Anyway, I said hello and asked him if he was having any luck getting out to the field. He said no. And I said, "Let's see if I could cook him up something for tomorrow, say 9 am?"
He smiled and said, "that would be great!"
Here's a link to Davids lastest work
As soon as I got back to our field location, LTC Lethcoe was waiting for me.
"Dick, we need to talk."
"Dick, we have a problem. The Division Public Affairs Officer has complained about you doing his job for him. He wants to take over the Wednesday press trip."
"Sir, I don't have a problem with that. But I do wish to speak freely."
"Go a head."
"My father knew General Pat W. Crizer over in Korea and told me he was an exceptional officer. But no one is going to know that if the Public Affairs Officer is more interested in the girls at the press center than promoting Pat's career..
Editorial note:
This was part of Pat's Eulogy:
The 3d Division was
special for Pat. He nurtured his division, trained it as well, maybe better than
any other in the Army at the time, and developed a camaraderie, esprit de corps,
and a professional respect between himself and his officers and men." General
George S. Blanchard, US Army, Retired, recalled Pat's command of the 3d
Division: "He was an outstanding division commanding general and I remember one
Reforger when, through his division's brilliance, the 'enemy' was completely
befuddled and practically collapsed." A classmate and close friend, Major
General, US Army, Retired, Dick Bresnahan, wrote: "...Recently I met an officer
who had commanded a division with great success in the Middle East War. He had
been a major in the 3d Division when Pat commanded it. He said. 'Much of my
success and that of several other officers over there was the result of lessons
we learned from General Crizer while serving under him. He knew his business and
was a great teacher.' What else is there to say about such a loyal friend?''
Continuing on with my story:
"You pissed off the division Public Affairs Officer. Seems he's been watching you."
"I guess that piece we got on national TV made him look bad, sir"
That made LTC Lethcoe laugh. But he quickly regained his composure. "Let's do this. Put him in the hot seat and set his head set to private. You can still direct things and he'll be thinking he's the hot shot."
"This public affairs officer is not doing his job.
"If he was, I wouldn't be pulling off what I've been able to pull off."
"Permission to speak freely, sir."
"Go."
"Who knows Major General Pat W. Crizer? That's a rhetorical question. I do. You know how? My father said he knew him as a Captain during the Korean War and was impressed with him. And I've only seen him once or twice but when I have and heard him talk to the troops, he makes General Alexander Haig look bad. He's just an unbelievable cool and interesting human being.
"Dick, we know that. Just play along."
(Something tells me that a similar remark was made when General Pat W. Crizer was told to back of from totally destroying the opposing force during REFOREGER 77, too.)
"That sounds like a good plan to me, sir. You do know who this guy is, right?"
"No."
"His name is David Allan Burnett and he's there to take pictures for Time Magazine."
"That might explain why Ruddy Williams wants to tag along."
"Wait", I said incredulously, "The Rudy Williams?"
"Yes, something wrong?"
"No, not really. We - meaning you, me and John Michael Coleman -- have only run circles around this silver spooned photo-journalist at the speed of light for the past 6 months."
My real thoughts, placed bets that it was his way of claiming rights to another image he didn't take or he's so darn desperate to grab some association attention with the legandary David Allan Burnett.
David Burnett, Washington Post, June 12, 2012:
It’s difficult to explain to someone who has grown up in the world of digital photography just what it was like being a photojournalist in the all-too-recently-passed era of film cameras. That there was, necessarily, a moment when your finite roll of film would end at frame 36, and you would have to swap out the shot film for a fresh roll before being able to resume the hunt for a picture. In those “in between” moments, brief as they might have been, there was always the possibility of the picture taking place. You would try to anticipate what was happening in front of your eyes, and avoid being out of film at some key intersection of time and place. But sometimes the moment just wouldn’t wait. Photojournalism — the pursuit of storytelling with a camera — is still a relatively young trade, but there are plenty of stories about those missed pictures.
In the summer of 1972, I was a 25-year-old photojournalist working in Vietnam, mostly for Time and Life magazines. As the United States began winding down its direct combat role and encouraging Vietnamese fighting units to take over the war, trying to find and tell the story presented enormous challenges. On June 8, a New York Times reporter and I were going to explore what was happening on Route 1, an hour out of Saigon. We visited a small village that had seen some overnight fighting, but were told by locals that there was a bigger battle going on a few kilometers north. There, at the village of Trang Bang, I waited and watched with a dozen other journalists from a short distance as round after round of small-arm and grenade fire signaled an ongoing firefight. I was changing film in one of my old Leicas, an amazing camera with a reputation for being infamously difficult to load. As I struggled, a Vietnamese air force fighter came in low and slow and dropped napalm on what its pilot thought were enemy positions. Moments later, as I was still fumbling with my camera, the journalists were riveted by faint images of people running through the smoke. AP photographer Nick Ut took off toward the villagers who were running in desperation from the fire.
