The Coffee Table
War
One cold January morning some years ago, an
ad in the local paper caught my eye:
Old LIFE Magazines on Vietnam War $35.00
takes all.
This might not be a remarkable ad to find in a
city newspaper, but in the remote coastal area where I lived –
fifty miles from the nearest stoplight --- it was a peculiar message
to see among the classifieds for firewood, well digging, and satellite
TV.
It was a lazy Superbowl Sunday, so I called the
phone number out of curiosity. A woman answered, inviting me to
drive down that afternoon to take a look. My house was filling
fast with football fans, so her offer was especially attractive.
I drove south on the winding coastal highway, turning up a long
gravel driveway to her house, perched on the seaward hill with
an enviable bluewater view. Only a few thousand people lived along
this thirty mile stretch of Mendocino County coast, and most of
us knew each other. This woman was new in town.
We stood in the garage of her half-finished house,
making our introductions and surveying the contents of a large
box that held a thick stack of LIFE magazines and dozens of assorted
clippings. I judged that the woman was in her late twenties, too
young for the "Vietnam Generation" and probably too old to be
the daughter of a vet. Maybe a sister. I told her about my interest
in Vietnam, then asked about hers.
"Oh. I don’t really have any special interest.
I found them. I was clearing out my house in Buffalo getting ready
to move out here, and I took some junk to a dumpster behind a
local shopping center. And there they were. The magazines and
other stuff. In the box. Next to the trash but not dumped out.
Something told me they would mean something to somebody, and I
didn’t know anything about Vietnam but I guess I thought I should.
So I took them and moved them all the way out here with me. It
was kind of a crazy thing to do, but I’m glad you can use them."
I had told her about a class on the Vietnam War
I was teaching at San Francisco State, and that my part of the
course focused on how the war was portrayed in American popular
culture. LIFE Magazine would
be perfect for the students. I thanked her profusely and turned
to leave when she stopped me. "No, wait. I want you to have these,
too. These were with the magazines." She held out a packet of
letters, letters home from a young marine serving in combat in
1967. "I don’t know what happened to him. I didn’t want to
sell them with the magazines, being personal letters, but I want
you to have them. I don’t know why they were thrown away."
The Collection
The minute I got home I sat on the floor with
the box and took inventory with archeologicalcare. Twenty-eight
LIFE magazines, soon being eagerly passed around the Superbowl
guests, several of them vets. One of them didn’t watch a minute
of the game over the next two hours as he pored over issue after
issue. It was a pretty heavy duty collection, concentrated from
between 1966 and 1968 and including some of the finest combat
photography of Henry Huet, Tim Page, David Douglas Duncan, and
Larry Burrows.
The collection also included a copy of Newsweek
with a fiery Khe Sanh cover, a New York Times "Week in Review"
from 2/21/65 with extensive coverage of Vietnam issues, a miscellaneous
gung ho magazine called Vietnam in Pictures that was the print
equivalent of The Green Berets, a newspaper clipping of the first
boy in their town to die in Vietnam, [list other print contents].
More compelling were the letters. Twenty-three
from the young marine to his parents, half a dozen from his wife
to his parents, several letters from the mother of the marine
that she had sent to him in Vietnam and been stamped "return to
sender," and even one letter from the mother to President Lyndon
Johnson.
It was clear that the contents of this box had
belonged to the mother. They had been carefully chosen and saved.
Why had she thrown them away? Or maybe she had died and someone
else had tossed them. But who? Why would anyone throw away the
letters from a war?
Having gone through the contents of the box, a
mother’s memories of her son’s Vietnam combat, I got to know
her in a strange way, this middle class devout Catholic woman
with a penchant for military strategy. It was as if I had crawled
inside her information space and for a time and from the corner
of a room seen that part of the world as she had seen it. I read
the notes she had made on her boy’s letters home, noting the
number of days each took to arrive and his locations during that
time. She was obviously struggling with the geography, trying
to pinpoint where he was and track his movements. I read him begging
her not to send any more packages – eight had arrived at once
– and trying not to hurt her feelings while asking her to stop
"generaling" him. Mother the military strategist, it seems, offered
her tactical suggestions not only to LBJ.
Sharing in the personal documents of a mother
with a son at war offers insights into some of life’s most private
moments. Taken as a text, this collection allowed me to reconstruct
the way in which she reached out to understand a world that had
sent her son in harm’s way. It was not by accident that LIFE
magazine figured so heavily in her world view.
