Vietnam: A Reporter's War

by Hugh Lunn

From February 1967 to March of 1968, Australian journalist Hugh Lunn reported on the war in Vietnam for Reuters. He joined several military missions into the combat zones, learning the terror of jungle warfare from the front lines. Lunn's record of his experiences reveals attitudes to the war from numerous sides-American soldiers, foreigners living in the capital, and Vietnamese, some intrigued by the American presence and some outraged. Throughout Vietnam, Lunn discovers telling signs of how wrongheaded American strategy was and how desperate American journalists were to show the war as progressive.

Genres: War, Military Fiction, Nonfiction, History, Photography, Journalism

296 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1985

Reviews

[Jimmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hugh Lunn was an Australian reporter for Reuters. His first impression of Saigon was like mine. Families riding motor scooters, restaurants and bars, heat and humidity. He works with Pham Ngoc Dinh, in some ways the hero of the book. He spoke "Dinglish." It was really Dinh who was the consummate journalist. He even went to the DMZ to cover a story. And he hitched a ride. There was also the legendary Jim Pringle. And the Australian reporter Bruce Pigott who loved Vietnam instantly as I did, but who was described by Dinh as "not long live man." He is the tragic hero.

Vietnamese referred to Americans as "Khong Goc" or "people without roots." Dinh explained it as "people who don't know who they are." They don't even have grandparents in their own country.

Jumping off a helicopter in a marine assault, Lunn wonders which way to run. Reporters were a drag on the soldiers. At the famous battle of Con Thien, a captain was forced to remove much needed supplies to allow seventeen press people to go there instead.

Yes it's true that soldiers say with their last breath to tell their wives that they love them.

And yes, the number of "enemy" killed were inflated. Of course, bodies were dragged away as well.

Villagers voted because they were afraid of being thought of as VC.

VC radio called Americans "Khi Dot" or "Big Monkeys."

CAP or Combined Action Program used Marines in villages working with locals. I knew a Marine who did just that. He swore by the program, wishes it were done more. One weakness is they can be overrun in large-scale assaults. But they didn't, maybe because of all the good work they did in the villages.

WHAMO means Winning the Hearts and Minds of the people. A well-intentioned failure. The Chiew Hoi program was for defectors. Only one higher up defected and that was for a young woman.

The name Charlie came from Victor Charlie for the initials VC for Viet Cong.

One common legend in Saigon which I heard numerous times was that a VC prostitute could insert a razor blade in her vagina. Another story I heard everywhere was that an island was set up for GIs with an incurable venereal disease to prevent spreading it to America.

Many of soldiers from other Asian countries were called "PX soldiers" (Thais and Koreans) or "black market soldiers" (Filipinos).

Lunn praises the openness of the Americans which eventually allowed the rest of the world to know what was happening in Vietnam. What worries me is why would other countries follow the same example. Will Russia allow accurate news stories about eastern Ukraine, for example?

And American soldiers argued with their superiors about tactics.

Three Australian soldiers were captured, had their penises stuffed in their mouths, their faces bashed in, their heads scalped, and their tags gone.

Lunn's story of the 1968 Tet offensive was quite good. Dinh received info that Saigon would be invaded and during a agreed upon cease fire. It was expected at 1 AM. They were "Saigon underground men" according to Dinh. The people in Cholon's St. George Hotel where I would live in two years had to fight there way out to survive. Battles occured in 33 of the 34 province capitals. Even the US Embassy would be attacked. Symbolism matters. I knew of citizens who had meals prepared for the VC so they would not be murdered by them. Was Khe Sanh just a ruse to distract the military? Did the North Vietnamese want the VC to be killed so they would not have to deal with them later after victory? The answers to both questions may be Yes.

Lunn leaves Saigon, but Saigon never leaves him. Believe me, I know the feeling.

As the country collapses later, Bruce Pigott and three other reporters are executed by VC and accused of being CIA. They went to the front to get stories. Dinh goes to find them. These four were part of the 45 journalists that were killed during the war. Eighteen others were still missing.

The book continues with Dinh still in Saigon after the collapse. He actually tried to leave at the very last seconds, but four buses were being driven by VC. They took the passengers elsewhere than to an escape. Hanoi was made the capital. Even the VC did not ever want that. And of course, Saigon became Ho Chi Minh City. The day will come when it will be Saigon once more. If it still isn't that behind the scenes anyway.

