Heroes for a day?: last days in Vietnam.

Most of us or I at least would have said that the famous airlift American evacuation from Vietnam occurred when the war ended w the Paris peace accords of 1974 but Tory Kennedy's documentary Last Days in Vietnam reminded me that no the evacuation was a year or so later -1975 after the north Vietnamese "violated" the peace accord and invaded the south and closed in on Saigon. Her film v effectively brands archival footage mostly for journalists - rather blurry and low deaf by today's standards and extremely brave examples of great photojournalism give the cumbersome equipment of the era - with contemporary interviews with participants well known (she gets v special access obviously) and not such as several marine embassy guards. She also does a great job setting forth the complexity of the moral dilemma the Americans esp the ambassador felt and had to resolve under great pressure. Obviously we made this mess and there were many Vietnamese who helped the Americans in many capacities soldiers cooks the embassy tailor - and also the wives and girlfriends nor the 5k or so Americans in country at the time. They would all be dead if left behind or so we thought but that said the ambassador did not want to create a panic by beginning an evacuation too soon. Perhaps he did wait too long but the film makes clear his bravery and that of other Americans who managed to get thousands to safety. As it happened the north Vietnamese were not as horrendous as pol pot and did not I believe massacre those who stayed behind - tho no doubt things were not easy either. Although we Americans were at our best in these final days of the war the whole episode is weirdly tragic - a film about heroism that never should have been necessary in the first place.