325: Fall of Saigon: Apocalypse Now (Part 2)

The Rest Is History

Goalhanger

History

4.6 • 26.6K Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2023

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“It is 105 degrees in Saigon, and rising.” This announcement, made through U.S. Armed Forces radio on a spring morning in 1975, is the cue for all Americans remaining in Saigon to head to the US embassy, in order to be evacuated. With up to a million South Vietnamese also expecting to be flown to safety, the city erupts into panic and unrest. The last U.S. troops barricade themselves on the roof of the embassy, waiting for the final helicopter to pick them up. Join Tom and Dominic as they dissect the final hours of American presence in Saigon, and the legacy of the war in Vietnam and abroad. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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0:00.0	Thank you for listening to the rest is history.
0:02.2	For weekly bonus episodes, add free listening, early access to series and membership
0:07.3	of our much-love chat community, go to the rest is history.com and join the club. That is, the rest is History. is History.
0:15.0	This episode is
0:18.0	by Diet Coke.
0:20.0	Time for a Diet Coke break.
0:25.0	Enjoy what you like.
0:27.0	Just how you like it.
0:30.0	This is my taste. What's yours? Celebrate your unique taste with Diet Coke.
0:45.0	Canvas Magic Right can improve any dull piece of work.
0:48.0	Canvas Magic Right turns dismal diction into spell binding sentences.
0:54.0	Canva's magic right sprinkles enchanting inscriptions into dull documents.
0:59.0	Canva's magic right turns dull drafts into salient soliloquies.
1:05.6	Dull words designed convincing, eloquent, compelling, poetic with Canva AI tools. Canva Design Against Doll. On the morning of the 29th of April, 1975, Keys Beach, who was a reporter, the Chicago Daily News, he was 61 years old, he had served in the Marines.
1:36.4	He was having breakfast with a group of other journalists when he was told that he had to get on a bus and head
1:41.8	urgently and directly for Saigon's main airport.
1:45.6	As they were heading there, however, news came in on the intercom that there were going to be no
1:50.3	planes leaving from the airport, and so they turned around and they headed for the US embassy in Saigon.
1:57.6	And he wrote, Beter wrote an incredible account of what he saw when he got there.
2:02.1	Great seething mass of Vietnamese people trying to get over the walls of the US embassy compound.
2:08.0	Once we moved into that seething mass, Beach wrote, we ceased to be correspondence.
2:12.0	We were only men fighting for their lives, scratching, clawing,
	...

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