The Coffee Table War
Vietnam has been called the "living room war"
because it was the first war to be televised into people’s homes,
and there is no question that television coverage had an enormous
impact on public opinion in the United States. But television
was still in its early adolescence in the 1960s; thirty minute
news broadcasts did not begin until 1963, and the then-supreme
three networks were not broadcasting fully in color until 1967.
In today’s television audience terms, a Nielsen
rating of more than 20 – meaning 20 million sets tuned to your
channel --- is a rating home run. No network approached those
numbers in the 1960s but another medium did: LIFE magazine, which
in its heyday reached 36% of all U.S. families, with an estimated
weekly readership of 22 million, a greater market penetration
than any network either then or now.
LIFE was so ubiquitous that it was taken for granted
as a staple of American culture. It was transparent; part of the
wallpaper. At the doctor’s or dentist’s office, on your neighbor’s
coffee table, LIFE magazine was as much a part of American values
as motherhood and apple pie, and it played a special role in bringing
the Vietnam War home. Vietnam was a coffee table war, too.
William Prochnau in his study of Vietnam War correspondents
Once Upon a Distant War called LIFE "the premiere publication
of Middle America," "flossy, glossy" and "an unabashed propaganda
organ for The American Way or, at least, the view of it as seen
by its messianic founder and publisher Henry Luce." The New York
Times served the elite readership; LIFE was there for everyone
else.
In the 1960s, LIFE was not just an example of
a magazine, but virtually a medium unto itself. In those years
just before the domination of television became complete, LIFE
represented a transitional medium between print and visual worlds,
making it a unique vehicle for communication. LIFE was as visual
as television, but with the added dimension of written text and
the presence of a physical reality that – unlike TV – could
be touched, turned, and read over and over again. Print media
deal largely with issues; television with symbols. LIFE dealt
in both. Because of LIFE’s ubiquity and unique graphics + text
formula, there is no question it had considerably greater influence
on American public opinion about the Vietnam War than is generally
acknowledged.
This suited Henry Luce just fine, who had always
thought of Time/LIFE as an unofficial arm of the government. Loudon
Wainwright called LIFE a "virtual house organ" in its coverage
of World War II over more than two hundred issues. Luce was famously
chauvinistic and anti-communist during the Cold War, turning his
magazine editorials into open letters to the presidents of the
United States. And he knew them all.
Heroes and Hello Dolly
Studying the magazine collection, (which I later
completed), one could readily see that LIFE went through several
very different moods in coverage of the Vietnam War. Until 1965,
the theme seemed to be "Heroes and Hello Dolly." This is the period
when the mother of the young marine wrote to the president:
January 17, 1965
President of the United States
Mr. Lyndon B. Johnson
White House
Washington, D.C.
Mr President:
Last fall one of my pupil’s brothers was the first Western
New York casualty in Viet Nam. In a letter that he had written
to his mother, he stated that the Viet Cong came out of nowhere.
My son will soon enter the Marine Corps upon graduation from
college and we discussed the element of surprise. Then research
started about how Asiatics would fight. We read about the Tartars
and their invasion of Europe. . .To conceal their footsteps
or horse markings they use caves. . .Further research divulged
that many times pits were covered with young trees. . .Their
tunnel openings or cave openings may be along these watersheds.
. .The most faithful and policing dog is the Irish Wolfhound.
. .
I approached my grade if they would like to write our President
a letter on the subject of caves. Enclosed letters are repetitive
but one surprised me with his research on chipmunks. . ."Chippy"
may be worth studying...
I wish I were an expert to help more, but please accept our
sincere interest in our united nation.
Most respectfully yours,
Mrs. Michael Pace
At almost the same time, in the LIFE issue dated
January 8, 1965, Editor-in-Chief Hedley Donovan wrote "To L.B.J.:
What IS Our Aim in Vietnam?" "Only the president," he wrote, "by
insulating our policy and boldly implementing it, can stop the process
of Vietnamese disintegration and a growing U.S. mood of to-hell-with-it."
This was still early 1965, with only 23,500 American
"advisors" in Vietnam. Also in the collection was the New York Times
"Week in Review" section of February 1, 1965 featuring "The Debate
Over our Vietnam Policy" that stands even today as a remarkably
thorough analysis of the issues. This was the week Lyndon Johnson
said "we seek no wider war," words that would return to haunt him.
In February 1965 the Times broke with the Johnson administration
and editorialized "a great debate on the Vietnamese war is now raging
all over the United States," concluding that "the course of sanity
is explore the initiatives opened up by Secretary General Thant
and General deGaulle for negotiations to seek a neutralization of
Vietnam and all Southeast Asia." A map of anti-U.S. demonstrations
in ninteen different cities around the world as well pointed editorial
cartoons look in hindsight like handwriting on the wall so clear
that the consequences of escalation were inevitable. This "Week
in Review" section was part of the mother’s collection, the only
New York Times clipping in the box.
In the same month, on February 26, 1965, LIFE featured
a group photograph of sixteen proud and dashing pilots posed in
front of a fighter plane next to a dramatic shot of a soaring MIG
with the caption "Into a New Blue
Yonder" and "Objective: Red Sanctuary." This heroic
image was not unlike an article from August 1964 on "Heroes
of the Gulf of Tonkin." During this time, the war is still a
portrayed as a "clean" war with vigorous young troops posing proudly.
The more clinical air war is featured over the minimal military
actions on the ground and there was less emphasis on combat coverage
with the notable exception of Larry Burrows’ April 16, 1965 searing
photo essay of a helicopter
crew under attack and Horst Faas’ July 2, 1965 pictures of war
dead and wounded.
1965 was a critical year in the course of the Vietnam
War. While in a broader sense there might have been the force of
some historical inevitability, it was still a conflict with still
fewer than 50,000 troops committed, a president who stated "we seek
no wider war," and world opinion strongly opposed to expanded American
military involvement. The first 3,500 ground combat troups were
committed to provide "security" for the Da Nang air base in March
1965, and the critical threshold had been crossed.
In Daniel Hallin’s study of coverage of the war
during this period, he concludes that a "faithful reader of the
New York Times – someone who read it thoroughly every day" could
follow the policy debate and see that escalation was immanent. But
what about everyone else? As late as 1964, two-thirds of all Americans
had given "little thought" to Vietnam. Hallin’s study of news
coverage during this period concluded that the facts about Vietnam
policy "emerged in the news in such fragmentary form it is hard
to see how the average member of the public. . .could have had more
than a hazy awareness of the momentous decision the administration
was making." (p.77) To complicate this lack of information and confusion,
Hallin documents that every government escalation during this period
was accompanied by a neutralizing statement indicating that it represented
"no change of policy whatever." Every escalation in troop engagement
was accompanied by increased administration attempts to manage information
and public opinion.
The New York Times may have broken with government
policy early in 1965 with its call for negotiation, but the magazine
of the people, LIFE, stood editorially steadfast with the administration.
The very week that the first Marine batallion landed at Da Nang,
Hedley Donovan editorialized that "in this latest phase of the Vietnam
crisis President Johnson has shown admirable toughness and skill."
Called "Shape of a Vietnam Policy," the piece relentlessly belittled
opponents of a U.S. policy that "seemed almost entirely isolated
by so-called ‘world opinion’": "Peking was bellicose, Moscow
minatory, DeGaulle avuncular, U Thant inept and intrusive." These
"meddlings" were from the "noisy maw of world ‘world opinion’"
and Johnson had "properly refused to bow to the premature pressure
to negotiate." What was at stake, in Donovan’s view, was "the
credibility in Asia of an American commitment." It is little wonder
that even a conscientious reader would find "the facts" nearly impossible
to sort out.
Peter Pan in Vietnam
By October 1965, more than 100,000 U.S. combat troops
were in Vietnam, and even the editorial writers for the Times had
for the most part closed ranks behind the president. The window
for early resolution had closed. "This is Really War," editorialized
the Times. But it is clear that this escalation had not entirely
sunk in, nor had the meaning that this was "really war."
If there is one document that should be placed in
a time capsule to memorialize the mixed messages being received
by the American people about the Vietnam War at this crucial time
it is the October 22, 1965 issue
of LIFE magazine. The cover reads "Mary Martin in Vietnam" with
a subhead "Vietcong Ambush." The cover photograph by Charles Moore
(shot from above and behind) is of Mary Martin wearing a flowing
flowered gown, outstretched arms rising, as she poses Madonna-like
over hundreds of G.I.s seated on the tarmac at Nha Trang air base.
In the background is a mammoth B52 bomber that spans the width of
the page. Beneath the plane’s landing gear in small point type:
"Hello Dolly’ at Nha Trang."
