• Horst Faas, legendary Vietnam combat photographer, dies

    Horst Faas / AP

    Hovering U.S. Army helicopters pour machine gun fire into the tree line to cover the advance of South Vietnamese ground troops in an attack on a Viet Cong camp 18 miles north of Tay Ninh, Vietnam, northwest of Saigon near the Cambodian border in March 1965.

    AP

    In this 1967 file photo Associated Press photographer Horst Faas works in Vietnam.

    Horst Faas / AP

    Women and children crouch in a muddy canal as they take cover from intense Viet Cong fire at Bao Trai, about 20 miles west of Saigon, Vietnam, in January 1966.

    Associated Press reports:

    Hoang Dinh Nam / AFP - Getty Images

    German photographer Horst Faas (C) and Vietnamese-American photographer Nick Ut (R) meet with Vietnamese photographer Dinh Dinh Phuoc during a party held, in this April 28, 2005, file photo in Ho Chi Minh-City. Ut under Faas's guidance won one of the news agency's six Vietnam War Pulitzer Prizes.

    As chief of photo operations for The Associated Press in Saigon for a decade beginning in 1962, Horst Faas didn't just cover the fighting — he also recruited and trained new talent from among foreign and Vietnamese freelancers.

    The result was "Horst's army" of young photographers, who fanned out with Faas-supplied cameras and film and stern orders to "come back with good pictures."

    Faas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning combat photographer who carved out new standards for covering war with a camera and became one of the world's legendary photojournalists in nearly half a century with the AP, died Thursday in Munich, said his daughter, Clare Faas. He was 79.

    Read more about the life and work of Horst Faas

    Editor's note: Some images included in this post include graphic content.

    Horst Faas / AP

    A wounded U.S. soldier is given water on a battlefield in Vietnam. Faas was best known for covering Vietnam and won four major awards including the first of his two Pulitzers.

    Horst Faas / AP

    A father holds the body of his child as South Vietnamese Army Rangers look down from their armored vehicle. The child was killed as government forces pursued guerrillas into a village near the Cambodian border. This image is one of several shot by Associated Press photographer Horst Faas which earned him the first of two Pulitzer Prizes,

    AP

    In this May 11, 1965 file photo, Associated Press photographer Horst Faas tries to get back on a U.S. helicopter after a day out with Vietnamese rangers in a flooded plain of reeds.