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The Associated Press culled from tens of thousands of its images from the Vietnam War for a new book and accompanying exhibitions that detail the news service’s crucial role in documenting the conflict. The book, “Vietnam: The Real War,†will be published by Abrams on Oct. 1 and features some of the era’s most famous images, including Nick Ut’s photo of a young girl running after a napalm attack.
But it also has gripping photos that are not so widely known. Among these rarities are shots of American prisoners of war in Hanoi, scenes of the French colonial occupation and images of the abuse of Vietcong prisoners.
Ralph Blumenthal, a young foreign correspondent in the middle years of the war, wrote about the book in an article being published Wednesday in The Times. He shared with Lens his own recollections about working alongside photojournalists who were covering a conflict in which the rules of journalistic engagement were shifting.
The Things They (We) Carried:
Notebook.
Pens.
Cameras.
Film.
Condoms (to protect the rolls of film).
During the Vietnam War, photographers were often reporters and vice versa. Think of The Associated Press bureau chief Malcolm Browne’s 1963 prize-winning photos of a protesting monk committing fiery suicide (Slide 1), which persuaded President John F. Kennedy: “We’re going to have to do something about that regime.†Sure enough, a few months later, President Ngo Dinh Diem was overthrown and shot, followed closely by Kennedy’s own assassination 50 years ago in November.
Working out of the Saigon bureau as a correspondent for The New York Times from late 1969 to early 1971, I usually traveled with a Nikon or two around my neck, purchased cheaply (in those days) on R & R trips to Hong Kong or Singapore. You never knew when a picture would present itself. When it did, it was often bad news. Luckily for me, that didn’t happen much. I was happy to leave it to the professionals.
I often traveled with Denis Cameron, the daredevil freelancer who regularly worked for The Times. In August 1970 we drove to Svay Rieng, in Cambodia’s Parrot’s Beak poking into South Vietnam, to check out black market military equipment being sold in the shops and stalls. We started back too late and were caught at dusk on Highway 1. The rice paddies were eerily deserted, a bad sign. I suggested we find a place to stay over but the photographer drove grimly on, determined to make it back to Saigon.
I later found out why: he had a hot date waiting for him.
The logistics of predigital war photography and reporting were daunting. Early on, The A.P.’s mythic Horst Faas turned a bathroom of the Saigon bureau into a makeshift darkroom. Transmitting pictures meant carrying prints to the colonialist PTT, the government Postal Telephone and Telegraph office.
Even to file our copy we had to hand deliver the typewritten sheets to the Reuters bureau, which had a cable link to New York. The nightly curfew meant walking down dark, deserted streets making as much noise as possible so as not be mistaken for the stealthy Vietcong.
I’m reminded of all this by a seminal new collection of Vietnam War photos by The A.P., which pretty much owned the franchise. The 250-plate album, “Vietnam: The Real War,†to be published by Abrams on Oct. 1, spans America’s first stumbling steps in Indochina from 1950 when Seymour Topping (later to become the managing editor of The Times) opened The A.P.’s Saigon bureau, through the escalation of the war in the early ’60s, the ignominious United States withdrawal in 1973, the Communist takeover in 1975, and the reopening of The A.P. bureau, now in Hanoi, in 1993. One photo shows “Top†at the “Five O’Clock Follies,†the often-derided daily military briefing, around 1963. Sitting next to him is Pham Xuan An, the expert Time magazine reporter later revealed as a Vietcong colonel and a master spy.
The book features not only the Buddhist immolation series and Pulitzer Prize-winners, like Eddie Adams’s gruesome image (Slide 12) of the summary street execution of a Vietcong prisoner and Nick Ut’s photo of a naked 9-year-old Kim Phuc (Slide 14) fleeing a napalm strike, but also elegiac pictures of troops awaiting medevac salvation in the jungle, brutal pictures of terrorized prisoners, and portraits of desperate refugees caught up in the war’s horrors.
Horst Faas/Associated Press A farmer helplessly holds the body of his dead child as South Vietnamese troops look on, March 19, 1964. The child was killed as government forces pursued guerrillas into a village near the Cambodian border. One haunting photo by The A.P.’s Henri Huet, who died in a helicopter crash with Life’s Larry Burrows in 1971, depicted a bandaged American medic peering out of his one good eye to treat a fellow soldier (Slide 2). Mr. Burrows insisted Mr. Huet submit the photo to Life, and it appeared on the cover on Feb. 11, 1966.
As the freelance photographer Tim Price told friends, there was nothing like walking into a bar in Saigon with a rolled-up copy of Life under your arm that had one of your pictures in it. The patio of the venerable Continental Palace hotel, where many journalists bunked, served much the same purpose. Sodden nights on the Continental shelf were given over to war stories, some of them true.
