Word: danang
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...tears and little panic. From the old imperial capital of Hue, 50 miles to the north, the lines moved in silence, sometimes edging forward down the packed roads at the frustrating rate of only 20 miles a day. In all, 500,000 people swarmed into the city, doubling Danang's population in a matter of days. Amazingly, most of them were swiftly absorbed, off the streets, out of the makeshift sidewalk shelters and shanties. They moved into all of Danang's 100 schools (8,000 packed into a single high school) and, with no direction from government authorities...
...soon, as the word spread that not only were district towns giving way but also capital cities and whole provinces, a desperate unease gripped Danang. With it came a growing hatred and confusion that are new even to this war. Gradually the city realized that it might not be safe after all, that the war was going much worse than anyone had feared. The news of the fall of Hue, which everybody expected the government to defend, came as a severe shock. Equally frightening, the dusty buses pathetically crowded with refugees were no longer coming in only from the northern...
...police, who are usually concerned about Viet Cong infiltration into refugee caravans, bothered to show up. The National Assemblymen and local elected leaders, worried by stories that the North Vietnamese were killing civil servants in the towns they occupied, were busy saving themselves and their families. The mayor of Danang, an ARVN colonel, one night declared to a friend his passionate intention of remaining with his people; the next day he put his wife and entire family on a plane to Saigon, a luxury that not even the rich can afford without the right connections...
Many began frantically trying to find some way out of Danang by air. In one day, the price of a single one-way air ticket to Saigon on the black market jumped from $51 to $140. The traffic halted only when the military took control of the Air Viet Nam flights to provide for their own families. Then came the welcome promise that the U.S. would begin an airlift to take 10,000 people a day to Cam Ranh, a half-hour's trip by air some 200 miles to the south. But still there was panic. Even...
...priority flight, was reserved for Americans - the consular staff, reporters and other civilians - along with a few favored Vietnamese families. As the plane lifted off the runway in a steep, powerful climb, there was a strange sense of irreversible change. These evacuees were among the last Americans to leave Danang, finally ending a presence that had once symbolized America's involvement in Indochina. There was a powerful sense of tragedy too: they were leaving behind not a people grateful for the years of American sacrifice in Viet Nam but a people feeling bitterly betrayed. Now, for better or worse...