Dan Rather: A Reporter Remembers

Newsman Looks Back At 44-Year Career At CBS News

(CBS) 
Rather says his first impression of Vietnam from the air was "what an emerald, green, beautiful place it was." But when he set down in Tam Ky, it became a "green jungle hell."

"I really wanted to go to Vietnam. It's not a case of I just want to go. I've got to go," says Rather, of covering the Vietnam War. "I knew it was a story -- just that in your gut, this is going to be one of the defining stories of my time."

At the time, CBS was reluctant to send family men overseas, and Rather was married with two small children. But Rather insisted he be allowed to go, and met with his family to discuss it.

"So that's what brought me to having a family council - my children were very young - with Jean, and saying, 'Look, they've finally agreed to send me,'" says Rather. "And Jean said, 'You know, go because you've got to go.' And I called the boss back within hours, and said, 'I'm ready to go, and I can leave this afternoon.'"

Rather says he wanted to get into the field as quickly as he could: "I got there just as the American involvement was really beginning to explode."

In December 1965, just a few days after he arrived in Vietnam, Rather found himself in Tam Ky, in the middle of a fire fight. A Marine was hit in the crossfire.

"This young Marine was hit, hit very badly. They needed help getting him out, and naturally I helped," says Rather, who vividly recalls his emotions as he helped carry the wounded Marine from the battlefield.

"It doesn't take much imagination to know what I was thinking," says Rather. "I see this young man much younger than I, cut down ...You say to yourself, 'My God, this is somebody's son, this is somebody's brother, somebody's husband.' But when you're there, if you let your emotions for a second out of you, then you're not going to be able to do what you need to do."

"Very few people in a lifetime get to see this as an observer," adds Rather. "Your role is to show them and tell them as best you can what it's like, what it's really like, as opposed to what someone may imagine it's like, or what someone's telling them it's like."

Of seeing soldiers in combat during the war, Rather says: "A lot of people believe that what soldiers fear in combat is death. Well, they do fear that, but that's not the big fear. The biggest fear is that they will somehow let their comrade down."

Of the many stories Rather covered during his stint in Vietnam, one stands out in particular. It was a mission to recover the body of Sgt. Rudolph Nunez, of the 1st Infantry Division. Rather was overwhelmed by the determination of the unit to find Nunez, despite the fact that the young soldiers put themselves at grave risk to do it.

"We didn't go there as journalists with antiwar sentiment. With the country at war, my country at war, I want the country to win, whatever the definition of win is," says Rather. "But I was increasingly struck by the difference between what was being said in Washington or Saigon about what was happening on the ground ... and what the reality was."

"The reality was, it was a minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, day-by-day death struggle," adds Rather. "This was in some ways the beginning of the difficulties between the press and the government."