AS the first small contingent of U.S. troops received the word last week that their Viet Nam duty would soon be over, a widely scattered crew of TIME'S own Viet Nam veterans recalled their service with the Saigon press corps. For as the U.S. commitment in Viet Nam grew over the years, so did TIME'S. By now, our bureaus all over the world are staffed with men who have put in tours as combat correspondents; TIME casualties included one dead and seven wounded.

TIME'S first office in Saigon was a cramped hotel room. TIME correspondents, in fact, continued to operate mainly out of hotel rooms until May of 1966. Then Bureau Chief Frank McCulloch, now head of LIFE'S Washington bureau, rented a villa in the city's downtown district--a convenient if not commodious structure located between the Presidential Palace and the new American embassy. The two-story, whitewashed building is devoted mostly to office space. During the 1968 Tet offensive, however, correspondents, Vietnamese employees and most of their families moved into the TIME compound.

For TIME'S Saigon contingent, the little time they spend in the villa at No. 7 Han Thuyen is a welcome change from the workaday hazards they share with the troops in the field. All the rooms are air-conditioned --when the power does not fail. And more important, correspondents can send their copy over one of the few direct press communication links with New York, via radio to Manila and then cable to the U.S.

The present Saigon staff includes a varied crew of correspondents. Bureau Chief Marsh Clark is a Middle Westerner who was political editor of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat before coming to TIME. Wallace Terry, who will soon go to Harvard as a Nieman Fellow, is an ordained Disciples of Christ minister. William Marmon, a Virginian with a Princeton degree, once taught school in Greece. John Wilhelm, a Florida native, used to be a TIME correspondent in Washington. Chicago-born Burton Pines studied at the University of Wisconsin and was working in Heidelberg on his Ph.D. in history when he was hired by TIME.

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