An award-winning journalist who covered wars from Vietnam to Iraq has died.

Peter Arnett was 91 years old.

Arnett died on Dec. 17 in Newport Beach, surrounded by friends and family, The Associated Press reported. His daughter said he died from prostate cancer, The New York Times reported.

“Peter Arnett was one of the greatest war correspondents of his generation — intrepid, fearless, and a beautiful writer and storyteller. His reporting in print and on camera will remain a legacy for aspiring journalists and historians for generations to come,” AP’s United Nations chief correspondent Edith Lederer said. Lederer also covered the Vietnam War from 1972 to 1973.

Arnett was born in New Zealand in 1934 and got his start as a journalist when he got a job at his local newspaper after leaving high school. The New York Times said he dropped out of school.

“I didn’t really have a clear idea of where my life would take me, but I do remember that first day when I walked into the newspaper office as an employee and found my little desk, and I did have a — you know — enormously delicious feeling that I’d found my place,” Arnett shared in 2006.

He worked for the Southland Times for a few years before deciding to move to London and a larger newspaper. But when his ship stopped in Thailand, his fate was changed and he started working for Bangkok World and eventually a newspaper in Laos, which would ultimately lead him to the AP.

In 1962, he was part of the Saigon bureau after he was kicked out of Indonesia for angering the country’s leadership.

In 1966, he was reporting from the front lines of the Vietnam War. The AP said he was standing near a battalion commander when an officer stopped to read a map. The commander was shot inches from the journalist.

“As the colonel peered at it, I heard four loud shots as bullets tore through the map and into his chest, a few inches from my face,” Arnett recounted in 2013. “He sank to the ground at my feet.”

He wrote the soldier’s obituary: “He was the son of a general, a West Pointer and a battalion commander. But Lt. Colonel George Eyster was to die like a rifleman. It may have been the colonel’s leaves of rank on his collar, or the map he held in his hand, or just a wayward chance that the Viet Cong sniper chose Eyster from the five of us standing in that dusty jungle path.”

He won the Pulitzer for his coverage of the war in 1966.

Bureau chief Malcolm Brown taught Arnett how to stay alive in the middle of a war zone, including not to stand near a medic or radio operator because the enemy will target them. Also, when you hear a gunshot, don’t look around for where it came from because the next shot will likely find its target, the AP reported.

He covered the Vietnam War until after end in 1975, the AP reported. He remained in the country writing about the chaotic evacuation of Saigon, and after Vietnam reunified, the Times said.

Arnett was with the AP until 1981, when he left for CNN in the cable news channel’s infancy.

He interviewed Saddam Hussein in 1991 and Osama bin Laden in 1997 during his time at CNN, The Washington Post reported.

Within a decade, he found himself on the front lines of another war, the war in Iraq, where he brought the coverage home, into the living rooms of viewers.

He remained in Baghdad despite most journalists leaving before the U.S.-led attack.

Arnett delivered the news from his hotel room via cellphone as missiles rained down.

“There was an explosion right near me, you may have heard,” he calmly said as booms and air-raid sirens screamed.

“I think that took out the telecommunications center,” he said at one point, explaining, “They are hitting the center of the city.”

The Times called him “the eyes and ears of millions around the world” as the last Western reporter left in the city.

He said he covered 17 wars around the globe, The New York Times reported. The Washington Post said it was between 15 and 20.

He left CNN in 1999 after the network retracted an investigative report that he did not investigate but did narrate about the use of Sarin nerve gas on deserting American soldiers in Laos in 1970, according to the AP.

Arnett then went to NBC and National Geographic, covering the second Gulf War. He was fired in 2003 for speaking with Iraqi state TV and criticizing the U.S. military’s strategy. The comments were considered anti-American, the AP reported.

He returned to TV about a week after his dismissal, working for broadcasters in Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates and Belgium.

Over his decades-long career, he also created documentaries, wrote two books and hit the lecture circuit, the Times said.

Arnett turned to the classroom in 2007, teaching journalists at Shantou University in China, and then retired seven years later, moving to Southern California.

Arnett left behind his wife and their two children.

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