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With a book called 'Keeping Score,' I really did want to write a book about the Korean War, because I felt that it is the least understood war in the American cultural imagination. So I set out with the idea that Americans didn't know much about the Korean War and that I was going to try to fix a tiny bit of that.

I was a war correspondent. I've watched great people crumble under pressure and make bad decisions.

I was in a peacetime army. It was like something out of a Le Carre novel: studying the habits of your enemy. It was very exciting. It's interesting living life as a civilian, then on Friday night you're parachuting into a foreign country.

I was drafted during the Korean War.

I don't think I'd call myself a war writer, but I would probably say I'm a writer who has written about war.

Initially, I tried to become an aid worker and someone who could help people, but I was unsuccessful in convincing anyone that I could be of any use. So I went and became a war correspondent without any experience in war or in being a correspondent. So that was daring.

My job is to put words together and tell a story. If that doesn't work for you, it's not a war crime.