George Esper and Vietnamese boy,  Saigon, South Vietnam  c. 1966

The Fall of Saigon,  April 30, 1975

 George Esper spent ten years as a reporter for the Associated Press covering the war in Vietnam.

In the final days, as the North Vietnamese Army advanced toward the capital city of Saigon,

American officials raced to evacuate the remaining U.S. diplomatic and military personnel.

By the time the NVA had surrounded Saigon, rumors of a violent bloodbath were circulating throughout the city, prompting the few remaining foreign journalists to flee Vietnam.  

George and two AP colleagues, Peter Arnett and Matt Frangiola, decided instead to stay behind and report the fall of Saigon.

As the North Vietnamese Army entered the city on the morning of April 30, 1975, Arnett and Frangiola roamed the streets and reported what they could observe as the invading army sped toward the Presidential Palace.  George stayed in the city's center, waiting for the inevitable surrender of South Vietnam's remaining government officials.

Sooner than expected, North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the Palace gates

and within what seemed like a matter of minutes South Vietnam had surrendered.

Crowds of Saigon's citizens celebrated in the streets as Viet Cong flags were raised

above the Presidential Palace and hung in storefront windows.

After years of covering the endless carnage of war, George's report on the collapse and surrender of the South Vietnam regime was the final dispatch filed from the AP's Saigon Bureau. 

He wrote it quickly and got it on the wire to New York moments before

North Vietnamese soldiers cut the AP's cables.

George's last story on the war in Vietnam was published in America on the front page of more than a thousand small-town and big-city newspapers.  In it, he did his best to explain to his fellow Americans how this bewilderingly dark and deadly war had at last come to an end. 

A few weeks later, George was picked up by NVA soldiers and expelled from Vietnam.