Remembering Phil Caputo and the brutality of war

Phillip Caputo, an American journalist, author and ex-soldier best known for his Vietnam saga, 'A Rumor of War', sadly died earlier this month at 84 of cancer in Connecticut. Edward Girardet describes his encounter with this extraordinary writer in Peshawar, Pakistan, during the early days of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan - and why politicians promoting military solutions need to grasp that there is absolutely nothing romantic about war.

When US President Donald Trump, who has never experienced war other than to order it, and Pete Hegseth, his Secretary of Defence, began extolling soldiers as "warriors" as though they lived in medieval times, they were only advertising their ignorance. Hegseth, an ex-Fox TV host who served with the military in Afghanistan and Iraq, claims a near-death experience when his vehicle was struck by a rocket that failed to explode. He also insists that his office be known as the Department of War.

The reality is that, for all their bombast, neither man has a clue about the harsh realities of war as experienced by so many, notably the tens of millions of hapless civilians, but also aid workers and journalists caught in horrendous conflicts past and present, from Ukraine and Sudan to Palestine, Lebanon and Congo.

As for Phil Caputo, Pulitzer Prize-winning former marine turned reporter, author of the 1977 Vietnam classic A Rumor of War , there was nothing "romantic" or worth extolling about war. If anything, Caputo maintained, it was what he saw on television and in the press that convinced him the Vietnam War was little more than "one enormous con game."

Huey helicopters during the Vietnam War

US military

Attracted by duty but also adventure

As a young American lieutenant, Caputo was initially drawn by the kind of "warrior" language espoused by Trump and Hegseth, believing it was his duty to fight. At the same time, he saw it as an incredible adventure. Bizarrely, that same sense of frontline challenge - perhaps stupidity is the better word - is often what initially attracts many journalists, me included, to cover wars, until reality hits. Only then, as one grows older and more on-the-ground savvy, does one wonder how on earth one ever survived, given all the asinine risks one sometimes took.

As a foreign correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor covering the Soviet-Afghan war out of Peshawar in early 1980, I first encountered Caputo in the lobby of Dean's Hotel, the colonial-style bungalow haunt where journalists, aid workers and diplomats in the know tended to stay. Caputo had been dispatched by Esquire magazine to write a piece on the newly emerging Soviet war but with a focus on the Afghan resistance.

I was excited and honoured. Based in Paris during the late 1970s, I had read A Rumor of War - twice. For any reporter seeking to cover conflicts, it was essential reading. I had been intrigued by Caputo's experiences as one of the first American troops deployed with a combat role in Vietnam in 1964, and then as a journalist who covered the conflict's final stages. Caputo was there for the Fall of Saigon, marking America's defeat by a defiant resistance. He also covered the 1975 war in Lebanon and went on to write 18 books in all, among them a memoir about a 17,000-mile (27,360-kilometre) road trip across the United States from south to north.

A Rumor of War proved harsh, bluntly revealing the ugliness of war. For a young Paris-based correspondent drawn to the concept of resistance, from the French maquis of World War II to the Afghan mujahideen, Caputo's observations proved pointedly pertinent. He describes arriving in Vietnam, only to realise quickly that this was no small war, nor one remotely resembling the battles of World War II. Very quickly he began to witness death, American and "enemy" alike, and to grasp that the United States was not fighting some ragtag guerrilla force but a well-trained, highly effective resistance.

Vietnam changed men and women once they began witnessing the absurdities of that massive military intervention. As many combat troops came to understand, neither the Viet Cong nor the North Vietnamese could simply be subdued by superior airpower. In the end, America's pointless war cost the lives of more than 58,000 soldiers, not counting the thousands of veterans who later took their own lives as a direct consequence of PTSD and other war-related trauma.

Both as a soldier and later as a reporter, Caputo recognised these on-the-ground realities. Yet such lessons were hardly heeded in the wars that followed: the Soviet and US-led coalition campaigns in Afghanistan, Israel's inconclusive effort to crush Palestinian resistance in Gaza, and most recently the US-Israeli strikes against Iran.

Phillip Caputo

MacMillain Publishers

A quiet piece of war, please

Planning to write about the Afghan resistance or the mujahideen, as they called themselves, Caputo had read my Monitor pieces and wanted to ask for pointers on where to go and which group to accompany. As I was about to head "inside" with my colleague, British photographer Peter Jouvenal, to report on guerrilla operations around Jalalabad, we sat down with him over dinner and brief him on the situation across the border. Cooperation amongst each other is often the best way for foreign correspondents to operate.

"Look," Phil told us with a somewhat concerned look, "I just want a quick in and out for colour. I really don't need any real fighting. I have seen enough fucking war and I don't need any more. So where can I go where it's relatively quiet but still get the gist of what’s happening? A couple of days talking with fighters, visiting their bases, that sort of thing," he said.

