Forty Four Years

On this day in 1975, the national prestige of the United States in Vietnam had contracted to a single rooftop, a pinpoint landing zone where American helicopters were extracting as many allies as we could from a nation in collapse.

Helicopter pilot O.B. Harnage reaches out to help Vietnamese evacuees escape Saigon on April 29, 1975.

I was a college senior, doing all the final things preparatory to graduation, and about to accept a commission as an Army officer.  Gerald Ford was President.