The Fall of Saigon

This letter in todays Australian serves to highlight another reason to recall the embarrassment of being an Australian when Whitlam was in power Last days of Saigon still linger 04 May 2005
RODNEY Dalton’s article (“Pain lingers for deserted four – fall of Saigon: 30 Years On”, 30/4) recites, without comment, unfounded and hurtful criticisms of my late father, Geoffrey Price, the last Australian ambassador to South Vietnam. My father, as Australia’s ambassador, was obeying direct and specific instructions from the Australian government, which he had bitterly but unsuccessfully disputed over the preceding days, in not evacuating the Australian embassy’s 55 Vietnamese staff on the RAAF Hercules sent to evacuate the other few remaining Australian staff and him. He certainly was not loading the aircraft with his personal possessions or any pets during the scramble on that day. In an article The Australian ran on the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon in April, 2000, Stuart Rintoul reported my father’s enduring sense of shame at the way Australia abandoned all but one of its locally engaged Vietnamese embassy staff, together with many other Vietnamese at risk of being punished by the incoming North Vietnamese for their associations with Australia. I can confirm that my father’s shame at Australia’s petty betrayal of Vietnamese colleagues who had worked alongside him for many months did remain with him until the day he died. Christopher Price Bellevue Hill, NSW
Whitlam wouldn’t have anything to do with ‘those f**king Vietnamese Balts’, as he put it at, least not with the ones from the South. Stuart Rintoul, of course would blame the military, or the Diplomatic Corps, or the Ambassador, or the…..well , anyway, anyone but Whitlam.

2 comments

  • Ever end up reading “Ashes of Vietnam” Kev? First book about the Australians in the war that I’d ever read. Very different from all the other ones I’ve read since.

  • Yep. By Stuart Rintoul, wasn’t it. I first bought the book in 1987 and picked up on Rintouls pro-communism and anti-US/War/Liberal party opinions then.

    As in:

    Australia followed America into Vietnam, stupid with anti-commnusim and xenophobia, and indifferent to the interests of the Vietnamese people to a point beyond immorality. pp x

    I know a lot of the diggers he quoted in his book including one that was in my platoon who recalled a story that made us look bad and I’m damned if I can remember the incident. And nor can others in the platoon.

    I considered it selective reporting to carry Rintoul’s agenda and have been wary of him since.