FRANK LEE: BRONZE STAR WITH VALOR military combat correspondent profile by marc yablonka

Frank Lee’s interest in photography began when he was in jr. high school in Mississippi , and for reasons that he would call other than just liking photography. Being Chinese-American in the deep South, and in spite of the fact that the girls wanted to go out with him when he reached the dating age, it was hard for him to ask girls out without causing embarrassment and discomfort—the social morays of the South in the mid 50’s forbidding inter-racial dating as they did--so he chose photography as a way to make friends. “It was my free pass to be with all the stars of the school: the jocks and the cheerleaders. Everybody wanted their picture taken and I was the go-to guy,” he said. This was a strategy that also worked well for him when he moved west to Los Angeles and attended largely Jewish Fairfax High School, where he became editor-in-chief of the high school yearbook. For Lee, the early years behind the camera and what he called “breathing noxious chemicals” were his ticket to becoming a Marine Corps Combat Correspondent. When he was in boot camp being tested for various MOSs, he informed his drill instructor that he was a photographer. The next thing he knew, he was hustled over to a corner desk and given an aptitude test. He not only passed photography, he found that he had an aptitude for electronics and audiovisual as well. “What surprised me even more was when they ASKED me what specialty I wanted! That, I believe, was a first in the Marine Corps. I chose photography.” Soon he was off to Vietnam, though he did not fly a direct route. His trek into the fray took him first to the Marine Corps Air Station in El Toro, Calif. and then on to Okinawa, Japan, where he reported with two junior enlisted photographers to the 2nd Battalion 4th Marine Regiment. “ 2/4 was in a horrific battle at the Rock Pile that fall, suffered heavy casualties and was in Okinawa to pick up troop replacements. While the grunts trained in the hills and mountains, we were at the base post office shuffling and sorting mail. My first hint of a war was when I had to stamp “Return to Sender. Deceased” on a copy of Playboy.” On New Year’s Eve, 31 December 1966, he boarded the USS BEXAR (pronounced “Bear”) along with the men from 2/4. The following day at 1600 hours, the ship slipped quietly out of Kin Bay, leaving behind a panoramic backdrop of fertile green mountains, untouched sand dunes and colorful peaked roofs scaling up the hillsides, lit bright by the setting sun, Lee recalled. “5 January 1967. Land ahoy! Instead of a blast of heat engulfing me as it did to others when stepping off an aircraft, I stood on the deck of the Bexar and sailed against a cool breeze into Da Nang Harbor. Again, the scene resembled the Kin Bay I left behind. Again, thin slips of sand marked the border of the sea; a multitude of trees fell in line behind the sand creating a solid green curtain. As the ship coasted near the shoreline, birds appeared and cross-hatched the sky.” Lee didn’t expect this. He fully thought he would be met by the sounds of artillery or gunfire, but not as tranquil a tropical setting as this. “At that moment it would have been impossible to convince me there was a war. And it wasn’t too long before that thought vanished. “My first encounter with the Vietnamese was probably like other new arrivals. It was a shock. I never met a Vietnamese before; I didn’t understand their language, culture, food except what little I read about Vietnam from a pamphlet issued by the Marine Corps that listed verbal orders in Vietnamese: to say stop, go away or don’t move. The most common phrase everyone knew was, “Number Ten” or “Number One,” obvious references that the latter was good. As I spent more time in Vietnam, I became confused about America’s role. One day we’d be at a civic action camp protecting the Vietnamese villagers from VC attack; the next time we’d be destroying the village ridding it of the enemy. Sadly, the Vietnamese all looked the same to me. I can still recall my mother crying in the driveway asking me why I wanted to kill “our people.” My simple answer then: I was an American first regardless of my ethnicity. One day in the DMZ, I watch a young NVA soldier – no more than 15 years old, lay dying under the hot sun after being shot by his superior for surrendering. The Marines brought him back and as the medical doctor worked on him. I looked into the teenager’s face as he gasped like a fish for air, his chest heaving. I realized that he and I were the same, not just the same skin color but of the same species. I felt ashamed.” But one gets the feeling that that shame did not last all that long in Vietnam. Being Asian and a Marine in Vietnam had some obvious drawbacks, i.e., getting killed by friendly fire. In the heat of combat Lee, who believes he may have been the only Chinese-American Marine combat correspondent in Vietnam ("because nobody else wanted to do it"), could easily be mistaken for the enemy. To minimize this chance, he always tried to meet and introduce himself to whomever he was linking up with. “Look. Me Marine. See?” And being from Mississippi added immense credibility since many of the Marines were from the South. The standing joke, according to Lee, was there were very few if any