Sunday Morning Almanac Recalls Key Historical Events of March 29

The men boarding the last military transports out of South Vietnam on March 29, 1973, were told to change into civilian clothes before landing, to avoid becoming targets of the protests that had defined the war at home. There were no ticker-tape parades. Soldiers were in a jungle one day and walking a quiet American street 48 hours later.

That exit closed a deployment that peaked at more than half a million U.S. troops in 1969, the same year anti-war protests at home reached their highest levels. Nixon began the drawdown in the early 1970s, framing the withdrawal as a transfer of battlefield responsibility to South Vietnam. By March 29, 1973, Military Assistance Command, Vietnam had been formally disbanded. The last unit to leave was not a rifle company but special couriers from MACV's Infantry Security Force; the final American military act in Vietnam was, in the end, an administrative handoff.

The resonance for today is direct: every contemporary argument over when and how the United States exits a military commitment runs through this date. Congress and President Trump formalized the connection in 2017, designating March 29 as National Vietnam War Veterans Day. Approximately 2.7 million Americans served in Vietnam; for many, official recognition took more than four decades to arrive.

Two other March 29 moments echo in current conversations. In 1865, General Ulysses S. Grant moved Union forces against Confederate trenches outside Petersburg, Virginia, beginning the Civil War's final campaign. In a political moment when the durability of American institutions faces daily scrutiny, the last great stress test of the republic broke open on this same date. And on March 29, 1918, Sam Walton was born in Oklahoma; in a week defined by tariff policy and debate over the structural future of American retail, the founder of Walmart drew his first breath on this date.

Garrison Keillor, whose Writer's Almanac marks dates like this one, offered his own sideways take on the national character. "I went into treatment for naivete and it helped," Keillor wrote, positioning Minnesota as "a national headquarters for the recovery industry," complete with programs for "people suffering from traumatic taciturnity." It may be the most efficient description of the American self-help impulse ever attached to a Midwestern state.