Exploration of the vietnam war, featuring interviews with american and vietnamese veterans and civilians with firsthand experience of the wars events as well as historic analysis. Its a fascinating collection of newly discovered and iconic original documents, photographs, film footage, and artifacts that illuminate 12 critical episodes in the war that divided the peoples of both the United States and vietnam. The visual imagery of remembering vietnam relies on the talents of the many photographers who risk their own safety to capture the stories of the war in pictures. Tonight well hear from some of those combat photographers and learn their own stories. Its my pleasure to welcome lee reynolds to the stage. He is the Strategic Communications officer for the u. S. Army center of military history here in washington. Previously, he was senior manager of the Universal Studios hollywood backlock tour from 2014 to 2016 and now works as an independent contractor as an actor, screenwriter, and creative producer. He has more than 20 Years Experience in the Entertainment Industry as an actor, screenwriter, playwright, stage manager, military technical adviser, producer, and technical advisadviser, and dir. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome lee reynolds and the panel. [ applause ] thank you. And to the National Archives and Records Administration for hosting and cosponsoring then event this evening and thanks to all of you for coming out and attending then event. Im lee reynolds, the Strategic Communications officer for the u. S. Army center of military history and ill be moderating the event this evening. The center of military history is responsible for recording the official history of the army in peace and war, while advising the army staff on historical matters. Our core responsibilities are to educate the force and the public, to inspire americas men and women to preserserve and pr our heritage. I invite you to visit our website history. Army. Mil for manage information about our responsibilities and the publications we provide. We are proud to support the 50th commemoration of the vietnam war about the department of the Armys SpecialPhotographic Office or daspo for short. It was authorized by president kennedy in 1962 and closed down in 1974, following the end of the vietnam war. It was charged with providing documentary films and quality photo products showing the armys operations worldwide, they would report directly to the chief of staff. Three detachments were created, one in europe, one in hawaii, and one in panama. Tonight we will focus on the pacific daspo office and vietnam specifically. The daspo teams made up, in part, by the men you see on stage tonight, would carry state of the art equipment, in the day, out into combat and often by themselves, and would embed in army units in the field. They went where civilian journalists couldnt go or wouldnt go. The results, as you will see tonight, captured on film through their lenses were some of the most iconic pictures and films of the vietnam war. And these images were not just used by the army, they could be seen in newspapers, magazines and films throughout the United States and the world. Now at the end of the presentation tonight well have about 10 minutes for questions and answers. Hopefully on the way in, you all were able to get some index cards and pencils to write down your questions. We have assistants on each side. Theyll collect the cards during the presentation and will get them back to me and well use those to guide the question and answer period. If you need an index card or pencil, let an assistant know. Id like to introduce erik villard, the digital historian for the department of the army. He is author of the new book about vietnam called staying the course october 1967 to september 1968. Hell be available in the lobby after the event to sign copies of the book and his book will be available for purchase. Ladies and gentlemen, dr dr. Villard. Thank you all for coming. Those of you who are tuning in to the live stream and those who will see it afterward. This is an exciting event. Something thats been in the works for a while. Im just pleased to be here with these great photographers. I was hired at the u. S. Army center of military history to write the book, which became staying the course, which was the Third Operational combat history in the vietnam war series. And it was published about a year ago. And, in fact, we had the opening book event here, National Archives. In the course of doing the research over many years, i came to really value the photographic archival history, the images, the film from the vietnam war helping me understand what i was reading in the text. And being a visual person anyway, i suppose, i gravitated towards it. And about four or five years ago, in fact, created a facebook based group, vietnam history. Org as a way of reaching out to veterans and engaging with them and families and getting more information. One of the draws, i think, of this group was these great photos that i was finding at the National Archives. I was going up to college park and digitizing these and, you know, i had seen a lot of photos but a lot of these i had never seen before. It was such a revelation. And over the course of d digitizing these photos, names popped up again and again, lafoon, durrance, acheson and others. When i formed the Facebook Group and began digitizing these photos, which were then enhanced, the photo you see behind you are the type of photos i poured the pixie dust over them and breathed life back into them. Well, these guys were around. And so they became members of the group. So i got to know them, and they remain members of the group. Its such a wonderful thing to be able to post a photo and say, hey, bob what were you doing that day you took that shot . We were doing this, that and the other. And as a result of that dialogue, i thought this is something we need