North or South Vietnamese who talked with a southern accent. “I readily spoke with a Mississippi Delta drawl,” he said. While in camp, Lee was relegated to the most mundane of duties…cleaning his living quarters, doing laundry, organizing combat gear, cleaning cameras, or raking the dirt around the hooch. For Lee, it felt like they were always cleaning something because of the wind, sand, rain and mud. On duty, he sequestered himself inside the air-conditioned comfort of the photo lab, a mobile darkroom. There, he processed film and printed the pictures. Some evenings when it was particularly hot, he stood night duty and slept underneath the processing sinks where it was really cool. Off duty evenings, he went with the other photographers to the enlisted club and sucked up “near beer until we looked like bloated rubber fuel bladders.” But the one standing routine every morning after breakfast was to report at the Admin Hut and look for your name on the Field Assignment Board. If it was there, the details of the assignment followed, perhaps matching you with a platoon patrol in the DMZ or participating in a major combat search and destroy operation involving thousands of Marines, in which case the entire photo section was there. The first thing Lee noticed inside the Admin Hut was a plaque with several rows and columns of purple heart ribbons, with one empty spot at the bottom right edge. One of the NCO’s commented to Lee that the ribbons represented how many photo people were killed and wounded since 1966. “It was a little disturbing to wonder if that spot was for me,” Lee remembers worrying at the time. Lee enjoyed going into the field if for no other reason than what he felt was his personal freedom. “In the rear, every senior office pogue demanded our uniforms be starched and crisp; you had to salute every officer in front, behind or beside you, or draw duty that was totally alien to your occupational specialty.” Being in the field was always preferred…even if it was dangerous. A typical day on a combat assignment might involve humping up a gorge, down a hill following the Marine in front of you, constantly reminding yourself what the Gunnery Sergeant said, “Stay at least 5 meters behind the man in front of you. One round will get you both.” Lee recalled that the Gunny never mentioned what to do if a grenade landed amongst the troops. Its killing radius was 15 meters. “If you are lucky (as a photographer), or unlucky as a grunt, you make contact with the enemy and your instincts spring into action. Both of us run toward the gunfire, I behind a viewfinder with a false sense of safety, and the rifleman with his weapon on automatic, sweeping the foliage with bullets.” During the first half of Lee’s first January in country, the countryside was under water from the monsoon rains. The second half the Vietnamese began preparing for Tet, their New Year. As would happen more than once in the Vietnam War, North and South Vietnam struck an informal truce to last through Tet. For the Marines it was an opportunity to reconnoiter the area. Lee had not yet had the chance to go into the bush since arriving in Vietnam, so he petitioned and was granted permission to join and document a recon team in action. His Gunnery Sergeant heard about it, however, and tried to convince him not to go out. “At the time, few if any photographers had been out with a recon team because of the extreme danger that usually follows them. Instead of having 100 Marines sweep an area with some personal protection, recon teams of ten or fewer Marines are often dropped smack in the middle of Indian country. I appreciated Gunny’s warnings but joined a squad from 1st Platoon, Alpha Company, 3rd Recon led by Lt. Richard Piatt, an enlisted “Mustang” Marine sent earlier by the Marine Corps to the U.S. Naval Academy, where he became an officer. Piatt was a leader among leaders, and very much admired by his men. “ Lieutenant Piatt introduced the squad with a cheerful welcome. Among handshakes, howls of laughter and giggles they proceeded to try and transform me into a Recon Marine – first dumping all his gear in the rucksack onto the floor, then removing his C-ration cans from the boxes and shoving them into two pairs of socks. While his pack was being reorganized, someone collected three extra water canteens and hung them with the two already on his web belt (“making me feel more like a water buffalo.”) Next, a clutch of grenades was handed to Lee but not before they taught him how to protect against the safety the pins accidently going off. Utility covers were the headgear instead of helmets. And the final makeup of a Recon Marine, Lee said, was applying camouflage grease on his face the next morning to become “a new human species.” After a couple of days of bad weather which kept Lee’s unit grounded, they boarded two helicopters. An hour later, they landed on a small plateau high in the mountains. They off-loaded from the aircraft very quickly and ran into the tall elephant grass. “Before the last man vanished into the thicket, the aircraft were already flying down the mountain slope, quickly disappearing around a bend,” Lee recalled. Lee remembers the area being incredibly quiet. There were no sounds at all except for the breeze moving the grass. The lieutenant gave a hand signal and the circle of Marines