Time to Decompress

His detractors, notably U.S. military brass, have called him dishonest, dangerous, anti-American and even a card-carrying Communist. But admiring junior officers asked for his autograph, and Congressmen visiting Viet Nam sought him out to obtain his views on the war. Associated Press Correspondent Peter Arnett, in fact, is one of the most energetic and resourceful reporters ever to cover Indochina.

Something of a legend among rival newsmen for being in the right place at the right time, Arnett combines hustle with a discerning eye for detail and an acute ear for devastating quotes, including those that symbolize the tragedy of the war. He was there, for example, when an Army major looked over the ruins of Ben Tre after the Tet offensive and said, "The city had to be destroyed in order to save it."

Last week, after eight years of duty in Indochina, Arnett left at his own request for reassignment as a roving reporter in the U.S. Departing A.P.'s Saigon Bureau at the same time was another distinguished veteran, Photographer-Reporter Horst Faas. Most recently in charge of the bureau's much-admired photo operations, Faas will become a roving Southeast Asia correspondent based in Singapore.

Aggressive Team. New Zealand-born Arnett, now 35, and German-born Faas, now 37, arrived in Viet Nam for A.P. on the same day in 1962. Often they worked as a reporting team. On the surface, they may seem too alike for compatibility. Arnett is brash, aggressive; Faas is gruff, Prussianly efficient. But together they produced some spectacular results. Among them: the 1965 disclosure that U.S. and South Vietnamese forces were experimenting with non-lethal gas; last year's exclusive on Alpha Company, the U.S. Army unit that balked at an order to advance. Individually, they did equally well. Arnett won a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 1965; Faas won a Pulitzer for his photography in 1964.

One of Arnett's most memorable items was his account of the battle in 1967 for Hill 875, near Dak To. Out of 300 U.S. soldiers who went up the hill, he recalls, 97 were killed and 120 were wounded. "We were stuck there for 30 hours, no water, no nothing--just enemy fire. The living and the dead had the same gray pallor. When I finally got on the helicopter to get out of there, I just bawled, I was so glad to be alive." The same year Faas wrote a moving story while he was in a hospital recovering from a severe rocket wound. Without his camera, Faas simply recorded in words the scene around him: the boy without a face, the stains on the nurses' clothes, the moans, the man who quietly quivered and died during the evening television news.

Such stories helped make the two newsmen, Arnett in particular, the target of Pentagon ire. But both insist they have been more than fair. "Our mistake," says Arnett, "was in not being pessimistic enough." One military complaint was that he avoided talking to generals. Says Arnett: "All they can give me is their interpretation of events. I'd rather make my own. I don't want Abrams whispering to me about the goddam Thais and telling me I can't quote him. That restricts my reportage."

Losing His Cool. Both men were plainly war weary as they said their goodbyes last week. "I will never be one of those guys who sit around and talk about the good old days in Saigon," Faas told TIME Correspondent Robert Anson. "There were never any good old days in Saigon. People were always getting killed."

Said Arnett: "I don't feel a reporter ought to be involved. But I remember going into Snoul [Cambodia] and seeing the bodies of five civilians in the road. They had been napalmed. There was a mother and her two kids sort of melted together. I've seen a lot of bodies, but this got me. I started to lose my cool." He paused, then added: "The war is going to go on and on--five or ten more years --no matter what anybody writes. I've been like a diver crawling around the floor of the ocean too long. I've got to come to the surface and decompress."

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