(4 of 4)
— Stanley Cloud, Washington correspondent, TIME
1975: Twice-Told Tales
Before jettisoning my shoulder bag and dashing to a waiting helicopter for what may be my last flight out of Saigon, I fished out a copy of the first story I ever filed from Viet Nam. It was dated July 8, 1948. In that year, the Viet Cong were called the Viet Minh, and they were fighting against Vietnamese government troops, French soldiers, foreign legionnaires and black mercenaries from Senegal and Morocco. When I reread that story, my first and last days in Viet Nam seemed somehow indistinguishable. Excerpt: "The French hoped to pull large non-Communist nationalist resistance units away from the Communist-controlled Viet Minh. But instead of winning nationalists away from Ho Chi Minh's camp, they are driving them to it." Excerpt: "Saigon belongs to the French in the day and the Viet Minh at night. The faint, sporadic sputtering of machine-gun fire and thudding artillery disturb the night's peace."
—Roy Rowan, Hong Kong bureau, TIME