Phil Meinhardt

Combat Experience

I was assigned to the Vietnamese Joint General Staff in Saigon to coordinate U.S. support for the Vietnamese. Our small group was located with the Vietnamese next to their Joint Operations Center, and we had a secure phone to key force locations within South Vietnam. My roommate at the fleabag Newport Hotel and fellow Liaison Officer was LCDR Glenn Brindel who was later Captain of the ill-fated USS Stark in the Persian Gulf. Every fourth night, I was the duty officer and the only American on the Vietnamese Compound. During my tour, I was all over Vietnam, usually with General Trien (J3). The most memorable trips were to Quang Nai, Mo Duc, Pho Duc, and Pleiku during the North Vietnamese Easter Offensive of 1972. I also coordinated a combined-force, helicopter lightship-gunship, nighttime capability for Saigon during the 1972 U.S. presidential elections. There was fear that the Viet Cong might try to influence our elections. There were no attacks in Saigon while this force was flying. Each day, with the aid of four assigned interpreters, we would report McNamara-type body-count statistics to the Pentagon. The reports were neither verifiable nor relevant. When the truce in Vietnam arrived, my job was to be one of the 200 U.S personnel allowed to remain to support the South. Everyone seemed to want my job; I wanted to go home; so they sent me to Nakom Phanom, Thailand with the remnants of the U.S. Vietnam Headquarters (MACV); the name was changed to US Support Activities Group (HQ USSAG). In Thailand, we carried on the war in Laos, until a truce there, and supported Cambodia.

When the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, was about to be overrun, the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command (CINCPAC), by message, gave us 72 hours to develop a plan for the evacuation of the U.S. embassy, the military assistance group, and associated personnel. I personally wrote the evacuation plan, nicknamed "Eagle Pull", in 12 consecutive hours on yellow legal pad. About three weeks earlier, I had been in Phnom Penh, walked five potential helicopter landing zones with the Military Assistance Group (MAG), Cambodia, and planned communications; but until the CINCPAC message, the mission belonged to the MAG, Thailand. A week earlier, we had held a meeting with MAG, Thailand; but they didn't want to give up the mission even though we controlled all the forces, and they had no plan. At the end of the 72-hour suspense, late at night, we deployed the helicopters (32 HH and CH-53s) and supporting forces to their forward operating bases, lit up Phnom Penh with flares, and massively bombed the Kymer Rouge at first light the next morning. The evacuation was staved off for nearly two more years. When finally executed in 1975, "Eagle Pull" successfully withdrew about 1300 personnel from Phnom Penh with no evacuee hurt, using the primary landing zone, a soccer field. Marines were taken in to secure the zone and then removed. The evacuation was realistically portrayed in the movie, "Killing Fields".

I thought the Vietnam War was stupid as early as 1963, but my thirteen months in Southeast Asia were the most exciting period of my life. What can I say?