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THE INAUGURATION. By dawn Monday, Saigon, for the first time, was totally cut off from the rest of South Viet Nam. Communist forces had brought enough artillery to the edge of the city to level it utterly if they chose to do so. On the northern edge of Saigon, flatbed trucks piled high with crated ammunition roared away from the supply depot at Newport, their air horns shrieking. The Newport tank farm burst into flame with a series of explosions that shook the ground and sent clouds of black smoke, easily visible from the center of Saigon, billowing into the air.
Later that day, Big Minh formally took power from the feeble Huong in a ceremony at the presidential palace. "We sincerely want reconciliation," he told the unseen Provisional Revolutionary Government. "You clearly know that. Reconciliation demands that each element of the nation respect the other's right to live." Minh proposed an immediate cease-fire "as a manifestation of our good will, and to quickly end the soldiers' and people's sufferings."
As Minh spoke in the chandeliered reception hall, deeply carpeted and hung with gold brocade, great rolls of thunder and flashes of lightning accompanied him. The Communists were not impressed. P.R.G. representatives promptly rejected Minn's proposal, charging that he had not met their conditions: 1) all U.S. military personnel must leave Viet Nam, and 2) the new Saigon government must have no holdovers from the old U.S.-supported regime. As Minh worked frantically to arrange a settlement, Saigon was gripped by the fear that the Communists would launch an all-out attack. "There is just one way out for us now," said an official, "by American choppers."
The fear soon turned into panic.
Word spread that the U.S. had abandoned the giant commissary at Newport, setting off a frenzy of looting by some 3,000 Vietnamese. As burglar alarms brayed, looters wheeled off shopping carts filled with sugar, medicines and frozen pork chops that began immediately to thaw and drip hi the blazing sun. Cops in the nearby parking lot watched with amusement, occasionally plucking a few items for themselves from passing shopping carts as a kind of exit toll. Finally a truckload of military police arrived, firing M-16 bursts into the air, and the looting stopped.
Just after 6 p.m., three A-37 jet fighter-bombers struck Tan Son Nhut airbase, destroying several planes on the ground and causing explosions that rocked Saigon. It seemed most likely that the attackers were South Vietnamese pilots venting their frustration over the endless agony of their country. That, too, seemed to be the reason for an outbreak of small-arms fire in Saigon that soon followed. Every ARVN soldier and policeman in the city seemed senselessly to empty his gun. After 15 minutes the firing sputtered and died. But there was still the concussion of distant bombs from Bien Hoa and other bumps in the night: mortars, rockets, artillery.