Vietnamreporters War

Australian journalist Lunn arrived in Saigon to cover the Vietnam War for Reuters in 1967 and left shortly after the Tet offensive in 1968. It was during this period that the futility of the American position began to emerge to the outside world, and Lunn here tells how that realization grew among his press colleagues and then spread. Reporters in the capital were given daily handouts by the U.S. military and usually did not deviate from the official line. Those who went to the front, however, developed misgivings as they toured ""pacified'' areas that were far from secure and suspected that many of the peasants who professed allegiance to Saigon were instead loyal to Hanoi. Exacerbating the problem, the author maintains, was the contempt that many GIs expressed openly toward the Vietnamese, who often returned that sentiment forcefully. Lunn's excellent study also includes an affecting human-interest storythat of Dinh, the Vietnamese factotum in the Reuters office, who finally escaped to Australia. Photos. (March)