Dinh was a master of survival, and always on the edge of being killed. In 1980, he was able to leave Vietnam with his family.

[Okimura1170 · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excerpt from Hugh Lunn’s A Reporter’s war was published in the Weekend Australian a couple of weeks back on the 50th anniversary of the Tet Offensive which led me to search for and read a book that won the 1985 Age Non-fiction award.
Yes -- it is 50 years since the watershed Tet Offensive. Before the Tet (Lunar New Year) offensive, the public and reporter consensus was that the Americans were slowly but surely winning the Vietnam war. Then Tet occurred where Viet Cong guerrillas attacked 33 of the 44 provincial capitals of South Vietnam as well as Saigon. The VC captured the American Embassy in Saigon as well as Radio Saigon, the horse racing track where it turned the grandstand into a military hospital as well the fortified ancient city of Hue. The Americans were only able to recapture its embassy with helicopter landings on its roof to fight its way downwards.
However, this is not just the story of the most significant year of the Vietnam war which Hugh Lunn at the age of 26 was fortuitously or unfortuitously (depending on your point of view) sent to cover on behalf of Reuters. Hugh who hails from Brisbane was working in Reuters London when he was offered a 12-month posting in Reuters Vietnam. Initially he thought of refusing the posting as considering it to be likely a boring posting given that most people expected that America would easily prevail given the disparity in wealth, technology and materiel …..but on second thoughts, Hugh accepted the posting as it was only a short distance to travel home from Vietnam to Brisbane after the 12 months was finished. Recall that the 60’s were still a time of regulated airfares, when air travel was still a province of the rich, and that overseas travel was rare enough that friends and family would make a special trip to the airport to see off/ welcome the lucky traveller. How wrong he and conventional wisdom turned out to be.
This is a story of how reporting used to be before the advent of portable filming equipment, before the advent of the internet, and when the most reliable form of international communication was the telex machine! That is, the story had to be typed up at telex machines which were located at the Saigon offices of the big 4 (at that time) wire news agencies – the British Reuters, the American UPI and AP, and the French AFP. Reporters were not embedded in combat units like in the First Iraq war but were free to roam (and die) throughout Vietnam to get their story. The journalists would catch lifts on military helicopters and planes to travel to hot landing zones in firefights or major battles to observe the situation, interview soldiers and then fly back out on similar military transport – all in the same day so as to file their stories via telex that were sent to newspapers and TV/radio stations globally. To call this job as dangerous would be an understatement, 45 journalists died and 18 are still MIA in this war in one country compared to 39 deaths in WW2. For TV cameramen who were game enough to take the danger payment and venture into the field with the cumbersome equipment restricting their movement and offering inviting targets, the death rate was even higher.
Hugh recounts his growing realisation over the 12 months that the Americans would never win despite daily press conferences called the 5 O’clock Follies by the US Military of its successes. He recounts his visits to battlefields and forward firing and observation posts like Khe Sanh where enemy artillery would send 1000 shells a day into the compound (that’s one a minute) and US marines just sit there like sitting ducks.
This is an engrossing 259 page read by a skilled writer telling us about the first war that America were to lose and the mistakes that he saw in 12 months. He describes the terror of war whenever he journeyed to the front line, and mistakes made by those at the rear and higher up the chain of command. The prose remains fresh despite that fact that it was written 35 years ago. We forget the lessons of Vietnam at our peril and may already have repeated them in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This is a highly recommended read for those who want an insightful account from a keen observer of the military events of the pivotal year in the Vietnam war as well seeing how a top-flight reporter gathers and records news from a war zone.
http://www.hughlunn.com.au/books-orde...

[Brian Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

Australian journalist Hugh Lunn’s, Vietnam: A Reporter’s War is one of the best nuts & bolts accounts of what it was like for a foreign correspondent covering the American War in Vietnam. Lunn covered the war for Reuters from the Saigon bureau but experienced plenty of combat as well. He especially notes the difficulty in reporting first-hand observations that differed from the official lines coming out of MACV: “The main problem with writing about something you had seen, as opposed to heard about at the [Five o’clock] Folies, was getting your story believed. A single story dissenting from the official announcement in Saigon merely made the story seem wrong.” (p. 65) He also accounts, amusingly, the visit to Vietnam by LBJ with his White House press corps entourage. After the press event, the local Saigon reporters were driven around aimlessly to give time for the White House guys to land in Bangkok and file their stories ahead of the Saigon team.

