Vietnam through the Lens: Part One
By Edward Palm
Dong Ha, Vietnam, 1967 Click to see Full-Size
There is an old joke that has long made the rounds among serious photographers: a much celebrated photographer finds himself the guest of honor at a dinner party, and in front of the other guests, the hostess gushes over him as follows:
“Oh, your photos are so wonderful! You must have a really good camera.”
Later, in the middle of dinner, the photographer feels obliged to repay the compliment in kind:
“This dinner is so wonderful,” the photographer exclaims. “You must have some really good pots and pans.”
Anyone who has seriously pursued photography—as a vocation or an avocation—knows that, while good cameras and lenses can certainly make a difference—the most important piece of equipment any photographer possesses can be found between his or her ears. It is the ability to
Dong Ha, Vietnam, 2002 Click to see Full-Size
see, in the fullest sense of the word, that counts. The compliment that every photographer really wants to hear is that he or she has a “good eye,” meaning the ability to isolate, amid thewelter of human experience, an image “commensurate with [his or her] capacity for wonder.” If the photographer is very good, very lucky, or both, the resulting image conveys to the rest of us something of what the photographer saw. Still photographs can even transcend the photographed object or scene in ways the photographer never anticipated, becoming universally meaningful or even iconic. Joe Rosenthal’s famous image of the Iwo Jima flag raising and Eddie Adams’s image of General Loan executing a Viet Cong suspect during the Tet Offensive of 1968 come to mind.
Frankly, I have always believed that a photograph should speak for itself—it should have an intrinsic appeal or meaning for the viewer. Such is the classic distinction between a “photograph” and a “snapshot.” But I also believe that sharing the back story, the circumstances and events surrounding the creation of a memorable photograph, can add to our appreciation. Only artistic snobs feel otherwise. The question, then, is what I saw in capturing these two images.
I took the first photo in the late summer or early fall of 1967, when I was serving as a rifleman and patrol leader with the Marine Corps’ Combined Action Program. Recognizing that the war would never be won by firepower alone, and that someone had to win the hearts and minds of the people, the Corps selected young enlisted Marines to live and work alongside Vietnamese Popular Force (“PF”) soldiers in their home villages. A typical Combined Action Unit consisted of 12 enlisted Marines and a Navy corpsman. No officers were assigned to the units themselves. Our primary mission was to train and inspire the PFs. Our secondary mission was to make friends and win over the villagers. Ultimately, the program was grounded in an article of faith. At the beginning of the two-week school all newly selected CAP Marines attended, the instructor reassured us that the people would warm to us because, unlike those brutal French professionals that preceded us, young Americans are inherently likeable. We were “innocents abroad.”
The CAP unit I was assigned to when I took the first photo was located between Dong Ha and Cam Lo only about five miles south of the Demilitarized Zone that used to divide North from South Vietnam. My CAP unit was the Third Platoon of Papa Company, Third Combined Action Group—known on our radio net as “Tiger Papa Three.” We took pride in that handle, although it was largely wishful thinking. In reality, we were not known for our derring-do. And, unlike Blake’s fabled tiger, we neither burned “bright . . . in the forests of the night” nor impressed anyone with our “fearful symmetry.”
Truth be told, we were ineffectual. We didn’t know the language. We ran roughshod over the culture. Our PFs were largely indifferent to our presence and would not follow our lead. As we would eventually learn, the Viet Cong infrastructure was deeply entrenched in our village, and our PFs had made their accommodation with it—a fact we would not fully appreciate until December 4th of that year. As one wag put it, the V.C. could have placed a sign on a hut in the middle of the village proclaiming it to be the headquarters of the V.C. infrastructure, and we would have passed blithely by it. We couldn’t read Vietnamese.
