I woke at shortly after three in the morning, growling at the Tet revelers: “Isn’t it time for you to go home?” But when I went over to the window and looked down at Lam Son Square I was amazed:  there wasn’t a human soul where a few hours earlier tens of thousands had welcomed the Year of the Monkey. Even the White Mice, Saigon’s policemen, were gone; only rats scurried about. I realized that what I was hearing was not the sound of firecrackers but the rat-tat-tat of automatic rifle fire – and not somewhere out there across the Saigon River, but right in town within walking distance from my hotel.

I put on a pair of jeans and a dark-colored polo shirt, and took my steel helmet and flak jacket from my aluminum trunk the hotel staff had brought to my room from the Continental’s basement. As I came downstairs, the lobby was filling up with people who would not normally have been there so early: receptionists, telephone operators, room boys, kitchen staff, waiters, and American contractors with their paid companions.

            “Ne sortez pas! VC! Couvre feu!” the night watchman, a wizened French-speaking Indian from Madras, urged me: don’t go out! Vietcong! There’s a curfew on.

            “The curfew does not apply to me because I am an accredited correspondent,” I said, “I must go outside to see what’s going on.”

            He unlocked the door and I quickly turned right and then right again. I walked up Tu Do Street in a northwesterly direction following the increasingly angry sound of a nearby firefight. Commonsense made me stay close to walls. The streetlights were turned off. At first I felt chillingly alone until a gut feeling told me that somebody might be watching me. I ducked, walking warily in measured steps lest hasty movements drew unwelcome attention. Fearing that my white face might betray me in this terrifying darkness, I turned it away from the street and faced toward the facades of the buildings on Tu Do, and edged sideways like a crab.

At the first intersection, I quickly glanced over to the opposite side on my left. There was the Café La Pagode, where mamasan normally squatted next to her pile of newspapers: Đức’s boss. Where was Đức now, I wondered. Was he alive? Was he an ARVN soldier – or a Vietcong? The last time I saw him was eighteen months before when he accompanied me to the Naval hospital in Cholon.

Something made me glance up at the floors above La Pagode. Did I see shadowy figures scampering on the roof, or was this just my imagination? If so, were these Vietcong snipers? This question continued to trouble me as I scuttled block by block toward Notre Dame Cathedral, turning around and scanning roofs and sidewalks quickly at brief intervals.

            Had Vietcong fighters been there they might either not have seen me or just not opened fire on a solitary figure so as not to make their presence known prematurely. I wasn’t taking chances. I turned sharp right, still hugging walls. At the next intersection, I ran across the street as fast as I could and turned left. Then I was on Hai Ba Trung. Still ducking and hugging buildings, I approached a scene of battle. I wasn’t alone anymore.  Others moved in my direction, all staying on the sidewalks close to the houses. I made out the familiar voices of colleagues and the whispers of strangers in French or English spoken with a British accent.

Arriving on Thong Nhut Boulevard, I felt, as so often in Saigon, as if someone had dropped me on a stage of the theater of the absurd during a particularly demented scene. To my right, soldiers of the Royal Gurkha Rifles had taken up position in full battle mode behind the gates of the British Embassy, the protection of which was their responsibility. Across the avenue I witnessed a bizarre spectacle: a helicopter trying repeatedly to land on the roof of the six-storey U.S. embassy; again and again automatic weapons fire from within the compound fought it off.

Vietcong sappers had blown a hole into the wall surrounding this four-acre terrain. They held the chancery grounds until 18 of them were killed and one captured in a battle lasting hours taking the lives of three American marines and two military policemen, all outgunned by the Communists. A chopper swooped down, dropping three cases of M-16 ammunition in an effort to resupply American security people as they were shooting it out with the Vietcong. Then it transpired that not a single M-16 existed in the chancery for which these munitions were intended.

I scanned the spectators lining the sidewalk on my side of Thong Nhut Boulevard, and my cartoonist’s mind kicked in, just as it had done in my high school days, always at the most inappropriate moment. Then I had developed a passion for drawing caricatures of my mathematics teacher -- during tests, which I inevitably failed.  This time, my passion for comics found an entirely different target: In my head I sketched the hilarious contrast between neatly placed civilian feet and the military chaos across the road.

