Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

William Prochnau and Laura Parker wrote collaborative articles for Vanity Fair, where Prochnau was a contributing editor. Prochnau, a former national correspondent for The Washington Post, was the author of three acclaimed books. He died in 2018.

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Once Upon a Distance War tells the stories of such young Vietnam war correspondents as Neil Sheehan, Peter Arnett, and David Halberstam, providing a riveting chronicle of high adventure and brutal slapstick, gallantry and cynicism, as well as a vital addition to the history they shaped. "Prochnau . . . tells a Vietnam story we haven't heard before. . . . Complex, witty, and humane."--Tobias Wolff. of photos.

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Distance War tells the stories of such young Vietnam war correspondents as Neil Sheehan, Peter Arnett, and David Halberstam, providing a riveting chronicle of high adventure and brutal slapstick, gallantry and cynicism, as well as a vital addition to the history they shaped. "Prochnau . . . tells a Vietnam story we haven't heard before. . . . Complex, witty, and humane."--Tobias Wolff. of photos.

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Once Upon a Distant War

Vintage Books USA

Chapter One

A NICE LITTLE WAR IN A LAND OF TIGERS AND ELEPHANTS

Malcolm Browne, a tall and gawky thirty-year-old formerchemist whose red hair would soon turn sandy, stepped down in asweat from Flight One, Pan American's new around-the-world jetservice.

Saigon's heat, humid and oppressive at 96 degrees, hit the newman from the Associated Press like a wave. Just out of Baltimore,where winter had arrived in a sudden early surge, Browne worethe only suit he owned, a wool one. Over one shoulder he luggeda useless topcoat; over the other a battered $25 Japanese camera hehad picked up secondhand.

On the hot tarmac at Tan Son Nhut Airport two photographerstook his picture, one for South Vietnam's secret police, the otherfor a small English-language newspaper called the Times of Vietnam.It would not take Browne long to realize that there was little differencebetween the two. Otherwise, the arrival did not seem auspicious.No military man met him with a jeep and driver as acorrespondent from America's premier news-gathering agencymight have been welcomed to a war zone in another time andplace. Those at the American Embassy, soon to be bogged downwith an onslaught of arrivals of a different sort, noted the date--November11, 1961, a Saturday--with only passing interest. Beneathlazily turning fans inside the low, open-air terminal building,South Vietnamese customs officials languidly riffled through hissingle suitcase, glanced without interest at the wry smile onBrowne's passport photo, and waved him through.

In the beginning it was such a nice little war.

"A dapper, debonair little war in a land of tigers and elephants,"enthused the CIA man in one of the dark novels written later byWard Just, a distinguished correspondent whose life after Vietnamwas consumed by bleak, Conrad-like trips deep into the Americansoul.

In 1961 the United States stood at the height of its power, primedby a national "can-do" attitude that anything lay within its reachand sustained by a near-religious certainty about the rightness ofits goals. During this first of the few, but hyperkinetic, Kennedyyears, "saving" South Vietnam became one of those goals. Thetrickle of Americans passing through Saigon during the fiftiesturned abruptly into a relentless stream.

The newcomers had little historical reference to the place. Vietnam,clinging to a tropical peninsula south of China, was not aprominent Second World War battleground still tugging at Americanmemories. Nor had the French in their final colonial strugglein Asia just a few years earlier left Americans with more thanscratchy, newsreel-vague recollections of a strange war in an unknownplace called Indochina. The American government hadspent $2 billion supporting that lost cause and another billion afterthe French departed in 1954. But, to workaday Americans, Vietnamremained as distant and obscure as any place in the world. OfficialWashington did not know it much better. Two examples make thepoint:

George Reedy, an aide to Lyndon B. Johnson, accompanied theVice President on a visit early in 1961. Reedy, an intelligent man,realized soon after he landed that he didn't have the foggiest notionwhere he was. He found a map, searched for Saigon, and positionedit in relation to more familiar landmarks to give himself thatsense of place that comforts seasoned travelers.

General Maxwell Taylor, a prince in Kennedy's Camelot and hisspecial assistant for military affairs, made a fateful fact-finding tripin October, only weeks before Mal Browne's arrival. A newspaperreporter following Taylor observed that, throughout his inspectiontour, the general continually referred to the object of his attentionas South Korea.

Both Johnson and Taylor returned to Washington and recommendedmajor increases in military aid for the little Asian troublespot, seeing it as a strategically crucial Cold War prize.

Vietnam, a place so foreign to their experience that it often tookon a storybook surreality, captivated Americans. It became a fairykingdom, a toy country as alien and enticing as the Siam of TheKing and 1, as remote and mystically alluring as Shangri-la. Vietnamwas not simply exotic. It was erotic. And narcotic.

In the cities women of exceptional Asian beauty--tiny, porcelain,ephemeral images of perfect grace--wafted past. They did notwalk, they glided, oblivious to the Western faces swiveling to followthe silken trail of their raven hair and flowing white ao dais,the uniquely Vietnamese pants-gown that so remarkably enhancedtheir femininity. Or they flowed by in serene waves on fleets ofSaigon bicycles, their conical sun hats tilted back neatly on proudshoulders.

Buddhist monks, with heads shaved and lithe bodies cloaked insaffron robes, moved silently through a babble of Hindu moneychangers. Down narrow Asian alleyways expatriate Chinese withthree-strand beards and opaque eyes introduced visitors to theancient pleasures of the poppy--one pipe, two pipes, three pipes,four; the brown gum bubbling into amber, the rock-hard smoker'scouch softening to velvet at the first inhalation, the stranger driftingblissfully to a still more exotic land.

Outside the cities, the countryside turned to a poet's panoramaunchanged for centuries. To the south of Saigon, in the broad deltaof the Mekong River, ageless peasants toiled in endless green seasof rice. To the north, sinewy Montagnard tribesmen still carriedspears as they had in the Stone Age, the men clad in loincloths, thewomen bare-breasted.

Strange religious sects abounded. One, the Cao Dais, kept a pink-and-bluecathedral. A single huge Masonic eye hovered over thechurch's entrance. Inside, the Cao Dais worshiped icons of theirsaints--Buddha, Joan of Arc, Jesus Christ, and Victor Hugo--withequal passion. Vietnam's Buddhists, who would soon move to theforefront of Mal Browne's story, were almost inexplicable in Westernterms, mixing ancestor and animal worship into their mysticjourney along their religion's Eightfold Noble Path. The little war flared intermittently in brutal attacks. Wispy figuresappeared suddenly in the black-pajama garb of peasants, didtheir violence, and then, just as suddenly, melded back into theshadows of triple-canopy jungle. A faceless youngster emergedbriefly from a sidewalk crowd and rolled a sapper's grenade into aSaigon bistro, then disappeared into the natural cover of teemingAsian streets.

The American-supported Saigon government called the guerrillasthe Viet Cong, a derogatory term for Vietnamese Communists.The Americans would bastardize the name further, abbreviating itto VC, codifying it in radio lingo as Victor Charlie, shortening itagain to Charlie, and, in the end, when the going got very rough,restoring a begrudging measure of respect. "Mister Charles," theAmericans would finally call the enemy when the war turned big,mean, and impossible.

But, in the beginning, even the war was an enticement. It gavethe outsider, as Graham Greene had described it while the Frenchstill fought there, "that feeling of exhilaration which a measure ofdanger brings to the visitor with a return ticket."

A few of the early arrivals found the country dark and ominous,and could not wait to leave. "It was a sinister place," said HomerBigart, a renowned New York Times war correspondent who arrivedsix weeks after Browne. "There was...