by Denise Chong
“Go back to school. Go home to your family,” Faas told him.
“AP my family now, I want take picture, too,” Nick replied.
In a family of ten sons and one daughter, tenth-born Nick was the older of two boys still left at home with their widowed mother. As long as Nick wasn’t in school, he was a target for recruitment by both the Viet Cong and the government. As it turned out, the eleventh-born answered Nick’s call to enlist in the government army; conveniently, their mother had named them both “Ut,” meaning last-born.
La, the seventh-born, had brought Nick to Saigon to live with him and his wife, in hopes that he’d pick up some English and, like him, find work with a Western news agency. Every night, La brought back beat-up old cameras to teach Nick how to operate them. As well, he brought home stacks upon stacks of blowups of combat shots; he could talk for hours about their photographic merits. He had lectured passionately about the senselessness of war and spoken of how pictures that showed its horrors could help end it.
Nick already had in his mind’s eye the evil of war. Growing up in Long An in the Mekong Delta, he had shrunk from many a dead body, hours old but already grotesquely bloated in the heat. He’d seen severed heads impaled on bamboo poles, a smoked cigarette stuck between the lips—a last defiling to identify the dead as Viet Minh.
One fall day in 1965, La came home and told his wife that a photographer volunteering for the AP had been killed. Bernard Kolenberg, back in Vietnam for only one week after a stint of several weeks earlier that year with an American newspaper, had died in the crash of a South Vietnamese military plane. “I’m going to be next,” La told Arlette, marking himself for death.
Eight days later, La’s prediction came true. He had returned to the front lines in the Mekong Delta, where he’d been wounded by machine-gun fire three months before. While covering a fight between South Vietnamese troops and the Viet Cong, he was hit in the chest and arm. He was waiting to be evacuated by helicopter when the Viet Cong overran the makeshift aid station and finished off the wounded.
Despite Faas’s initial refusal to hire Nick, Arlette persisted. Finally, Faas let Nick run errands for the darkroom technician. Nick kept taking home old cameras to practice shooting. He started by taking photographs around the home, and of Arlette’s maid, then tried taking pictures from the window of the AP van, of people in motion, of passing traffic on Saigon streets. Faas moved one of his pictures on the wire: a cigar-smoking Vietnamese kid buffing the boot of an American GI. But his big break came the morning there was no photographer in to act on a tip that came to Faas: yet another protesting Buddhist monk was going to set fire to himself. Faas sent Nick, who came back in triumph with close-ups of the monk aflame, then the charred body, sitting upright, then slumped over. Faas rejected frame after frame: “These pictures are ugly,” he told Nick. “Newspapers won’t publish these. A better picture would be somebody covering the body, people in the background looking on, crying.”
Under the tutelage of Faas and another AP colleague, Henri Huet, Nick became a skilled combat photographer. From the start, Nick believed that his older brother’s fate, an early death, awaited him. That belief drove him to go where the action was, to not come back until he had a picture he was happy with.
In Nick’s fifth year of covering combat he was wounded. He was covering a ground incursion into Cambodia, and took shrapnel in the stomach from a rocket. But his closest brush with death came one year later, when he missed being among the tally of dead when a helicopter flown by the South Vietnamese air force crashed over the Laotian jungle in early 1971, killing all eleven on board. Four were foreign photographers, including the legendary Larry Burrows from Life magazine, their assignment to cover the first major test of Vietnamization, a South Vietnamese foray—without American advisers or troops—against North Vietnamese troops in southern Laos (it would fail; South Vietnamese troops suffered heavy losses and had to retreat). Nick had been among the journalists waiting out days of bad weather for the go-ahead for the chopper flight to tour South Vietnamese bases before joining up with the most forward of South Vietnamese ground troops. At the last moment, Henri Huet asked Nick for his seat, explaining that he wanted to get in a last assignment before taking R&R leave in Hong Kong. It was Huet who first called him Nick, and so the young photographer took the name for his own, in memory of his mentor.
