It's hardly the point, but you are mistaken in assuming that you know what I am referring to with regard to the end of the US occupation in Vietnam. If you are going to be a pedant about it, there were in fact helicopters taking off from the embassy roof at the fall of Saigon, lots of them:
__________________
But as a reporter for Newsweek covering the last spasm of America's war in Vietnam, going to the airport to be jetted out while the city fell was the last thing I [Loren Jenkins] wanted to do. Instead, when President Ford ordered the evacuation of Saigon to begin because of the dawn attack on the airport, I chose to record the last minutes of the U.S. presence in Vietnam at the U.S. Embassy in downtown Saigon. . . . .
Then there was the clamor of helicopter rotors descending from the heavy, muggy blue sky. Big, gangly CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters from the 7th Fleet standing off in the South China Sea began arriving in relays -- one plumping itself down in the parking lot while a second would alight on the embassy roof. With engines idling and rotors swirling lazily, Marine crew chiefs rushed lines of waiting Vietnamese and Americans onboard. Then the engines would be revved, and the Sea Knight would lumber upwards, making room for the next.
It went that way all day and then into the night. The random chaos of the morning soon settled into a routine. Helicopters came and went. Lines of refugees, by now stoic and resigned, shuffled into the rear doors to be whisked away. And even the clamor of the panicked mob in the street outside seemed to have died with the sun.
Eventually, some 18 hours after the evacuation was launched, President Ford ordered it to end. The crews of the 80 helicopters, who flew 495 sorties, were exhausted. Night had long since fallen on the thinned-out embassy grounds and the word quietly spread that only the remaining Americans would be evacuated from the roof. The Marines on the walls retreated into the embassy building, the doors were barred, and those of us inside moved up toward the roof floor by floor.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4624718
--- Jordan Hayes <jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com> wrote:
> > we'll leave with the
> > helicopters lifting off the embassy roof.
>
> I'm sure you're talking about this photo, which
> isn't the embassy roof
> at all.
>
> http://www.mishalov.com/Vietnam_finalescape.html
>
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
____________________________________________________________________________________ TV dinner still cooling? Check out "Tonight's Picks" on Yahoo! TV. http://tv.yahoo.com/