The A.P. in Vietnam had depth, much of its staff putting in a good decade of service, notably its intrepid editor Mr. Faas, who defined war photography. Richard Pyle, The A.P. bureau chief up to the American withdrawal, served from 1968 to 1973 and told me, “I felt like I was just passing through.â€
Their experience contrasted with the undeniably brave but grievously outmatched United States military with its 12-month tours of duty. It was said: They didn’t fight in Vietnam for 10 years â€" they fought for a year, 10 times.
I put myself in that category. I arrived from a year in Bonn, West Germany, as green as could be. My first interview, with a certain lieutenant colonel, ended poorly when I addressed him as “lieutenant.â€
“How long you been in country, son?†he asked.
“About an hour,†I said.
“Well, all right, then,†he drawled. That’s when I learned that colonels are higher than lieutenants.
The lessons came fast. I found out, for example, that it was not a great idea to drive to outlying firebases involved in combat. That’s what Army helicopters were for, their accessibility to journalists along with other official cooperation with no censorship, a distinguishing feature of the war, was never seen before or since. But flying with the troops carried its own risks. Veteran correspondents knew to fold up their flak vests and sit on them against enemy fire from below. Sometimes it seemed wiser to hire a taxi for the day.
The New York Times Ralph Blumenthal, circa 1970.A perplexed American commander once greeted us at his fort’s gates.
How did we get there? he wondered.
We drove, we explained.
He scratched his head. “You came by road?†he asked incredulously, giving orders to stop sweeping for mines, these kind reporters had already done the job.
Something similar had happened on April 5, 1970, after the coup that ousted Cambodia’s Prince Norodom Sihanouk, when several of us rented a taxi to check out the situation in the Parrot’s Beak where North Vietnamese troops were said to be operating.
Our group included two veteran freelance photojournalists, Dana Stone and Sean Flynn, son of the swashbuckling actor Errol Flynn. As we barreled down Highway 1, our driver suddenly screeched to a stop. Several hundred yards ahead, a black-clad column was crossing the road.
We made a sharp U-turn. Frighteningly, it seemed to me, Mr. Stone and Mr. Flynn insisted on sticking their long lenses out of the windows, snapping off frames. Disappointed at our hasty retreat, they said they would hire their own taxi the next day and go back. They did.
They were never seen again.
One good thing was I quit smoking. I had been a nicotine fiend since my teens, filching Kools from my mother’s purse. But now I figured the risks I was taking should not include cancer.
Photos from Vietnam held a tight grip on the attention of the American public and were instrumental in turning the home front against the war. The imperious and towering Gloria Emerson of The Times, “long lady†to the Vietnamese, recognized this instinctively the day she walked into the Continental Palace shortly after her arrival in early 1970 and marveled at the souvenir postcards.
Most postcards in hotel gift shops depicted skylines and sunsets. These showed battle scenes like “Direct Hit†and “Mine Detecting.†I sent one to friends showing “Street Fighting in Saigon Outside Governmental Grounds.†Ms. Emerson found them entirely bizarre, bought a bunch and wrote a piece about them. “It is a curious war,†it began. “There are even colored picture postcards showing scenes of it.â€
By a foreign desk mix-up, she, fellow correspondent Henry Kamm and I were all dispatched one day in 1970 to Phnom Penh to take over the Cambodia bureau in the Hotel Le Royal. No one would yield the turf so we all slept in the suite until New York could sort it out.
One day Ms. Emerson and I were at a Cambodian military briefing â€" the officer in charge, I kid you not, was Major Am Rong â€" and we were being treated to a stirring recitation of the army’s glorious victories. The North Vietnamese vanquished here, on the run there. When it was over, Major Rong’s young deputy, Captain Song, sought us out.
Were we from The Times, he wanted to know.
We were, we told him.
“You got to get me out of here!†he pleaded.
Not long afterward, Sydney Schanberg arrived to take charge and he stayed put with Dith Pran, his translator and loyal photographer, even after the Khmer Rouge marched in and took them prisoner, an act of epic courage celebrated in the Oscar-winning “The Killing Fields.â€
Ms. Emerson (who later came down with Parkinson’s disease and sadly took her life in 2004 at the age of 75) had a dramatic side and was sometimes inclined to moan with weltschmerz, “Oh Ralph, what are we going to do?â€
I had no idea what she was talking about. “Do about what?†I always asked.
She would give me a look and sigh with exasperation. “Ooh, you’re so young.â€
I was.
Photos from “Vietnam: The Real War†will be on view at the Steven Kasher Gallery in Manhattan from Oct. 24 through Nov. 26.
Follow @ralphblu and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.
This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: September 5, 2013
An earlier version of this article mistakenly described Malcolm Browne's 1963 photo of a Buddhist monk's self-immolation as a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph. The image won the World Press Photo of the Year for 1963, not the Pulitzer Prize. Mr. Browne shared a Pulitzer Prize with David Halberstam in 1964 for international reporting.
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Marco Gualazzini/LUZphoto M23 rebels prepared to march back to Goma, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, following orders to withdraw from a city they had occupied for nearly two weeks. 2012.
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