WASHINGTON, United States, May 8, 2026 (BSS/AFP) - Former journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winner Philip Caputo, best known for his memoirs as a US Marine officer in the Vietnam War, has died, his son said. He was 84.

Caputo had "hoped to die in the manner in which he lived -- dramatically and with panache -- as a writer, adventurer, warrior, sportsman, and raconteur," his son Marc Caputo posted on Facebook late on Thursday.

But instead, "cancer claimed him in his bed at home" in Connecticut on Thursday, he said.

Part of a team that won a prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for reporting on election fraud in Chicago, Caputo also worked as a foreign correspondent, notably covering the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

He covered the fall of Saigon in Vietnam and the Lebanese civil war in 1975, during which he was shot in the ankle by a militia faction.

Two years later, he wrote "A Rumor of War", a recounting of his experiences as a young US Marine during a 16-month tour of duty in Vietnam in 1964.

According to Caputo's website, the book sold more than 1.5 million copies and was described by his son as a "classic assigned in history classes to this day".

Caputo was "among the first Americans to fight in the Vietnam War and then, as a reporter, was among the last civilians evacuated from Saigon as it fell," Marc -- a White House reporter -- said.

Caputo went on to write a total of 18 books, including another memoir describing an epic 17,000-mile (27,360-kilometer) road trip from the southernmost point of the US to the northernmost.

A seasoned adventurer, Caputo also "hunted big game and caught bigger fish", but "put family first", Marc said.