Inside the issue are back to back stories – "Hello,
Dolly!" and "Hellish Ambush" that juxtapose photo
essays on Mary Martin taking her bows at a production of "Hello
Dolly" in Nha Trang followed by a four page spread including some
of the most horrifying gore from an ambush taking place at about
the same time in Bien Hoa, where
the Dolly troupe had performed several days earlier.
The "Hello Dolly" end of this gruesome synchronicity
was the brainchild of producer David Merrick. Shana Alexander (who
was along) reported that when the Russians canceled out of a State
Department-sponsored Dolly tour with the company already in Tokyo,
Merrick called the White House to see if the fan-in-chief might
want to book the show into Vietnam. "Oh yes, that’s the show that
has my song in it." And thus the arrangements were made.
This bizarre theatrical event might not add up to
a Machiavellian scheme to make the war look like fun, but it does
suggest a certain naivete and denial that "this is really war."
At the very least, it was not an inspired decision to put one of
America’s best loved entertainers in the middle of a combat zone,
but somehow it seems the war just was not yet taken very seriously.
Shana Alexander wrote "it was difficult for me to view the whole
tour as anything but an episode in a musical comedy." Of course,
she also wrote of being there during the "very height of the war,"
and as we now know 1965 was merely the very beginning.
"The War Goes On"
Marine Corps School
Quantico, Virginia
July 20, 1966
Dear Mom and Dad,
Well, we are in the thick of it now. We’ve
started our training schedule and it’s really great. And it will
get better.
Now, we go from about 7:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. We have physical
training and mostly classroom, but soon we get out in the field.
Saturday we go to the rifle range for live fire. I’m really looking
forward to it, this has got to be the best life on earth.
Enclosed is our training schedule for this week as I thought you
might like to look at it. Well, that’s about it for now, I’ll
write more over the weekend. Take care now, both of you.
Love,
Andrew
In March 1965 the first U.S. 3500 ground troops
were deployed to Danang. By the end of that year there were 184,000
combat troops in Vietnam and by the end of 1966 the number had risen
to 385,000, peaking in 1968 with more than 536,000. This massive
escalation under the command of a president who said at its start
"we seek no wider war" was accompanied by growing anti-war dissent.
The administration’s public opinion management strategy during
this period, largely successful, was to avoid any appearance of
crisis by making all policy decisions appear routine, incremental,
and automatic. (p. 31)
LIFE published twenty-eight covers on Vietnam between
1964 and 1969. Half of these were in the years 1966 and 1967, the
period of most rapid troop build-up. The mood of "heroes and Hello
Dolly" was clearly changing, shown starkly in the February
11, 1966 black and white cover by Henry Huet of two wounded
and heavily bandaged G.I.s with the caption "The War Goes On." A
weariness was creeping into the text that had been absent before.
The long and gritty photo essay
inside was the most sobering coverage to date.
Sometimes you really have to wonder if Henry Luce
read his own magazine during this period. John MacArthur observes
"such was the self-confidence of the United States during Luce’s
American Century. Horrifying pictures of war could be published,
but the Johnson administration kept sending more troop ships. Uncensored
reporting seemed to shock virtually no one’s conscience, and certainly
not the editors of Time Inc." (p. 127)
The most graphic LIFE cover and photo story ever
published on Vietnam carried the date October 26, 1966. Shot by
Larry Burrows, later to die in the war, and Co Rentmeester, the
cover read "Invasion DMZ Runs into
the Marines." The images suggest something else. On the cover
is a head shot of a tattered Marine cradling the head of another
marine so bandaged that only his nose can be seen. The story inside
includes some of the most vivid and gruesome war photography
ever published in the mainstream media.
This is the Vietnam that the young marine encountered
in February 1967 shortly after he arrived in country stationed near
Da Nang.
23 February 1967
Dear Mom and Dad,
The last few days have been very busy indeed. One of my
men’s father’s died and we were occupied with getting
him off on emergency leave. . .
Last nite we got hit. A lot of firing and all but we didn’t
get any bodies. No one here was hit so we are lucky there.
Today I went to the rear for a court martial. While back there
I was talking with a friend from Quantico and he had some
very bad news for me. Al stepped on a mine and has lost both
legs. It really burns me that these gooks won’t come out
and fight but they ruin a man with a stinking booby trap.
Another friend of mine was killed 36 hours after we got here.