to share with everyone. The world needs to know about these guys. So thats where the idea behind this came. So we worked together and again i want to give a special thanks to our executive Director Center of military history, Charles Bowery jr. Who believed in this vision and supported us and made this all happen. So tonight youre going to hear from five you know, the top photographs of the vietnam war and i see this as a beginning of an ongoing project. Again im posting these photos on my social media feeds and you will also find them on the center of military history, social media feeds. So i encourage you to, you know, follow those things and learn more about it. Tonight were going to hear from these five individuals. And im going to run the slide slow for most of them until we get to the final one, but without further ado, id like to turn over to our first speaker, william san hamel who will tell us a bit about the kind of the history of daspo and what it took to herd this group of wild cats, keep them in line when theyre doing their thing in vietnam. Thank you, erik. Im william san hamel and i was a captain with daspo. And i started with the United StatesArmy Photographic agency, in the pentpentagon, as a secon lieutenant and worked my way into daspo and left there january 1, 1970 to start a new year as a civilian. My oms was an 8500 and an 8511. Whats that . 8500, is a pictorial unit command erand an 8511 is a eMotion Picture tv director. In those capacities, i wore a couple of different hats. Well get into that in a moment. But to talk about the origin of daspo, as legend would have it, around 1961 or 62, general david or george decker, im sorry, who was the chief of staff of the army at that time would go to briefings at the white house with jfk and the other chiefs were there also, air force, navy, et cetera. And every time decker would go there, he would walk out and hed be furious because hed say to his deputy, you know, that curtis lamay, every time we go in there hes mouthing off with his photographs and his movies and he puts us to shame. And i want to do something just like he does. And i want it done now. And he of course curtis lamay was affectionately called iron ass but he wanted to compete with lamay. So a delta force concept was developed with decker and his staff, and he wanted an elite special ops unit. And im going to read to you what they really tried to create, and which they did. Im going to read it because i dont want to miss something. He wanted a Rapid Response team. He wanted the team to be fulltime. He wanted the teams to be highly mobile. He wanted them unincumbered by red tape, security clearances and travel orders. He wanted everybody to have a secret or top secret clearance. Cover worldwide military subjects. He wanted quality still and Motion Picture products. He wanted us to have the best equipment and always tdy into the countries that we went to and we were told to live on the economy. And the reason for that is well, ill get into that in a second. But also it was special missions that were to be ordered by the deputy chief of staff for operations right out of the pentagon, thats who we worked for, thats where our budget came from, and the units that they developed were for pacific, panama and europe, as lee said, but europe the deal was, if its going to the pacific, local commands could not take charge or have anything to do with our unit, except perhaps give them an office on the base. So europe said, no, were not going to do that. Pacific said, fine. Were hands off. Same in panama, fine. Let them come in. Europe said, no. So europe never did get a team. It ended up going to conus, and thats where it stayed. The objective was Central Control over the assignments, supplies, training, and the disposition of the workproduct. It got sent where it should go. The action officer to put all of that together was major arthur jones, he was at the pic center. He put a Team Together. Ill be very brief. He did a lot of developing with it. He wanted an acronym, they came up with daspo, department of the army special photo office. He cherry picked the photographers that would go into the units, they got them through the pic center. And through the course of time they would go out and try to find enlisted men and officers who had backgrounds in photo. In my particular case, i was found by Lieutenant Colonel walter haloren, who found me in fort benning, georgia. I had three years of background in Motion Pictures. Had to take my commission from Loyola University in 1965, and he found me and put me in the pentagon. I thought this is a wellgreased organization. They know what theyre doing. Anyway, the other deal was no parades, no change of commands, no marching bands, you dont shoot that. Youre going to do documentaries, training films, combat. And youre going to be not a Public Information office type of unit. Lastly, special orders with a licensed to steal that we were accused of one time in okinawa. Ted and i were on a mission, it was top secret and i never told anybody about it, and i wont even talk about it tonight. I happened to open a book and the middle of the page was written by the author of the puzzle palace, and there was this whole deal in the middle of the book all about our top secret mission. So the secret was out. Im going to read just a few lines from our instructions. We were to take military aircraft home when we went on our tdy trips. If there was no military aircraft available you could take a private airline, pan am, twa to get to southeast asia. If that wasnt available you could take a foreign flag, rent a ship, a naval boat, you could do anything you wanted to get and accomplish your mission. If anything would deter us from accomplishing our mission we could circumvent the problem and do what we wanted. We could rent cars, planes, trains, we could do anything we wanted to. So we had total freedom to move around. And the this is what