VIETNAM, 1966.(Column)

In early 1966, I was catching a ride on a helicopter out to a battle on the central coast of South Vietnam. Once there, I intended to hook up with an infantry battalion of the 1st Cavalry Division that was going into action. Both of the pilots were lieutenant colonels, helicopter battalion commanders in the same 1st Cav. I was sitting on the bench seat behind them, with two enlisted machine gunners on either side of me. The colonels were amusing themselves by slapping the tops of the palm trees that covered the area with the skids of the helicopter. It was dangerous play. The slightest miscalculation could send the helicopter spinning into the ground under full power and we would all die. Jesus Christ, I thought. All I want is a helicopter ride and I draw two lieutenant colonels behaving like a pair of fucking cowboys.

I remembered some advice that the great war correspondent Homer Bigart had once given me. Homer had covered every war from the Second World War to the Greek civil war, the Korean War, and sundry other conflicts, earning two Pulitzer Prizes along the way. He was in his mid-fifties by the time of Vietnam and, although fiercely competitive, he took pity on a kid reporter and let me follow him around like a puppy dog. One day in 1962, I asked him how he'd managed to stay alive through so many wars. "Take what risks you need to get the story, but don't take any foolish ones," he said. "Never play tourist."

Back in November, I had nearly been killed playing reluctant tourist with a senior officer of the 1st Cavalry, a colonel who was the division engineer. It was the end of the third day of the battle of Ia Drang, the first ferocious clash between the American and the North Vietnamese Armies in the mountains of South Vietnam. I needed to get to brigade headquarters to finish up my reporting before returning to the main air base, at Pleiku, to file my story. The colonel was headed there, and I asked if I could hitch ...