FEAR IS contagious. Forty years ago, and half a world away, a great panic the likes of which I have never seen before or since took over the country where I lived: Vietnam. The American-equipped and American-trained army was simply melting away before the less well-equipped but better motivated North Vietnamese onslaught sweeping south. Some South Vietnamese soldiers stood and fought, but most just dissolved without fighting back.
When the final American evacuation of Saigon came on April 29, after 30 years of the United States backing first the French colonialists and then the Republic of South Vietnam, fear raced through the city like an Ebola outbreak. Thousands of terrified Vietnamese came to the American embassy, pleading and crying to be let in. Marines beat back those who tried to scale the walls.

As our helicopter rose from the embassy compound in the gathering dusk, I could see more panic below in the rain-washed streets of Saigon, with people milling about or trying to force their way on to boats on the waterfront — anything to get away.
Out in the South China Sea, an American fleet was waiting for us. Vietnamese helicopters, like butterflies borne on an offshore wind, landed briefly and were thrown overboard to make room for more. All about us, hopelessly overfilled boats packed with fleeing Vietnamese drifted like flotsam and jetsam after a gigantic shipwreck...........