Once Upon a Distant War: Young War Correspondents and the Early Vietnam Battles

This is an account of how a group of reporters, Mal Browne, Neil Sheehan, David Halberstam, Peter Arnett and Charles Mohr, came to Vietnam in the early 1960s and changed the nature of the war, the media, the country and themselves. In the beginning it was a war of spies, intrigues and exoticism, that quickly dissolved as Americans, soldiers and correspondents alike, began to learn the realities of the place. Most of the group were just learning the ropes as reporters and they had to learn fast in Vietnam. They went there to tell a story, but what they found out, and how they challenged the official story, wasn't what they expected. Sheehan, Halberstam, and Browne each earned Pulitzer Prizes for their Vietnam coverage.