Vietnam War correspondent

Robert Poos, 78, who covered the Vietnam War as a reporter for the Associated Press and later was managing editor of Soldier of Fortune magazine, died Monday at a hospice in Arlington, Va., said his wife, Bobbie. He had suffered respiratory ailments and a broken hip.

A Marine during the Korean War, Poos joined the AP in 1957. Assigned to the AP’s Saigon bureau in 1965, he quickly became noted for aggressive and daring combat reporting.

During the January 1966 battle of An Thi, where U.S. cavalry troops were surrounded by Communist forces, Poos and AP photographer Henri Huet helped recover and stand guard over wounded GIs.

Two months later, Poos was wounded in the chest when gunmen attacked a Buddhist pagoda in Danang, where he and other journalists were covering a standoff by anti-government monks.

In late 1966, Poos was named chief of AP’s bureau in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and later was a news editor in Tokyo before returning to the U.S., where he spent two years in AP’s Washington bureau. After leaving AP in 1970, he was a spokesman for the American Railroad Assn.

Later, as managing editor of Soldier of Fortune in the 1980s, he wrote about military topics. Robert K. Brown, a former Green Beret who is editor and publisher of Soldier of Fortune, called Poos the magazine’s “first professional” journalist and said he brought expertise and real experience to readers.

Poos studied journalism at Southern Illinois University.