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
View More Photos »
Indelible Saigon Van Es
Hugh Van Es spent much of the day on Saigon's streets but saw the line of evacuees from his office window. (Bettmann / Corbis)

Photo Gallery (1/4)

Indelible Saigon Van Es

Explore more photos from the story

More from Smithsonian.com


(Page 2 of 2)

"Jeez, we've certainly gone our own way for all these years, but then—bang!—we're all back together again," says Carl Robinson, a wartime Associated Press reporter and photo editor.

Like Van Es, many of us who covered the war found ourselves forever in the grip of Vietnam. No other story, no other war, quite measured up. The exotic charm and dangerous undercurrents of Saigon were seductive, the adrenaline rush of survival intoxicating. We hitchhiked around the country on military helicopters and roamed the battlefields without censorship. The Associated Press lists 73 of our colleagues as killed in South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, yet as individuals we felt invulnerable.

"I've searched for an answer why I stayed all those years," says George Esper, an AP reporter who spent nearly a decade in Vietnam. "What I keep coming back to was a young nurse from upstate New York I saw on a firebase. It was monsoon season. We were under rocket attack. She was tending the badly wounded. Some died in her arms. And I said, ‘Wow. What a woman! Why are you here?' and she said, ‘Because I've never felt so worthwhile in my life.' That's how I felt, too."

"Did Vietnam teach me anything professionally?" says Loren Jenkins, a wartime reporter for Newsweek who is now the foreign editor of National Public Radio. "Absolutely. It taught me never to believe an official. It made me a terrific skeptic."

"I honestly believe those years gave [Hugh] the best memories and most meaning to his life," his wife said after he died in the Hong Kong hospital, never having regained consciousness. The FCC set up a "Van Es Corner" in the bar with a display of his Vietnam photographs. Nearby is a small plaque marking where his colleague and drinking buddy Bert Okuley had a fatal stroke in 1993, a double Jack Daniels in hand. For her part, Annie honored only one of Van Es' two requests for his exit: his wake at the FCC was indeed boisterous and celebratory, but his coffin was not on display and did not serve as the bar.

David Lamb covered Vietnam for UPI and the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of Vietnam, Now (2003).


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.

"Jeez, we've certainly gone our own way for all these years, but then—bang!—we're all back together again," says Carl Robinson, a wartime Associated Press reporter and photo editor.

Like Van Es, many of us who covered the war found ourselves forever in the grip of Vietnam. No other story, no other war, quite measured up. The exotic charm and dangerous undercurrents of Saigon were seductive, the adrenaline rush of survival intoxicating. We hitchhiked around the country on military helicopters and roamed the battlefields without censorship. The Associated Press lists 73 of our colleagues as killed in South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, yet as individuals we felt invulnerable.

"I've searched for an answer why I stayed all those years," says George Esper, an AP reporter who spent nearly a decade in Vietnam. "What I keep coming back to was a young nurse from upstate New York I saw on a firebase. It was monsoon season. We were under rocket attack. She was tending the badly wounded. Some died in her arms. And I said, ‘Wow. What a woman! Why are you here?' and she said, ‘Because I've never felt so worthwhile in my life.' That's how I felt, too."

"Did Vietnam teach me anything professionally?" says Loren Jenkins, a wartime reporter for Newsweek who is now the foreign editor of National Public Radio. "Absolutely. It taught me never to believe an official. It made me a terrific skeptic."

"I honestly believe those years gave [Hugh] the best memories and most meaning to his life," his wife said after he died in the Hong Kong hospital, never having regained consciousness. The FCC set up a "Van Es Corner" in the bar with a display of his Vietnam photographs. Nearby is a small plaque marking where his colleague and drinking buddy Bert Okuley had a fatal stroke in 1993, a double Jack Daniels in hand. For her part, Annie honored only one of Van Es' two requests for his exit: his wake at the FCC was indeed boisterous and celebratory, but his coffin was not on display and did not serve as the bar.

David Lamb covered Vietnam for UPI and the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of Vietnam, Now (2003).


Single Page « Previous 1 2

    Subscribe now for more of Smithsonian's coverage on history, science and nature.



 

Add New Comment


Name: (required)

Email: (required)

Comment:

Comments are moderated, and will not appear until Smithsonian.com has approved them. Smithsonian reserves the right not to post any comments that are unlawful, threatening, offensive, defamatory, invasive of a person's privacy, inappropriate, confidential or proprietary, political messages, product endorsements, or other content that might otherwise violate any laws or policies.

Comments (7)

Can you refer me to somewhere I can search for a name of a photographer who was killed in Vietnam approximately March 11, 1968. He may have been a civilian who was with the 2nd Platoon, 4th Marine Division Fox Company. This photographer died in my brothers arms but he never knew his name. My brother ended his life in 1972 and his story is told in a book titled The Twins Platoon. I have always wanted to find this photographer's name and possibly get ahold of a family member so I can tell them this part in a story my brother wrote:

We took three wounded. One was the photographer. I was laying next to him, He took the shrapnel I would have gotten. His face was sliced from his cheek to the bottom of his neck. His juggler vein was cut. He was breathing from his neck, Swallowing a lot of his own blood. I tried to help but what could I do. If I put a battle dressing on I would smother him or drown him in his own blood. He was in shock. I shook him and I pushed him down, He must have talked a half an hour. Then he grabbed for me. I laid him down again, He looked me in the eyes and said: Your not going to let me die are you? Please get me out of here". I said "OK I'll get you out, I promise". Then he looked up in the sky and said, "PLEASE GOD DON'T LET ME DIE! PLEASE DON'T LET ME DIE" then he looked at me and died.

This story my brother Skip wrote was about a battle that just a handful of Marines survived. The next day skip volunteered to take E Company back to recover more bodies where they ran into another bloody massacre and then took H Company the day after that. I know that my brother put himself in danger again to keep his promise to the photographer. Skip received a Silver Star for his actions.

Any suggestions who be greatly appreciated.

Diane Finnemann

Posted by Diane Finnemann on April 19,2012 | 04:55 PM

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



Advertisement


Advertisement

Follow Us





First Name
Last Name
Address 1
Address 2
City
State   Zip
Email


Travel with Smithsonian




Smithsonian Store