American writer and journalist Philip Caputo, a key witness to the Vietnam War, has died at the age of 84

Philip Caputo, an American writer and journalist known for “Rumors of War,” his war memoir in Vietnam, passed away on Thursday, May 7th from cancer, as announced by his son, himself a journalist. His son, Marc Caputo, wrote on Facebook that his father hoped to die the way he had lived – in a spectacular and flamboyant manner – as a writer, adventurer, warrior, athlete, and storyteller. However, cancer took him in his bed at home in Connecticut, in the northeast United States.

A member of a team that won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for reporting on electoral fraud in Chicago, Caputo also worked as a foreign correspondent, covering the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He covered the fall of Saigon and the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, during which he was injured in the ankle.

Two years later, he wrote “Rumors of War,” an account of his experiences as a young American Marine during a 16-month mission in Vietnam in 1964. According to his official website, the book sold over 1.5 million copies, and his son, a journalist at the White House, described it as a “classic still used in history classes today.”

Philip Caputo was among the first Americans to fight in the Vietnam War and then, as a journalist, was among the last civilians evacuated from Saigon during its fall. He went on to publish a total of 18 books, including another memoir detailing a 17,000-mile road trip from the southernmost point of the United States to the northernmost.

An experienced adventurer, he hunted big game and caught large fish, but always prioritized his family, as his son noted.