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The Communists apparently had not anticipated the civilian stampede, and they certainly did not welcome it. It is, after all, an empty victory to capture the land and lose the people. Armed troops were also mixed with the refugees. Thus last week North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces were deployed to try to block the exodus from the Central Highlands to the coast. On a stretch of road in Phu Bon province, a refugee column was harassed again and again by enemy fire, taking heavy casualties. At one point part of the column crossed the Song Ba River but soon ran into a Viet Cong blockade that stopped its advance. Perhaps as many as 50,000 people and 500 trucks found themselves jammed between the river and the Communists. On the other side of the Song Ba, meanwhile, the caravan began to pile up on itself. A jumble of people, motor scooters, trucks, buses and cars congealed until 5,000 vehicles turned the riverbank into a gigantic parking lot. Then Communist mortar and rocket fire slammed into the riverside, setting vehicles alight in a fire that 24 hours later was still raging. In the end, the 50,000 who had crossed the river pushed on to the sea in reckless disregard of the danger from the Communists. But continued sniping on the road by the Viet Cong made it impossible for more than 100,000 others to cross the Song Ba.
Of all South Viet Nam's major cities only Saigon has so far been spared mass panic, though nerves were frayed by the news from the north. The only clear sign of unease was the precautionary actions taken by many people. Hoarding pushed up the price of rice by some 10%. Housewives were stashing away three-month supplies of Nuoc Mam, the redolent fish sauce. Businessmen were transferring piasters from Vietnamese banks to the local branches of U.S. banks, hoping they would prove safer if the Communists came.
Close enough, it seemed, for some extraordinary political events to take place in Saigon. On Wednesday a group of leading anti-Communists met for tea at the officers' club at Tan Son Nhut Air Base. Their host was Nguyen Cao Ky, the flamboyant airman who was Prime Minister from 1965 to 1967. Among Ky's 30-odd guests were such prominent figures as Dr. Tran Van Do, former Foreign Minister and head of the South Vietnamese delegation to the Geneva Convention of 1954, and Father Tran Huu Thanh, leader of the Catholic anticorruption movement that has sponsored several popular anti-Thieu demonstrations in the past several months. The group's first move was to put pressure on Thieu to cede his power to a new, more broadly based government. Thieu could remain as President, but he should preside over an entirely new Cabinet.
Thieu's response was swift and characteristic. He had a handful of lesser-known dissidents arrested, including two who had been at the tea meeting, as well as a number of journalists and politicians who tend to support Ky. The arrests were clearly meant to frighten the bigger fish in the opposition and demonstrate that Thieu not only was still in power but also intended to remain there.