When it finally arrived, the day that the G.I.s called X-plus-60 was hot and mildly anticlimactic. On the withdrawal deadline two months after the Paris truce signing, the U.S. military command in Viet Nam was closed down in a simple midday ceremony in a parking lot near Saigon's Tan Son Nhut airbase. No U.S. military band was available for the occasion. Loudspeakers blared out a recording of The Star-Spangled Banner, and a color guard rolled up the blue flag of the command under which 2,500,000 American G.I.s had served since 1962. Ellsworth...
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