April 30, 1975
5 Min read
True story
Upcoming book
Raising Athena, a Memoir
A mother-daughter story
New military tradition
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The marine chopper touched down onto the U.S. Embassy roof in Saigon where the Ambassador waited to evacuate amid the whirl of the blades. The marines began to withdraw from the perimeter around the embassy compound into the building, using doors and tear gas and rifle butts to hold back the South Vietnamese, who were clamoring up the stairwells to get to the roof and escape on the airlift. In the distance, fires burned at the ammo dump, a flare went up, the lights of Saigon beyond the gates. The Ambassador stepped on board with his dog in one hand and the folded U.S. flag in the other.
Just behind the Ambassador, a bald man in glasses followed him onto the chopper, an official in crumpled trousers and dress shirt, huddled earlier beneath the desk during bombing, waiting for the word to leave. Long-legged and broad-shouldered, this Irish American from Boston spoke Vietnamese fluently. He helped allies escape that day and the days before, he spoke for the Americans, for the Ambassador; to many Vietnamese he was the mouthpiece for the United States. Locals and officials knew him by sight and listened to him as they would one of their own. He reached up to adjust his glasses, turned for a final look. Amid the smell of burned jet fuel and dust, of fear and sweat, the twin-rotor CH-46 Sea Knight Lady Ace 09 lifted into the sky at 04:58 hours with its final official cargo, Code Two, Ambassador Graham Martin, along with the bald man. Darkness and the long night engulfed them. The helicopter flew south then west off the coast and headed for the U.S.S. Blue Ridge, the amphibious command and control ship of Task Force 76 which was part of the Seventh Fleet, just thirty kilometers off Vung Tao. This was the last official personnel out of Saigon.
The bald man was Donald C. Brewster, my father, and that is how I believed it went down for him in the wee hours of April 30, 1975 on the final day of the U.S. Mission in Vietnam. He had told me the stories, but he is long gone from this world. My Vietnamese mother is alive and when I asked about that night, she said, “He walked in [the CH-46 Sea Knight] right after the Ambassador. He spoke Vietnamese.” She looked at me to see if I understood: they needed him because they didn’t know the language. My father was the last U.S. Cultural Attaché to South Vietnam and my mother, Hương Bửu Brewster, was his wife. Lady Ace 09 disappeared with the night as dawn was breaking, a thin line of light on the horizon. Don Brewster disappeared from the circle of advisors and brass and Vietnam experts.
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Why did my father stay in a crumbling South Vietnam when he knew what was coming? Was it a kind of human sickness to behold a calamity, so long foretold, so long in waiting, that the end seems at once implausible and inevitable, that the demise must be witnessed to be believed? The Ambassador ignored all signs and intelligence, waiting until the final day to return to his home for his effects. Both men had to see it with their own eyes, the destruction, the despair, to hear the screams. My father had ample opportunity to leave and sent me along with my mother and brother home on April 3rd, over three weeks earlier. Yet he stayed until the last day, until the last hour, until the last chopper. My guess as to why, is he felt he owed it to the South Vietnamese, his allies and friends, that he would not desert them, staying till the final moments meant helping the maximum number escape. Don Brewster loved them and this exotic land, far away from his sobering childhood. He wanted to—he hoped to— do all he could. And it was not enough.
My Saigon years had weighed on me. And though my family was lucky to escape from Vietnam, I could not escape the past any more than my father could escape or my mother and her family could escape. That long night in April was hardwired onto a nation’s consciousness, in my parents’ lives, and into my own story.
The United States was reeling from the loss of its longest war and arguably its most ignominious defeat. Amidst the turmoil, the nation welcomed all the members of my Vietnamese family. Twelve years after Saigon’s fall, I would report to West Point in 1987. Then, my daughter would report to West Point in 2017. Just what was it that compelled me to join the Army and my daughter to do the same thirty years later? That’s what I set out to understand when I began writing. I desperately needed to know.
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The fear and struggle I felt as a mother for my daughter kept me awake at night and began in earnest with her decision to attend West Point. So, I wanted an understanding why I had chosen this path, what I had hidden or pushed away, challenges my daughter might face. If I could get a handle on my reasons for going, surely I could grasp my daughter’s. I served at the height of the Cold War when there was a combat exclusion for women. For my generation, that meant women could not serve in combat. Cara would join during the Global War on Terror and would have no restrictions. And, with recent changes from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on gender-neutral physical fitness standards, that would mean one standard that is the same for men and for women for combat-arms jobs. This would be a decidedly different force than I had joined in the eighties.
What scared me so much? The possibility of death, injury, assault, trauma; yes to all of those. The growing divide between a society and its defenders meant waning involvement from citizens, and leaders who have less and less at stake when they send troops to war. Coming to terms with the risks and facing them in the broad light of motherhood was a long, hard ride. The ride was necessary and, though far from over, allowed me to move along this path towards a kind of personal peace, or at least the occasional night’s sleep. One thing my daughter has that I did not, is a mother who wore combat boots, a woman she could talk to. This was good; this was progress.
This hollow and unfamiliar feeling pushed me to explore thorny issues, nagging thoughts. And the writing was unpredictable, not outlined or plotted, but essential to the search for meaning, with discovery often a surprise I found along the way.
The biggest lesson proved to be the most difficult to pin down and to understand. This had to do with the stories we tell ourselves, especially those about war, the disconnect between myth and reality. In land navigation, if the map doesn’t match the ground it isn’t the ground that’s wrong. The map isn’t wrong either, you just haven’t figured out where you are. This disorientation I felt as a mother of a daughter who joined the Army caught me wholly by surprise, because I was in new terrain.
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This is the Prologue for my book coming out this year.
Raising Athena, A Memoir
A Mother and Daughter Attend West Point 30 Years Apart
Why should you care?
This is a singular, first-of-its-kind memoir about a mother and daughter, modern warriors in an era of global strife. Mothers who want to raise strong daughters will find this engaging, not only how to survive and thrive at West Point, but anywhere: on the athletic field, in the classroom, in the boardroom, and in life. This is not a how-to manual, but a personal story of two women who felt called to the profession of arms.
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