On this day in 1973, the Vietnam War officially came to an end as the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam was disestablished, and the last U.S. combat troops departed the country.
In 2017, then President Donald Trump signed the Vietnam War Veterans Recognition Act, which declared March 29th to be National Vietnam War Veterans Day.
A Manitowoc man who was there in the waning hours of the conflict remembers that day all too well.
John Jacobs, who was a pilot in the Air Force, tells Seehafer News that he flew an OV-10 observational aircraft, which had to fly until noon on January 27th, which is when the Paris Peace Accords officially went into effect.
“There was an air strike going on just north of Danang,” he recalled. “The Navy F4 got hit by ground fire, and they had to punch out.” 
Another part of his team’s mission was search and rescue, so, another aircraft jumped into action.
“One of our aircraft was in the area and they tried to rescue those two Navy pilots,” Jacobs explained. “In the course of that, they got hit by an SA7, the heat-seeking missile, and both of them had to jump out.”
The last thing anyone heard from them was not positive news.
“Our front seater said ‘I’m about to be captured,’” Jacobs said.
John said that nobody knew what had happened to their squadron mates, that is until about two weeks later when the first POWs were released.
“We found out that only the Navy back seater survived, and he had been shot in the leg as he had been parachuting down,” Jacobs recalled. “Those three crew members, to this day, are still missing in action.”
The loss of those lives is something John says sticks with him to this day.
“Just kinda knowing that, to me, the government didn’t value our lives if you will,” he said. “There was no reason to do it.”
John also told us that he just so happened to be at the Honolulu airport on March 29th, 1973 when the final wave of POWs were landing on American soil.
While he could not make out who was who in the middle of the night, John tells us it was “riveting” to be a part of such an important moment in history.
