doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com 29 April - a Bad Day at Black Rock

This will be posted now. I was under the impression Saigon fell on 29 April 1975; and that Sardar Mohammad Daud Khan was overthrown in Kabul on 29 April 1978 starting the whole mess there. I was in Singapore for the first event; Up in Baluchistan near Dera Bugti Khan for the second:

Internet search will identify NVA tanks busting through the SVN Palace gates on 30 April; and the "Saur Revolution" on 28 April 1978 when the Afghan Air Force at the urging of the Afghan communist party bombed the Presidential palace to smithereens killing 5,000 members of the Presidential bodyguard.

Still I don't like or trust this day.

Here is the last message transmitted from CIA Station Chief in Saigon Tom Polgar around 2330 hours 29 April 1975. The message is apt:

This will be final message from Saigon station. It has been a long and hard fight and we have lost. This experience, unique in the history of the United States, does not signal necessarily the demise of the United States as a world power.

The severity of the defeat and the circumstances of it, however, would seem to call for a reassessment of the policies of niggardly half-measures which have characterized much of our participation here despite the commitment of manpower and resources, which were certainly generous. Those who fail to learn from history are forced to repeat it. Let us hope that we will not have another Vietnam experience and that we have learned our lesson.�

Saigon signing off.

And here is a picture at Dera Bugti Khan on that date when news reached us. The Afghan Air-Force Migs were passing right over the US embassy with the bombs already falling to hit the Presidential palace a half-mile down the road. The US high schools in the region - Kabul, Peshawar, Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi were having their sports tournament there. The kids took refuge on the roof of the embassy and came back wide-eyed. Kabul was an interesting city then - mini-skirts and burkhas - Pakistanis used to travel there to see Indian movies they couldn't see in Lahore.




I don't like this day. Plus my Mom died on this day.