Arlette grew afraid that she’d lose Nick to the war. Another brother of La’s, who’d arrived from the battlefield just in time to throw himself on her husband’s casket at the funeral, had died in combat months later. Arlette herself was superstitious. Her house address in Saigon was 1010, and La had been killed on the tenth day of October. She talked to her mother-in-law about what else Nick might do. The old woman depended on Nick for financial help to hire laborers to work her fields, and to pay the taxes exacted by the government and the “donations” asked for by the Viet Cong. “Ut loves taking pictures,” she replied.
ON THE EVENING OF JUNE 5, A NIGHT VISITOR came to Tung and Nu’s house. He was the leader of several Viet Cong commandos. “Mother, do not move away from your house,” he told Nu. “Visitors are building tunnels. You can move your family to the forest when we complete our work.” This was not a request but an order. “Do not go into the town. There are government soldiers gathering there. If you go there, you will bring everybody trouble!”
When news had first broken of the Easter Offensive, people across the south feared a repeat of the Tet Offensive, that the Communists would “strike everywhere.” In Trang Bang, houses began to empty as people chose to flee, mostly to Saigon. The way Tung and Nu saw it, their family was too large to move and had nowhere to go. Auntie Tiem in Tay Ninh had no room for them, and they knew no one in Saigon. The noodle shop still had customers, and the animals required daily care. Besides, the house and possessions represented their life’s investment. The family decided to stay, to gamble that fate would play out in their favor.
The offensive had not been a complete surprise. Some weeks before, an infiltrator from Hanoi had visited Nu in her shop. By her physique, Nu was certain she was a northerner. The girl asked Nu to observe movements of the South Vietnamese military along Route 1. Nu saw no choice but to keep accurate count. What if she was being tested?
That afternoon, the girl returned.
“Mother, did you have the usual customers this morning?”
Nu gave her tallies, how many trucks, moving in what direction.
As Nu expected, she was asked to assume greater risks. A contact, never the same, came bearing a basket: “Mother, here are some areca nuts.” Sliced, boiled and sundried, smeared with a lime paste, the nut was a stimulant that also kept the mouth from going dry. Inside the basket was concealed a message, which Nu was supposed to hand off upon hearing a code word. Other times, the contact would give Nu an address and she would have to deliver the message. As Nu could neither read nor be away from the shop without arousing suspicion, she had to enlist Tung. The Viet Cong showed their appreciation, once bringing her a basket of large betel leaves which, fresh, were ideal for wrapping food and, dried, made all-purpose household cloths. Once, wrapped inside one was a Viet Cong flag pin of a yellow star against a split background of blue and red. The star represented the people, the blue, the peaceful north, the red, the bloody south.
The visitors were building their tunnels right under the family’s house. Throughout the night, muffled sounds of mechanical punching came from beneath the room housing the hearth. Cracks began to appear in the floor.
Around midnight, the leader came to Nu. “Mother, we need the doors of your house.” As they began to unhinge each of the seven doors, including the double-louvered ones on the three front entrances, Nu called out angrily, “Don’t do that!” She was ignored. Seeing through the open doorways piles of guns and ammunition, Tung and Nu made the decision to move sooner rather than later. They prepared to make for the Caodai temple, deciding that it was best to stay near the house, so that someone coul
d come back for food and medicines, to care for the pigs and to guard against looting. They also didn’t want to go far for fear of running into government night patrols, which would most certainly be out if, as the Viet Cong said, government soldiers were setting up a position in town. Another reason not to go far was Great Uncle; his chronic stomach problems had flared up and it was all he could do to take a few steps. Tung and Nu rigged up a hammock to support him as he walked, and then they woke the younger children, who had slept through the noise.
Nine-year-old Phuc rubbed her eyes and saw that it was still dark. “Oh, Ma!” she said, happy to see Nu. “Why haven’t you gone to the shop?!”
“Shh! Ask nothing!”
Phuc saw a black-clad figure in the doorway and began to cry.
