Marc Phillip Yablonka - Vietnam Bao Chi: Warriors of Word and Film

Warriors of Word and Film

MARC PHILLIP YABLONKA

Published in the United States of America and Great Britain in 2018 by

CASEMATE PUBLISHERS

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Copyright 2018 Marc Phillip Yablonka

Hardback Edition: ISBN 978-1-61200-687-1

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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 EastWest 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 196870. 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. Its 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 dont 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 photojournalistsLarry Burrows, Henri Huet, Kent Potter, and Keisaburo Shimamotobefore the South Vietnamese Army Huey helicopter they were flying in to cover 1971s 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 Stevethe first bao chi (loosely translated, Vietnamese for journalist) I came to know who reported on and photographed the war in uniformwas the genesis of this book. I went on to write about Steve, our mutual friend Marvin Wolfthe Press Information Officer (PIO) for the 1st Air Cavalry and author of Buddhas Child: My Fight to Save Vietnam (written with Premier Nguyen Cao Ky), and many other booksand 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 .

Its 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, Id 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.