Next to me I spotted a pair of feet in woolly socks and leather sandals, and I thought, “This can only be a German!” With the sound of the firefight across the street in my ears, my eyes scanned the stranger from his flip-flops on up. I pinched myself. “Am I having a bizarre dream?” I wondered. What I saw was German uniform trousers, topped by a German officer’s jacket with a badge identifying the wearer as a helicopter pilot. His epaulettes were garnished by one silver pip framed by two silver oak leaves. A peaked officer’s cap completed the picture: In the midst of combat in central Saigon I stood next to a German major in sandals. As it turned out, he was the assistant West German defense attaché.

“Neue Kleiderordnung, Herr Major?” I asked him: new dress code, major?

“Wie meinen Sie das?” he shot back: what do you mean?

I pointed to his feet and said: “Uniform, Wollsocken, Sandalen.” Uniform, socks and sandals!

“Gucken Sie sich gefälligst Ihre eigenen Füße an,” he retorted: Look at your own feet.

I did, and saw a sorry sight: below my helmet, flak jacket and jeans, I saw a pair of feet covered in coagulated blood and stuck in blue shower sandals made of rubber. I hadn’t even noticed that I was injured, probably by flying glass.

“Nur Tarnung, Herr Major,” I replied: just camouflage! We both laughed.

Our mirth drew the attention of other bystanders who joined in, unaware that the topic of our jollity was footwear. They laughed because they assumed that we, too, were reacting to the tragic absurdity of what we were witnessing on the other side of the street.

“I thought you were in Laos,” said a British journalist, “What brought you here?”

I told him that I had followed the advice of Maurice, Mee, and the French major in Paksong to return to Saigon for Tet.

“They were right,” commented the Englishmen shaking his head. “It’s unfathomable. An innkeeper, a retired opium courier, and a French officer in Laos knew what was coming. The South Vietnamese military knew it too. Gen. Cao Van Vien, the ARVN chief of staff, knew.  Three days ago, he ordered the corps commanders to place their troops on alert. But American military spokesmen in Saigon seemed to be blissfully ignorant about the Vietcong intentions.”

“You are right about Gen. Cao,” said the German major, “He gave this order after the ARVN had captured in Qui Nhon eleven Vietcong officers carrying audiotapes containing a pre-recorded address to be broadcast to the people of the ‘liberated’ cities of Saigon, Danang and Hué, presumably today.”

“Two days ago, I was at a pre-Tet poolside party with 200 MACV intelligence specialists,” the English reporter continued, using the acronym for U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam. “Nobody there seemed to have a clue that the Communist offensive was imminent.”

 It was by now daybreak. Bit by bit we learned astonishing details of what had transpired on that battle torn piece of real estate. There was a particularly dramatic ascene at a villa housing George Jacobson, a special adviser to Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker. Aware that a Communist fighter had entered this house, Jacobson rushed to his bedroom window, shouting at a GI below, “Throw me a gun.”

Thus armed, Jacobson confronted the Vietcong soldier pointing the gun at him. A life-and-death scuffle between the two men ensued. Eventually Jacobson managed to shoot the stranger. An American reporter came by to tell us that Gen. William Westmoreland, the commander of U.S. forces in South Vietnam, was about to show up at the embassy, however, I couldn’t wait because I had to file my story. As I returned to the Continental, I saw sporadic house-to-house fighting in the side streets, which were covered with bodies. I ran for my life. Sharpshooters popped up suddenly at one spot, fired a few rounds, then disappeared just as quickly only to surface again at a different place, thus creating an illusion of omnipresence and unpredictability. In my own story written on January 31, 1968, I read, “The shootings took place only meters from my hotel.”

The Continental’s elegant lobby looked like a refugee camp. Droves of foreign residents of the Saigon districts stricken by the Vietcong offensive were seeking shelter. Some called loudly for food because there was nothing to eat in the capital where all bakeries, shops, and restaurants were closed, but Monsieur Loi, the Continental’s general manager, announced that the hotel had barely enough supplies to feed its registered guests.

In the midst of this pandemonium, young Baron Hasso Rüdt von Collenberg stood out as a model of composure. This pale and boyish-looking first secretary at the German embassy was an incredibly brave man. Journalists loved him for his dry sense of humor and analytical mind. By the time we ran into each other in the lobby of the Continental he had been up most of the night driving around in his white Volkswagen in order to bring German citizens to safety.

He had arranged temporary lodgings for Arno Knöchel, his Vietnamese wife and their ten children. Knöchel, a former staff corporal in the Foreign Legion, was the factotum of the West German embassy. He was squatting in its courtyard, which was a woefully unsafe place, given the embassy’s location at the edge of Cholon, Saigon’s embattled Chinatown. It had taken von Collenberg three trips, ducking sniper fire, to ferry the 12 Knöchels to the city center.

