Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Australian journalist Lunn provides a fine memoir of his experiences as a reporter for Reuters news agency, while stationed in Saigon from 1967 to 1968. The most vivid sequence is his account of the 1968 TET offensive, and the hectic and dangerous business of assembling news and dispatching it via telex. He also discusses the role of Australian troops, who operated in areas largely remote from heavy combat. His friendship with Pham Dinh, a Vietnamese fellow reporter from Reuters, adds a nice human dimension to the narrative. No desk-bound journalist, Lunn joined the Marines and the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment on combat missions, and reports quite well the fearful emotions of a journalist armed with a camera instead of a rifle. Recommended. Richard W. Grefrath, Univ. of Nevada Lib., Reno (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Lunn is an Australian who covered Vietnam for Reuters in 1967-68. He describes his experiences and his friendship with a Vietnamese man who worked with him. The book is rife with so many errors of fact, misperceptions, poor reporting and sloppy writing that it is difficult to take seriously. It is hard to understand how such unbelievably poor reporting could find its way into print--or how it could have been committed in the first place. One glaring example: when Lunn arrived in early 1967, "". . .Saigon generally looked like a happy little Asian city. Only the green military vehicles, and the tremors from B-52 bomb attacks at night, indicated that anything was wrong in this tropical capital. ""In fact, there were sandbags and armed guards at many building entrances. There were heavy wire anti-grenade screens on the windows of billets and civilian restaurants. There were high mounds of rotting garbage in some areas. The city was swollen to three or four times its pre-war size by the hundreds of thousands of refugees who had fled the fighting in the countryside. Many lived in indescribably filthy slums jammed together on the outskirts. Other thousands lived on the sidewalks, even in the city's center--close to the Reuters office--in cardboard shelters or under bits of tin propped against a building. The book, consistent with its flawed description of Saigon, adds nothing to the literature on Vietnam. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
