Vietnam Bao Chi: Warriors of Word and Film

361 Pages·2018·3.4 MB·English

by  Marc Phillip Yablonka

VIETNAM BAO CHI
Warriors of Word and Film
MARC PHILLIP YABLONKA
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Taking on Hollywood: Dale Dye
Soldier First, Photog’ Second: John Del Vecchio
They Were Marines Like Him: Steve Stibbens
Rockin’ and Rollin’ With the Montagnards: Jim Morris
Getting His Knees in the Breeze: Chip Maury
Seeing the Action Through the Viewfinder: Ken Hackman
He Shot More Photos than Bullets: Marvin Wolf
He Had Survived: Frank Lee
Connected with Vietnamese Refugees from Home: John Taylor
Learned How to Deal with the Danger: Bob Bayer
Covering Operation Homecoming: Tom Lincoln
So That Others May Live: Rick Fuller
Memorializing the Troops: Roger Hawkins
Illinois Farm Boy Thrust into a Different World: Mike Boggs
From the Peace Corps to the Coast Guard, San Francisco to Vietnam:
Donn Fry
Requested Vietnam Duty on Friday, the 13th: Chris Jensen
221st, Unique by Any Definition of the Word: Frank Lepore
The Country Needed to Know: Chuck Abbott
MoPic Photog’ Wearing the Blue: Joe Montgomery
From Hot Rod Comics and Hemingway... to Vietnam: Dennis “Bao
Chi Mac” McCloskey
Played an Invaluable Part in Training New Army Photographers:
Stanton Pratt
A Rifle and a Hard Time: Bill Christofferson
Chronicler of the Coast Guard Experience in Vietnam: Paul Scotti
On a Special Purpose Mission: Sonny Craven
Photography Became His World: Robert Frank
Gunner with a Camera: Ron Gorman
Never Ambushed: Larry Letzer
A Magic Slice of Life: David Sommers
No Photography on Night Patrols ... Just Ambushes: Terry Lang
Robert Capa Was His Hero: Dick Durrance
Followed Directions and Kept His Mouth Shut: Bob Douville
Vietnam Seemed Just Fine: Mike Stokey II
There but for the Grace of God Go I: Eddie Carroll
The War as Reported and Photographed by the Civilian Press
A One-way Ticket, $100 and Leica: Catherine Leroy
Everything Is Okay Now: Nick Ut
A Moment of Truth: Eddie Adams
Bringing the War Home: Requiem
Glossary
Select Bibliography
Preface
I became interested in combat correspondents early in my career as a military
journalist. As a writer for National Amvet (later American Veteran magazine), I
wrote pieces on war correspondents Ernie Pyle of the Scripps-Howard News
Service, and Andy Rooney of Stars and Stripes, later to distinguish himself as a
commentator on the CBS-TV news magazine show 60 Minutes. Plain and
simple, I wondered for a long time what it was that would compel a person to
want to record action with pen and paper or camera while bullets flew overhead
and bombs exploded all around.
Because my reportage for the likes of American Veteran, Stars and Stripes
and Vietnam magazine veered toward the war in Indochina, I coincidentally
began to befriend combat correspondents who had covered Southeast Asia. One
was David DeVoss, whose East–West News Service I contacted after having
been a stringer for Reuters and Agence France Presse and looking for more of
the same type of wire service work. David had been a reporter for Time
magazine in Vietnam. He put me in touch with Jim Caccavo. After serving in
Germany and on the DMZ in Korea with the 1st Air Cavalry, Jim left the Army
and became the chief writer/photographer for the Red Cross in Vietnam during
the years 1968–70. He also filed for Newsweek. Through Jim I met Nick Ut,
Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist of the famed “Napalm Girl” photo of
Phan Thi Kim Phuc, and attended a lecture given by Eddie Adams, who took the
equally notable photo of a South Vietnamese general on a Saigon street shooting
a Viet Cong in the head. Both photos are often cited as being among those that
turned the American public against the war. Indeed some Vietnam veterans are
of the opinion that it was photos like these that caused the United States to
“lose” the war in Vietnam. I place quotation marks around the word because I
am one who, having reported from and about Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia
after the war, and having seen the abject poverty and failure of communism in
Indochina after 1975, does not believe we lost it. It’s not my place, however, to
quibble with Vietnam veterans who feel that way about those photos.
