Word: arnett
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...fire must now beware of increasingly accurate heavy artillery fire that can kill at long range. At the same time, the withdrawal of U.S. combat units has reduced both the reliability of battle intelligence and the amount of protection a correspondent can count on. Recalls Associated Press Correspondent Peter Arnett, who started covering Viet Nam in 1962, "When you went out with a U.S. unit, you knew that your ass was covered. You were cared for like an American soldier, and that was very good care indeed...
Aggressive Team. New Zealand-born Arnett, now 35, and German-born Faas, now 37, arrived in Viet Nam for A.P. on the same day in 1962. Often they worked as a reporting team. On the surface, they may seem too alike for compatibility. Arnett is brash, aggressive; Faas is gruff, Prussianly efficient. But together they produced some spectacular results. Among them: the 1965 disclosure that U.S. and South Vietnamese forces were experimenting with non-lethal gas; last year's exclusive on Alpha Company, the U.S. Army unit that balked at an order to advance. Individually, they did equally well...
...Arnett's most memorable items was his account of the battle in 1967 for Hill 875, near Dak To. Out of 300 U.S. soldiers who went up the hill, he recalls, 97 were killed and 120 were wounded. "We were stuck there for 30 hours, no water, no nothing-just enemy fire. The living and the dead had the same gray pallor. When I finally got on the helicopter to get out of there, I just bawled, I was so glad to be alive." The same year Faas wrote a moving story while he was in a hospital recovering...
Such stories helped make the two newsmen, Arnett in particular, the target of Pentagon ire. But both insist they have been more than fair. "Our mistake," says Arnett, "was in not being pessimistic enough." One military complaint was that he avoided talking to generals. Says Arnett: "All they can give me is their interpretation of events. I'd rather make my own. I don't want Abrams whispering to me about the goddam Thais and telling me I can't quote him. That restricts my reportage...
...Said Arnett: "I don't feel a reporter ought to be involved. But I remember going into Snoul [Cambodia] and seeing the bodies of five civilians in the road. They had been napalmed. There was a mother and her two kids sort of melted together. I've seen a lot of bodies, but this got me. I started to lose my cool." He paused, then added: "The war is going to go on and on-five or ten more years -no matter what anybody writes. I've been like a diver crawling around the floor...