Nguyen Ngoc-Phach as a correspondent for London Daily Telegraph interviewed by Greg Swanborough for 'The sharp end'

Take 1. Meaning of the Tet celebration; Tet has been described as a Vietnamese equivalent of New Year, Christmas and Easter all put together; in some villages celebrations would last the entire month of the Lunar New Year; generally would last four days; Tet was a family affair and because of the Vietnamese cult of ancestor worship a religious affair; Take 2; describes his experience of Tet when a child at his grandparents home; tradition of setting off firecrackers to ward off evil spirits; firecrackers continue even during the war though it was forbidden; undisciplined soldiers would fire the weapons in the air to celebrate Tet; Scene 28 Take1; he was in Da Lat during the start of Tet offensive in 1968; not much happening in Da Lat; there were rumours of Viet Cong penetration but most of this proved false when investigated; on the last day they did penetrate but the Viet Cong became lost since though Da Lat had a small population the city covered a vast area; similar occurrence in Saigon because the Viet Cong turned up in areas that had absolutely no military value and apparently they got lost; Take ; when he arrived in Saigon Tet was still in full swing; though a twenty four hour curfew though many people were still in the streets and he had no problems finding transport; Take 3; Tet offensive was very badly covered by the American press; example that the attack on the US embassy by ten Viet Cong lasted a day but if you read the despatches there was nothing else but reported but this attack for two weeks; in the first 24 hours of the of Tet there were at least ten thousand actions big and small; the embassy attack was only small but if you read the press it was everything; created an impression in the US public of the hopelessness of the war; the people in the South were behind their government and didn’t join the Viet Cong; the Communists wanted the attack to incite the people to rebellion but there was no people’s rebellion anywhere; his opinion that there was no popular participation at all; Scene 95 Take 1; always interested in human development is the reason he became a reporter; worked for publishing houses and in 1959-1960 worked for the BBC in London; in 1964 joined the staff of the Saigon Post; in 1966 became correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph initially because to relieve the previous correspondent who was sick; worked for the London Daily Telegraph for ten years; exciting of the times became evident when he came to Australian and found that in a peaceful country there was on story a week – maybe even a month; during the war there was three to four stories a day; Scene 31 Take 1; Tet as a military operation was a failure most of the Viet Cong units were totally decimated and the political cadres exposed; the Viet Cong politically and militarily were totally decimated by the end of the offensive; even after mini Tet in May the regular North Vietnamese army units withdrew into Cambodia; for most of 1969 the South could have been considered more or less peaceful; he wrote an article “Where are the Viet Cong’; didn’t work with Australian journalists but had good relations especially those that worked in the Reuters office; shocked by the news of the shooting of the four journalists in Cholon; considers that the Cholon killings were one of those things that happens in war but could have been avoided; Scene 33 take 1; negotiation as far as Hanoi was concerned was not real negotiation but part of their war strategy – “Fight talk fight”; negotiations started in 1968 and took six years to achieve the Paris agreement; during those years there were big Communist offensives with the biggest in 1972 when Hanoi practically sent their entire army into the South; feelings about leaving Vietnam; a void for the first week ; left on the last day of South Vietnam by boat out to the waiting US 7th Fleet; first went to Guam and then in August 1975 to Australia; The US started off doing a good job but ended up doing a very bad job; in hid opinion if you fight a war you fight to win; the US never fought to win but only to achieve victory but only to force Hanoi to leave the South alone; Hanoi never left the South alone and that is the way it ended; says he will go to Vietnam when the current bunch of octogenarian leaders are gone; hope this will happened because who would have thought before of the end of the Berlin Wall or end of the USSR; he cannot say whether Australia should have been involved in the Vietnam war; Scene 42 Take 1; human nature funny; remembers the sense of relief to when returning to Saigon during the Tet offensive to find his house intact and all his family safe; Take 2 war is strange; on leaving South Vietnam a sense of relief but also sadness.