Too flip
Sir: It was crass of Nicholas Coleridge to ridicule Sydney Schanberg (Diary, 19 January) and thereby his colleagues who also reported the war in Cambodia. Unlike the American MACV operation in Vietnam, there never were helicopters 'always stand- ing by to chauffeur him up-country and to deliver him home again'. There were only two known helicopters in the country and they were kept on standby in the Presiden- tial Compound. Sydney, like the rest of us, went up the road to war by car, van, motorbike and jeep and more than 20 journalists and cameramen were killed doing it: And . . . his dispatches were mostly descriptive'. Meaning he had to get off his backside and go to the places where the stories and risks were? Too flip Coleridge! Michael Nicholson
Grayswood House, Grayswood, Surrey
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