We were there Vietnam - eyewitness battlefield stories We were there Vietnam -  eyewitness battlefield stories This collection of stories about the war in south Vietnam during the period 1961-1975 is special in two ways.   First, the individual stories do not pretend to be full and detailed accounts of the Vietnam war. The intent was to collect personal experiences of writers and photographers. We searched for reports that were for the most part eyewitness accounts and personal reflections of those who witnessed the struggle firsthand. While newspapers reporters and photographers provided most of the material, there are also reports from writers like john Steinbeck and James Jones. And second, this collection features a generous selection of pictures from a war that was photographed like no other before or since.   A special note about the pictures: in some instances the photographs show specific events described in the stories but in most cases the pictures are of similar actions. In many ways the events of the war-except for increasing violence-changed very little over the years. Horst faas, the Pulitzer prise winner who covered the war for most of it long duration, describes his first battle coverage in 1962 this way: “ three days of wading through swamps, paddies and mangrove thickets, long hot walks in the sun, followed…..on the third day I walked back into a government post and was tucked out with the troops, eventually reaching Saigon to tell my story and transmit the photos from day one….this pattern that did not change until the last day of the war” A pattern that did not change. To many, writers and photographers alike, that was the frustration. Battles were fought anywhere at any time, then fought once again in the same places. Patrols in one week would encounter nothing but the unchanged landscape; a week later ambushes caught troops on either side unawares. Towns and cities changed hands-for a time Vietcong controlled, then government controlled, then Vietcong again. Even parts of Saigon suffered a similar fate as the war neared its conclusion. So there was a similarity from story to story, and form picture to picture. Yet each story and each photo remained a unique thread in a tapestry of war and destruction stiched together for more than a decade. ( longer if one considers thr freanch conflict in the years after world war 2.) Many of the stories and pictures include here are by Pulitzer winners. Other stories were also written and photographed by journalists who were at a time and place where drama encountered storytelling skills that set there stories apart, each a nuance that helped report the war in personal terms.