One night 54 years ago, I was drinking a beer in bar on a hotel rooftop in Saigon listening to the distinctive krrrump of bombs falling from American B-52 planes on the countryside not too far distant and wondering what I had let myself in for.
I had begun the year on a new post as Asian correspondent for the late, lamented New Zealand Press Association (NZPA). Reporting on New Zealand troops’ activities in Vietnam was an integral part of the job, and having moved a pregnant, understanding wife and two children to our new base in Singapore, I had to deal quickly with my nervousness about becoming a war correspondent.
Unlike the renowned fellow Kiwi reporter Peter Arnett, who made his name in Vietnam, I was never of a “warry” disposition. Perhaps living through the World War II Blitz in London as a child removed any trace of that from my DNA, and two years' of Royal Air Force national service in the 1950s Cyprus emergency left me devoid of affection for things military.
I freely confess that fear seldom left me during many subsequent visits to Vietnam to report on the war over the next three years. I was comforted many years later to read the confession of my journalism hero,
