January 27, 1973. The Paris Peace Accords Signed and last combat casualty sustained.
The following agreements were signed on this day in Paris, between the warring parties in Vietnam.
"Protocol Concerning the Cease-Fire in South Vietnam and the Joint Military Commission"
"Protocol Concerning the Return of Captured Military Personnel and Foreign Civilians and the Captured and Detained Vietnamese Civilian Personnel"
"Protocol Concerning the International Commission of Control and Supervision "
"Protocol Concerning the Removal, Permanent Deactivation, or Destruction of Mines in the Territorial Waters, Ports, Harbors, and Waterways of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam"
The agreements paved the way for the United States to exit Vietnam under the fiction that "peace with honor" had been brought to South Vietnam. In reality, the fighting never fully stopped and the Nixon Administration expected South Vietnam to fall. The South was pressured into signing the agreement.
By this point in the war, the US had largely withdrawn its combat troops from Vietnam. The final ones would be withdrawn in March, by which time it was obvious that the war was continuing on. As a practical matter, disciplinary problems in the US military were, by that point, so severe, that the Army was close to becoming incapable of engaging in combat operations. To this extent, the North Vietnamese had truly defeated the US in the ground war, although US air cover remained potent up until the ceasefire took place.
On this day, U.S. Army Col. William Nolde was killed by Communist artillery fire. He is generally regarded as the last American combat casualty of the Vietnam War, although Marines Charles McMahon and Darwin Lee Judge were killed by a North Vietnamese rocket attack on April 29, 1975, just before Saigon fell. The distinction, if there is one, is that Nolde was assigned to a combat command.
Nolde had been a Korean War conscript, and stayed in the Army thereafter, becoming an officer. His first tour of duty was in 1965.
Nolde had been a professor of military science at Central Michigan University before being conscripted, so he had the somewhat peculiar experience of being a university professor on military matters before being an enlisted man in the Korean War, and an officer in the Vietnam War. A scholarship at Central Michigan was established in his memory.
