They Stayed

"It's complete, it's total, it's bye-bye, everybody" flashed the word from the American embassy in Saigon. On this signal, hundreds of newsmen began their helicopter evacuation from South Viet Nam. But not all. Left free by their home offices to decide for themselves whether to go or stay, at least 80 journalists remained to continue reporting the story. Among them were three Americans who had covered the war from the start of U.S. involvement: Bureau Chief George Esper, 42, Matt Franjola, 32, and Peter Arnett, 40, all of the Associated Press. Said Arnett, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his Viet Nam War reporting in 1966: "I was here at the beginning, and I think it's worth the risk to be here at the end."

NBC left behind one correspondent, James Laurie, and a cameraman, Australian Neil Davis; on hand for CBS was former British Schoolteacher Eric Cavaliero, who had taken refuge in the network's Saigon office last month. About a dozen British correspondents, along with several Frenchmen and Italians, also stayed. Of the 37 Japanese journalists still in Saigon, a few were there willingly, but most because their American evacuation buses had not shown up. Other non-volunteers were United Press International's bureau manager Alan Dawson, 32, Asian News Editor Leon Daniel, 43, Correspondents Paul Vogle and Charles ("Chad") Huntley and their Dutch photographer Hugo van Es, who were trapped in panicky Saigon crowds and never made it to the evacuation points.

Quiet End. In the first 36 hours after Provisional Revolutionary Government troops entered the city, newsmen moved about without interference, taking photographs and filing dispatches through the wire-service offices. At the A.P. bureau, a Vietnamese who had supplied pictures to the wire service for three years showed up with a Viet Cong friend and two North Vietnamese soldiers and revealed proudly that he had been a revolutionary for a decade working as a "liaison with the international press." He thereupon guaranteed the safety of the A.P. newsmen and joined them in a round of Cokes and leftover cakes. Wrote Peter Arnett that night: "I never dreamed it would end the way it did at noon today. I thought it might have ended with a political deal like in Laos. Even an Armageddon-type battle to the finish with the city left in ruins like in World War II in Europe."

Another stay-put journalist, Stewart Dalby of the London Financial Times, reported: "I went to speak to some Communist troops heavily armed with grenades and AK47 rifles sitting in a truck outside the old Defense Ministry. They smiled and waved. All of them were very young." A correspondent from Agence France Presse was also glowing. Within hours of Saigon's fall, he wrote, "I could wander about the streets without feeling any threats, any animosity."

But soon afterward, at 8 p.m. last Wednesday, the P.R.G. cut off all communication with the non-Communist world except, sporadically, via the Japanese embassy. By week's end the victors' handling of the Western press was looking relatively professional. Unlike the unpredictable and still rather unsophisticated Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, the well-organized, news-conscious P.R.G. quickly established

Saigon press center where all foreign reporters were asked to register and agree to abide by the new government's regulations. After that, they were free to keep their old press passes, roam throughout newly dubbed Ho Chi Minh city and interview P.R.G. officials, though no dispatches or photos were allowed out of the country.

In a skilled public relations move, the P.R.G. also allowed CBS's Peter Kalischer, 60, A.P.'s Daniel De Luce, 63, and his wife, as well as several other foreign newsmen, to visit Danang and Hue via Hanoi and send out eyewitness reports on the return to normal routines in those onetime citadels of American might. Clearly, one phase of press coverage was ending and another had just begun.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.