From Newsgroup: alt.obituaries
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/08/books/philip-caputo-dead.html
Philip Caputo, Who Wrote Blistering Vietnam War Memoir, Dies at 84
rCLA Rumor of War,rCY about his service as a Marine Corps infantry officer and published in 1977, relentlessly detailed rCLthe things men do in war and the things war does to them.rCY
By Joseph Berger
May 8, 2026, 2:01 a.m. ET
Philip Caputo, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist whose best-selling, disillusioning memoir, rCLA Rumor of War,rCY about leading a Marine platoon through the sniper-riddled and booby-trapped jungles of Vietnam, entered
the canon of wartime literature, died on Thursday at his home in Norwalk, Conn. He was 84.
The cause was cancer, his son Marc Caputo wrote in a social media post.
The Vietnam War, which cost the lives of at least one million Vietnamese
and 58,000 American service members, generated an outpouring of fictional
and nonfictional books, by some reckoning more than 3,500 titles.
A few works came to be widely regarded as classics because their authors captured unflinchingly the peculiar mix of boredom and terror in combat,
the ambivalence about fighting a war that often seemed pointless and unwinnable, and the disheartening malaise that followed AmericarCOs first military defeat.
The standouts include works of fiction, including Tim OrCOBrienrCOs rCLThe Things They CarriedrCY (1990), and nonfiction ones like Michael HerrrCOs rCLDispatchesrCY (1977), Ron KovicrCOs rCLBorn on the Fourth of JulyrCY (1976) and
Mr. CaputorCOs rCLA Rumor of WarrCY (1977), which sold two million copies and was translated into 15 languages.
rCLTo call it the best book about Vietnam is to trivialize it,rCY the novelist and screenwriter John Gregory Dunne wrote in his review of rCLA Rumor of WarrCY for The Los Angeles Times. rCLHeartbreaking, terrifying and enraging, it belongs to the literature of men at arms.rCY
In The New York Times, the author and editor Theodore Solotaroff wrote
that Mr. Caputo rCLsteadily forces you to see and feel and understand what
it was like to fight in VietnamrCY by rCLthe acuity of his running commentary on the psychological and moral devastation of fighting a rCypeoplerCOs warrCO; and, most to the point, by placing himself as a Marine lieutenant directly before the reader and giving the American involvement a sincere, manly, increasingly harrowed American face.rCY
Mr. Caputo wrote in rCLA Rumor of WarrCY that his book was about rCLthe things men do in war and the things war does to them.rCY It opens with an account
of Mr. CaputorCOs enthusiastic enlistment in the Marine Corps as a 24-year-
old Midwesterner, driven by a need to prove his courage and manhood,
followed by his 16-month tour of duty as a platoon commander and infantry lieutenant.
He vividly recorded the toll on the soldierrCOs spirit of the punishing
heat, dust, malarial mosquitoes, disease-laden water and minimal hygiene. Those physical challenges were augmented by the confusion about what the platoon under his command was supposed to accomplish in its daily patrols
rCo purportedly to secure the perimeter around the Danang airstrip essential to the safe passage of supplies and soldiers.
It was especially difficult to pinpoint an enemy, hidden and shielded as
they were by the thick growth of jungle and by their deadly mines and
booby traps. The Vietcong rCo guerrilla fighters supporting the Communist government in Hanoi rCo were experienced at warfare, and the periodic skirmishes were bloody, costing the lives of men to whom Mr. Caputo had
grown close.
In one skirmish, the platoon encountered a hamlet, rife with Vietcong sympathizers, where an ambush had been set up.
rCLThe marines are letting out high-pitched yells, like the old rebel yell, and throwing grenades and firing rifles into bomb shelters and dugouts,rCY
he wrote. rCLPanic-stricken, the villagers run out of the flame and smoke as if from a natural disaster. The livestock goes mad, and the squawking of chickens, the squeal of pigs and the bawling of water buffalo are added to
the screams and yells and loud popping of the flaming huts.rCY
Mr. Caputo soon realizes that the destruction is not an act of madness but
of retribution. rCLThese villagers aided the V.C. and we taught them a lesson,rCY he wrote, using the shorthand for Vietcong. rCLWe are learning to hate.rCY
After troops under his command intentionally shot two civilians suspected
of having Vietcong loyalties, Mr. Caputo took responsibility for the
killings and wrote that he was rCLalmost court-martialedrCY in 1966 before the charges of premeditated murder were dropped; Mr. Caputo left the service
with an honorable discharge. He told the story as an illustration of how
war can warp the moral codes of even ethical men.
