Remembering MG Homer Smith

'Last Soldier Out of Saigon' Dies

By DIA's Historical Research Support Branch

Retired MG Homer Smith, a sometimes overlooked, but extraordinarily heroic figure in DIA history, died March 6 in his home state of Texas. He was 89. Known as "the last soldier out of Saigon," Smith served as the U.S. defense attaché in South Vietnam from 1974-1975 and played a major role in one of the great dramas of the Vietnam era.

Smith began his Army career in World War II as a logistician planning the D-Day invasion, and he later served in the Korean and Vietnam Wars. As defense attaché in South Vietnam, his job was to coordinate U.S. military aid to the South Vietnamese government, provide military analysis to the U.S. Embassy staff and U.S. military forces in Thailand, and represent the U.S. to the South Vietnamese military.

On March 10, 1975, North Vietnam launched a massive military offensive that swept aside the South Vietnamese resistance. Within weeks, the North Vietnamese army was on the outskirts of Saigon and shelling the city. It was clear to Smith in those tense days that all U.S. citizens and their dependents needed to be evacuated, but he refused to abandon his South Vietnamese comrades-in-arms to a potentially tragic fate. Smith began laying plans for the evacuation of Americans and their Vietnamese supporters. U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin objected to Smith's plans because he feared it would trigger panic among the South Vietnamese. Smith proceeded anyway, and began evacuating the Defense Attaché Office (DAO) at the beginning of April. As part of this evacuation, he asked for DAO volunteers to help on the first flight of Operation Babylift — the evacuation of Vietnamese war orphans from Saigon — which later crashed, killing five DIA employees and hundreds of others. Smith was devastated.

Still, he pressed on. His task was urgent and huge. Many U.S. citizens had married Vietnamese women and started families in Saigon; other Vietnamese personnel who worked in the embassy or DAO also had families to worry about. More South Vietnamese government employees and their families needed to be evacuated. Under the code name Project Alamo, Smith set up an evacuee processing center in the DAO to handle the massive press of refugees fleeing the country. As the North Vietnamese closed in and the situation became more urgent, Smith cut through swathes of red tape to evacuate tens of thousands and, with U.S. Embassy support, even granted U.S. passports to South Vietnamese officials who were refused exit by their home government.

When the North Vietnamese broke into Saigon at the end of the month and collapse was hours away, the U.S. initiated Operation Frequent Wind April 29-30, evacuating thousands of Americans and Vietnamese by helicopter from the DAO and embassy compounds. Under mortar and artillery fire, Smith helped direct the final frenzied evacuation. COL Stuart Herrington, who served under Smith, recalled years later, "I marveled at how he kept his cool, his display of determination and courage while also setting an example for the staff by his methodical approach to problems that developed during the course of the evacuation. He was not the type to fall victim to histrionics, posturing or other conduct that would have been the undoing of some officers faced with such life-and-death decisions." Finally, at 8:15 p.m. April 30, Smith and his small staff crowded onto a helicopter with dozens of Vietnamese refugees at Tan Son Nhut Air Base and departed Vietnam. In less than a month, Smith had saved some 130,000 U.S. and Vietnamese citizens from likely imprisonment and or death at the hands of the North Vietnamese.

One of the people who survived those harrowing days because of Smith's efforts is the Vietnamese-American poet Linh Duy Vo. Of Smith, he later wrote:

Somewhere in the city
There was an American, a guardian angel
He kept making up the names
Each stroke he penned, each life he saved
He put my name on his list
My unforgettable American Schindler.
Now I write.
Now I live.

Smith is survived by his wife, five children and six grandchildren.