Philip Caputo, an American writer and journalist known for “Rumor of War,” his war memoirs in Vietnam, passed away on Thursday, May 7 from cancer, as announced by his son, also a journalist. His son Marc Caputo wrote on Facebook that he hoped his father would die in a dramatic and stylish manner, as he lived – as a writer, adventurer, warrior, athlete, and storyteller. However, cancer took his life at home in Connecticut, in the northeastern United States.
Caputo, a member of a team that won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for reporting on electoral fraud in Chicago, also worked as a foreign correspondent, covering the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He reported on the fall of Saigon and the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, during which he was injured in the ankle.
Two years later, he wrote “Rumor of War,” a narrative 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 more than 1.5 million copies and his son, a White House journalist, described it as a “classic still used in history classes today.”
Caputo was among the first Americans to fight in the Vietnam War and later, as a journalist, was among the last civilians evacuated from Saigon during its fall. The writer went on to publish a total of 18 books, including another memoir detailing an epic 17,000-mile road trip from the southernmost point of the United States to the northernmost.
An experienced adventurer, he enjoyed hunting big game and fishing for large fish, but always put his family first, according to his son.
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