DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli. One of the most unflinching and acclaimed memoirs of the Vietnam War was about a young lieutenant, one of the first Americans to fight in the war, leading a Marine platoon through the jungle. "A Rumor Of War" was written by Philip Caputo, who died last week at the age of 84. In reviewing the book in 1977, John Gregory Dunne described it as, quote, "heartbreaking, terrifying and enraging. It belongs to the literature of men at war," unquote. The book became a bestseller and was adapted into a TV miniseries.
After the war, Caputo became a journalist and was part of the Chicago Tribune Pulitzer Prize-winning team that uncovered violations of voting procedures in a March 1972 primary. While a foreign correspondent in Lebanon during their civil war, he was captured by Palestinian militants and held for a week. Later, in another incident, he was shot multiple times by a different group of militants in Beirut. He returned to the States, and during convalescence for his injuries, he wrote "A Rumor Of War.
Caputo went on to write two other memoirs, 10 novels, two short story collections and four works of nonfiction. His love of adventure is detailed in an obituary on his website, which reads, quote, "Caputo caught a leviathan-sized marlin off Cuba's shores, hunted big game in Africa, roughed it in Australia's outback, cast fly lines in the world's oceans and streams from Alaska to New England and read books as voraciously as he wrote them."
We're going to listen to Terry's 2005 interview with Philip Caputo. At the time, he had written the novel "Acts Of Faith" set in war-torn Sudan about aid workers and missionaries there.
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TERRY GROSS: You've been in war zones as a Marine and as a journalist. Can you talk a little bit about the difference between being there as a fighter and being there as somebody just covering the fighting?
PHILIP CAPUTO: Well, probably the major difference is that the war correspondent can get out of there almost whenever he chooses, or she chooses. The soldier is stuck there, is under orders, and there's no return ticket. There's no going back to the hotel in another day or two or three. The soldier has to confront that situation constantly under orders, often against his or her own will. And also, the journalist generally has some kind of picture of what's going on, a big picture of what's happening. Quite often, if you're an enlisted soldier or even a junior officer, say, on the level of a lieutenant or a captain, all you know about what's going on is what's going on directly in front of you. And this can often give you a certain sense or feeling of powerlessness, no control over your fate or your destiny that, say, somebody like the war correspondent can maintain that sense, although it may be an illusion, even on the war correspondent's part.
GROSS: Did you respect war correspondents when you were fighting in Vietnam, or did you see them as, like, guys with pens and cameras who were onlookers?
CAPUTO: I think I was agnostic about them.
GROSS: (Laughter).
CAPUTO: I mean, I didn't particularly dislike them. I always remember feeling, and I think there were probably in four operations I was on, that there were journalists along, either TV or print journalists. I could never figure out why they were there. It seemed just peculiar to me. It seemed very odd. And sometimes I got a little annoyed with them because I would be - especially if they were with the unit that I was with or that I was in command of, which in this case was a rifle platoon, I would feel somewhat responsible for them and for their safety. And that would be a distraction to me. But in general, you might say I could have taken them or leave - or left them.
GROSS: You know, as we were saying, your new novel, "Acts Of Faith," which is about aid workers and missionaries in Sudan, is in part about how idealistic motives can become really changed once you're in a foreign war, where you don't really understand the culture. And you wrote in your memoir about fighting in Vietnam, "A Rumor Of War," war is always attractive to young men who know nothing about it, but we had also been seduced into uniform by Kennedy's challenge to ask what you can do for your country, and by the missionary idealism he had awakened in us. I guess I'm wondering if fighting in Vietnam made you skeptical of idealism.
CAPUTO: Oh, yes, it did. I'll just freely admit that - and like a lot of people my age - I was indelibly marked by that experience and by that era. Yes, I'm profoundly skeptical of idealism, profoundly skeptical about government pronouncements, profoundly skeptical about the honesty and integrity of our elected officials, profoundly skeptical about what generals and military leaders tell us is happening, as opposed to what may really be happening. And I would not want to speak for the entire baby boom generation. I forgot how many millions of people that is. But I think a significant number of people in that age group think that way, and as a result of what happened in Vietnam and in the '60s. And I can't - there's no sense in my trying to pretend somehow that that didn't happen to me because it did.
GROSS: You know, it's interesting. You managed to - as you pointed out in your writing, you managed to get through your tour of duty in Vietnam without any wounds. But then, as a journalist covering Beirut, you were shot several times in one episode. What happened to you?