Peter, a former British army soldier determined to become a war photographer but eventually morphed into one the best TV producer-cameramen reporting conflicts, and I considered the options. Poring over my maps of Afghanistan, mainly aerial projections with only a few marked names of towns, villages and rivers - we had to update by writing in place names based on our own cross-border reporting as well as late 19th century British accounts of their ventures into Afghanistan.

"Things are pretty quiet in Kunar," Peter said, referring to one of the northeastern border provinces. We had both recently passed through on brief trips and seen no sign of the Soviets beyond a few distant helicopters and the occasional pair of MiGs streaking across the sky.

Our own aim, in fact, was to push into Nangrahar province a bit further south, where reliable sources told us the Afghans were preparing armed operations against Soviet positions in and around Jalalabad, including the airport, which Red Army troops had taken over. Both Peter and I were keen to take part in one of those sorties, particularly for his photography, as without pictures there was no story. For us writers, we could always hang back and talk to people.

We assured Phil that a quick in and out was no problem, and that we would put him in touch with one of the groups. When a key commander swung by Dean’s, Peter and I explained to him that this American journalist was very important but that he only wanted a "taste" of what was happening inside. “A couple of days, certainly no more than a week,” I ventured.

We also helped Phil find the necessary gear: a quick trip to the Khyber Bazaar to buy an Afghan shalwar kameez and slip past the Pakistani border guards. With his dark Italian complexion and black hair, Caputo looked almost more tribal than the Afghans.

In search of war

A few days later, Peter and I slipped into Nangrahar Province to link up with a group of fighters - most of them former veterinary students, as it turned out - who took us on an attack against Jalalabad airbase.

But as we made our way through abandoned, war-shattered villages leading down from the southern Safed Koh mountains toward the city, the distant north erupted with flashes, explosions and rockets streaking across the sky. As we soon learned, the Soviets had just launched their first major ground offensive against the resistance since the invasion.

The province they had chosen? Kunar.

"Well, it looks like Phil may have found some real war and not just a rumour of it," I remarked to Peter. "The shit's really hitting the fan up there."

A week later we returned to Peshawar, having found our own share of "action," but wondering what had become of Caputo. There was no news from him at the hotel. We decided to check in with the weekly film evening and informal dinner hosted by Doug Archard, the US Consul, at his home for whoever happened to be around - aid workers, reporters, drug enforcement agents. Doug, we figured, might have an update.

Guerrilla commanders from Pech with western journalist during quiet period in Kunar Province

Edward Girardet

Your mistake for expecting a holiday

An extract from my latest book, The War That Followed Me - From the Hippie Trail to Afghanistan's Frontlines, to be published in 2027,sums it up best:

Once back at Dean's Hotel, Peter and I grabbed hot lingering baths in the wonderfully long English tubs, before changing into clean clothes. We headed over to the American consulate, where Doug Archard, the US consul, was holding his usual Wednesday night film showing. Archard, a reserved and sharp observer, organized informal receptions and weekly films to bring together aid workers, journalists, and diplomats. These gatherings weren't just social. I doubted that he was intelligence, but these were his way of keeping tabs on the shifting dynamics of the region.

The feature, appropriately, was Apocalypse Now. A dozen guests were already sitting at the dining table chatting over food and wine. Halfway through dinner, the butler appeared at the door. Apparently, there was a filthy man dressed like an Afghan claiming to be an American waiting at the front gate.

"Let him in," Archard said.

Phil Caputo, an American journalist and writer best known for his 1977 Vietnam memoir, Rumor of War, stalked into the room. With his thick black beard and dust-caked garments, he looked more like a Sicilian bandit than a reporter on assignment for Esquire. Two weeks earlier, Phil had dinner with Peter and me asking advice on where best to go inside Afghanistan. "I don't want anything dangerous," he confided, "I just need some frontline colour." We had suggested Kunar as it was close to the border and quiet.

Unfortunately for Caputo, he had walked straight into the same Red Army ground offensive whose flares and rockets we had witnessed from Jalalabad. For almost a week, Caputo was caught in the middle of the operation. At times, he had to hug trees to avoid being seen by marauding helicopter gunships firing at suspected guerrilla positions. "So much for a fucking quiet trip into Afghanistan," he declared venomously as he grabbed a drink.

Peter smiled calmly. "Your mistake for expecting a holiday," he said.

Phillip Caputo’s article eventually appeared, much acclaimed, in the December 1980, edition of Esquire as Rumor of Resistance.

For a journalist and writer who covered more than his fair share of war, there are not many like Phil Caputo. Journalism needs more Caputo’s, if only to show that wars are not whimsical games, to be played, regardless of the civilian cost, by arrogant politicians from Putin and Netanyahu to Trump, or Sudan’s two leading military thugs, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (‘Hemedti’) of the rival Rapid Support Forces.

Global Geneva editor Edward Girardet is an author and former foreign correspondent who has covered wars, humanitarian crises and environmental issues for more than 40 years. His latest book, “The War That Followed Me - From the Hippie Trail to Afghanistan's Frontlines,” is expected to be published in 2027.