Photography legend Horst Faas dies

One of the world's best war photographers, Horst Faas, died yesterday aged 79.

Horst Faas worked for the Associated Press during the Vietnam war and is responsible for some of the most iconic images of that conflict. He was awarded four major photo awards for his work in Vietnam, including the first of his two Pulitzer Prizes.

As chief of AP's photo operations in Saigon for a decade beginning in 1962, Faas covered the fighting while recruiting and training new talent from among foreign and Vietnamese freelancers.

"Horst's army" was a band of young photographers recruited by Faas, supplied with cameras and film and sent out with the order to "come back with good pictures".

Faas and his editors then chose the best and put together a steady flow of telling photos showing South Vietnam's soldiers fighting and its civilians struggling to survive.

Faas was wounded in the legs by a rocket-propelled grenade in 1967 and nearly bled to death but stayed on to continue to feed pictures to the Associated Press in New York.

The pictures earned him a a Pulitzer prize in 1965.

Born in Berlin on April 28, 1933, Faas grew up during World War II and like all young German males was required to join the Hitler Youth organization.

As the war ended in 1945, the family fled north to avoid the Russian advance on Berlin and two years later escaped to Munich in West Germany.

He began his career in the Congo (then Algeria) in 1960 aged 27. He was assigned to the Vietnam War in 1962.

On receiving his first Pulitzer in 1965 he said his mission was:

Whilst based in Saigon he worked with the late New York Times correspondent David Halberstam, who said of him: