The Evacuation from Dunkirk to Dover

I just finished the section of Songs of the Damned where Hunter Thompson is writing about his time in Saigon right before the American evacuation.  He interviewed Loren Jenkins, the Newsweek bureau chief in Saigon in '75, who'd just been to a the nuts-and-bolts planning session for getting people out of the city that really highlights how difficult it is to get people out of a war zone:

The Marines have to come in from the ship, but they don't have enough Marines to defend all these places.  Until they get helicopters in from the Marine ships, from the aircraft carriers, they can only operate with twenty-five or twenty-eight small Hueys.  That's all Air America has, apparently, which isn't much at all.  It sort of shows you how ridiculous this whole plan is.  It really comes down to trying to ship people out on choppers, but big choppers can't land at these collection points, and all they've got are twenty-eight small choppers that can carry eight to ten people.

That's actually still a major issue today: they started letting people bring their families to Korea a few years back, and getting those people out if trouble starts is going to be so difficult and distracting.  Mark Thompson wrote about it for Time's website last week.  He quoted Craig Hooper, an guy I really respect, who said that our civilian evacuation plans are "unrealistic, underfunded and under-resourced," before adding on his personal blog, "I will bet serious money that the ... evacuation plans (such as they are) are based on some really rosy assumptions (fantastic weather, lots of warning, total order in the South, minimal casualties, little behind-the-lines disruption, etc)."

General Walter Sharp, Commander, U.S. Forces Korea (and a couple related U.N. billets, plus a guy who shares my birthday) had a defense of bringing dependents to Korea in the Time piece that just really knocked my socks off:

"There is no reason that families should not be together here in Korea, one of the world's most vibrant and dynamic societies," [Sharp] said Dec. 15. "Ultimately, the ROK-U.S. Alliance is a relationship between two peoples and by bringing more families to Korea I believe we will build stronger bonds between our countries."

I've written some public affairs pieces for my ship over the years, and I know importance of using sentences like "building stronger bonds," "relationship between two peoples," and suchlike.  But if armed conflict breaks out again on the Korean peninsula, Gen. Sharp may wish he could take those words back.