The 30 year war in Vietnam is now in its death throes.
And finally it is reaching streets of Saigon.
In the past 24 hours it seems almost every kind of weapon and tactic that was ever used in this war has been displayed in and around the city.
It is a last stand befitting Vietnam.
The city, and especially the airport, are now under constant heavy artillery and rocket attack from both the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong.
The Provisional Revolutionary Government, which is the Vietcong's political arm and President Duong Van Minh's South Vietnam government have agreed in principle call a ceasefire tomorrow.
But the Communists are insisting that it cannot start until the last member of the Theiu regime has been thrown out and the last American has gone.
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It is, it seems to be total capitulation - or a fight to the end.
The Americans who lost 55,000 soldiers in Vietnam pulled out the last of their men late last night.
A party of marines was a plaque by helicopter from the roof of their Embassy after being pinned down for hours by crowds opened fire at rescue craft.
Earlier a rocket attack killed two marines and others waiting with their Vietnamese wives at the airport for an evacuation plane which was destroyed on the runway.
Worst of all, Vietnam is merely a war story yet again.
For those of us on the Caravelle Hotel room watching the exploding horizon, the crashing plane, the flares, the helicopter gunships incinerating people, the story is good and the film footage is marvellous.
Two urchin flower sellers and a teenage girl - who was turned onto heroin by a G.I. two years ago and is now a human the ruin - are brought into the safety of the hotel and someone actually objects to their presence.
These are the street children who have somehow survived the war and now their cumulative terror has arrived.
"Oh mister, oh mister," says the junkie girl softly and dementedly, "I kill you, kill, all die, all kill."
The girl from whom I buy flowers every evening grips the last unsold chain as if it is life.
And she is one of the top ones.
She is eight years old and this morning the French housekeeper says: "Get them out of here. No refugees here please, please."
They are put into a little Renault taxi, which sways with the shock of the artillery, and sent home - perhaps to an alleyway behind the market.
When the evening thunder suddenly became a hail of a weapon fire in the centre of the city. I took shelter in the rear of an Indian tailor's shop.
During it all the Indian sat counting his black market dollars and humming and old song called "Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White" and his Vietnamese staff sat cross-legged on the floor while the roof shook.
Only an old woman prayed and cried, only the foreigner lay face down.
Perhaps for them the war is part of life, like some malignant strain of weather that comes and goes, but they are the most remarkable people.
"We got more Marines coming in", says the American Embassy man on the telephone. "We are going to have to secure parts of this city to get everybody out. We have the know-how and the can-do where human life is concerned."
The first evacuation of the last Americans from journalist has begun and in a few hours time the helicopters of Air America, which belongs to the CIA, will lift some of us out.
About four miles away on the other side of Newport Bridge last bridge to Highway One the Vietcong flag has been hosted again after a battle of incredible savagery.
The bitterness among the Saigon troops towards the remaining Americans is beginning to surface.
A television sound man has been beaten with a pistol.
On my way to the Reuter cable office with this report a drunken lieutenant stopped my taxi with a 45 pistol drawn, then examined my press card and bellowed "you go away, I stay eh? OK. You number 10 (very bad) shit. He walked away gun drooping muttering to himself.
In the house next door to the cable office woman sits on the step singing to her children a song she knew as a girl.
"Sleep my little love. The guns chatter all the time, but they shoot out cheerful flame. Hush it is nothing, my little love, just life, it is nothing."
This report appeared in the Daily Mirror on April 30, 1975.