“Don’t worry,” the Viet Cong assured her. “We are here for a visit only.”
Nu requested permission to leave the house, citing the need to seek help for the old man’s worsening pains. The leader gave no argument. In the darkness, the family half ran, half stumbled down the footpath. Five minutes later, they slipped through the gate in the rear grounds of the temple and headed for an outbuilding there behind the main building, normally used for social functions and to house visiting dignitaries from the Holy See.
Inside, the family found several neighboring families encamped, some thirty people in all, mostly women and children. Among them were Grandmother Tao, Auntie Be, Auntie Anh and her three children. Auntie Anh’s husband was away in the province, and Grandfather Kiem was at the Holy See in Tay Ninh, where he often stayed for weeks at a time. Inside were also eight or ten government soldiers. The one with the two-way radio fired questions at the latest arrivals: Did they know where Viet Cong were hidden? “They are everywhere!” How many were they? “We don’t know! There are many!” The soldiers let it be. “We are waiting for the big attack,” they said.
The morning of June 6 was announced by the distant rattle of small arms fire. The first sound of mortar fire sent everyone scrambling for the makeshift hams in the dormitory rooms opposite the open foyer, one for the women and children, one for the men, echoing the segregation in the main temple. The hams were piled-up sandbags with timbers laid across the top.
It soon became evident to all that the fighting was in the town’s business district. The soldiers relaxed. The children played, running back and forth across the foyer. At lunchtime, the women cooked rice for their families in the small kitchen off it.
Late in the afternoon, after a long silence, suggesting either a lull in the fighting or an end to it, one woman asked permission to go to her house for food for her family. The soldiers shrugged, offering no opinion. The woman left, and Nu decided she would go to tend the pigs at home. Along the footpath, she met the same woman running back. “If you stay in your house you will die!” the woman yelled. “The government is going to attack here with rockets!”
When American combat troops first arrived in Vietnam in 1965, the U.S. command agonized about “rules of engagement” in this war without a front. Among their unwritten rules was one that allowed bombing strikes to be called in on South Vietnamese villages if American forces had received even a single round of sniper fire from the general vicinity. While many American consciences were troubled about civilians being fair game under dubious conditions, the South Vietnamese military command had no similar qualms.
Nu turned back. She was almost at the temple outbuilding when an incoming shell struck the ground in front of her, and she was half buried under a spray of dirt. A couple of minutes later, unhurt, she got up and scurried inside. Nothing more happened that day, but the soldiers kept the crowd encamped for a second night.
By the morning of June 7, the fighting had moved from the business district of the town to its eastern edge. So close were the rockets and shells exploding that the terrified villagers feared for their homes. The air in the crowded hams was so stale that people had to take turns by the air holes. Late afternoon again brought a lengthening silence. Worried about the pigs going yet another day without food and water, Nu asked for permission to go home. Too dangerous, said the soldiers, pointing out that the South Vietnamese army had moved a unit of soldiers into positions near the temple and that the Viet Cong could be anywhere.
ON THE MORNING OF JUNE 8, ON ROUTE 1 just past Cu Chi, Nick and his driver encountered refugees clogging the road, heading east. Women carried babies, women and men shouldered poles balancing a hodgepodge of clothing and pots and pans, children carried babies and led water buffalo on ropes. The old and injured rode on oxcarts. The location of Trang Bang was obvious by the heavy smoke hanging in the air above it and the planes circling the skies. The sound of Soviet- and Chinese-made weapons confirmed the presence of mainforce North Vietnamese soldiers. Immediately, Nick knew why the skirmish had gone on as long as it had. The enemy’s rocket-propelled grenades, recoilless rifles and anti-aircraft guns were the kind of portable artillery that could fire from a fair distance and still inflict serious damage.
Short of the town, traffic was stopped behind concertina barbed wire stretched across the road. Ut flashed his bao chi pass to the military police, identifying him as a journalist. He could go no farther than the small elevated bridge. Several soldiers and journalists stood there. Like Nick, the journalists were in battle fatigues, bought from Saigon street markets. The uniforms made it easier for them to move freely among the army.
