My War - Vietnam
I was an enlisted man, a 71Q20 combat correspondent, working out of the Headquarters, U.S. Army Vietnam Information Office in Long Binh. My time in country was during what became known as the Vietnamization Period, and therefore, many of the subjects of my stories and photos were the Vietnamese civilians and soldiers who would inherit the war once all our combat soldiers departed.
Angels of An Phong Orphanage
Angels of An Phong Orphanage
Her dark brown eyes broke my heart. Her toothy smile captured it.
She was so pretty, so attentive to her little brother, so much a little girl, yet old beyond her years.
I marveled at the inner spirit that sparked her smile—so pure and sweet amid the filth and decay of that orphanage.
She could not have been more than 10 or 12 years old, yet I was captured and captivated by her eyes.
Her gaze was direct, open, and honest, and it cut directly to my soul.
In that mean, hopeless world of daily death and desperation, she was a survivor.
I met her during a reporting trip to Vung Tau, South Vietnam, in 1972. I took her picture, felt bad about it, and made up my mind to help.
I delivered a batch of stuff to the kids on a follow-up visit a month later—three large boxes from home—toys, soap, diapers, candy, and a doll for my Angel of An Phong.
She will always be special—an image etched on my mind, the innocent face of the Vietnam War.
Angels of An Phong Orphanage
Montagnard Children
The Montagnard children met us as we walked into their village.
We dropped in on them from the sky - three men who flew in on a Huey that immediately flew back to Qui Nhon and left us there for the day.
We were the first Americans to visit this remote Central Highlands village in almost two years, or so we were told.
I was a greenhorn who recently arrived in-country on my first reporting assignment in Vietnam, attached to a sergeant who would show me the ropes. He did a good job, and I traveled the country alone after that.
Between the three of us, we had one weapon - a .45 pistol - and two cameras. But we never felt threatened. The village was surrounded by tough Montagnard soldiers, and we focused on getting the story, exploring the village, and taking photos.
Soon, as the sun started to drop below the mountaintops to the west, our ride arrived to take us back to Qui Nhon.
Montagnard Children
The An Phong Orphanage
Children of the An Phong Orphanage
Sun on her face, the little girl at the back stoop of the once-proud French home said not a word.
This strange group of Americans was a diversion from the raw, damp, crowded conditions inside the An Phong Orphanage in Vung Tau.
No playground, no mattresses for the room of cribs and crying babies, no soap, little food, and no running water.
Children died each night, as did some of the French Catholic nuns who worked to ease the suffering.
Before we left, I lifted the little boy next to her up for a ride on my shoulders. It was a rare bit of human contact for him, and he clung tight.
I had to let him go.
I often wonder if either survived.
For more, please read Angels of An Phong.
The An Phong Orphanage
With the ARVN Infantry
ARVN Infantry at Pleiku
The Army of the Republic of Vietnam had a tough assignment in 1971. The Americans were pulling out. The ARVN would be expected to take over the fight, and they weren't ready.
There were some good units; some not so much. ARVN Rangers seemed to be some of their best, and the tankers I worked with seemed to know what they were doing. But many South Vietnamese soldiers just wanted to go home.
These ARVN infantrymen were taking part in a combined arms exercise at Pleiku. The day before, their unit, supported by tanks, artillery, helicopter gunships, and jet fighter/bombers, assaulted a hillside in a mock attack to please the generals in Saigon. Now they were doing it again - this time just for me, an Army journalist who got to Pleiku a day late.
That training exercise went well, but the jets never made it. They were diverted to attack North Vietnamese tanks spotted on the highway north of Pleiku.
When patrols found fifty mortar positions outside the wire, all ARVN units and the handful of Americans still at Pleiku, went on full alert through the night.
None of us slept that night; the enemy tanks disappeared back into the jungle, and the real attack never came.
With the ARVN Infantry
Bob Hope at Long Binh
Thanks, Bob Hope, for Remembering
(The Column I Almost Didn't Write)
Thanks For The Memories - too easy a headline to mark the passing of Bob Hope. I wrote it this way: "Thanks, Bob Hope, For Remembering."
Five words above a piece written by a lazy editorial writer who stitched a dozen words onto the top of an Associated Press article. To my amazement, those were the only words I wrote.
I had started down that trail of memories many times over the years, trying to put into words how much the man had meant to a lonely Kansas draftee - more than 31 years ago in Vietnam.
After all, Bob was only 100. Surely he would live forever. I should have known better; I felt the same way about my father.
Christmas 1971 was a lonely time - for me, for all of us, soldiers on the ass-end of a war that nobody back home had the stomach for anymore.
The night before the show, I spent the night stranded on Nui Chau Chan, a mountaintop outpost above a firebase north of Long Binh. That night, I sat amid the sandbags atop a bunker at the edge of the wire, staring blankly into the blackness that sloped off over the trees to the plain below and the vast, dimly lit circle that was the Long Binh perimeter.
The flares started popping around midnight - green, red, and white - a Christmas present for all of us.