Other introductions to and articles about combat correspondents followed.
Famed French photographer Catherine Leroy, whose poignant photographs
graced the pages of Life and Look magazines during the war, was one. Joe
Galloway, famous for putting down his camera and picking up a rifle to help
troops fight off the enemy in the battle for the Ia Drang Valley, and for co-
writing the book We Were Soldiers Once and Young with the late General Hal
Moore, was another. A third was famed British photographer Tim Page, who I
had the pleasure of meeting in the Foreign Correspondents Club in Phnom Penh,
Cambodia, in 1996.
Then in 1997 through circumstances I still don’t quite understand, I was
invited to attend a celebration in Washington, D.C. of the publication of the book
Requiem: By the Photographers Who Died in Vietnam and Indochina, a project
that was the brainchild of Page and German Associated Press photojournalist
Horst Faas. I took the red-eye out of LAX with Jim Caccavo and his friend, and
very quickly mine, Marine Corps combat correspondent Sergio Ortiz. Sergio was
then renowned for taking the last known picture of the four deans of civilian
photojournalists—Larry Burrows, Henri Huet, Kent Potter, and Keisaburo
Shimamoto—before the South Vietnamese Army Huey helicopter they were
flying in to cover 1971’s Operation Lamson 719 crashed in Laos, killing them
all.
It was in Washington that I also had the honor of meeting Steve Stibbens,
who, as a Marine, was the first combat correspondent that Stars and Stripes sent,
in 1962, to cover Vietnam. Meeting Sergio and Steve—the first “bao chi”
(loosely translated, Vietnamese for journalist) I came to know who reported on
and photographed the war in uniform—was the genesis of this book. I went on to
write about Steve, our mutual friend Marvin Wolf—the Press Information
Officer (PIO) for the 1st Air Cavalry and author of Buddha’s Child: My Fight to
Save Vietnam (written with Premier Nguyen Cao Ky), and many other books—
and Frank Lee, who believes that he was the only Chinese-American Marine
combat correspondent in Vietnam for the Milspeak Foundation. (Or if not that,
Lee believes he was the only Chinese-American Marine combat correspondent
from Mississippi in Vietnam, or if not that then the only Chinese-American
Marine combat correspondent from Mississippi who graduated from
predominantly Jewish Fairfax High School in Los Angeles!) Other articles soon
followed, such as the ones I wrote for Sacramento-based Military Magazine on
101st Airborne Division combat correspondent John Del Vecchio, author of The
13th Valley, and Marine “Snuffie” Bob Bayer, former editor at the San Fernando
Valley bureau of the Los Angeles Times.
It’s in the spirit of honoring these brave chroniclers in uniform who brought
the Vietnam War home to us that I offer up this book. For years, there has been a
well-deserved plethora of work by and about those who covered the war as
civilians, but not enough about the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast
Guardsmen who did so while wearing an American uniform. My hope is that this
book will enlighten in some small way those who also honor them.
Author Marc Phillip Yablonka, Chief Warrant Officer-2, California State Military Reserve, ret., with
cameras at the ready, prior to a mission at the Joint Forces Training Base, Los Alamitos, California. (Marc
Phillip Yablonka collection)
Acknowledgements
For his guidance in unknowingly steering me toward the realization of this book,
I offer heartfelt thanks to the former editor-in-chief at both the National Amvet
and American Veteran magazines, Dick Flanagan. In my near 15-year
association with both AMVETS’ publications, and our friendship, Dick taught
me the basics of what it means to write about the US military, past and present.
