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Michel Laurent, Pulitzer Prize, Saigon, South Vietnam, THE MOST Famous Hotels in the World®, Viet Nam, Vietnam
French journalist Marc Charuel (Directeur de l’iconographie of Valmonde) was on one of the first tours of the POH (Path of History). He is a former correspondent from the American War and when you google him you find he is very famous himself. Here he is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZI2nUc6L5o
He discovered a photograph in our PoH which he had never seen before. He was referring to THE MAN on the plate OF THE WAR showing ALL THE DELEGATIONS. He stands to the right in the picture of the GERMAN DELEGATION, with his NIKON camera.
It is a picture of Laurent, Michel (Paul Marie) (France) 1946 – 1975. Born on
July 22, 1946 in Vernon (Eure) in Normandy. Michel Laurent,
29, became the last journalist to die in Viet Nam on 28 April
1975, a few days before Saigon was conquered by the North
Vietnamese Army.
Michel Laurent worked first for AP. He had
joined Gamma in September 1973.It was on his second visit to
Viet Nam (working for Gamma) when his luck ran out.
The Pakistan – Indian war over Bangladesh and the bloody end of the war in Dhaka culminated with his coverage of a massacre of Pakistani collaborators at the
hands of the Bangladesh liberation militia. It was this coverage
that won Michel Laurent the Pulitzer Prize for News Photography, jointly with Horst Faas, in 1971.
After a brief interlude covering bloody events in Northern Ireland Michel
Laurent went to Viet Nam and worked again with Horst Faas.
Michel now covered the North Vietnamese offensive across the
17th parallel and the South Vietnamese counter offensive. Back
in Paris in 1973 and working for Gamma Agency he was sent
once more on foreign assignments. The Yom Kippur war in
1973, the first Arab oil crisis summit in Kuwait in October
1973, the revolution in Ethiopia and the war in Cyprus in 1974.
Then Michel Laurent set out for his second tour to Viet Nam to
report on the disintegration of South Viet Nam and the fall of
Saigon.
Michel Laurent died near Xuan Loc north of Saigon on
28 April 1975, during the final assault on the South Viet Nam
capital. He was killed trying to rescue a fellow newsman when
they were both ambushed by North Vietnamese troops. It was
one of the last battles of the war. His body was not recovered
for three months, finally exhumed from the roadide grave and
repatriated.
He was buried at Montparnasse cemetery in Paris.
Madame Michele Laurent published a book with photos and
personal letters and mementoes in his memory in 1995 (Michele
Laurent ‘Je pense a vous’.