In one moment, when Ut’s Leica came up to his eye and he took a photograph of the badly burned children, he captured an image that would transcend politics and history and become emblematic of the horrors of war visited on the innocent. When a photograph is just right, it captures all those elements of time and emotion in an indelible way. Film and video treat every moment equally, yet those moments simply are not equal.Within minutes, the children had been hustled into Nick’s car and were en route to a Saigon hospital. A couple of hours later, I found myself at the Associated Press darkroom, waiting to see what my own pictures looked like. Then, out from the darkroom stepped Nick Ut, holding a small, still-wet copy of his best picture: a 5-by-7 print of Kim Phuc running with her brothers to escape the burning napalm. We were the first eyes to see that picture; it would be another full day before the rest of the world would see it on virtually every newspaper’s Page 1.
When I reflect on that day, my clearest memory is the sight, out of the corner of my eye, of Nick and another reporter beginning their run toward the oncoming children. It took another 20 or 30 seconds for me to finish loading my stubborn Leica, and I then joined them. It was real life, unfolding at the pace of life.For some years afterward, I wondered what had happened to Kim Phuc. She eventually left Vietnam for Cuba, and later, on a stopover in Canada, defected with her husband. They now live near Toronto, where she runs a foundation dedicated to helping children deal with the trauma of war. Nick Ut is still photographing for AP in Los Angeles.I think often of that day, and of the unlikelihood of a picture from such a relatively minor military operation becoming one of the most iconic pictures from the entire war — or any war. For those of us who carry our cameras along the sidewalk of history for a living, it is comforting to know that even in today’s digitally overloaded world, a single photograph, whether our own or someone else’s, can still tell a story that rises above language, locale and time itself.Except for one photo, which was published in Life the next week, my own pictures have lived in my archives for 40 years, like witnesses in waiting — until now.
Continuing on with my story:
"You pissed off the division Public Affairs Officer. Seems he's been watching you."
"I guess that piece we got on national TV made him look bad, sir"
That made LTC Lethcoe laugh. But he quickly regained his composure. "Let's do this. Put him in the hot seat and set his head set to private. You can still direct things and he'll be thinking he's the hot shot."
"This public affairs officer is not doing his job.
"If he was, I wouldn't be pulling off what I've been able to pull off."
"Permission to speak freely, sir."
"Go."
"Who knows Major General Pat W. Crizer? That's a rhetorical question. I do. You know how? My father said he knew him as a Captain during the Korean War and was impressed with him. And I've only seen him once or twice but when I have and heard him talk to the troops, he makes General Alexander Haig look bad. He's just an unbelievable cool and interesting human being.
"Dick, we know that. Just play along."
(Something tells me that a similar remark was made when General Pat W. Crizer was told to back of from totally destroying the opposing force during REFOREGER 77, too.)
"That sounds like a good plan to me, sir. You do know who this guy is, right?"
"No."
"His name is David Allan Burnett and he's there to take pictures for Time Magazine."
"That might explain why Ruddy Williams wants to tag along."
"Wait", I said incredulously, "The Rudy Williams?"
"Yes, something wrong?"
"No, not really. We - meaning you, me and John Michael Coleman -- have only run circles around this silver spooned photo-journalist at the speed of light for the past 6 months."
My real thoughts, placed bets that it was his way of claiming rights to another image he didn't take or he's so darn desperate to grab some association attention with the legandary David Allan Burnett.
Missing That Iconic Shot While Loading Your Leica
David Burnett, Washington Post, June 12, 2012:
It’s difficult to explain to someone who has grown up in the world of digital photography just what it was like being a photojournalist in the all-too-recently-passed era of film cameras. That there was, necessarily, a moment when your finite roll of film would end at frame 36, and you would have to swap out the shot film for a fresh roll before being able to resume the hunt for a picture. In those “in between” moments, brief as they might have been, there was always the possibility of the picture taking place. You would try to anticipate what was happening in front of your eyes, and avoid being out of film at some key intersection of time and place. But sometimes the moment just wouldn’t wait. Photojournalism — the pursuit of storytelling with a camera — is still a relatively young trade, but there are plenty of stories about those missed pictures.
In the summer of 1972, I was a 25-year-old photojournalist working in Vietnam, mostly for Time and Life magazines. As the United States began winding down its direct combat role and encouraging Vietnamese fighting units to take over the war, trying to find and tell the story presented enormous challenges. On June 8, a New York Times reporter and I were going to explore what was happening on Route 1, an hour out of Saigon. We visited a small village that had seen some overnight fighting, but were told by locals that there was a bigger battle going on a few kilometers north. There, at the village of Trang Bang, I waited and watched with a dozen other journalists from a short distance as round after round of small-arm and grenade fire signaled an ongoing firefight. I was changing film in one of my old Leicas, an amazing camera with a reputation for being infamously difficult to load. As I struggled, a Vietnamese air force fighter came in low and slow and dropped napalm on what its pilot thought were enemy positions. Moments later, as I was still fumbling with my camera, the journalists were riveted by faint images of people running through the smoke. AP photographer Nick Ut took off toward the villagers who were running in desperation from the fire.
