Filming Under The Gun

Award winning cameraman Mike Marriott spent eight years covering the Vietnam War for CBS News, filming some of the war's most horrifying and moving pictures. Known for his crazy antics, Australian accent and a knack for getting "just the right shot," he recently sat down with CBS News' Alexandra Cosgrove and gave the following account of his last days "in-country."

New York's edict was, "if you wish to stay, that's fine, we'll do all that we can, but we don't think we can do anything once the Communist government takes over. So we'll settle you in the (United) States and you all will be offered staff jobs."

So we arranged with the U.S. embassy a press, Vietnamese exodus. We had, I think about two to three thousand seats on what they call "black aircraft."

For several weeks before the Vietnamese news media were evacuated, essential (Vietnamese) personnel that had worked for the CIA, DIA, Army intelligence, Air Force intelligence -- and who would be targets of the Communists -- were all lifted out over a two week period.

It was always at night.

So they all went out, and then it was we "round-eyes" as we called ourselves.

We were left to run the whole thing. There was no one who spoke Vietnamese there. We were kind of left on our own to wander without anyone to translate for us. It was quite comical because we suddenly realized how much we really did depen on our Vietnamese to get us by, with language.

We sorely missed them, but we were happy for them.

The next day -- the day after they were gone -- two renegade pilots flew down and bombed the palace. They were terrible shots. They missed.

The palace is larger than the White House. And even with no one shooting at them -- we could see them in the sky circling at 1000 feet -- they still managed to miss the presidential palace. And none of us knew why. We were all running down the street because we heard the air raid sirens go off. We heard some ground fire, but it was Mickey Mouse ground fire. It was people firing pistols at aircraft 1000 feet in the air.

It was quite ineffectual in actual fact. So Ed Bradley and I -- Ed was my soundman then, how things change -- because we didn't have our Vietnamese soundmen, Bradley became mine. We were running down the main street towards the presidential palace. We'd stop and we (film) the aircraft on their bombing runs.

A South Vietnamese captain stopped us. We explained that we were press and going to the palace. And he lost it.

He pulled out a sidearm, a 45 colt military pistol and pointed it at Bradley.

Bradley and I backed off and he pointed it at me and he actually cocked it, pointed it at my face and pulled the trigger. I could see that when he cocked the weapon, the round jammed in the breech, and he couldn't fire the weapon -- I could see that.

So we started to back off and he reversed the weapon, held it by the barrel and clubbed me three times over the head. It literally split my entire head -- from the forehead to the crown of the head -- open.

I dropped the camera, Bradley picked it up. He had sound gear around his neck and dragged me back to our hotel where the CBS bureau was. And we had no doctors.

It was kind of amusing in actual fact, none of us had ever thought "hang on we don't know where the nearest doctor is" because we relied on the Americans. And most of the Americans had been evacuated. And none of us had any idea where a Vietnamese doctor was, because whenever we need a Vietnamese doctor, we'd ask our Vietnamese staff "Hey where's the nearest doctor?" And they'd take us and translate for us.

Suddenly these silly "round eyes" who'd covered the war for so long are kind of like sheep. They don't know what to do. We didn't know what to do with my head split open.

So they got some scotch.

They got out a shaver and shaved my head so they could see the extent of the damage. It was a 5-inch gash. So they poured scotch in it, which I can remember saying, "that's an absolute waste of good scotch."

Up until that moment of getting my head split open I was going to stay and cover the arrival of the Communists. I then decided, because I was worried about infection and sickness through this five inch gash, to evacuate.

The only problem was no one knew how to stitch a wound. You know, guys.

Seasoned combat heoes and all that stuff don't know how to sew up a wound. Really a catch 22. So what they did -- they gave me some scotch to drink and got me relatively drunk and took a staple gun and actually went "clip, clip, clip, clip, clip, clip," down the gash.