It’s a lousy war but what can we do. They tell us to make
friends when I’d rather go down to the village with a flame
thrower. That really burned me up about Al, but there is nothing
I can do now. I’m trying to get his address and will let
you know when I do. But some day those who are the cause of
this will pay. I’ll do my best to see to that. . .
It’s 10:00 p.m. and time to check post. I go around and
make sure all positions are manned and all are awake. So take
care now and write soon. I hope you are both well and keeping
busy – I do.
Love,
Andrew
This personal disillusionment of one Marine was
a microcosm of growing disillusionment both private and public
with the course of the war. But there was a long way to go. By
the end of 1966, 5008 Americans had died; by the end of 1967 16,000.
By the end of 1969 the figure was over 40,000, with more than
18,000 U.S. combat fatalities yet to come.
LIFE communicated a steady stream of mixed messages
through these years. The official editorial stance of the magazine
was supportive of the administration nearly until the end. LIFE
published thirty-six Vietnam editorials. Editor in Chief Hedley
Donovan was something of an expert on Vietnam and had been there
several times. While deferring of necessity to his expertise,
most of his editorial staff were opposed to the war long before
LIFE made its own anti-war statement of sorts in 1969. So in an
official text-based way, LIFE was a conservative if not hawkish
publication. The inside articles conveyed a more balanced message.
But the pictures themselves told a very different story.
In the early 1930s, Henry Luce became preoccupied
with what he called "picture magic" and with the idea of the "candid
camera." He intuitively understood the power of photojournalism,
though the idea for a picture magazine is actually credited to
his wife Clare Booth Luce. The creation of such a magazine depended
on several technological innovations: the introduction of small
cameras (specifically the Leica), the ability of paper companies
to make coated paper in rolls, and a process for quick drying
inks. These technologies came together in the November 23, 1936
inaugural issue of LIFE.
Interestingly, the format of the magazine owed
much to the movies. Specifically, Luce had introduced a monthly
filmed newsreel "The March of Time" as a promotion for Time Magazine,
and his staff worked backwards from the film format in designing
LIFE. Luce wanted LIFE to be "all the newsreels on your knee."
Picture stories were called "acts" in a peculiar theatrical reference.
Luce wanted LIFE to embody "charm" and "relaxation." Above all,
"LIFE is here to inform," he wrote, "indeed, it exists to harness
a whole new art of communication to the business of informing."
But how did LIFE inform about the Vietnam War?
Did the pictures tell the story? The text? The editorials? How
did it function as a medium to bring the "coffee table war" home?
A great deal of attention has been given to the differences between
print and television as communication mediums. Print is more linear,
more complex, capable of sustained information and argumentation.
Of course, it can also exploit the tabloid style, but tabloid
headlines that can be gulped in one look are closer to images
than words.
Television as a medium privileges symbols, images,
and dramatic narrative, and it appeals to a much wider and down-market
audience. Television blurs news and entertainment with greater
ease than print. Television is the medium of the sound bite, and
they have been getting consistently shorter over the years. Television
images are fleeting, ephemeral. Our collective consciousness of
memorable television moments is a rather short list, indeed. Television
news was far more consistently supportive of administration Vietnam
policy than the major newspapers. On television, the war was presented
as more of a morality play, "while the coverage of a paper like
the Times had a dry and detached tone, television coverage presented
a dramatic contrast between good. . .and evil." (Hallin p. 118)
But where does this leave LIFE as a medium? With
both text and photography, it had elements of both television
and print with several additional features. Image persistence
is one distinctive feature of LIFE’s Vietnam photography. Unlike
fleeting television footage, the combat photography of a LIFE
cover or story could be on view for weeks. Images could be studied
and reread, with details emerging over time. LIFE’s combat photography
was sending a message quite different from its editorial position
in the sense that most combat photography is by definition "anti-war."
At the same time, the very persistence and ubiquity
of LIFE might function as a message frame that in fact neutralizes
– even legitimizes -- the more extreme images and renders them
more routine and less dramatic. Combat photography within the
context of a middle-brow magazine that featured all manner of
other subjects from fashion to football becomes just another set
of pictures. This process of desensitization to images has become
so pervasive over the years that attention itself has become a
highly prized commodity.
