists breached Saigon, Operation Frequent Wind evacuated thousands. Because the airport was heavily bombed, helicopters took people from landing zones throughout the city out to ships.
The Pittman Apartment building was one of those landing zones. It isn’t on any tourist map. TripAdvisor refuses to publish anything about it. We didn’t ask any locals where it was—they live under a communist regime. But I had researched and had an address.
 |
| Pittman Apartments, Saigon, December 2017. Photo by Linda Street-Ely. |
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| Pittman Apartment rooftop, Saigon, December 2017. Photo by Linda Street-Ely. |
ElyAirLines.blogspot.com
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