His were the last American boots to leave the ground that day, the last pair of military feet to scramble aboard the last American helicopter out of Saigon on April 30, 1975.

And as the mechanical bird finally headed out of war-ravaged Vietnam, John Valdez looked down at the place he had just left, the U.S. embassy at Saigon. Some people were looting the building. Others just sat, talking. A few raised their heads to watch the American military fly away.

Some 58,000 Americans and thousands more Vietnamese had died down there, on the land his feet had last touched. The toll of more than a decade of fighting had reached from the jungles of Vietnam to the living rooms and funeral homes of America, sparking an anti-war movement and dividing the nation.

Valdez, then a 37-year-old master sergeant in the Marines and a guard at the embassy in Saigon, had a number of friends die on that ground, including the last two Americans killed in the war.

And, 30 years ago today, as North Vietnamese tanks rolled toward what was then Saigon, Valdez knew it was all over.

Today, the 67-year-old Valdez lives in Vista, in the same home he bought three years after leaving Saigon, which is now Ho Chi Minh City.

He's retired now, after a 30-year career in the Marines. He takes classes at MiraCosta and Palomar colleges. Passing him on the street or in the grocery store, many would never know his role that fateful day 30 years ago.

Pressing the embassy

A week before the city fell to the North Vietnamese, Valdez ordered the 52 Marines under his command to move out of their quarters in the city and into the embassy in downtown Saigon. They slept on cots.

Within days, Valdez said, South Vietnamese people desperate for help, desperate to get out of the country before they were overrun by the army from the north, flocked to the gates of the American embassy.

"It was crowds and confusion," remembered Valdez. The people at the gates weren't dangerous. But they were desperate.

Soon, the crowd was crushing into the gates of the walled embassy. Infantry Marines, brought in to help, took to the top of the wall to hold them off. Children were lifted to the top of the throng as parents begged the troops to take the little ones, to get them on a flight out.

"The kids were getting crushed," Valdez recalls. "They are handing kids over to you and you know you can't take them. It was a real tear-jerker."

Only the "at-risk" Vietnamese, those who had helped the Americans, could come over the wall. Valdez said he lifted eight or 10 of them over.

A direct hit

Meanwhile, at Tan Son Nhut air base six miles away, Americans and selected South Vietnamese people were flying out of the country.

Valdez sent about 20 Marines to help. In the early morning hours of April 29, 1975, in the darkness, two of them died.

Cpl. Charles McMahon Jr. and Lance Cpl. Darwin Judge were the last two American military deaths in Vietnam from enemy fire.

Judge had arrived at the embassy about six weeks earlier; McMahon had been there only a week.

Valdez sent them to the air base, figuring it to be the safest spot for rookies.

Random rocket launches by the North Vietnamese killed the two Marines with a hit to the closest Marine post to the main gate at Tan Son Nhut. A direct hit.

The shelling at the air base made airplane evacuations no longer an option. The operation shifted to the sprawling embassy compound.

American helicopters were landing at the embassy, the smaller ones on the roof, the larger ones in the courtyard. Waves of choppers. Hovering, loading. Thousands boarded and flew off to waiting American ships.

"I don't think we were scared," Valdez said. "Your blood is pumping, you are excited."

Up and out

It was just before dawn on April 30, 1975, when Valdez got the word from his superior officer: That's it. No more people. Leave.

The Marines at the gates and at the walls formed three groups into sort of a semicircle, faced the crowd, and inched back toward the embassy. The goal: button up the building, get to the roof, hop into a helicopter.

They backed up 400 yards. The first line of Marines slipped inside the embassy doors. The second went in. By the time the third group of Marines were backing up, the crowds became clued in.

"They started flooding the gates," Valdez remembers. "We had to push them and shove them so we could close the (embassy) doors."

The Marines who made up the third semicircle, including Valdez, fought off the clawing hands of the people who had jumped the embassy walls and dashed to the doors.

Push. Shove. Slam. They shut the door. Thump. The troops banged down the wooden bar designed to barricade the doors. Clang. Down they dropped the metal gate inside.

Some of the Marines then sped to the elevators to lock them up, freeze them on the sixth floor. Other Marines clambered up the stairs to the top of the six-story building. Valdez took the steps, he and his buddies stopping to slam shut and lock the metal grill gates that stood on every other floor in the stairwells.

There they were. On the roof, 150 or so Marines.

The crush

Soon, Valdez heard a crash below and peeked over the edge. Desperate South Vietnamese had rammed a firetruck through the doors of the embassy's lobby.

Somehow, the panicked crowd had clawed its way up the stairwell and entered the incinerator room on the top floor. The last room to the roof.

Valdez said 30, maybe 40 Vietnamese could be seen through the door's small window. He stationed an armed guard at the roof door. No one tried to enter.

In waves of 20 or so, the Marines hopped into the helicopters as they came. The South Vietnamese in the incinerator room must have heard them, Valdez said.

Finally, just 11 men remained on the roof top.

And then, nothing.

The wait

Long, anxious minutes followed, the 11 men peering into the sky for puffs, tell-tale smoke from a helicopter coming to whisk them away.

Until then, the choppers had come back and forth from the American ships pretty constantly, every half hour or so, hovering, landing in the embassy courtyard or on the rooftop, filling with evacuees.

But now, near silence. Half an hour passed. Then another. And another.

"We were getting pretty itchy," Valdez said. "We went into our own thoughts. It was quiet, except for the cowboy shooting."

Cowboy shooting was the random shots fired into the air by South Vietnamese on the ground.

Valdez never doubted the chopper was coming. But what went through his mind, what thoughts came as he awaited rescue?

"My sweet butt getting the heck out of there," Valdez said.

He thought of the horrors of being captured by the enemy. He thought of McMahon, of Judge. He could see the shelling at the airstrip again, and worried that the rockets might get turned in the direction of the embassy.

"We were sitting ducks up there," Valdez said.

Rescued

Then they saw it. Puffs in the distance, drawing closer. The rescue helicopter.

Valdez told the Marine guarding the roof door to make three or four passes by the door while everyone else hopped on board. Then, he told the Marine, run and jump on.

Valdez made sure everyone was on, then he scrambled aboard.

The ramp to the helicopter was still open as they lifted off. Someone told the Marines to get rid of their smoke grenades before leaving. But one of the Marines had pulled the pin before tossing his —— a bad move. The churning blades sucked the smoke into the chopper, blinding the pilot.

The helicopter had to land on the roof. Within seconds, the smoke cleared, and the bird lifted off. It was 7:53 a.m.

On the way to the ship, the USS Okinawa, the gas light came on. But soon, the crew chugged the chopper onto the ship.

After 70 hours, Valdez finally slept.

Back at home

Today, 30 years later, Valdez heads the association of Marine security guards who were at the embassy those final two days, some with him on the roof that last day.

By Valdez's count, 84 Marines qualify for membership in the association. Two of them —— Judge and McMahon —— died in Vietnam. In the years that followed, 10 others, including two who were on that final flight out, have passed away.

The Fall of Saigon Marine Association is meeting in Quantico, Va., this weekend to mark the 30th anniversary of the evacuation.

Valdez said about 50 of the association's members will attend the reunion.

"This," Valdez said, "is the very first time that we are going to get together since the evacuation."

Contact staff writer Teri Figueroa at (760) 740-3517 or tfigueroa@nctimes.com.