All media seem to work in mysterious ways because
there is rarely a one to one correspondence between a message
in any medium and its observable effect. It is the exception for
any one message to register a significant impact on the viewer
or listener. Hearing "fire" in a crowded theater or "I love you"
for the first time from a friend might have an observable direct
effect. But typically, any single message is but one piece of
a vast environment of information bits where our "message" on
any give topic is an aggregate of data from a variety of sources.
Thus we cannot know precisely what effect the LIFE magazine collection
had on the thinking of the mother of the young marine, but we
can know that they were important enough for her to keep over
many years.
"Don’t Worry"
The last letter from Vietnam in the mother’s
collection is dated April 21, 1967:
Dear Mom & Dad,
Well here we are again on the move. I got back from that
last little operation only to pack up and move again. Now
we are northwest of Hue and due to go out on an operation
tomorrow. We’ve been on operation Big Horn and I think this
new one is to be called Shawnee, but I’m not sure. It doesn’t
really matter. Little is known from a name. Apparently this
will be quite a big operation, though. . .
That’s about all I have for now so once again I must say
don’t worry if you don’t hear from me for a while. I don’t
know how long this next operation will be. The word is anywhere
from 3 to 30 days, so take care and don’t worry. All is
fine and I am healthy and fine. Take care now and write soon.
Love,
Andrew
Then the letters stop. The next letter in the
collection was written May 4, 1967, from the mother. It reads
in part "Andrew, we hope all is well with you and your platoon.
News is not good for Marines." The letter was returned in an envelope
stamped "Returned to Sender – Moved Left no Address."
The collection ends with a yellowed newspaper
clipping headlined "Falls Residents Visit Son Wounded in War."
Mr. And Mrs. Michael Pace have returned from St. Albans L.I. where
they visited their son, 2nd Lt. Andrew Pace, USMC, who is a patient
in the Naval Hospital there.
Pace has been medically evaluated back to this
country after being wounded in Vietnam on May 4th. He was on a
reconnaissance assignment with his platoon several miles west
of Hue when he was wounded. . .
This chilling ending to the collection moved me to go to some
lengths to learn what had happened to the young marine and his
mother. Was he an alienated Vietnam vet living in the woods? A
businessman? Was he dead?
Through a fortuitous series of telephone inquiries,
I located him and his family. To say the least, they were surprised
to hear from a woman on the other side of the country who had
come into possession of a box that had been tossed out in Buffalo.
His wife was especially appreciative, and we subsequently exchanged
several letters. The once young marine was now a colonel assigned
to NATO – a career officer. And the box? The collection? He
told me "Yes, it belonged to mother and when she died I threw
it out. Do whatever you want with it and then burn it all. It
means nothing to me."
LIFE Comes Out
It took LIFE Magazine until 1969 to publicly turn
the anti-war corner with its classic issue "One
Week's Dead." The LIFE editorial staff had always been "dismayed"
(Loudon Wainwright’s word) at the way the magazine had covered
the war and "many on the staff felt that much more should be said,
that LIFE should speak up for withdrawal."
New Managing Editor Ralph Graves had the idea
of doing a story on all of the American dead killed in one week,
an idea he knew would be difficult to get past Hedley Donovan.
They chose the week May 28 – June 3, 1969, and dispatched stringers
and correspondents to get in touch with all 242 families and do
a photo round-up. Donovan was not to know of the project until
a basic layout was completed. Collecting the photographs was filled
with "heartbreaking ironies," but only about twenty families wanted
nothing to do with the idea.
When Donovan was finally called in to see the
preliminary pages and copy, he took a long time reviewing the
material, finally saying to Graves "All right. Thank you." And
with those words Donovan both changed LIFE’s editorial policy
toward the war and sanctioned an unforgettable issue of the magazine,
with page after page of yearbook size pictures, thirteen pages
in all, of boys from across the U.S. who had died in a single
week in Vietnam.
In 1972 LIFE magazine published its final weekly
issue. With its former advertising dollars diverted to television
and printing and postage costs soaring, the magazine had been
losing money for years, and there was no saving it. We can’t
know precisely what role it played in the formation of public
opinion during the Vietnam War, but there is no question its vivid
and compelling coverage made a difference.
Reflecting back to the mother of the young marine,
I marvel that I am writing this chapter in Hanoi while at this
moment my own twenty year old son is visiting Hue, Danang, and
Marble Mountain on his own as a tourist. What a terrifying world
it must have been thirty years ago for all mothers and all sons
and all of those who loved them, and what an eternal lesson that
experience should remain.
--August 2001
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