Marines mark copter's 40th birthday

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{EXCERPT} July 17,2004 ANDREW DEGRANDPRE DAILY NEWS STAFF

Twenty-five years after the fall of Saigon, in a letter to a retired
Marine master sergeant, former President Gerald R. Ford recounted
America's frantic withdrawal from Vietnam.

"April 1975," Ford wrote, "was indeed the cruelest month."

With the city - and its U.S. embassy - poised to be overrun by the
advancing North Vietnamese army, Ford ordered the evacuation.
Thousands of American troops, diplomats and civilians needed to get
out. Along with countless refugees, the remaining Americans crowded
onto the embassy's rooftop.

And they waited.

Marine Corps CH-46 helicopters rescued nearly 7,000 people in all -
including then-U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam Graham Martin - from
that rooftop between April 29 and 30, 1975. Operation Frequent Wind
lasted almost 20 hours.

That scenario and dozens of others were remembered Friday when Marine
aviators past and present gathere...

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Otis Willie
Associate Librarian
The American War Library
http://www.americanwarlibrary.com