I had a front row seat for the end of the Vietnam War—a war that I’d spent more than two years of my life covering on the ground in combat. My Vietnam story began in early 1971, when United Press International assigned me to its Saigon bureau to replace photographer Kent Potter, who was supposed to be rotating out. He never got the chance. On February 10, 1971, Potter and three other photographers perished when their chopper was shot down over Laos during the Lam Son 719 operation. Larry Burrows of Life, Henri Huet of the AP, and Keisaburo Shimamoto of Newsweek were among those who died. I didn't know any of those great photographers, but Burrows was a personal hero, and his photos inspired my desire to cover the war. A few weeks later, I was on a plane bound for Saigon. I spent more than two years photographing combat in Indochina, and in 1972, I was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for my work in Vietnam, Cambodia and India, where I photographed refugees escaping across the border from East Pakistan. Vietnam became part of my DNA; everything that has happened to me since has been informed by that experience. I was 24, and my first year as a combat photographer was so intense, and there were so many close calls, I really never figured to see 25. When I celebrated that birthday in Saigon, I felt that every one after was a bonus. So far that windfall has added up to an extra 43 years! I have tried to use them well. I returned to the states in mid-1973 to work for Time magazine. One of my early assignments was the Watergate melee, and I was also assigned to photograph House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford after Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned in the fall of that year. A portrait that I took of Ford ran on the cover of Time when Nixon announced that he would replace Agnew as the new vice president. Time then assigned me to cover Ford full-time. When Nixon resigned, and Ford replaced him, he asked me to be his chief photographer. With that job came total access, not just to the president and his family, but to everything that was going on behind the scenes. It was quite an honor, wildly exciting and one of the most professionally and personally rewarding times of my life. On March 3, 1975, six months into the Ford presidency, South Vietnam began to unravel when the North Vietnamese army attacked the Central Highlands city of Ban Me Thuot. After a few days of heavy fighting that saw thousands of casualties, particularly among the civilian population, that key city fell to the North Vietnamese. This was the beginning of the end for South Vietnam. My previous life as a combat shooter was running head-on into my latest career as a presidential photographer. I was deep inside the White House as the president’s photographer, and was given an unparalleled opportunity to see a war implode from within the halls of power. This special access also led to a secret trip back to Vietnam on a special mission for President Ford—and then back to the White House for the finale of the Vietnam drama. The final days of April 1975 were personal days of hell as the last act of the Vietnam tragedy unfolded. I didn’t sleep, and I was consumed with making sure that I photographed every minute that I could of these tense final days. As uniquely qualified as I was to record the unfolding events, I was also emotionally drained by the circumstances. During the war itself I played through my pain to document the story, and I did the same during those final days. I always knew that just a handful of people with tremendous power made the decisions that shaped our lives. They were the ones who started and ended wars. As someone who had always been an outsider, it was startling to see that process in action. Just a few short years earlier, I was consumed with a drive to document events from the other end—and to be out on the front lines where the action was. Or so I thought. Not much later, I found myself in the center of action of another kind—watching and recording the agony of decisions about life, death and the future of nations being made one at a time by a president until there were no more decisions to make. And then, the Vietnam War was over. This is my account and photos of the final days of Vietnam and the fall of Saigon. Direct quotes from the participants are from declassified minutes of National Security Council meetings, Memorandums of Conversations, Cabinet meetings, White House press conferences, President Ford’s book, A Time to Heal, Donald Rumsfeld’s book, Known and Unknown, and my own autobiography, Shooter. March 16, 1975: The North Vietnamese were now in Hue, and moving on Da Nang. It looked as if all of the northern provinces of South Vietnam would fall to the advancing communist forces. On March 25, Ford met in the Oval Office with U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Frederick Weyand and U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam Graham Martin. The president discussed dispatching the general on a fact-finding mission to Saigon to see if anything could be done to stem the advancing North Vietnamese tide. Weyand had heroically served several tours in Vietnam and knew the intricacies of the conflict. The president felt confident he would give him the best assessment of the situation. Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, and his deputy, General Brent Scowcroft, participated in the meeting also. The photo I took of Scowcroft in his White House office as he talked on the phone to a colleague reflected the gravity of the situation.

David Hume Kennerly