contracted into a small group with Piatt at the center. Willie Acosta, who, according to Lee, was an easy-going Hispanic who always had a quick smile, was the point man. Armed with a machete and rifle slung across his chest, he began whacking at the heavy foliage, creating an opening for the unit to pass through. This went on for an hour or more until the sun began to set and they dropped their gear for the night. For the next two days they humped up and down the mountains setting up different observation posts, watching the enemy below them move about. On the fourth day while Willie was scanning the terrain with his binoculars, a rustling of grass on a nearby trail gave away the VC’s position. AK-47 rifles rang out. “We started running up the hill, returning fire, trying to encircle them. The firefight escalated. Bullets sounding like angry wasps snapped around us. I started taking photos of the fighting when a cry broke through the noise, ‘Doc, Doc,’ a voice shouted. ‘Tex (our radioman) is hit! Corpsman up!’ Tex was slumped over in the grass a few meters behind me. I thought for sure he was dead. The bullets were still dancing around us when Doc reached Tex. As he rolled the radioman over, his arm began to move, then the rest of him. We later saw where a round hit the metal buckle on his shoulder harness and ricocheted past his chest. It barely missed his heart.” Lee marvels now about how, apparently the VC “didn’t get the word” about the “mutually agreed upon” Tet truce because they kept shooting at the Marines. Lieutenant Piatt then led them further downhill across to another knoll and called up a fire mission on the radio. In less than ten minutes Lee’s unit heard a whump, whump sound overhead and then the loudest BOOM he ever heard. That explosion was followed by another series of explosions with dirt, rocks, tree branches showering them from every direction. Afraid that the VC was still there, they stayed in position for almost another hour. No one moved. “Our legs ached and the muscles in our arms cramped in pain. As if that wasn’t enough, the rain started, first with a few drops that increased into a steady heavy downpour. Under the noise of the rain we climbed back to the ambush area to assess the battle damage. The artillery apparently did its job very well; tunnels and trenches were unearthed, but no VC, not even blood trails or spent brass. Willie found some enemy documents and collected them for the lieutenant. Not finding anything else, we humped for another hour to the razorback of another hill and set in for the night. Even though the rain receded, we were soaked and cold. No fire was permitted so the C-rations were eaten cold. Everyone paired up and erected two-man shelters. Willie and I partnered together. As they said in boot camp, it was a**hole to belly button tight trying to stay warm. We all shivered in unison, too tired to worry about the VC, the cold or the rain. Sleep was the elixir.” The next day Lee’s unit ran into the VC again and another firefight broke out. In spite of the bullets flying, he was able to maneuver around taking pictures, this time standing only briefly since, as he was later told, the bullets were hitting all around him. “My sense of invincibility almost got me killed. When the fighting stopped, the lieutenant ordered a headcount and we responded by shouting our last name. When Corporal Dray didn’t answer, everyone panicked and started searching – only to find him behind a huge boulder spooning fruit cocktail from the can into his mouth. ‘I was hungry,’ Dray protested.” Covering combat never got easier but it did become what Lee termed more routine. “Once you can manage the initial paralyzing fear and exposure to the blood, guts and death – on both sides - you go about filming without so much as a wince from a decaying body. The worse for me was finding women and children grievously wounded or dead, which kept me asking, `Why, why?’ The emotional pain can be intense. We had a saying at the press center: `God protected drunks and fools.’ We got and stayed drunk after coming off the line, and were fools for going out there with only a camera. Taking new photographers into the field was also a heavy responsibility.” Along with the relationships Lee forged with new combat correspondents in uniform, there was also that which he and others in uniform forged with the civilian media. Civilian journalists going north to cover the war were billeted at the Danang Press Center. The Marine correspondents and civilian press had a cordial relationship, not the competitive friction one might expect. Where some chafing appeared is when a civilian journalist attempted to order the enlisted photographers around in the compound. Most often it came from “celebrity” journalists or the first-time-in-Vietnam guys who concealed their discomfort and innocence by being pushy. “Veteran journalists like Jim Lucas, Joseph Alsop, Henry Huet and Larry Burrows – to name those I came to know - were always kind and interacted with us. The Marines particularly liked Dana Stone, the redheaded photographer who thoroughly enjoyed being in the bush with us.” Overall, the military and civilian press worked comfortably together. On one occasion bad weather kept Lee’s unit from being extracted for two days. By the last day the CBS news crew ran short on food so