For TIME'S correspondents in Saigon, the public apprehension and spidery, semisecret political maneuvering that followed President Thieu's resignation last week had a certain grim familiarity. To Roy Rowan, the scene was eerily reminiscent of Shanghai in 1949 during the collapse of the Chiang Kai-shek regime which he covered for LIFE. "The same gnawing fear that gripped Shanghai has taken hold in Saigon," Rowan cabled last week. "You saw the same scenes: inflation requiring shopping bags full of paper money, wailing police sirens, and the endless debate among correspondents about whether to stay or leave."

William McWhirter, who reported from Viet Nam during the palace upheavals and military setbacks of the mid-1960s, found that once again the press corps was "no longer trying to report a country neatly organized into definable structures, parties and war zones, but only a suffocating mass of humanity, frightened and on the run--officers, civil servants and well-to-do alike." Added McWhirter: "By degrees, we become involved in the heart of what is happening. Vietnamese stop us while taking notes and ask us to explain the U.S. Congress, when the evacuation is coming, and most poignantly, how they can get onto the passenger list." Following the path of some of those who managed to get out, Hong Kong Correspondent David Aikman flew to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, which was rapidly becoming a sort of Ellis Island for the Vietnamese evacuees.

With South Viet Nam's territory shrinking daily, Photographers Mark Godfrey and Dirck Halstead, who have traveled to the front in Indochina by Jeep, taxi and helicopter in the past, now found the story--and the war--coming to them in Saigon. The fatalistic, enervating mood of defeat they found there contrasted sharply with the elan of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong victors in Danang, captured in an exclusive series of behind-the-lines shots in this issue by the Iranian photographer Abbas.

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