“The Vietcong have kidnapped our doctors in Huéand also Prof. Otto Söllner, a conductor heading the National conservatory there, ” said von Collenberg as he made his way out the Continental’s teeming lobby, “We don’t know anymore than this. Will you be going there?”

“As soon as I can catch a military flight to Danang, maybe tomorrow,” I answered, “From there I’ll hitch a ride on a military convoy to Hué.”

“Good luck! I hear that Huéis completely in the hands of the Vietcong,” von Collenberg told me.

“I will try to attach myself to an American or South Vietnamese unit fighting its way back into the city.”

“Be careful – and keep me informed,” he pleaded.

“I’ll do my best. I know they are friends of yours,” I promised.

“Yes, I stayed with them so often when visiting Hué. They are such cultured and decent people. They gave up so much in Germany to help the Vietnamese. Actually, they were supposed to go home but extended their tour of duty over here. They told me they had fallen in love with Vietnam and its people and didn’t want to desert them. And now we don’t know where they are or whether they are still alive.”

“I’ll contact you as soon as I can when I’m in Hué, this is a promise. Where will I find you?”

“At the embassy, even at night for the duration of this crisis. I have put up a camp bed in my office.”

 I went up to my room, showered and bandaged my wounded feet before writing my story. Just then, my teammate Friedhelm “Freddy” Kemna came in from the press center with a comprehensive account of the situation in the whole country: Some 80,000 Vietcong and North Vietnamese troops had attacked 100 towns and cities in South Vietnam. President Nguyen van Thieu had declared martial law.

Freddy spread out a map of Saigon on my bed, encircled the worst trouble spots with a blue marker and said: “There’s heavy fighting at the race track and at Tan Son Nhut; but I think the airport has by now been cleared. The VC attacked the ARVN and Navy headquarters near Tan Son Nhut, and the Presidential Palace but never managed to penetrate the perimeter. The good news is that the South Vietnamese mounted an effective defense and fought extremely well.  The national radio station is still in Vietcong hands, but the South Vietnamese cleverly cut the lines to the transmitters, so the VC can’t use the station for propaganda purposes. The Fifth Arrondissement – Cholon -- is the worst battleground. It’s a mess…”

“Oh, my God!” I said.

“Why?”

“The Fifth Arrondissement! That’s where Josephine lives!”

“So that fabulous woman is still on your mind, is she?” Freddy asked, “It’s almost three years after you had split up. I thought she had married a Chinese grain merchant with a grand villa.”

“Yes, she has, but I don’t think she’ll be at that villa. She is probably with her mother in her little house in the Fifth Arrondissement during Tet, and that has me worried.”

“Let’s eat something and then start writing,” Freddy suggested. “Do you have food in this room?”

“I have brought some tins of German pumpernickel from Hong Kong, and I always keep C-rations. They include canned cheese. Let’s have some bread and cheese, then.”

We ate. Then I hit the keyboard with Freddy standing on my left side and filling in the details he had learned at the Press Center. Under a joint byline we wrote the Tet cover story with sidebars for Die Welt, and then I did additional pieces for my other papers.

Every time I finished two or three typewritten pages, Freddy grabbed the manuscript and rushed across the road to the Press Center where recently two telex lines to Manila had been installed – two for 600 accredited correspondents. There were three pretty and humorous telex operators, all three of them friends of mine because I had brought them bales of silk for new Ao Dais from Hong Kong.

“You have worked wonders with those ladies,” said Freddy, beaming, when he came back. “There were two long lines of journalists waiting to file their copy, but these girls sneaked our manuscript right in before anybody else noticed. It’s good to have friends in low places”

“Freddy, would you mind staying put, checking with the Press Center and updating our story, please? I must take a look around town.”

“How?” Friedhelm Kemna yelled, “You don’t have a car anymore. There are no taxis, no pedicabs, nothing!”

“There are ways,” I answered. “Let me talk to the concierge. He is also a friend of mine.”

I am embarrassed to say that I have forgotten the concierge’s name if I ever knew it; like so many of his kind in well-run hotels, he was a gentleman of extraordinary character.

“Can you please find wheels for me?” I asked him.

“No and yes,” he replied with a smile.

“What do you mean?”

“I say no because there are no civilian cars on the road today. But I say yes because you may use my Honda.”

