Combat· Vietnam War
DAO Compound Rocket Attack
The rocket attack on the Defense Attaché Office compound near Saigon's airport, in the opening of the final North Vietnamese assault on the capital, killed the last two United States Marines to die on the ground in Vietnam.
As enemy rockets and artillery struck the airfield and the adjacent compound where Marine security guards were posted, two young Marines manning their position were killed in the bombardment, their deaths coming just as the final evacuation was about to begin. The shelling that killed them helped render the airfield unusable for fixed-wing aircraft, forcing the evacuation of Saigon to be carried out entirely by helicopter. The two Marines hold a somber place in the Corps' history as the last of its members killed on Vietnamese soil, falling at the very end of a war that had cost the Marine Corps so heavily. Their loss marked the grim closing of the long Marine ordeal in Vietnam.
Record no. 717