Battleground bylines

Forget images of tough-guy male war correspondents two of New Zealand’s most distinguished reporters from the front lines were women.

- DAVID BARBER

One night 54 years ago, I was drinking a beer in bar on a hotel rooftop in Saigon listening to the distinctive krrrump of bombs falling from American B-52 planes on the countryside not too far distant and wondering what I had let myself in for.

I had begun the year on a new post as Asian correspondent for the late, lamented New Zealand Press Association (NZPA). Reporting on New Zealand troops' activities in Vietnam was an integral part of the job, and having moved a pregnant, understanding wife and two children to our new base in Singapore, I had to deal quickly with my nervousness about becoming a war correspondent.

Unlike the renowned fellow Kiwi reporter Peter Arnett, who made his name in Vietnam, I was never of a "warry" disposition. Perhaps living through the World War II Blitz in London as a child removed any trace of that from my DNA, and two years' of Royal Air Force national service in the 1950s Cyprus emergency left me devoid of affection for things military.

I freely confess that fear seldom left me during many subsequent visits to Vietnam to report on the war over the next three years. I was comforted many years later to read the confession of my journalism hero, Scotsman James Cameron: "I have never met a war correspondent/photographer who was not far braver than I."

Retiring after 60 years in the newspaper business, from 15-year-old office boy on a London daily to reporting from more than 50 countries, I wrote three volumes of memoir, while dreaming nightly about press conferences, interviews, unhelpful diplomats and filing difficulties from remote cities. Memories of the days before mobile phones, emails and the internet continue to haunt my sleep today, perhaps understandably after six decades of round-the-clock commitment to getting and sending the news.