I
couldn't guess his age.
Well-
muscled and strongly veined arms
told of a life of hard work. A
whispy white moustache and thin whiskers of beard belied the look of strength about him. He was only one of 200 refugees evacuated from a small hamlet along the infamous "Street Without Joy" north of Hue. He sat silent and stoney on a Navy landing barge, the body of his teenage son wrapped in a dirty cloth before him. He stared back hard at my obvious interest in him but
OUR COVER
It
hesident Bert Okuley FÞst Vice hesident Jack Worth Second Vice hesident
Martin Bishop Tleasurer Martin Bishop Secretary Ken Kashiwahara
Editor I)on Ronk Photographer Hugh Van Es Advertising Nida Cranbourne
was
that the
two years ago April 30
message came
zit-zit-zitting
p I
over the UPI teleprinter on the 'l4th
É,*rlE í¿Ër4'*êÞ
ublished monthly as
an
of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong. Offices at 15th Floor, Sutherland House, 3 Chater
floor that the war, for all intents and purposes, had ended in South Viet Nam. The Americans were withdrawing. For those of us with relative$, . friends and colleagues there, thère were some anxious
organ
Road, Hong Kong. Tel: 5-237734 and 5-233003.
Cables: CORCLUB HONG KONG. Address all correspondence to: Editor, Foreign Correspondents' Club of
days until word finally arrived that
all were safe, whether still in Viet
Nam, on the South China Sea or in The Philippines. _ For many of us still working Southeast Asia, April 30 ended añ era of our lives not easily forgotten. There are good and'bad reasons for remernbering Viet Nam -- and lndochina -- and every one of us who does remember uses our own yardstick of good and bad. But one thing it was to everyone who was there -- an inescapable memory.
I
gave no sign
only
guess
of emotion. I could
what anguish might lay
behind his proud face. Who had killed his son? I never found out; perhaps no one knows how or knew then. Possibly the
Hong Kong, 15th Floor, Sutherland House, 3 Chater Road, Hong Kong. Adver-
Viet Cong? Or the American
tising: Nida Cranbourne, First Floor, 30 Ice House St., Hong Kong. Tel: 5-248482
Marines? Or an accident, an inadvertent step on a mine lald for Marines? Or an air strike? Or one of the ARVN troopers on the
Printed by Yee Tin Tong kinting Press, Ltd., Aik San Factory Building, Ground Floor, Block A, 14, Westlands Road, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong. Tel: 5-62227I-7
operation?
His was the tragedy of Viet
Nam, the stupidity of people killing
and maiming people in quest of some political objective which, at best, could nevei match the value of a single human life. And yet, when I look at the picture I took of this ageless peasant refugee, I see
more than tragedy. There is triumph and pride and deep interiors of strength.
As a journalist, I left friends in Viet Nam, in Laos, in
dead
Astained bundle
Cambodia. Fellow journalists who, more than l, covered the war in all its dimensions of tragedy, farce and irony, and left their souls there. Bob Ellison, Charlie Eggleston, Heri
Huet, Larry Burrows, Terry Reynolds, Kent Potter, Tu Vu,
Shlmamoro, Sully. The list is long.
There were nights of terror when
He stared back hard at my obvious interest in him.... For many years Hall Ellithorpe,
his brother and a collection of
a'a/
2
2a
t
Sole Agents: FRENCH FASHIONS LTD., Hons Kons.
r'2zt z '¡t
Lt
by Hol
Ellithorpe
other classic old Viet Nam hands, operated an agency in central
Saigon. Hal became so enamored with Saigon that he brought out the best souvenirs, H Janie and Donald.
one realized in self-reproach the vulnerabilities of the human
psyche. And days of
witnessing the inhumanity
horror
of it
all.
Memories fade, however, and war talk is of the unusual, the hilarious and the obscene delights of life in a country being blown to hell.
Yet when sober reflection comes
at odd moments, it is the
visage
of that lone man, upright and noble amid his tragedy, that returns. He
endured and the pride
strength went beyond
of
the
his mere
military might of his tormentors.
3