March they received orders to move to Camp Alpha, the personnel staging facility at Tan Son Nhut, where they were restricted to the compound pending their flight out. Finally, at 0100 on the twenty-ninth, they boarded buses for a ride to their C-141 transport. The drivers halted the buses some fifty feet from the floodlighted jet, and kept the bus doors closed while a double file of people formed between the bus and the boarding stairs. The two lines were composed of Americans, South Vietnamese, North Vietnamese, and Viet Cong, all members of the Four Power Joint Military Commission that was supervising the implementation of the peace treaty.

The bus door opened, and one at a time the departing personnel of the 57th marched through this double file. They had been part of the last U.S. Army operational personnel in South Vietnam. The same day the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, lowered its flag and ceased to function for the first time since 1962. The ground war in Vietnam was completely in the hands of the Republic of Vietnam for the first time in twenty-seven years. During a long, cruel, and ultimately losing struggle, Dust Off personnel had comported themselves with courage and honor, proving that a band of brave and dedicated pilots and crewmen could make this new mode of medical evacuation work extremely well, even against well-prepared enemy ground fire.