Please follow this link to hear an eyewitness description of the crash site where five US Army soldiers were killed when their chopper was shot down by enemy gunfire.
Category Archives: Cambodia
NVA/VC Training Camp in Cambodia
On the second day in Cambodia an AP reporter, photographer and I were taken to a NVA/VC training camp in the jungle near the border with Vietnam. The photographer was Henri Huet, well-known AP photographer who had covered the wars in Vietnam for many years, first with the French and then the Americans (http://www.apimages.com/Collection/Landing/Photographer-Henri-Huet-Vietnam-War/f8713143bd31444684a7db49d8846231). Getting to the camp required a half days trek on a trail through the jungle terrain. Just before we got to the camp the troops burned down a hooch similar to the one pictured here. Their reasoning was that because it was so close to an NVA/VC training camp its owners must have been sympathetic to the enemy.
Once we arrived at the camp, the AP reporter, Huet and myself walked about the camp. Huet went immediately to a four foot deep burial pit hastily carved in the red clay where several enemy bodies lay rotting in the sun. Walking up to the edge of the pit he began taking pictures. A few minutes later we were shown personal artifacts of a former North Vietnamese Army soldier including a picture of Ho Chi Minh carefully protected in a plastic cover. After this “photo op” we boarded a chopper back to the staging area in Vietnam.
Possessions of a former NVA soldier found at an enemy training camp in Cambodia 1970.
Army Field Hospital Near Cambodian Border
While in Cambodia I remember being hastily dropped off at a field hospital because my medevac transport was called on a rescue mission. When I looked inside the hospital tent there were three or four people standing in the doorway. About thirty feet away was a team of doctors and nurses standing around a table operating on a wounded GI. The scene was illuminated by a single light bulb hanging over them. It was the only illumination in the tent. As I was about to take a picture of this MASH scene one of the people at the operating table told us to leave. I didn’t take the picture.