CAPUTO: Well, it's one of those proverbial long stories that I will endeavor to make short. I was covering the Lebanese civil war. I was the Chicago Tribune's Middle East correspondent based in Beirut. I was filing a story to the paper when the building I was in came under heavy machine gun fire. I then exited the building, ran into some Muslim militiamen from some strange street militia that was active in Beirut at that time. They tried to take my press card away from me. The press card was very precious to us, as that without it, you could get killed fairly easily. And I remember I grabbed it from one of these guys that was trying to take it from me, and I put it back in my wallet and they said, all right, you know, get out of here. Go.
As I was walking away, they started to open fire at me - opened fire on me - and hit me in the ankle, in my left ankle. Hit me in the left leg. I got hit superficially in the head, the back, the shoulders, but just by, I'll say, superficial shrapnel wounds. And fortunately, I was - these were Muslim militia men, and I was right near a street controlled by Christians 'cause that was a sectarian war and - or at least in part, a sectarian war. And although I was down, I - because of the wounds in my legs, I couldn't walk - I was able to crawl. And I crawled onto this Christian-controlled street, and probably I just owe my life to that 'cause I think had they not been afraid to pursue me, they would have. And that would have been the end of me.
GROSS: You're a writer. You use your imagination all the time, and I'm sure during the war in Vietnam, you must have imagined what it would have been like to be shot or injured there. How did actually getting shot compare to what you'd always imagined it would feel like?
CAPUTO: Well, it - I suppose I used to wonder like anybody who's been in there, will it hurt? Even if it is an instantly fatal wound, like, say, one to the brain. I remember I used to think sometimes in Vietnam, especially if I'd seen comrades who were who were killed, if they felt somehow in the - in that last flashing instant of their life, some enormous amount of pain was compressed. Well, as I discovered, is that you actually don't feel a thing. The impact is so stunning from a high caliber high, I mean, a high velocity bullet that something happens to your system. And I didn't feel any pain. In fact, for probably two or three hours after I was shot.
GROSS: By then, were you in a medical setting?
CAPUTO: Yeah, I was in a hospital bed.
GROSS: You did some of your recovery back at your parents' house, the house you grew up in. And you've said that you wrote some of "A Rumor Of War," your Vietnam memoir, in the bedroom that you grew up in. And when I read that, I thought, wow, that's so weird because, I mean, a lot of people I know feel or used to feel that if they went - that when they went back to the bedroom that they grew up in after they were an adult, they'd feel like a child again. You know, that - you see that same furniture, stuff that's still on the wall?
CAPUTO: Yeah, yeah.
GROSS: Your parents are there, and somehow, you know, you're kind of a kid again. But what was it like for you to be in that kind of setting at writing this, I mean, this really complicated memoir of war?
CAPUTO: Well, I think, considering that I was then confined either to a wheelchair or to crutches, that I was almost naturally in a childlike situation. I mean, I had my wife and two kids with me, so we were all living in the same house. It was almost like one of those old immigrant families. And it was so intensely boring, you know, to be...
GROSS: (Laughter).
CAPUTO: ...To be confined to a wheelchair in a rather ordinary suburb of Chicago that, as a matter of fact, oddly enough, writing that book gave me some focus, a purpose in life, and was also partly an antidote to this intense boredom. And I think I would have either been perhaps reading some of the time, but probably most of the time would have been sitting in that wheelchair or in a chair with my legs up in cast, watching TV.
BIANCULLI: Journalist Philip Caputo talking with Terry Gross in 2005. He died last week at the age of 84. We'll hear more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's interview with journalist Philip Caputo, who wrote the well-regarded Vietnam War memoir "A Rumor Of War." He also was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a foreign correspondent. He died last week at the age of 84.
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GROSS: Some of your new novel, "Acts Of Faith," is about extremism. And, you know, again, it's set in the civil war in Sudan, and the government in Khartoum is an extremist Islamist government. You've had firsthand experience with extremists. When you were covering Lebanon, you were captured for a week. Who captured you, and what did they do to you?
CAPUTO: I was captured by a faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization that was called the PDFLP. They captured me because they thought that I was a CIA agent, which is a rather frequent accusation made against journalists, particularly American journalists in the Middle East and in - elsewhere, but particularly in the Middle East.
GROSS: So what did they do to you in the week that you were held hostage?
CAPUTO: Well, I wasn't held hostage. They didn't - they weren't holding me for ransom or anything.
GROSS: Captive. Captive is the...
CAPUTO: Yeah. It was...
GROSS: Captive. Yeah.
CAPUTO: Yeah. Yeah. They interrogated me over and over and over again, often with questions that were ludicrous. They - I was subjected to mild physical and, at times, severe psychological torture - you know, things like having my hands tied behind my back and then my ankles - my legs bent back so my ankles were then tied to my hands. It was - you're bent like a bow. And then a guy sticks an AK-47 in your temple and says, you must now answer these questions truthfully, you know. No kidding. And...
