(NOTE: Tomorrow and Thursday I invite you to join me as I relive the last 24 frantic hours in Saigon as it fell to Communist North Vietnamese troops on April 29-30, 1975–an event I covered for the Chicago Tribune in 1975. I hope you will stop by) 

Forty-five years ago I was in a place called Saigon as it fell to Communist North Vietnamese troops. It is an experience I will never forget, mainly because I wasn’t sure if I would get out of Vietnam in one piece.

At the time, I was the Chicago Tribune’s Far Eastern Correspondent based in Tokyo and I had gone to South Vietnam and Cambodia to report on both countries two years after the spurious Paris Peace Accord was signed.

In my posts tomorrow and Thursday, I will share with you my personal account of that harrowing, panic-filled 24-hour period between April 29-30, 1975 when a 10 year-long war that some have called America’s “lost crusade” came to a frantic and ignominious end.