(NOTE: Tomorrow and Wednesday, 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’ll stop by. 

Fifty 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 traveled to South Vietnam and Cambodia to report on both countries two years after the flawed Paris Peace Accord of 1973 was signed.

In my posts tomorrow and Wednesday, I will share with you my 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.

I hope you’ll join me.