As the morning progressed, more than a dozen foreign newsmen arrived. Besides Nick, there was the NBC cameraman who’d given Nick the tip about the fighting, Le Phuc Dinh. He was there with correspondent Arthur Lord. A second television crew belonged to the British Independent Television Network (ITN), with correspondent Christopher Wain. Among the print reporters was Fox Butterfield of The New York Times. There were at least three other photographers: a competitor from UPI who, like Nick, was Vietnamese; David Burnett, a stringer for Life; and Alexander Shimkin, a former Peace Corps worker turned freelancer. Three British journalists, among them William Shawcross for The Sunday Times, arrived by chance: the roadblock had waylaid their plans to take a sight-seeing trip to the Holy See.
Major Cuong, whose word put out the night before had brought several journalists from Saigon, was on the bridge. “I decided not to use air strikes yesterday,” the major told Fox Butterfield. “Many soldiers asked me to use air, but the villagers were against it. One air strike and the whole village is gone.” He credited government forces with having driven the Viet Cong, on the first and second days of fighting, from the marketplace to the eastern edge of town, near the temple.
The objective on this third day of fighting was to drive the Viet Cong into the treeline, and therefore out of town, so that the highway could be reopened. The plan that day was to launch a ground assault with air support. It did not need to be said that government troops would have been unwilling to take on even a small Communist unit without such support.
Two or three times that morning, South Vietnamese planes came in on bombing runs. These were mainly A1-E Skyraiders, the outmoded, propeller-driven, low-flying aircraft that the Americans gave to the South Vietnamese early on to use as training planes for combat missions. The runs were in tandem. The first plane would drop high-explosive bombs intended to blow covers off bunkers or tunnels; the second would deliver napalm, to burn or suffocate anyone still alive. A couple of times that morning, helicopter gun ships came in to fire into the treeline to respond to anti-aircraft fire. Ground assaults followed the bombing runs: government soldiers, moving single file, swung caterpillar-like in wide arcs through waist-high grass in the fields. Nick got shots of airplanes coming in. He shot soldiers on their bellies aiming grenade-launchers and firing machine guns, and soldiers rushing out the wounded on stretchers. These were the same images he’d recorded hundreds of times before.
The crowd at the roadblock, many of whom had been stopped there three days, was like an audience at a state fair. At the sound of an approaching aircraft, they would stand, violently e
ngaged by the explosions and fires half a mile away. In between times, mothers and big sisters busied themselves picking lice out of the hair of little ones. As if the lulls were intermissions, a boy peddled ice cones from his bicycle to the line of stalled traffic. Some of the crowd, crouched in the shade of their vehicles, snacked on bananas or savored the sticky, sweet pulp of the last of the star apples of the season.
THE CROWD ENCAMPED INSIDE THE OUT-building found the third morning of fighting to be alternately deafeningly loud and terrifying and deathly silent and calm. The air was acrid with the smell of high explosives. They saw only what was visible from the hams, through the windows and doorway on three sides of the building. They heard the drone of airplanes, the beating of helicopter rotors, the burst of shells, the staccato of machine-gun fire. So near did explosives drop to the temple grounds that branches and tree trunks, chunks of walls and rooftops of nearby houses landed inside the perimeter fence, or bounced off the walls and roof of the outbuilding.
Two or three times that morning, without warning, the world seen through the windows was transformed into luminous red. When a recognizable reality came back into view, fire was leaping through the air, across treetops; even the ground seemed wet with it. “Fire is falling from heaven!” cried the villagers.
A soldier explained the napalm bomb: “When you see the fire, the bomb has already fallen.”
In the silent lulls, sometimes the crowd caught sight of uniformed North Vietnamese soldiers dragging wounded colleagues to safety. It was the first time many had seen “soldiers from Hanoi.” Reassured by the presence of government soldiers to protect them, they also agreed that it was unthinkable that either the Communists or the government would attack a holy place.