The Associated Press is publishing a new book ‘Vietnam: The Real War’ in October 2013. It, among others, features pictures of the war taken by Art Greenspon who traveled to Vietnam in his 20s to document the fighting.

After five months in the country, Greenspon went on a two-day patrol with soldiers in the A Shau valley, just inside the Laotian border. There, after an ambush and subsequent firefight, Greenspon made a photograph that David Douglas Duncan, the famous Time-Life war photographer, lauded as the “best picture yet of the Vietnam War.”

This particular picture was the inspiration for the promotional poster for the 1986 movie Platoon, written and directed by Oliver Stone and starring Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe and Charlie Sheen.

After his return from Vietnam, were he was wounded several times, Greenspon went on to work as a photographer for the New York Times and later embarked on a successful career in finance.

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