“But, I have never ridden a motorcycle before!”

“You can ride a bicycle, can’t you? I’ll teach you how to accelerate and brake. That’s all you need to know.”

He went to the courtyard, rolled out his Honda, started the engine, showed me how to shift gears and then watched as I drove off jerking forward like a grasshopper when releasing the clutch. The concierge never asked me for a rental fee or even a deposit for lending me his prize vehicle. Months later, I asked him, “Were you not worried that I might not return your Honda in one piece to you?”

“I figured that I had a fifty-fifty chance,” he answered, “But you needed transportation there and then, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever need a motorcycle again, given what had happened at Tet. So I felt it was the right thing to do to lend you mine.”

It is remarkable how differently eyewitnesses remember world events, or rather, which aspects on these events remain foremost on their minds. I for one was deeply moved by the acts of basic humanity, generosity and bravery I witnessed on that first day of Tet 1968. Hasso Rüdt von Collenberg and the concierge provided two outstanding examples, but there were others. Today I am certain that I owe my life to the courage of ordinary Vietnamese who took great risks to protect me.

I knew the route to Josephine’s house well, but this time it became a wild zigzag course around Vietcong bodies and pockets of house-to-house combat. As I rode slowly through one eerily quiet street, staying close to the walls, an elderly man jumped at me from a doorway, knocked me off the Honda and held me down to the ground ordering me gently but firmly, “Ne bougez pas!” – don’t move!

He crawled over to the motorcycle the wheels of which were still spinning in the air. He turned off its engine, came back and whispered, “VC,” pointing to the windows of buildings further down the block. Then he pulled me inside his house, leaving the Honda where it was. Twenty minutes later he went outside again, came back and said, “VC gone. You can go now. But do use different street. This one is very dangerous.”

Amazingly, the Honda was barely scratched. As I zigzagged on, I was warned three more times, twice by Vietnamese women and once even by children shouting, “VC, VC,” in clear defiance of the Vietcong’s stated purpose of the Tet Offensive, which was to trigger a popular uprising against the Americans and their “Saigon puppets,” as the Communists phrased it.   From what I have experienced, the offensive had the opposite effect. As the world learned later, nobody in all of South Vietnam followed the Communists’ orders.

Josephine was standing at the gate of her mother’s little house with a baby in her arms and her two sons from a previous marriage clinging to her pajama pants.

“I knew you were coming,” she said.

“How?”

“I just knew. I can’t explain.”

“Are you alright?”

“Yes, now I am fine. We saw the Vietcong outside our door. That was scary, but they didn’t come in. Thank God the telephone is working. My husband called first thing this morning. He’ll be here soon to take us to safety.”

“Will he take you abroad, Josephine?”

“Yes, I think so, probably to Singapore. My husband is Chinese and is well connected in Singapore.”

She turned briefly to the house, handed the children to her mother, and came back to say goodbye.

“Comme la mer, comme le ciel,” she said softly, just as she had three years earlier while we were swimming off the Baie des Cocotiers in Cap St. Jacques: she loved me like the sea, like the sky. Then she went inside.

I never saw Josephine again.

Zigzagging back to the Continental, I stopped by the Press Center to have my name placed on the manifest of a U.S. Air Force flight to Danang the following morning, if possible.

“How will I get to Tan Son Nhut?” I asked the desk sergeant.

“We’ll pick you up at your hotel tomorrow at 0300 hours – tomorrow or the following day, whenever we have space available. We’ll call you,” he said.

In my room at the Continental I bashed out another brief feature story before going out to dinner with Freddy. We wandered through deserted streets to the Royal and were not surprised to find it open; nothing could prevent old Ottavi from putting a meal on the table.

“All I can offer you is fresh artichokes from Dalat, some stale bread and my Soufflé au Grand Marnier,” he said.

“Fresh artichokes from Dalat! Where did you get artichokes from?” Freddy asked, “Dalat is in Vietcong hands, isn’t it?”

Ottavi smiled mysteriously and said, “Well, we have our ways.”

Artichokes were my favorite vegetable in my Vietnam days, so much so that my English friends called me “Artichoke Charlie of Hamburg.” Devouring six artichokes each, Freddy and I agreed that he would hold the fort in Saigon while I would travel “up-country” to Danang and Huế. Later we would reverse our roles to allow him to go to the Mekong Delta.

As it happened, I had to wait for a couple of days before I commenced what turned out to be the most traumatic journey of my professional life.