I hadn't planned to be there at all. The assignment was a throw-down story, one I planned to finish by early afternoon Christmas Eve. I was writing about how guys in scattered outposts get paid, and the payroll officer I interviewed said, "Hop in. I'll show you."
I had nowhere else to go, so I jumped in - only to end up hours later at a firebase far away up Highway 1 to the north. The road was posted for travel by convoys only, not single Jeeps. The driver had an M16. I had .45 and a camera.
The two lieutenants in the back had a bundle of cash and a wish to get out and back that day. No time to wait for a convoy. We held our breath and made it.
At the firebase, we hopped a Huey for a quick lift to the top of Nui Chau Chan, which towered above the base.
The chopper dropped us off and disappeared. Last flight of the day, we learned.
This turn of events upset the lieutenants, who immediately retired to a meal and a bunk arranged by another officer. The driver and I made our way to the small mess hall for something to eat, then fended for ourselves. We decided to hang out with the perimeter guards.
They were good guys - maybe a little crazy, but good guys. I didn't feel unsafe, but I didn't really believe they planned to stay awake all night either.
After the Christmas light show, we listened awhile to the sounds in the blackness - a laugh here, a murmur there, a curse on the far side of the mountaintop. The distant thump of artillery and the wild sounds of insects in the jungle put us to sleep, somehow comfortable atop a pile of sandbags.
We returned to Long Binh the next morning - the way we had come in reverse order. This time, we were warned not to travel alone. Made no difference to the officers. So we highballed back down the narrow road that should have been safe but wasn't.
I made it back to the information office in time for my next assignment - to cover Bob Hope's Christmas show at Long Binh.
I was a journalist for the Army, working at the USARV IO. I had been scheduled to travel throughout Vietnam with Bob Hope's troupe, but my opportunity was squelched by a sergeant who outranked me. He wanted the duty, but never wrote a word that I recall.
By my third month in-country, I was somewhat cynical, a bit jaded, and a lot homesick. I didn't think I would laugh at many of the jokes.
But you know, when Bob comes out to put on his show, somehow politics doesn't matter anymore.
The show was a mixed bag meant to appeal to everyone: baseball great Vida Blue, the Hollywood Deb Stars bouncing and jiggling to Les Brown's "Band of Renown," and Jim "Gomer Pyle" Nabors joking, singing, and talking to us like he was an old friend from home.
Bob arrived wearing jungle fatigues covered with unit patches and carrying his ever-present golf club. Although it was 1971 and soldiers fighting the tail-end of this war could have proved to be a tougher crowd than earlier groups, he showed no concern. We were no different in his mind than our fathers in France and our uncles in New Guinea.
And, he was smart enough to know the crowd would appreciate the girl on his arm - Brucene Smith, Miss World-USA, whose Texas good looks were a stark contrast to the dust-covered green of the Army post.
It was somewhat magical how this man somehow knew the secret—how to put smiles on faces that had been blank just moments before, how to restore the twinkle to eyes that had been so cold.
His well-worn routine brought laughs and groans, but we knew the cornball gags were pulled from a vast collection of jokes, skits, and one-liners perfected over many years in a hundred places soldiers, sailors, flyers, and marines gather away from home.
We knew many of those one-liners had been tested on our fathers in earlier times, and that connected all of us.
As we neared the end of 1971, we knew our unpopular war was winding down and that we would not be going home as heroes.
But on that day, at that moment, in a Long Binh amphitheater carved out of the earth by bulldozers, we were the center of the universe - because a 68-year-old comedian with a special feeling in his heart for soldiers cared enough to give up his holiday for us.
Thanks, Bob Hope, for remembering.
Written by Dave Berry, copyright Tyler Morning Telegraph, Memorial Day, 2004. Bob Hope died at the age of 100 on July 29, 2003.
Bob Hope at Long Binh
Live Fire With the ARVN
Live Fire Exercise at Pleiku
Live Fire With the ARVN
Vung Tau Fishermen at Dawn
Vung Tau was a vacation spot, an R&R center for the military. And most soldiers saw the beach from within that controlled compound.
But Vung Tau was also a city with a life apart from the military.
I had already done the story on the R&R facility weeks earlier. This time, I was on a personal mission.
A small group of us made a run from Long Binh to the An Phong Orphanage to deliver three large boxes of goodies gathered by my sister and her friends back in Kansas.
The war - for the moment - was quiet, and we hoped it would stay that way as we traveled by Jeep. Our trip was uneventful, and we made our delivery and spent the night.
The next morning, I was up with the dawn to capture the city waking up. Setting out along the curve of the beach, I walked a mile or so and captured some good images, including this one of fishermen putting out their nets.
Vung Tau Fishermen at Dawn
Business End of M60
M60 Machine Gun Up Close
Don't try this at home.
Photographers are always looking for a better angle, a new look, or a different way of taking a photograph. I guess I was experimenting a bit.
But many viewers of this shot of a South Vietnamese soldier with his finger on the trigger of an M60 machinegun look at me like I'm one crazy b*****d.