GROSS: (Laughter).
CAPUTO: And then - or they stuffed me in a hole in the ground that - where rats were crawling around and things like that for 24 hours with no food, no water, no light, hardly any air, that sort of thing, all of which they were trying to break me down, convinced that I was a CIA agent and at any moment, I would suddenly, you know, like a person in the courtroom melodrama, leap up and scream, I did it. I did it. But of course, I didn't, since I wasn't one.
GROSS: So what were some of the things that went through your mind about what you should tell them? I mean, you told them the truth - that you weren't a CIA agent. But you did risk getting killed during this week. I'm sure that that was a real possibility. So did you think of, like, lying and making stuff up to give them or...
CAPUTO: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I sure did. And there were a couple of times I actually thought about telling them what I figured they wanted to hear 'cause I - you get the feeling that they're going to hold you there forever and that you're going to go through 10, 12, 14 hours of grilling every single day for - in the indefinite future and that you'll be driven crazy, to which was added the extra stress as the Palestinian camp they were keeping me in was under fire from the Lebanese air force and the Lebanese army. It was being bombed and shelled at the same time. So while I'm answering these questions, every now and then, the interrogation would be interrupted by a 250-pound bomb going off in the next block or something like that. So yeah, I was tempted at times to just lie to them.
And, in fact, after I was released, a CIA agent from the American Embassy called me in to his office and wanted to know if I had done just that and if I might have, you know, started to throw out names of people I knew in the embassy just to give my captors names and say, yeah, these guys are CIA agents, too. So that was, you know, one of the things I did think of, but I decided that it would be a bad idea.
GROSS: You know, people talk about war as a crucible that will test you and shape you. Probably being in a hole in the ground, held captive, is a crucible, too. Do you feel like you were tested and learned things about yourself and even about, like, your threshold of pain when you were held captive for that week in Lebanon?
CAPUTO: Oh, certainly. When you've had experiences like that and then you encounter the more or less ordinary stresses of life, even what one could consider, say, extreme stresses - I don't know - like, say, you're broke or you can't make the mortgage payment or whatever, that - you know, that's nothing to sneeze at, nothing to laugh at. But when you've been through something like that, you - in the midst of a more ordinary crisis, you will stop and you'll say, oh, my God, I - you know, I got through that. This is absolutely nothing compared to that, and I'll get through this easy enough.
GROSS: So what are - if this isn't too personal, what are some of the things you feel you learned about yourself in the extreme and dangerous situations you were in, you know, as a journalist, as a Marine, as a captive?
CAPUTO: Well, I think, you know, let's say on the flattering side.
GROSS: (Laughter) Yeah.
CAPUTO: On the flattering side, I certainly learned that I was tougher than I thought, not in the sense of a, you know, chest-thumping macho tough guy, but I meant that I could endure and keep my head under extreme stress better than I would have thought.
On the unflattering side, I know in Vietnam - and it's described fully in "A Rumor Of War," and it would take me way too long to go into a full, like, you know, description of it. But when I was in Vietnam, I had discovered that I had a capacity to be violent and dark in my actions in a way that totally shocked me. And I didn't think that that sort of thing was in me.
And, you know - and I've got this main character here in the novel, in "Acts Of Faith," Douglas Braithwaite, about - who never - who does have a dark force within him, but he denies that it exists. And his partner, Fitzhugh Martin, later says of him that those who deny the dark angel in their natures will become prey to it, and they won't recognize that dark force when it summons you, when it knocks at the door and summons you to do something that is really reprehensible. And I think that arises out of a discovery that I made about myself when I was in Vietnam.
GROSS: You know, since your Vietnam memoir, "A Rumor Of War," was such an important book about the war, I'm just wondering what you made of the whole debate about John Kerry's service in Vietnam during the election and how divided the country still seemed to be about the meaning of that war and the justness of that war.
CAPUTO: The Vietnam War and the 1960s will not be over until, oh, I'll predict, let's say 2040. That is roughly when the last baby boomer will die. And I just think that the divisions that were aroused during that era and by that war will continue to be fought by that particular generation, again, until they no longer have any effect on the daily and political life of the country.
GROSS: Philip Caputo, thank you very much for talking with us.
CAPUTO: Well, thank you, Terry. Thanks. Good to be here.
BIANCULLI: Journalist Philip Caputo spoke to Terry Gross in 2005. He wrote the Vietnam War memoir "A Rumor Of War," which became part of the cannon of wartime literature. He died last week at the age of 84. Coming up, we mark the hundredth birthday of Sir David Attenborough and listen to a portion of our 1985 interview with him. I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF AARON DIEHL'S "A STORY OFTEN TOLD, SELDOM HEARD") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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