In one moment, when Ut’s Leica came up to his eye and he took a photograph of the badly burned children, he captured an image that would transcend politics and history and become emblematic of the horrors of war visited on the innocent. When a photograph is just right, it captures all those elements of time and emotion in an indelible way. Film and video treat every moment equally, yet those moments simply are not equal.Within minutes, the children had been hustled into Nick’s car and were en route to a Saigon hospital. A couple of hours later, I found myself at the Associated Press darkroom, waiting to see what my own pictures looked like. Then, out from the darkroom stepped Nick Ut, holding a small, still-wet copy of his best picture: a 5-by-7 print of Kim Phuc running with her brothers to escape the burning napalm. We were the first eyes to see that picture; it would be another full day before the rest of the world would see it on virtually every newspaper’s Page 1.
When I reflect on that day, my clearest memory is the sight, out of the corner of my eye, of Nick and another reporter beginning their run toward the oncoming children. It took another 20 or 30 seconds for me to finish loading my stubborn Leica, and I then joined them. It was real life, unfolding at the pace of life.For some years afterward, I wondered what had happened to Kim Phuc. She eventually left Vietnam for Cuba, and later, on a stopover in Canada, defected with her husband. They now live near Toronto, where she runs a foundation dedicated to helping children deal with the trauma of war. Nick Ut is still photographing for AP in Los Angeles.I think often of that day, and of the unlikelihood of a picture from such a relatively minor military operation becoming one of the most iconic pictures from the entire war — or any war. For those of us who carry our cameras along the sidewalk of history for a living, it is comforting to know that even in today’s digitally overloaded world, a single photograph, whether our own or someone else’s, can still tell a story that rises above language, locale and time itself.Except for one photo, which was published in Life the next week, my own pictures have lived in my archives for 40 years, like witnesses in waiting — until now.
"This is going to get interesting."
And it did. The Public Affairs Officer called in a Zulu time pickup. So, we landed at 9am instead of 8am. Not only that, we were flying a Huey with a condition red X problem where because of the fuel indicator malfunctioning, we had to land every 25 minutes and top off the fuel tanks.
The second time we landed, Burnett lost it. Between all the yelling and dirt kicking, he made it clear as I also figured out that we needed to change choppers. So, this was explained to Burnett and luck switched sides.
I should explain at this point who I was sitting with. On the right side of the helicopter sat three photo-journalists: me, Rudy Williams and David Allan Burnett.
The first photo-op had both me and Burnett in stitches. We were both cutting up so badly, the pilots looked back to try to figure out what was so funny. We also noticed that Rudy Williams did see what we saw as being so funny.
I went hot with the mike. "Sir, we need to land."
So what was so funny. Picture two GIs sitting at a picnic table casually eating lunch behind them in a small open area were tanks and APCs with their guns pointed directly at them.
It was one of those, "What, me worry" moments that was a humorous images asking to be taken.
After eating and changing choppers, we got too busy to remember much about what we were taking images of. Just that the action shots were out in front of us and there was a lot to pick and choose from.
Suffice to say, some of the images I took in black and what were also taken by Burnett and published in Time Magazine.
There were three other times when I saw Burnett out in the field after that. Once when I was with my boss and we were watching the drop of an APC out of the back end of a C-130 and once again at the Press Center.
You can see the video of this here.
We arrived with the AV team that took this video. Because they had to set up rather quickly the tops of our choppers show up in the image.
There was supposed to be a 4th time but that was stopped by my boss. We had brought some of the press up to where General Alexander Haig had flown in by helicopter.
I was within a quarter mile of him but was stopped by my boss who told me that because I was overweight, I would not be able to go take pictures of General Alexander Haig.
Little did he or I know that this event stopped me from getting published in Newsweek who told me that had I had an image of a prominent figure, they would have published my work.
When I did say goodbye to Burnett at the press center, I wanted to see if his ego was a big as his hair do.
So I asked, "Do you think I have a chance getting published in Time Or Life?"
To this day, what he said next I will remember for the rest of my life:
"It is not a question of whether or not you have a shot at getting published in Time or Life. It is more a question of do you have the willingness to continually send them your best images until they use something you've made available to them. You have to have your name on each slide and you have to have cut lines for each image.
Never give up."
By the way, the picture in question:
Rudy Williams claims he took this picture.
Which would be fine if he did. But he didn't.
I did. But I couldn't prove it for years because no credits were given for images published in December 1976 Army Aviation Digest Magazine and I didn't have a back copy of the images published in Army Aviation Magazine.
Okay so, that gives me credit for being there and, as you can pretty well guess, some of these are exactly the same as the ones published in Army Aviation Digest.
Okay, so I've established that both Rudy Williams and I were on the field taking images of the Air Assault In Action demo. So how can I be so sure it was my picture?
Because it got published in Army Aviation Magazine. And the only images that could have made it into print were the ones I printed up in my photo-lab.
How can I say that with certainty?
Because:
- The deadline for submission of images for the December issue would have been 3 months prior to publication.
- Bob "Silver Fox" Crossly, Director of AV at USAREUR & 7th Army told me to send my images to him because the images he had were bad.
- Even if Rudy Williams did take a similar image and that image -- by some miracle -- did manage to get into Army Aviation Magazine, it would have his byline on it.
- Unless he was in my photo-lab and had given the images to the Colonel who picked up the images for LTC Gary E. Luck, his would not have been included.
I rest my case.
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