Journalist Ambush Cholon Saigon May 5, 1968

I had not heard of this before reading up on this lately.  This is an extract from the then Reuters bureau chief in Saigon.

On May 5, 1968 during a year of political mayhem worldwide — reporters, photographers and television crews started heading towards Cholon. One small group of five journalists jumped into a small open Jeep-like Mini-Moke, painted white, outside the office of Reuters, the British news agency, on tree-lined Han Thuyen street, 200 yards from the then-presidential palace, in central Saigon.

There were two Reuters men, Bruce Pigott, 23, an Australian, and Ron Laramy, 31, a recently-arrived Brittish correspondent. Also squeezing into the vehicle were Michael Birch, 24, from the Australian news agency AAP, John Cantwell, 29, another Australian representing Time-Life, whose vehicle it was and who drove it, and Frank Palmos, a freelancer from Perth, Western Australia. Within two hours all but Palmos would be dead in one of the biggest single journalistic tragedies of the Vietnam War - or any war, for that matter.

As the Reuters bureau chief, and with four foreign-born correspondents and two Vietnamese reporters, I had covered the first-wave offensive, when fighting raged close to Reuters' office as the presidential palace was attacked, and the US embassy compound was penetrated 600 yards away in the other direction. Two weeks before this 'second wave' offensive, I had completed my assignment in Vietnam, and returned to the UK.

On May 5, the five correspondents reached Cholon and watched US helicopter gunships flying just above the rooftops firing rockets at presumed guerrilla positions. They passed Vietnamese civilians fleeing from the scene of fighting who shouted at them in the mixed English, French and Vietnamese patois of the war: "VC, VC, beaucoup VC. Di di mau (get away quickly). Go back, go back!"

But moments later, they turned a corner and Cantwell drove the tiny vehicle into a narrow lane and came upon a roadblock of oil drums. Suddenly several Viet Cong guerrillas stood up and started firing wildly. Four of the correspondents were either wounded or already dead. The VC commander, wearing tiger pattern jungle fatigues and not the usual black pajamas of the guerrillas, walked forward. Birch, as Palmos told it, had been sitting next to Cantwell in the front seat, and cried in an anguished voice: 'Bao chi, bao chi' ('press, press.')

The commander repeated 'Bao chi' derisively, walked towards Birch and shot him at point blank range with a .45 before pumping bullets into Cantwell on the ground nearby.

Then Palmos, who was unhurt after playing dead as the VC leader finished off his colleagues, picked himself up and dashed to the corner with the guerrillas firing wildly - and widely - at him with their Kalashnikovs. He was able to reach the still fleeing Vietnamese, daub himself with mud, and hunch his body so that he did not look taller than the much smaller Vietnamese.

The VC fired over the heads of the Vietnamese, trying to make them hand over Palmos, but not one Vietnamese turned his or her head. "They held with me," Palmos told a press conference a few hours later in Saigon. "They didn't look. They let me go along."

From further reading I am lead to believe Frank Palmos actually met with the ambush leader, Co Van Cuong, in a Saigon hotel for a follow up book "Ridding the Devils".

Here is a link for anyone that is interested:

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/50-years-since-4-journos-killed-in-vietnam/ufuoc9awu

Vietnam issued a statement Feb. 1, 1988, expressing its profound regrets over the incident.

“Our sympathy goes to all families with losses, just as I am certain they would have sympathy for our own losses,” said Gen. Nguyen Tuot of the Vietnamese Department of Defense Military History Division.

Nice links - Tim Page mentioned the incident in his book Page by Page, and I seem to recall Peter Arnett mentioned it in his autobiography too.

Besides learning about this shooting which was all new to me, I learned Reuters is a British organization. TO me the name looked German. Show what I know! Or don't know (plenty).

Tom

The guy who founded the company was a German as I recall (Googling) - yes, from Berlin. An 1848 revolutionary who moved to London.