But please don’t judge us, or the Marine Corps, too harshly. It was a lot to ask of young Americans, most of whom were uneducated and culturally conditioned to view Asian people as backward and their way of life as inferior to ours. In that time and place—for us at least—the cultural gulf seemed unbridgeable. Still, I don’t regret becoming a Combined Action Marine. It gave me an insight into the culture that the average Marine didn’t get. I have also come to realize that, whether it worked or not, the Combined Action Program stands as an enlightened gesture of dissent against a search and destroy strategy that was immoral and ultimately self-defeating. All that, however, I came to appreciate in later life. What I really liked about the program at the time was the unparalleled freedom it offered.
We had no officers out in the village, and all of us assigned to Papa Three were young first-termers, not career Marines. Discipline was lax. Because our PFs and the villagers conspired to keep us and the enemy out of each other’s way, we grew complacent. Most of our patrols were walks in the park—an effort to see and be seen. No one minded that I carried my camera (a Yashica SLR at the time) on most patrols or that I concentrated more on taking pictures than looking for signs of the enemy.
For the most part, the people in the hamlets were not friendly. They would hold themselves aloof, trying to ignore us and go on with their lives as we passed by or even among them. Still, I would like to believe that in some of my photos I have captured glimmers of human sympathy, if not mutual understanding.
The photo of a young boy carrying his even younger brother is clearly not one of them. After forty-plus years, I don’t remember the circumstances surrounding all the photos I took back then, but I do remember taking this one. It was late summer or early fall. The weather was good, the patrol uneventful. We were walking along a six- or seven-foot hedgerow that surrounded much of the principal hamlet in our village, when we came upon these two kids heading in the opposite direction. I halted the patrol and put my hand out, motioning for the kids to stop. I could tell they were frightened and confused, especially when I knelt down in front of them and raised my camera to my eye. It occurred to me later that they may not have even seen a camera before and didn’t know what it was. Even if they did, they probably couldn’t understand why I would want to take their picture.
I remember trying to smile and to tell them it was OK, hoping just the tone of my voice would reassure them. We were in heavy shade, with the camera facing an area of open sunlight. As a photographer, I wasn’t happy about the lighting. I also bracketed exposures and tried a few close-ups of the younger brother. A typical photographer, I didn’t stop to think about how I was prolonging the anxiety for these two kids. But, if I say so myself, the photograph turned out better than I expected.
Did I think all that through and plan it that way, or was I just luckier than I had a right to be? I don’t remember.
Of course, all this begs the question of what I saw in this image that I considered to be worth preserving? All of us, photographers included, ultimately see only what we’re culturally conditioned to see. I’m sure I was struck by what to me, as a westerner, seemed an inordinate responsibility to place on the shoulders—literally as well as figuratively—of one so young. I know that I wasn’t hearing the Hollies’ song “He Ain’t Heavy . . .He’s My Brother” echoing in my head. That song wasn’t released until 1969. I have recently learned, however, that a famous line drawing of a young boy carrying his brother dates to 1941 and that Father Flanagan adopted the image and its caption as the motto of his “Boys Town” orphanage : “He ain’t heavy, Father . . . he’s my brother.” I don’t recall seeing the image itself, but I do think the sentiment had become a common platitude by the time I was growing up. Did I recognize the two boys I photographed as emblematic of that platitude? I would like to think so, but again, I don’t remember.
Flash forward to 1999. Thanks to the miracle of the Internet—an innovation I could not have imagined in 1967—my old Papa Three sergeant, Bill Cooke, and I found one another. We had not stayed in touch after I rotated back to the States in 1968, and we didn’t even remember one another’s names. But one day in 1999, soon after he had gotten his first computer, Bill was surfing the net, looking for information on the Combined Action Program, when he suddenly found a photo of his much younger self in Vietnam—one I had taken and posted to a Web site. He got in touch with me, and we have been friends ever since.
Part Two of “Vietnam: Through the Lens” appeared on Monday, July 6th.
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Edward Palm is the Dean of Social Sciences and Humanities at Olympic College in Bremerton, WA. Dr. Palm is also a retired Major in the US Marine Corps and a Vietnam Veteran.
Photograph appears courtesy and copyright of the author.
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