Lying flat in the gutter that morning with the MPs, Arnett and I didn’t know where the VC attackers were holed up or where the fire was coming from. But we knew it was the big story.

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Arnett and other AP staffers had been the first to alert the world of the attack on the U.S. Embassy. At 3:15 the first bulletin had gone out a full 40 minutes ahead of competitor United Press International (UPI). First Lead Attack: Saigon (AP) The Viet Cong shelled Saigon Wednesday in a bold followup of their attacks on eight major cities around the country.

Simultaneously, a suicide squad of guerrilla commandos infiltrated the capital and at least three are reported to have entered the grounds of the new U.S. Embassy near the heart of the city. U.S. Marine guards at the Embassy, opened only late last year, engaged the infiltrators in an exchange of fire.

Several MPs rushed by, one of them carrying a VC sapper piggyback style. The VC was wounded and bleeding. He wore black pajamas and, strangely, an enormous red ruby ring. I interviewed the MPs and recorded their radio conversation with colleagues inside the embassy gates. The MPs believed the VC were in the chancery building itself, an impression that later proved false. Peter Arnett crawled off to find a phone and report the MPs’ conversation to his office. At 7:25, based on Arnett’s calls from the scene, the AP transmitted the first report that the VC were inside the embassy.Bulletin: Vietnam (Tops 161) Saigon (AP) The Vietcong attacked Saigon Wednesday and seized part of the U.S. Embassy. U.S. Military Police on the scene said it was believed about 20 Vietcong suicide commandos were in the Embassy and held part of the first floor of the Embassy building.

The question of whether the VC were in the chancery building or only in the compound took on symbolic importance. I have replayed the tape of that day in 1968, and there is no doubt the MPs believed the VC were in the chancery.

A helicopter landed on the embassy roof, and troops started working down the floors. MP Dave Lamborn got orders on the field radio from an officer inside the compound: This is Waco, roger. Can you get in the gate now? Take a force in there and clean out the embassy, like now. There will be choppers on the roof and troops working down. Be careful we don’t hit our own people. Over.

As we prepared to join the MPs rushing the gate, I had other concerns. OK, how much film have we got left? I shouted to cameraman Peter Leydon.

I’ve got one mag [400 feet], he replied. How many do you have?

We’re on the biggest story of the war with one can of film, I groaned. So it’s one take of everything, including my standupper. There was no time to argue about whose responsibility it was to have brought more film.

I stepped over the United States seal, which had been blasted off the embassy wall near a side entrance. We rushed through the main gate into the garden, where a bloody battle had been raging. It was, as UPI’s Kate Webb later described, like a butcher shop in Eden.

As helicopters continued to land troops on the roof, we hunkered down on the grass with a group of MPs. They were firing into a small villa on the embassy grounds where they said the VC were making a last stand. Tear gas canisters were blasted through the windows, but the gas drifted back through the garden. Colonel George Jacobson, the U.S. mission coordinator, lived in the villa, and he suddenly appeared at a window on the second floor. An MP threw him a gas mask and a .45 pistol. Three VC were believed to be on the first floor and would likely be driven upstairs by the tear gas. It was high drama, but our ABC News camera rolled film on it sparingly.

I continued to describe everything I saw into a tape recorder, often choking on the tear gas. I could read the embassy ID card in the wallet of Nguyen Van De, whose bloody body was sprawled beside me on the lawn. Nguyen was later identified as an embassy driver who often chauffeured the American ambassador and who had been a driver for 16 years. The MPs told me Nguyen Van De had shot at them during the early fighting and was probably the inside man for the attackers.

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