The book was a decade in the making. Its commercial success rCo it was
turned into a 1980 two-part CBS mini-series starring Brad Davis rCo allowed Mr. Caputo to quit daily journalism at The Chicago Tribune, where in 1973
he had shared a Pulitzer for general or spot news reporting, and pursue a career as a novelist.
Of his 10 works of fiction, the most highly regarded was rCLActs of FaithrCY (2005). Set in war-torn Sudan, it was about a swaggering American aviator
who plans to fly food, medicine and clothing to starving rebels but is
soon caught up in romantic and political complications that challenge his idealism.
Charlie Rose, the public television talk-show host, asked Mr. Caputo in
2005 whether he was impelled by the idea of taking a character to a
foreign country rCLwhere thererCOs something interesting going on and having him or her go through some interesting journey of self-discovery.rCY
rCLThatrCOs my thing, thatrCOs what I do, that is always on my menu,rCY Mr. Caputo
said. He later added, rCLIn these states of extremes rCo which are both geographical states and states of mind rCo that the truth of a human
character is revealed and starkly revealed.rCY
Philip Joseph Caputo, the older of two siblings, was born on June 10,
1941, in Chicago and grew up in nearby Westchester, Ill.
His father, Joseph Caputo, was a plant manager for the Continental Can Company. His mother, Marie (Napolitano) Caputo, managed the home. He
attended local Roman Catholic schools, where the teachers were nuns and
Jesuit priests.
rCLBy the time I entered my late teens,rCY he wrote in rCLA Rumor of WarrCY of his
suburban upbringing, rCLI could not stand the place, the dullness of it, the summer barbecues eaten to the lulling drone of power mowers.rCY
At Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., he studied engineering at
his fatherrCOs behest but struggled with calculus and physics. He left after three semesters, worked as a railroad brakeman, then enrolled at Loyola University in Chicago, where he majored in English and wrote for the
college literary magazine and newspaper.
After graduating in 1964, he enlisted in the Marines, filled with idealism inspired by President John F. KennedyrCOs rCLask what you can do for your countryrCY speech. Following his discharge three years later, he joined The Tribune.
He was a member of a reporting team that won a Pulitzer for exposing
flagrant violations of voting procedures in a March 1972 primary. When war broke out in the Middle East in October 1973, he was dispatched to the
region as a foreign correspondent. Postings in Rome, Moscow and Saigon
(now Ho Chi Minh City) followed.
In 1975, during the civil wars that convulsed Lebanon, he was wounded by bullets that struck his left ankle and right foot. He took an indefinite medical leave from The Tribune, and he and his first wife, Jill Ongemach,
and their two young sons, Geoffrey and Marc, moved into his parentsrCO home, where he worked on the manuscript for rCLA Rumor of War.rCY
The unexpectedly exuberant reception, including requests to speak and thousands of letters from Vietnam veterans, overwhelmed him and led to a nervous collapse that required a brief hospitalization in a psychiatric
ward. His marriage ended in divorce, as did a second, to Marcelle Besse.
In 1988, he married Leslie Ware, an editor for Consumer Reports. In
addition to his wife, he is survived by a sister, Patricia Esralew; his
sons Geoffrey and Marc, a reporter for Axios; and three granddaughters.
In 1975, sensing that the long war he covered at its outset was about to
end, Mr. Caputo chose to return to Vietnam as a correspondent and was in Saigon that April when the North Vietnamese Army and the Vietcong captured
the city. With shells exploding around him, he was evacuated by helicopter
to an American aircraft carrier and reflected on the American experience
in an epilogue to rCLA Rumor of War.rCY
rCLMy mind shot back a decade, to that day we had marched into Vietnam, swaggering, confident and full of idealism,rCY he wrote. rCLWe had believed we were there for a high moral purpose. But somehow our idealism was lost,
our morals corrupted and the purpose forgotten.rCY
John Yoon contributed reporting.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2