The ARVN soldier, a trainee at a basic training center at Pleiku, was locked and loaded with a full belt of ammunition and could have taken my head off with one burst had he wished to do so.
Instead, he just smiled for the camera and adopted his best warrior pose.
Shot in 1972 with my Pentax Spotmatic on Tri-X film.
Business End of M60
Sammy Davis Jr.
Sammy Davis Jr. With the Troops
My press card gave me some special privileges, one of which was covering Sammy Davis Jr. and his show for the troops at Long Binh.
He puts on a good show, and interviewing him afterward was pretty special.
Sammy Davis Jr.
Convoy to Bao Loc
I joined the third platoon of "Charlie Company" before sunrise. I was there to do a story on a Military Police convoy escort unit leading a collection of military trucks from Long Binh to Bao Loc 100 miles northeast up Highway 1.
I rode atop the "Lead" V, one of three V-100 armored cars bristling with machine guns and grenade launchers. I was armed with an M16 and my Pentax.
About three hours into the four-and-a-half-hour trip, the convoy drove up on an ambush that killed several men in an ARVN patrol. I dived the hatch as the lead and middle Vs took up positions to block any attack on the Americans.
Stuck on an open road, we watched as a light observation helicopter (LOH) scouted the treeline, trying to draw fire so it could call in fire from Cobra gunships circling above. But the enemy had fled, disappearing into the jungle.
Convoy to Bao Loc
Montagnard Women
Montagnard Village, Near Qui Nhon
This trip to the Central Highlands was my second foray outside the safety of Long Binh Post, where I was stationed, working as a correspondent for the Information Office of the U.S. Army Vietnam (USARV) Headquarters.
Most of the time, I traveled alone, but on this trip, I was paired with Sgt. Tom Shaner, a short-timer who took me under his wing to show the newbie the ropes.
It was September 1971. The war was entering the Vietnamization period. The creases weren't yet out of my jungle fatigues. And my education was beginning.
The trip took seven days. We basically hitchhiked our way up-country, taking an army bus to Saigon, then a C-130 to Nha Trang (where we spent a day, did a couple of stories, and found time for a morning at the beach). Gorgeous beach, but shark warnings kept us out of the water.
Looking at a Google map today, our route made no sense, but we hopped on a mail plane that took up a roundabout trip to Tuy Hoa, An Khe, Pleiku and Kontum. There, we decided we had had enough of the puddle-jumping mail plane and switched to a C-123 flying straight into Qui Nhon. We both wrote a couple of stories there and burned up some film before hopping on Huey to a village deep in the Central Highlands.
The Montagnard Village - the main story Tom had set out to do - would be an all-day event. The helicopter ferried us deep into the mountains and dropped us off on a trail above the village - just Tom and me and a civilian. Tom said he worked for USAID (Agency for International Development). Today, I think he was probably CIA.
We walked in and had the day to explore a village, shoot photos, and enjoy the friendly people. I never felt afraid for my safety or unwanted. According to the civilian who spoke Vietnamese, the village had not seen an American in more than a year and a half.
It was a magical place. And if you put aside the armed Montagnards patrolling the perimeter and the danger that lurked in the surrounding mountains, you might think it is a nice place to spend some time.
But we were smart enough to know that the Viet Cong owned the night, and when our helicopter swooped in to pick us up before dusk, we were happy to jump aboard.
We left with a good story, some fine memories, and a brass Montagnard bracelet jangling from each of our wrists. But we flew out at treetop level, following the curvature of the road back to Qui Nhon to stay below the outgoing artillery.
Even in 1971, Vietnam could be a dangerous place.
Montagnard Women
Convoy to Bao Loc
South Vietnamese Tanks at Pleiku
The large American combat units that once operated out of the Central Highlands base at Pleiku had already departed by 1972. I was there to report to a small American MACV adviser unit overseeing a collection of Vietnamese military training centers.
When I expressed regret at missing the big show yesterday's combined arms exercise that expended a million dollars worth of munitions for Westmoreland and the Saigon brass, the lieutenant said, "No sweat, we'll do it again."
The next day, the Army did indeed do it again so I could write my story.
Mortar teams blasted a fake hilltop village made of oil drums; tanks targeted it again, and the infantry moved in.
The jets and helicopter gunships were diverted to drive off NVA tanks spotted on the highway toward Kontum.
We stayed on alert all night, awaiting an attack that never came.
ARVN Tanks at Pleiku
Three Orphans
A Phong Orphanage in Vung Tau, South Vietnam, was a desperate place. Cold, damp, crowded, and dirty, it was a last chance for babies born of mixed heritage.
The children in that lonely human warehouse were Vietnamese, fathered by black, white, and brown Americans, Koreans, Thais, Aussies... you get the picture. A child on the street in wartime Vietnam had little chance. A mixed-race child on the street had no chance.
This facility, run by overworked French nuns, had few creature comforts. There was shelter and food, but little human contact... and children died at an alarming rate. The toll on their caregivers was also high.
This shot was taken in late 1971 on the first of my two visits. We tried to help, but our packages provided only a brief respite from the misery that was An Phong.