Viet Nam 1970-71
Nui Ba Den (Black Virgin Mountain) in Tay Ninh Province stands over 3200 feet tall. Seen here from a small fire support base (11th Armored Cavalry Regiment). The extinct volcano had a US Communications base near the summit and was sprinkled with VC caves throughout the center elevations. © 1971, MJ Roche.
View at Di An, February, 1971. Generating station. right, with piss tube and latrine at center, left. (11th Armored Cavalry Regiment). Foreground, left, are the sand bags at the front of the 17th PID (Public Information Detachment) hooch and office building that were designed to minimize casualties during rocket attacks. At right, center, two Vietnamese contractors adjust the fuel tanks feeding the source of local electricity. The noisy generators ran 24 hours a day, but you only realized they were there when they were shut down for maintenance! © 1971, MJ Roche.
Inside this edition, SP5 Albert Gore, Jr., recounts the events of a battle at Fire Support Base Blue in an article for the "Castle Courier" Engineer Command Newspaper on April 5, 1971. Edited at our newspaper offices , US Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) near Ton San Nhut airfiled. Drawing by SP4 William Smith, photos by SP5 H. Alan Leo. © 1971, MJ Roche.
SP5 Albert Gore, Jr., recounts the events of a battle at Fire Support Base Blue in an article for the "Castle Courier" Engineer Command Newspaper on April 5, 1971. Edited at newspaper offices at US Military Assistance Command Vietnam near Long Binh. Drawing by SP4 William Smith, photos by SP5 H. Alan Leo. Gore would later serve as a Congressman, Senator and Vice President of the US under Bill Clinton. He was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and won a 2007 Oscar for his documentary film addressing global warming ("An Inconvenient Truth"). © 1971, MJ Roche.
SP5 Albert Gore, Jr., recounts the events of a battle at Fire Support Base Blue in an article for the "Castle Courier" Engineer Command Newspaper on April 5, 1971. Edited at newspaper offices at US Military Assistance Command Vietnam near Long Binh. Drawing by SP4 William Smith, photos by SP5 H. Alan Leo. © 1971, MJ Roche.
Henry Luce III, the elder son of the founder and editor in chief of Time Inc., presents the "Thomas Jefferson Award" for best military offset newspaper in the world. Accepting for the Engineer Command, Long Binh, RVN, is the editor of the"Castle Courier" newspaper, in May, 1971, at the State Department, Washington, D.C. Lief Ericson, actor and star of the "High Chaparral" TV series, served as emcee (right at podium).
The nightly "Circle" at Long Binh between the hooches, next to the basketball pad. On this night I was given a lesson in how to drink fine wines properly. The tipped chair, far right, came from the 557th LE Engineer Bn., part of the 18th Engineer Brigade. A cassette tape played on the table provided the tunes. © 1971, MJ Roche.
LEFT BLANK INTENTIONALLY...I turned in or destroyed all of theses images!
One of our duties as US Army photo journalists in Viet Nam was to assist in the verification of daily body counts for senior officers. This meant being choppered in to remote sites and photographing the killed-in-action to prove kills, in case body counts were questioned. This included friendly as well as enemy dead. I never retained any of these images.
The news article that changed lives for REMFs in Vietnam. It detailed the ugly underbelly of the culture in the rear areas. Some PIO (public information office or journalists) personnel whose units were named in the article were reassigned to other duties. Steam baths inside the wire were forced to close. Drug testing prior to DEROS became routine. The American public's dislike of the war only intensified and, even though day-to-day life was less comfortable for GIs, it likely hastened the end of the conflict.
Former enemies meet in a Weapons Museum in Saigon in October, 2001. During a two-hour interview, which was guided by an interpreter from Anh Tours of Saigon, this former officer discussed how he was in the area when a rocket was fired into Cu Chi only days after I arrived at the 25th Infantry Division Headquarters. He was 92 years old in this photo.
From "Find A Grave" site. The shocking story of a brutal murder which happened at Cu Chi only hours after I was "boots down" in Nam. See:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=86439184