Well, I was sufficiently drunk that I had no sense up there anyway. And it was really funny. I looked in the mirror and it looked kind of like a Mohawk -- itty bitty Mohawk. But it was fine.

We did have painkillers, pretty potent painkillers. There was a small first aid thing, but nothing for sutures or anything like that. And we had antibiotics. So we made the decision that I would go. It was a good, correct decision.

Having been in Vietnam for the time that I was, which was eight years, I had a lot of military friends from the defense intelligence agency and I wanted to go out with them. I didn't want to out with the press, I wanted to go out with my mad military friends.

They were going to lace the U.S. military headquarters at the airport with high explosives and blow it all. I wanted to watch that, because I thought that was really cool. I wanted to see it and film it, as it was film in those days.

So I stayed behind, just watching my friends lacing the place and trying to blow it up, and destroy high-speed computers, intelligence data, and just generally leave it ground bare. I've never ever seen a major demolition job like it. I really really wanted to see it.

So I wandered around with them and they destroyed computers, big computers, Cray computers, heavy-duty stuff, until it got time -- about 6 o'clock in the evening.

They had the building laced and one of their own black choppers came in and picked up the last dozen of us.

We took out one body. The last GI ever killed that night by one badly aimed rocket. He was a guard at the gate of this defense intelligence headquarters.

It was fate. It was simple fate.

He was the only one outside. The communists had said "we will not attack until you give us the signal that all Americans are out and then we hope to walk into the city and not have any shooting." That was the deal. And this poor devil, they fired the rocket the wrong way and it just landed on him and killed him. It was insane. What an insane way to go.

So we took his body bag out and we took off about 6 or 6:30. We took a little bit of ground fire, but not much. It was more "Hey Yanks, go home," it wasn't really aimed at you.

We went out to a command ship that controlled the entire armada of American ships lifting out people -- receiving the helicopters with people on board.

All the corrupt (South Vietnamese) generals came in there. They were all searched by U.S. Military Customs when they arrived and their suitcases were full of gold, full of $100 bills, full of diamonds. It was quite despicable. No one could touch it. You knew it was corrupt. Corruption, absolute disgusting corruption and you had o sit there and watch it.

And the handles on the suitcases used to break, and the gold bars would sprinkle out on the deck of the ship. And these were the leaders of the country. Fleeing. And so, that was kind of the end of the war.

A lot of people knew (that South Vietnam was going to fall long before it happened).

It was apparent Danang was gone, the largest northern city, and within two weeks the central highlands was abandoned by the troops.

The D.I.A. guys called me one night and said "Mike, we're forbidden to go out in the field, and we think the center of Vietnam has three divisions there on the run, without fighting."

They said "if we get you up to Nha Trang we'll have a black CIA helicopter waiting for you. And you can get great film and you can tell us what's going on. How's that for a deal?"

So we flew up to Nha Trang and as promised, there was a black chopper sitting there. We flew out and they said they were going to "drop you in this field. We want you to walk about a mile east. And you'll come across the road."

(We did as instructed and) sat by the side of the road. Nobody. Then we heard this noise.

It was 40,000 soldiers and their families fleeing. It was the most incredible footage. I had never seen an entire army in flight, without firing a shot.

They had ducks, pigs on the back of their tanks. Anything and everything they owned was strapped to their armored personnel carriers and tanks. So everyone knew. All (the Communist troops) had to do was watch CBS back here, to know that now half the country was gone.

You think the Communists are going to stop when half the country is being given up without a fight? Of course not. Most of the generals had fled so there was no one to command the troops. So they fled too.

We walked about a mile inland because we didn't want the chopper to land near this huge exodus because the chopper would get mobbed, and we wouldn't get out.

(After getting to the pickup zone) we got on the radio and popped a flare. The chopper came back and got us and took us back to Saigon. And that stuff got on the air and it was very apparent the embassy knew that half the country had now been lost.

It was only a matter of time.

The political types still had real problems coming up and saying "Yup, it's gone."