Vietnam War journalists reunite in O.C. to share stories

Orange County Register: Vietnam War journalists reunite in O.C. to share stories
WESTMINSTER – They call themselves the Old Hacks. They're starting to retire now, but in their younger years, they slogged through the jungle or balanced cameras out of helicopters, trying to tell the story of the Vietnam War.

They gathered Sunday in Little Saigon to share their combat photos and their war stories, and to pay tribute to the local Vietnamese journalists who worked alongside them. They were also there to address a question they knew would come in a community built by war refugees: Did they have any regrets about their coverage?

"We made a lot of mistakes, all of us. We made a lot of misjudgments," said Richard Pyle, the Saigon bureau chief for the Associated Press during part of the war. In particular, he and others said during a public forum that they wish they had been better able to nail down the corruption and political weakness of the South Vietnamese leadership before it collapsed.

But, Pyle added, "We always did the best we could to cover the story, and I can't think of a story that would be more difficult to cover. ... We did the best we could, and I'm proud of that."

Sunday's reunion was the first of its kind in Southern California, and drew a few dozen former war reporters and photographers whose coverage was unlike anything since. They could go almost anywhere and report almost anything – "every bloody aspect," said Carl Robinson, an Associated Press photojournalist during the war.

Three of the photographers in the crowd had won Pulitzer Prizes for showing war up close. David Kennerly captured an American soldier alone on a desolated hill, surrounded by splintered trees. Neil Ulevich showed the beating and hanging of a man during a massacre in Thailand. And Nick Ut snapped one of the war's most searing images, a young girl running naked, burned by napalm.

But it was Dang Van Phuoc whom reunion hosts singled out for special recognition. He was a local photographer hired by the Associated Press, one of about half a dozen Vietnamese journalists at the reunion.

Phuoc, who now lives in Irvine, lost an eye covering the war; reunion organizer Ray Herndon called him the "bravest photographer in the war." His photos captured North Vietnamese soldiers being led away and refugees trying to escape the fall of Saigon.

But asked to discuss his work, he walks to another of his images hanging on the wall in a display of war photographs. It shows a muscular American soldier helping to evacuate an elderly Vietnamese woman as smoke curtains a nearby hillside.

"We just tried to show what we saw," said Phuoc, now 75. "The pictures would tell the story."