BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) -- April marks exactly 50 years since the fall of Saigon and the effective, if not official, end of the Vietnam War. On April 14, 1975, North Vietnamese tanks burst through the gates of the South Vietnamese government’s presidential palace, a short distance away at th e American Embassy, as people scrambled to escape the besieged city aboard U.S. military helicopters in dramatic scenes that would be etched in memory for decades. The war officially concluded on April 30, 1975. KGET's Robert Price marked the occasion by speaking to American combat veterans, Vietnam war protestors and others impacted by the war. What were they feeling during those dangerous and volatile days, and how did it make them, and the nation, what they are today? A botched operation: The international manhunt for escaped inmate Cesar Hernandez The war made a mark on Louie Vega, who was a door gunner on a U.S. Army helicopter throughout 1968. "First time I ever had somebody shoot at me," he said. "I actually saw who it was, obviously they were off in the distance, but I could see them taking the sight and shooting, and that was the first time I learned what it meant to be paralyzed with fear." The war made a mark on Ed Budney, who was an Army visual combat tracker and remembers the day he and a fellow tracker came upon an enemy machine gun crew. "They opened up fire," he said. "I got wounded initially in the shoulder and the finger and the other tracker I was with, he got killed in action. It was instantaneous." A botched operation: The international manhunt for escaped inmate Cesar Hernandez The war made a mark on Verda Varner, a young mother who took her baby to protests in his stroller. "I was an anti-war protestor and demonstrator," she said. "The emphasis I always want to make was, anti-war, not anti-warrior." The war also made a mark on Eddy Laine, then a Reedley College student who helped stage a rally in the farm town of Reedley, his hometown. "You could see it on TV every night, the bombing of villages," he said. "People dying, napalm. What were we doing over there, thousands of miles from here?" The war made a mark on Randa Hunter, who visited a Bakersfield grammar school friend at an Army hospital in Oakland after he lost a leg and mangled an arm in Vietnam. Never miss a story: Make KGET.com your homepage "I thought of the soldiers that were left in Afghanistan (in 2021) and the screaming and yelling in the States," she said. "I thought, 'well, I continue to play back what happened when we left Vietnam.' If you want to see chaos..." The war divided the country in a multitude of ways - socially, culturally and politically. It illuminated racial and socioeconomic divides and changed attitudes about foreign military adventures. Join us starting April 14 when KGET looks back on the Vietnam War, 50 years after the fall of Saigon. ...read more read less