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Within an hour sentries were placed at every intersection. Other soldiers equipped with megaphones cruised the streets shouting, "The forces of the National Liberation Front have taken control of Saigon! Have no fears. You will be well treated." On the quays of the Saigon River, people were trying frantically to get onto small boats, but there was no place to go. A South Vietnamese police colonel walked up to a military statue in front of the National Assembly building, saluted and shot himself in the head; he died later in a hospital.
According to a French diplomat, roughly one-third of the people of Saigon greeted the Communist forces with genuine enthusiasm, one-third with indifference and one-third with deep apprehension. Many Saigonese went into the streets to welcome the Communist forces with smiles and handshakes. Some South Vietnamese soldiers, seemingly unworried, rode their motorcycles alongside trucks loaded with armed Communist soldiers; others attempted to trade their uniforms for civilian clothes; some simply shed their uniforms in the street and continued on their way wearing only undershorts.
Some Communist troops meanwhile garlanded their rifles with flowers; others offered children rides on their tanks. Radio Hanoi said that Viet Cong troops had been ordered "not to lay hands even on a needle or thread of the people." Although all press contact with the outside world was cut off early in the evening, reports from the Japanese and French embassies, which had not evacuated the country, indicated that foreigners were being treated well.
THE CELEBRATION. Thursday, the first morning of "liberation," was also May Day, and huge parades involving thousands of Communist soldiers and Saigonese citizens were held on flag-festooned streets. In the park in front of the presidential palace, huge numbers of Soviet PT-76 and T-54 tanks, armored cars, artillery pieces and rocket launchers were arrayed. Bus service and garbage collection were quickly restored, and civil servants were reporting for work at government ministries. Political cadres in mufti, wearing red armbands and pistols and often sporting long hair, were taking the lead in administering the city. They seemed to be people who had been living in Saigon for some time, probably acting as secret agents for the Communist side.