From Jim Laurie's diary April 26th,1975:
"There aren't many on the Air Vietnam flight from Hong Kong today. Vietnam is in chaos. My friends give it weeks or days to live. I was anxious to get back to Saigon.

I think betrayal every time I think of my hasty exit from Cambodia two weeks ago.(April 12)  How could I have left Sinan behind. She was the one true love of my life and now I fear she is dead. A victim of the Khmer Rouge

Reporting for NBC News Saigon. April 30, 1975

No helicopters and U-S Navy rescue ships for me this time. I'll stay in Vietnam no matter what. Perhaps Sinan is alive and somehow will cross the border to Vietnam

On the plane with me are two informed friends: 

Diep Brady, wife of an NBC correspondent, who has come fighting back fear, determined to get her brother out of Vietnam before it is too late. And Neil Davis, veteran reporter/Visnews-NBC cameraman, friend and a mentor, a man whose knowledge of Vietnam and Cambodia I have relied on for five years.

Davis and I have a pact. We want to witness the endgame. Davis is well connected with the North Vietnamese and Provisional Liberation Government representatives who since 1973 have been stationed at Ton Son Nhut.

Davis was emotionally spent on his departure from Phnom Penh.  I sat opposite him on the helicopter.  He never raised his camera.   He had left so much behind, so many friends in Cambodia.  

We hear conditions are bad for the few reporters who stayed on in Phnom Penh to witness the Khmer Rouge victory.

We'll have better luck, I think.. The Vietnamese are more sophisticated than the Khmer.
We'll stay in Saigon come what may."

Four days after I wrote those words, the final evacuation of Americans and their  friends from Saigon began. Panic gripped the streets. Everyone wanted to get out at once. Many didn't make it.

Davis and I prepared to welcome the victorious North Vietnamese.
I remained in Vietnam for a month; Davis for three months -- following what the North Vietnamese call "Giai phong" or "Liberation."

23 years later "Time and Again" a program on MSNBC recalls the reporting of April 30th, 1975. and the weeks that followed.

Click here for video clip from MSNBC's: Time and Again 

Within a day the flag of the Viet Cong The National Liberation Front (the southern Forces who had fought the war were displayed From every building including the Caravelle Hotel where Davis and I stayed.

Within a week, however, the solid red flag of North Vietnam joined the NLF flag. Soon the NLF flag was seen no longer. The message Was clear - North Vietnam would run the show From now on in the south. Even the southern Communist cadres who had sacrificed for so long Were now to be cast aside or play a minor role in The New Vietnam.

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