A More Dangerous War

Covering South Vietnamese paratroopers as they advanced from house to house on the edge of Saigon last week. U.P.I. Photographer Charles Eggleston, 23, was struck in the head by a bullet and killed--bringing the total number of newsmen who have died in the war to 17. As the fighting has come to Saigon and other cities, reporters have been in more danger than ever before. The previous week, TIME Correspondent John Cantwell, 30, lost his life along with three other newsmen: Michael Birch, 24, Australian Associated Press correspondent; Ronald Laramy, 31, a Reuters correspondent; and Bruce Pigott, 23, assistant bureau chief of Reuters in Saigon (TIME, May 10).

One reporter, Frank Palmos, 28, a freelance Australian journalist, escaped to tell the story. The group had been riding in a jeep around Saigon when they noticed a column of smoke rising above the Cholon section. Heading for the smoke, they soon found themselves moving through a stream of refugees fleeing the Viet Cong. Some tried to warn them with shouts of "V.C.! V.C.!", but they kept going until they arrived at an empty intersection--and then it was too late. Cantwell, who was driving, tried to put the jeep in reverse. Before he could, two Viet Cong opened fire. Palmos jumped out of the jeep, ran, staggered and pretended to fall dead. He watched the V.C. commander approach the jeep, where Birch was wounded but still alive. "Bao Chi," he pleaded, using the Vietnamese word for newsman. "Bao Chi," replied the V.C. derisively. And he pumped three rounds from his .45 into the correspondent.

Hail of Bullets. The V.C. commander then fired from close range at another wounded correspondent lying on the ground; by then, all but Palmos had been killed. When the V.C. lowered their guns, Palmos leaped to his feet and sprinted away. "There was tremendous surprise and anger on their faces. They started firing, but they weren't very good shots. They hit a sign, they hit a post, they hit my shirt, but they didn't hit me." He ducked into a line of refugees and managed to elude his pursuers.

The execution of the correspondents was one of the more brutal acts of a brutal enemy. "Obviously the men did not know that the Viet Cong held the street," William Rademaekers, TIME bureau chief in Saigon, reported last week. "And in the shifting nature of the war, where one street is secure at 9 a.m. and V.C.-held at 10, they cannot be accused of naivete or recklessness. The fighting is inevitably close in, and the chances of getting caught in a crossfire are immeasurably greater. Street fighting is as new to most correspondents as it is to most of the soldiers. By now, most journalists can handle themselves fairly well in the field: they know when to duck, when to run, what to listen for, when to dig. In the cities, however, we forget about ricochets and flying glass, about the ability of an enemy to pop out of a burning shack and then disappear. If you move too slowly, you get cut off from Allied troops, and it you go too quickly, you suddenly find yourself in the middle of it.

"There are, of course, any number of things that one doesn't do in Viet Nam today. One does not drive quickly at night. In the cities one tries to wear white shirts after dark, and if walking alone, whistle. A reporter sits in the back of restaurants, away from doors and windows.

"Correspondents have gone on ambushes, flown Medevac missions, sat in Khe Sanh. Still others have deliberately gone into V.C. country to interview the enemy. All of these things are not wise; yet it is the way the war must be covered."

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