A Photo-journalist's Remembrance of Vietnam
The death of Hugh Van Es, whose photograph captured the Vietnam War's end, launched a "reunion" of those who covered the conflict
- By David Lamb
- Smithsonian magazine, November 2009, Subscribe
Hugh Van Es spent much of the day on Saigon's streets but saw the line of evacuees from his office window. Bettmann / Corbis
The end was at hand. Saigon swirled with panicked mobs desperate to escape. On the outskirts of the surrounded city, more than a dozen North Vietnamese divisions prepared for their final assault. A Dutch photographer, Hugh Van Es, slipped through the crowds that day, snapping pictures, then hurried down Tu Do Street to the United Press International office to develop his film.
No sooner had he ensconced himself in the darkroom than a colleague, Bert Okuley, called out from an adjoining room, "Van Es, get out here! There's a chopper on that roof!" He pointed to an apartment building four blocks away, where an Air America Huey, operated by the CIA, was perched. Twenty-five or so people were scaling a makeshift ladder, trying to clamber aboard.
Van Es slapped a 300-mm lens on his Nikon and took ten frames from the tiny balcony near Okuley's desk. The chopper lifted off, overloaded with about 12 evacuees. Those left behind waited for hours for the helicopter to return. It never did. But all that day—April 29, 1975—and into the evening, the sky was alive with choppers darting to at least four pickup sites in what was to be the largest helicopter evacuation in history.
During his seven years in Vietnam, Van Es had taken dozens of memorable combat pictures, but it was this one hurried shot from the balcony that brought him lifelong fame and became the defining image of the fall of Saigon, and the tumultuous end of the Vietnam War. Though it has been reprinted thousands of times since (often misidentified as an evacuation from the roof of the U.S. Embassy), his only payment was a one-time $150 bonus from UPI, which owned the photo rights.
"Money, or the lack of, never bothered Hugh," says Annie Van Es, his wife for 39 years. "Photography was his passion, not dollars." When a South Vietnamese photographer he knew inexplicably claimed authorship of the photograph years later, she says, Van Es' reaction was: "He is having a hard time in communist Saigon and needs to make a living; I can't blame him." Van Es looked up his old friend on a return trip to what had been renamed Ho Chi Minh City and never brought up the appropriation.
After the war, Van Es returned to Hong Kong to freelance. When he wasn't off covering conflicts in Bosnia, Afghanistan or the Philippines, friends could find him holding court at the Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC) bar in Hong Kong, swearing like a sailor, tossing down beers, smoking unfiltered cigarettes and telling war stories with caustic humor.
Last May, at age 67, Van Es suffered a brain hemorrhage and lay unconscious for a week in a Hong Kong hospital. Derek Williams, a CBS sound man during the war, put out the word over a voluminous correspondents' e-mail list so Annie wouldn't have to supply his many friends and colleagues with daily updates. Vietnam-era journalists chimed in with comments of encouragement, hitting the "reply to all" button. Soon people who hadn't been in touch since bonding on jungle battlefields a generation ago started corresponding.
Thus was born a members-only Google discussion group, "Vietnam Old Hacks," to share madcap remembrances, to argue about history and where to get the best pho ga (chicken noodle broth), to reflect on former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's death, to find out who among their fraternal gang is dead and who is still alive. Plans are underway for a real-life reunion in Vietnam next April. Seventy of the 200-plus members say they plan to attend.
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Related topics: Photojournalism World History Communism Photojournalists Vietnam War 1970s Asia Vietnam
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Comments (6)
great story, but the thing I've been wondering is how did he get out???
Posted by manyshoes on September 7,2011 | 11:14 PM
For Carl Robinson:
Carl, Susan Bennett of the Newseum responded, but said she didn't get my original email about the reunion. Suggest you contact her directly at sbennett@newseum.org. Tnx.
Peter Hickman
Posted by Peter Hickman on February 22,2010 | 10:28 AM
Saigon Requiem
Seeing the epic photograph by Van Es of the helicopter evacuation from Saigon in 1975 brought to mind my immediate reaction upon arriving in that city in June 1967. As any Massachusetts person would have said, "We are the Redcoats and the Viet Cong are the Minutemen!" Why President Kennedy and Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge did not realize this in 1962/'63 I cannot understand. Then, during the next few years, I claim that the U. S. had several opportunities to withdraw from South Vietnam without a threat to our national security as one corrupt regime followed another. I had been sent to Saigon via Hawaii to obtain the concurrence of Adm. Sharp, CINCPAC,General Westmoreland, MACV, General Momyer, 7th Air Force and Col. Singlaub, the CIA station chief, to install the "McNamara Line" across the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos to stop the movement of North Vietnamese troops and supplies down into the south. Later that year I was sent to the top secret communications-computer center in Northeast Thailand to assist in getting the "Line" or "Wall" operational, which we did on January 19, 1968. The "Tet Offensive" by the Viet Cong occurred on January 30-31, 1968 and despite our "victory" essentially ended any prospects for actually winning the war. I left the "Line" project later that year. Yet the "Line" was operated at enormous cost without appreciable effect until at least 1971. These thoughts are occurring to me as we struggle to decide what to do in Afghanistan.
Richard S. Greeley
St. Davids, PA
Posted by Richard Greeley on November 4,2009 | 10:07 PM
Of course, this was a wonderfully written article. I've come to expect nothing less from my favorite magazine. My only complaint is a common one to the online version. It's the art. Stories this well written demand art that is equally masterful. By art here I mean photographs. I found myself wanting to see more of that photographer's work, whether they had anything to do with the final day of evacuation or not. Similarly, with the linked article to the memories that have been dug up from the building of a highway along the old Ho Chi Minh Trail, I wanted to SEE the trail, then and now. When you DO have art, I want more. I want it BIGGER. The days of 14-inch monitors and 800x600 resolution are long gone. My current monitor views in 1400x900. The one I'm about to buy will be 1920x1080, and art like this will look like a postage stamp.
Posted by veronica dunbar on October 29,2009 | 10:20 AM
What a well-written story. It makes me understand a little more why my brother, Bert Okuley, loved his work in Vietnam so much. He never said it made him feel worthwhile, like the nurse in David Lamb's piece, but I'm sure that was part of it. He never really wanted to return to the United States. He became, in a sense, an Asian. For years I've had a small newspaper clipping of Hugh Van Es' famous photo on my refrigerator, as a reminder of my late brother and his colleagues at UPI.
Posted by Molly Abraham on October 28,2009 | 10:49 AM
Dave Lamb's stories are informative and easy to read. I look forward to reading them. I hope he gets around to doing an opinion piece about the controversy on the war's coverage. I think guys like Dave and Joe Galloway did a great job, but I can't say the same for some of the editors back home. I worked with Dave at UPI in San Francisco. A real pro who could be trusted to sell the story, not himself. If there had been more reporters like him newspapers wouldn't be in trouble.
Jim Clifford
Posted by james o. clifford on October 26,2009 | 04:07 PM