Max J Beilke

Master Sergeant, United States Army, retired - and the last American combat soldier to leave Vietnam.

He was born at Pipestone in Minnesota and grew up on a farm at Alexandria with five sisters. He finished school in 1950, was drafted in 1952, and served two years in Korea. He re-enlisted in 1956 and was stationed in Germany, where he met his wife Lisa.

At twenty years he put in his retirement papers. The Army refused them and sent him to Vietnam in 1972 as noncommissioned officer in charge of Camp Alpha in Saigon, through which every American entering or leaving the country passed. His work was to coordinate the withdrawal against the release of prisoners of war - a certain number of soldiers documented out before the bargain would be kept. Anybody who left Vietnam in 1972 or 1973 has his stamped signature on their orders.

When the last aircraft was to leave on the twenty-ninth of March 1973, the question was who would board it last. The officer commanding the camp had declared it would be himself. The men felt strongly it should be an enlisted soldier, and the junior officers took the colonel out the night before and saw to it that he was in no condition to stand before the cameras. He had been awake about forty-eight hours planning that flight.

A CBS correspondent asked him how it felt. He said: I think it is a fitting ending to the job I had. When you are responsible for moving the people out of here, I think it is nice to know you are the last man out. I had to do a job.

At the ramp a North Vietnamese colonel named Bui Tin put out his hand to the departing soldiers. Most refused it. One swore at him. Beilke looked him in the eye, accepted the colonels gift of a small painting of a pagoda, and said thank you.

He came home in 1974 and retired as senior noncommissioned officer of the Army Intelligence Command at Fort Meade, having taken a degree at Maryland and a masters at Central Michigan in years of night school. He worked as legislative counsel for the National Association for Uniformed Services and then for the Department of the Army as deputy chief of the retirement services division, and was instrumental in the passage of TRICARE for Life. His whole life after the Army was given to the retirees and to making sure they understood what they were owed.

He was a historian by inclination, and his favourite building was the Pentagon. His Monday meeting of the tenth of September had been moved to the eleventh. He was in a room where the nose of the aircraft came through, and was among the first declared missing.

Some of his remains were identified on the thirteenth of October. He is buried in Section 64 at Arlington, within sight of the building. His sister says the irony of it is not lost on the family.

The veterans clinic at Alexandria in Minnesota was renamed for him on the eleventh of September 2010.

His wife Lisa, his daughters Susie and Michelle, his grandsons Joseph, Luke and Joshua, and his five sisters.