Jerry Hogan is a 1969 graduate of Warsaw High School and a 1973 graduate of the Naval Academy Annapolis, Md.

During their senior year, a few, select Annapolis cadets are asked to join the Marine Corps. Hogan accepted the invitation.

"Isn't that a strange way to get out of Navy?" Hogan asked.

Following artillery training in Fort Sill, Okla., the then-2nd Lt. was assigned to the Third Marine Division. He spent 1974 in Okinawa stationed there "because ostensively, Vietnam was over." A couple of months later he trained at the Naval Guns Fire School in the Philippines and became the officer in charge of naval gun fire spotter team.

This platoon boarded the USS Vancouver in January 1975 and was sent to the contiguous waters of Vietnam.

He and his division sat offshore for 89 days prior to the Fall of Saigon and witnessed the frantic evacuation ending the American presence in South Vietnam.

"That's when strange things began to happen," the Marine said about that 1975 winter and spring. "At that time we knew the war was lost. There was no doubt about it."

The bay was filled with hundreds of vessels, large and small.

"We had no idea who was on what boat or what their intentions were. We were on 24-hour alert.

"Somebody, I imagine the South Vietnamese government, dragged 12 flat barges a couple of miles off shore and anchored them there. Boats ferried people out and just dropped them on these barges. All they had was a bag of personal items. They never had food. Navy ships started taking them in.

Then helicopters started bringing people out, landing on the barges, unloading human cargo and taking off again.

"They had to bring in merchant ships and Navy supply ships to ferry these people, I think they went to the Philippines. This went on all day, every day - boats and helicopters full of people. The Navy would pick them up and leave. They'd return in a couple of days and start the process again.

"This went on constantly. There were tens of thousands of people fleeing the country."

They were either South Vietnamese government workers, employees of the American government, American sympathizers, children of Americans or just anyone who didn't want to want to live under the "new and improved government of Vietnam."

They wouldn't go inland or west. Laos and Cambodia had already been conquered by communist forces. The North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong were marching toward Saigon.

The Marines' job was to man machine guns along the sides of the ships and train them at the boats and the helicopters to protect the ships from any threat the frightened, fleeing people may have posed.

"Everyone knew there were hundreds of thousands of people wanting to get out."

Hogan said the U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin wouldn't make a decision to send in troops and use Navy ships to expedite the exodus.

"His lack of decision resulted in the chaotic confusion that was the last couple of days in April. That was all avoidable," Hogan said.

South Vietnamese Army helicopters and Air America 'copters were making so many trips and bringing out so many people they couldn't all get on the barges. By mid-April helicopters started landing on the Navy ships.

"Their choppers flew all the time. They were the absolute heroes of whole process."

These helicopters, meant to seat six people, had their seats removed. Inside were 18 to 25 people, stacked like cordwood.

"We literally had to reach in and pull them out they were stacked so tightly. They didn't not all survive. Some on the bottom had suffocated ... and ended up over the side of the ship," the Marine said. "There was nothing else to do with them."

After a while the helicopters could no longer function because of the excessive loads they were carrying. They went over the sides, too.

Before long the Vietnamese pilots refused make another trip ashore.

"The closer we got to the end of April, the closer the North Vietnam Army got to Saigon, the more dangerous it was to fly."

By April 28 Saigon was cut off from the rest of the country when the airport at Tan Son Nhut was bombed. With that airport in ruins the only air route out was from the Embassy grounds.

"I have a vivid memory of a moment right before I went in, this chopper landed, just like all the others - full of people.

"One little lady, I couldn't tell whether she was 50 or 90, she walked up and said, 'Thank you, America, Thank you, for our freedom.'

"That was ironic because we'd been in the country for 15 years and we were literally deserting them in the face of their greatest danger.

"We probably left 200,000 to 300,000 people we could have gotten out. By time Ambassador Martin gave the go ahead for the Marines and Navy helicopters to go in, there were eight hours left. For three months he refused to let our military come in and evacuate our allies.

"Rather than have a well-planned, successful pullout, taking our friends with us, we pretty much threw up our hands and said, 'You're on your own.'

"What he did or didn't do was appropriate in a sense, because it was the crowning touch of the entire war. Rumor is, he'd had a nervous breakdown and was merely a figurehead at the time. That's what the Marines were saying anyway."

CH-46 choppers could land on the Embassy rooftop. the CH-53s could landed on the grounds.

"Some time on the morning of April 30th, my team got word that we'd go in and participate in the evacuation."

Hogan and other Marines landed on the Embassy roof seeing "literally thousands of people outside the embassy compound, trying to get in.

"We stayed on the roof for four hours. Basically, we helped people get into the helicopters. They took off and came back.

"Once we were gone, we knew no one was going back in and no one was walking out."

A unit of 11 Marine Security Guards remained on the rooftop. They were finally evacuated at 5 a.m. the morning of the 30th, the last men out. At the same time North Vietnam Army tanks entered Saigon.

"There's hard feelings. We could've done a lot more. We could've rescued a lot more people. There's no reason for what went on that day.

"But we had to wait for our orders. The whole process was a microcosm of the way the whole war was run. Nothing changed up to the last minute."

"U.S. forces won every single time they fought, they never lost a major battle."

Hogan served as a Marine recruiter in Lansing, Mich., following Vietnam and came up against a fear he thought he'd never know.

"Anti-military feelings were very high in 1977. We would get spit on walking down the street. Our car windshields would be smashed. I was married with two small children and feared for our safety.

"But we made our quota [of new recruits] every month."

Hogan, a captain at the time, left the Marines in 1979 along with a huge number of other junior officers.

He has three daughters - Pamela Gregory, Elisabest Kabala and Eileen Hogan.

After working in the electronic industry for 20 years and moving around quite a bit, he moved back to Warsaw nine years ago, "because I fell in love."

At his 25-year high school reunion he [re]spotted his soon-to-be second wife, Sally. They were just classmates in high school, but kept in touch for two years after that reunion.

Today Hogan is owner of the Resource Development Group LLC.

"We help businesses and individuals to be successful. It's very much about balance, helping people balance their entire lives. And beats the heck out of working. I just help people all day."

The idea is if someone can change their attitude, their habits of thought, their lives can be changed" Hogan said.

"If you're going to invest in an 18-year-old and you're going to give him a rifle and the power of life or death, you'd by golly better be able to depend on him. That's why leadership begins at the lowest level in the Marine Corps.

"The best way to succeed to is to help your subordinates, your employees, succeed. That's the Marine Corps philosophy and it gives me a lot of satisfaction." [[In-content Ad]]