This photo is by Spec 4 Keyes. The photographer without the shirt is me grinding out some motion picture pre-assualt footage with a 16mm Bell&Howell Filmo. The blond on my left is Spec 4 Campbell reading his light meter. Look at our boots they are shinier than the rest of the troops. Look at our fatigues they are cleaner. We would drop into the war and shoot our film and if the door was open when we finished we would leave. It left us with a guilty feeling, but the troops didn't seem to mind. They knew what could happen and to them having their picture taken meant someone cared.

I guess we cared or we would never have risked our necks, but postwar Washington didn't. As photographer after photographer has told me, only a trickle of what we shot ever made it to the archives. Government service workers filled dumpsters with our film as an embarassed nation backed away from what the Vietnamese call the American war.