War News: A Young Reporter in Indochina

Description from the book back cover: Robert Sam Anson was twenty-four, Time magazine's youngest correspondent, when he seized the chance to cover the war in Indochina in 1969. War News is his intensely personal story of camaraderie, rivalry, terror and exhilaration, set during the period when America was changing its mind about the war. This is a real-life journalistic adventure, which takes Anson from Saigon to Phnom Penh - where reporters live in the luxurious Hotel Royal and emerge to witness bloody massacres by Cambodian troops in the streeets - and behind enemy lines, where Anson becomes a prisoner of war. Not until he is captured and held by the North Vietnamese and their murderous allies, the Khmer Rouge, does the story take its final, surprising twist.

This is a very good account of what happened in Cambodia in 1970. The author worked for Time in Saigon, and was ousted to cover Laos and Cambodia because of his anti war views. A Vietnamese friend he worked with in Saigon was critical in his survival in Cambodia.In Cambodia, he sees the massacre of Cambodians by the Vietnamese, and the massacre of Vietnamese by Cambodians. Vietnamese in Cambodia ran most of the businesses and had the skilled labor knowledge. Cambodians resented this. Several reporters died covering the Cambodian fighting, including Sean Flynn, the son of Errol Flynn.The author saved a bunch of Vietnamese from slaughter by the Cambodians. Later, he was captured by the Cambodians and turned over to the North Vietnamese. The North Vietnamese checked his background to determine whether or not to shoot him. Because of his friendship of a Vietnamese who also worked for Time, his life was spared. In 1985 the author returned to Vietnam and visited his old Time friend. It turned out he was a Col in the North Vietnmaese army.The Col explained that he was not killed while a captive as they were friends. He also describes the battles with Time staff and his marriage.

I came close not to buying this book in a second hand book store. I read Anson's views on Richard Nixon, and found them not very objective, so when I saw this book about the Vietnam War I was not sure. The book is very readable, and Anson makes sure to detail his own weaknesses in the book, especially his rocky marriage and use of drugs and alcohol. He details his coverage of the war. Also details his views on the Cambodian government and their Vietnamese massacres. He is sypathetic to the NVA, even though several of his friends were killed by them. His personal stories are the best in detailing the corruption of Cambodian and South Vietnamese governments.

A memoir detailing the experiences of an idealistic young war correspondent in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Running the dangerous roads of 1970 Cambodia in pursuit of both news and personal fame, the author allows his readers a special insight into his soul. Anson's accounts of the deaths of his friends and colleagues, as well as the details of his own capture and detention by revolutionary forces, are remarkably vivid and painful to read, but at the same time filled with a special sense of black humor. No emotion, no matter how unflattering, is hidden from the reader. The author would certainly not be surprised to learn that the attitudes of US Embassy bureaucrats toward the death and disappearance of these same journalists was no different twenty years later than it was during the course of the war.