Of particular value is Lunn’s point of view as a wire service correspondent. Whereas reporters for specific newspapers and news magazine could indulge in analysis, wire service reporters were carefully circumscribed, reporting only what an official said or what they literally observed. They could not say, for instance, ‘the attack was repulsed leaving four U. S. Marines dead’ since the word ‘repulsed’ constitutes analysis. They could only say, ‘four U. S. Marines were killed in an assault on their position,’ unless, of course, a military official said the attack was repulsed. Lunn also discusses the difference between print and radio reporting. He quotes one Australian broadcaster as saying, “If it hasn’t got ‘fierce’ in the first paragraph then I don’t put it out.” Finally, the Tet offensive erupted just as Lunn was due to complete his year in Saigon. His account of Tet includes details that I have not read elsewhere, even in professional histories of the conflict. All-in-all, this is a first-class read and recommended for readers with an interest in the war aside from an interest in journalism.

[Alex Soong · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this critically acclaimed book, the writer takes us behind the scenes in the work of a war correspondent during the Vietnam War. The reader of today will appreciate just how different things were in the pre-Internet, pre-mobile phone era. Not only did correspondents take enormous personal risks in order to witness the news at first hand, their reports were often overwhelmed by the weight of official lies which were far more difficult to counteract given the paucity of sources.

Hugh's personal account of his year long experience is enormously readable. The reader is carried along by his laconic, unadorned descriptions of a country torn apart and the futility of foreign intervention. The savagery of the conflict is recounted with a minimum of moralising or value judgements. He portrays the various characters he encountered with a light touch that is no less perceptive, including a moving portrait of his Vietnamese colleague who has a towering presence in the book. Amidst the chaos of war, there is also the subtext of a beautiful love story between an Australian colleague and a Vietnamese lady ending tragically. This seems to be a tale worth picking up in full length. Hugh Lunn left Vietnam soon after the Tet Offensive and the reader will reach the end regretting that he was not around to write about the eventual fall of Saigon.

[Lisa Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having just come back from our 4th trip to Vietnam, it was interesting to read more about the history of the war. I found the first half a bit dull, but the second half was much more engaging.

[Marianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vietnam: A Reporter’s War is the 5th book by Australian journalist and author, Hugh Lunn. In it, Lunn details his year in Vietnam as a reporter for the Reuters agency. With his conversational style, Lunn presents a vast amount of information in an easy-to-assimilate form. His first-hand view of the US military propaganda machine in action, and the alternative sources a reporter might find, makes for interesting reading. He describes the intricacies of reporting from the field, sometimes under fire, and in a third-world country long before the existence of mobile phones, email and the fax machine. His description of the process by which newspapers get their stories from the wire services, who decides which story and which version will go to print, and how vastly this may differ from the facts, is quite a revelation. Other interesting subjects Lunn touches on: the attitude and behaviour of US servicemen towards the Vietnamese (brusque, insulting and completely lacking cultural sensitivity), and how this lost them credibility; the bravery of the troops under fire; the acceptance of 10% mortality due to friendly fire; the impossibility of discerning who was Viet Cong; the laughable tactics the US military used to scare the seasoned Viet Cong guerrillas; the US idea that they could win over the Vietnamese by good works (dams, schools, bridges) whilst at the same time shooting, napalming and defoliating them or their country; the completely ridiculous barrier planned to keep the Viet Cong out of South Vietnam. Some of the statistics were mind-numbing (4000 choppers lost by the end of ’67!). The extent to which the US Administration was out of touch with reality on the front was staggering. Lunn’s comments on the differences between the American troops (an army of university students) and the Australian Army (well-drilled schoolboys) and their behaviour and tactics was interesting, as was the effect on the complexion of the war of the North’s use of Russian weaponry. Lunn’s Vietnamese colleague, Dinh, said many insightful things, summing up the war with “…the Viet Cong, they are not afraid to die”. This book has moments of laughter and joy, but also moments of drama and sorrow. A great read.

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent expose of the lies told during the Vietnam War and how the military and governments conspire to keep control of propaganda. A compelling reason to always be skeptical of the reasons to enter and to stay in a non-regional war. Politicians and voters should have read this book before the Iraq debacle. This would make a great movie with the gorgeous Simon Baker in the journalist role.

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this a very long time ago, when I was about 14. It was my first book set during the Vietnam War and I will always remember it for imprinting me so young. :)

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

The version I read it an beefed up version of the radio program as presented on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.