A day of celebration for our British friends but a dark day in American history.

The British celebrate a royal wedding today that is splendent in tradition and ancestry. We, on the other hand, remember a day that is one of the darkest in American history.

The following is an excerpt from "The Amercan Patriot's Almanac" by William J. Bennett and John T.E. Cribb.

THE EVENTS UNFOLDED HALF A WORLD AWAY, but the last days of April 1975 were dark ones in American history. The United States had withdrawn its forces from Southeast Asia, leaving the Communist North vietnamese army to overrun South Vietnam. On April 29, as North Vietnamese troops encircled Saigon, Amerian officals began a helicopter evacuation to get thousands of U.S. citizens, South Vietnamese allies and others out of the capital city. On April 30, South Vietnam surrendered.

Just days earlier, a similar, though smaller scale evacuation had taken place in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, as forces of the Communist Khmer Rouge moved in on that capital. As U.S. officals fled the country, the American ambassador asked Prince Sirik Matak if he would like to leave. Matak's response is difficult for Americans to read:


I thank you very sincerely for your letter and you offer to transport me towards freedom, I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection, and we can do nothing about it. You leave, and my wish is that you and your country will find happiness under this sky. But, mark it well that if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is no matter, because we are all born and must die. I have only committed this mistake of believing you.

When the Khmer Rouge seized Phnom Penh, they shot Matak in the stomach. Unattended, it took him three days to die. During the Khmer Rouge's four-year reign of terror, some 1.5 million people died from execution, starvation and forced labor.

And some of us wonder why so many in the world hate us and why so many of us who served in Southeast Asia cannot forget it and the 58,000+ who died there.