If there were a boot camp for military journalists, Dick would have been its pre-
eminent drill instructor. Dick, wherever you are, sir, my hat is off to you. In
addition, I’d like to recognize two editors-in-chief of Vietnam magazine, for
which I also wrote: the late Colonel Harry Summers, and Major General Dave
Zabecki, US Army, retired. Both Colonel Summers and Major General Zabecki
ran me through their paces and helped me hone my chops as a military
journalist. I owe them much. So, too, am I indebted to Tom Skeen, for many
years managing editor of Pacific Stars and Stripes in Japan, and today the
managing editor of content at the Walla Walla Union Bulletin newspaper in
Washington State. Tom and I share undergrad school alma maters, but far more
importantly a long-distance friendship of over 25 years. Last but not least, my
heartfelt thanks go to my editor, Brooke C. Stoddard.
Taking on Hollywood: Dale Dye
Writer, actor, director, but above all, Marine Captain Dale Dye put all of his
experiences in Vietnam into the film Platoon, perhaps the most realistic of all
the films about the war in Vietnam. “We wanted to create just one moment for
every Vietnam veteran that he would recognize; a moment when he said to
himself, ‘Yeah, there it is … that’s what I remember.’”
In order to do so, Dye put a lot into recreating our enemy, in particular, the
North Vietnamese Army, whom Dye himself fought against in Vietnam during
three tours of duty between 1965 and 1970.
“The night ambush scene where they emerge from a spooky fog-bank is an
example. Been there and seen that … too many times. And I watched a bunch of
beleaguered company commanders trying to control chaos on a radio during
firefights in Vietnam,” he said.
His portrayal of Captain Harris in the film was from Dye’s own experiences
and remembrances of the war he fought.
“Much of the salty dialogue used by the actors was also from my own
personal observations. We wanted the actors to talk like real bush-beasts and not
like guys mouthing lines they didn’t understand. By the time they finished my
training, they spoke the language,” he said.
When Dale Dye refers to “my training,” he’s talking about Warriors, Inc., an
actual boot camp-like school he created to teach actors how to best be soldiers,
Marines, airmen, and sailors, because the way war was portrayed in Hollywood
for so many years really irked the veteran of combat in Vietnam.
“There were a bunch of movies that pissed me off for their cavalier or
misguided attitudes about military service, combat, and soldiering in general.
The more I saw, the more I became convinced that there was a better way to tell
the real story, and telling the real story was usually much more dramatic and
exciting than what I was seeing on screen … usually written by people who
never served and had rarely even met someone who did.”
He is hard-pressed to remember whether there were certain films in particular
that pushed him to the point that he knew he had to start Warriors, Inc. and “take
on Hollywood” as he called it, but he does remember one.
“It might have been The Boys of Company C. I went to see it with a buddy
who had served with me in Vietnam, and we were shocked by what we saw. I
seem to recall that we repaired to the nearest bar where I declared that I’d had
about enough of that kind of thing. Of course, I had no idea what I was letting
myself in for and knew very little about the lay of the land in Hollywood. But
when you’re ignorant you can do a lot of things people tell you that you can’t
do,”
When asked who his best pupils have been, he alluded to three actors who
just so happen to have the first name Tom.
“I’d have to give the nod to guys like Tom Hanks, Tom Berenger, and Tom
Cruise (maybe there’s something Warrior-like in that first name?) and a few
others. I find that the more serious actors are about telling a story credibly—as
opposed to becoming a movie star—the better they assimilate my training and
the more deeply they understand synergy or playing on a team with a selfless
goal in mind.”
Dye is hesitant to name off a long list of Hollywood actors he has schooled
who have made the grade, but he feels some of them, had they served in the
military, would have done it well and done it honorably.
“There is probably a double handful of working-name actors who would have
made solid soldiers, airmen, Marines, or sailors of one kind or another. I’m still
in contact with most of them, and I never hesitate to point out to them how proud
I am of how well they underwent and employed the training I provided. If you
want to include the hundreds of lesser-known actors I’ve trained for movie or
TV roles over the years, the number goes up exponentially.”
Platoon, the film that he and its director Oliver Stone—himself a soldier with
the 25th Infantry Division in Vietnam—are still best known for because of the
reality that Dye has been striving for in actors and filmmakers alike, has an
interesting history all its own.
“Oliver wrote the original screenplay some 10 years before we actually got