really irritated that colonel in okinawa. Our orders say the utilization of government quarters and mess is not required. When we walked in there, he said youre not going to a hotel. Youre going to be in the boq and the enlisted quarters. I said, sir, we cant function that way and thats not what our orders say. Going back to what i said originally, living on the economy, we had to be together 24 hours a day. We were a mobile force ready to go. And if the enlisted men were out and i was downtown, and we have orders to go do something, it would probably take two days to get us all together and then also, we would you know, they would have to peel potatoes that day because they had kp, there goes the mission. Thats why we lived on the economy, anything that would adversary affect our performance of duty we could circumvent. The other thing that ticked that colonel off was we were auth authorized to wear and carry civilian clothes. He didnt like that, we had to be in uniform. Photo number one is why we were living together and thats what i was just saying. That we had to be together 24 hours a day. This was the villa that we lived in, and we had how am i doing on time . Two minutes. I got two. Ill talk fast. Im trying. We all were on tdy per diem so we chipped in and paid the rent for the house. We had some locals who did our laundry and cooked for us, and the guys would come home, they would have a hot cooked meal and get a hot shower. Photo two is my capacity as an 8500 commander. This was a typical situation at the villa. We called it the villa, it wasnt that fancy. We my job was the welfare and safety of my men and make sure they had a roof over their head and everything was functioning. I had great ncos who made that happen. And basically thats that was that was what was going on. My job every other day was to go to the war room we call it the war room, it was a Briefing Room where i was briefed on what was going on in each of the four, in vietnam i would see where there was activity and jot that down. By activity, i mean someplace that was hot. Id go back to the villa, put a Team Together and thats where they would go to that location. Many times they hitchhiked. Periodically we could get them orders to be on a flight, but for the most part, thats what happened. This photo thered be two or three more teams up country at this time. So this would be the number of personnel there at any given time. Thered be two or three, nine, 12 other guys up country while these guys would be back. And they were always rotating, go up three days, four days. As a director, my 8511 capacity, i used to get some really cushy jobs. Here im on the lawn with bob lafoon and a couple other guys and Vice President humphrey. And this is what i would call a cushy assignment. So im director, and thats my butt you can see in the photo. The next photo is the opposite. Where i this was not so cushy. This is a first year movie we made for Lieutenant General kinard, the father of helicopter warfare, went to the pentagon, i met him, he told me what he wanted. So i went back and did a complete series on the first air cavs division. We were not allowed to shoot. Officers were not allowed. These guys were the pros, why should we be screwing that up . So the next photo shows me out making that film, the first air cavs story. And i was shooting we were on an air assault. I couldnt resist taking the shot, so i did. And theres some other shots that go along with that that were still trying to find. So in that particular film, i had three Motion Picture cameras shooting at one time, three choppers, it was a big production. Thats because the lieutena lieutenantgeneral said you want films in the air, whatever you want, i want you out of here. We shot every subject in vietnam, and the networks bought our footage. We put the footage on panam, t twa to get it back for processing. Post daspo, i opened my own advertising agency, pr firm, and have done that from 73 or so to the present day. So we are honored to have some of daspos finest photographers still and motion men sitting here tonight. And our next speaker is one of the greatest daspo still photographers, bob lafoon. Thats me. Im bob lafoon. I was born in washington d. C. , hail to the redskins. Im retired now. Fully. Live in mcdonna, south of georgia. The afternoons i end up at the american legions, vfws and play card games, have dinner, go to bed around 9 00 or earlier in possible. I graduated from high school in 1964. Like many of my fellow photographs i received orders for daspo pacific located in hawaii. Hawaii. Hawaii. My first thought, there is a god. Beaches, surfing, bikinis and fun in the sun. I guess at the time being a soldier in the army it evaded me. In october of 1965, i arrived aboard a troop ship at pearl harbor, what a pleasure trip that was. The majority of the soldiers aboard the ship were from the First Infantry Division headed to vietnam. After listening to some of the soldiers, i began to realize what was beginning to happen in vietnam but luckily i was going to hawaii. This 19yearold junior enlisted rookie photographer was about to get his first of many rude awakenings. The first came with my assigned sponsor who picked me up at pearl harbor. Kermit was no longer the youngest and lowest ranking soldier in the unit, i now had that distinction. As we were driving to fort shafter, kermit began explaining exactly what daspo did and where and what it was all about. My bubble immediately burst. Grip and grins in hawaii were now out of the question. A few weeks after i arrived yoho, he rotated back to vietnam, i believe it was for his second rotation in. From october through december of 65, while in shafter at shafter, most of us were filming the 25th Infantry Division who was training and preparing to deploy to vietnam. My first of four rotations to vietnam started on 3 january 1966. As we began to rotate into vietnam, other teams were rotating back t