I shared the goodies from home, a can of pate, beef jerky, soda crackers under the shelter of our assembled ponchos. “It’s not Paris, but it beats being hungry,” he said. Lee feels he owes one of those civilian correspondents a heartfelt apology, which he offers here: “In the summer of ’67, Ted Koppel, his film crew, other journalists and I were in the Con Thien area covering the Marines recovering the bodies of their fellow Marines. They were killed earlier by NVA artillery and rocket attacks and had to be left behind as the battle became intense. Only after the U.S. retaliated with air strikes and artillery did the enemy stop. Ted and his people were behind me as we walked alongside tanks accompanying the Marines when suddenly the NVA began a rocket attack. Everyone ran looking for cover, a hole --- the deeper the better. Ted was running and I was following behind him as the rockets exploded around us. As he dived into a nearby bomb crater, I notice something falling out of his pocket and quickly picked it up as I went head first into another crater. The attack lasted for another five minutes and ceased. I sat up and immediately saw that it was a Gossen photo light meter. I was preparing to give it back to him when selfish thoughts got the best of me. I had an old General Electric photometer that was on its last leg of life and here was a top-of-the-line meter. I guess necessity can distort rational thought, (he could always obtain another one; whereas we didn’t have any spares). So I kept it. Ted was searching the area asking if anyone had seen it; I even pretended to assist in the search but to no avail. I have been living with this guilt for over 43 years. It’s about time I fess up and publicly confess and apologize to Mr. Koppel for this terrible error in judgment. No excuses except to say that Marines – including Marine combat photographers - when desperate will do questionable things to get the job done. So, Mr. Koppel, I trust you will understand. I gave your light meter to another Marine photographer when I left Vietnam. I still have the General Electric meter, however. It only works if pointed directly at the sun. Thank you for your contribution. Semper fi.” Lee said that there were two moments when the odds were against a Marine walking away alive: 1) when he’s new in country and not familiar to the sounds and sights of combat, and 2) his last month in combat when he’s distracted thinking about going home. “These moments have killed many. And the last thing I wanted was to have a Marine killed on my watch.” Of all Lee’s memorable assignments, one that stands out was a trip to the 2nd Korean Marine “Blue Dragon” Brigade south of Chu Lai. The Blue Dragons were fearless warriors and notorious fighters which neither the VC nor NVA wanted to engage in combat. With a three-man photo/sound team led by a Lieutenant Carpenter, Lee’s unit shot a film story of that brigade. As guests of a General Kim, they were treated like “VIP’s attending an officers’ mess” that evening. After two days of filming, Lee and the unit bid farewell to the ROK brigade and boarded a Huey back to Da Nang. “The highlight of this trip for me was actually flying the Huey back as co-pilot. I was surprised the captain invited me to take the controls, especially with General Kim in the back. I must have done okay; the General fell asleep during the rest of the trip,” Lee said. If asked, Lee would probably clarify that particular mission a rarity. Others more like…Vietnam, were the norm. “At the DMZ, both Con Thien and Khe Sanh were subjected to some of the worse artillery and rocket attacks. At times the shelling would last for hours, stop and resume at another unannounced time. One early evening before it became ink dark, a group of Marines and I assembled on top of the sandbag bunkers to watch the B-52’s drop their ordinance on the other side of the DMZ. It was a spectacular show of fireworks as one explosion followed another. They lit up the horizon like a string of flashbulbs followed by thumps of sound. We were pretty engrossed in the action, standing up, yelling and cheering as if at a football game when an explosion erupted nearby. Like a cluster of prairie dogs we scattered in all directions, some literally flying into the trenches while others ran over each other searching for cover. When the excitement was over, we got up, looked around and started laughing. All of us were covered in mud. We obviously forgot about the rain early that day that turned the trenches into thick rivers of red clay mud.” But by far the worse experience was far less congenial than even that. “The worse firefight I encountered was getting ambushed and wounded while on a combat patrol. It was about 1400 hours when I was called to the Admin Hut to suit up and go on a Sparrow Hawk with Lima Company, 3/4. A Sparrow Hawk is simply this: we (the Marines) think bad guys are in this area but are not sure. So go out there with only a smattering of questionable intel and verify the situation. The helicopters inserted us outside the Gio Linh District in Quang Tri Province. The absence of males -- only women and children was the first clue that something was very wrong. Even yard animals and dogs were not seen or heard. After passing through the village all hell broke out. This time the North Vietnamese Army – not the VC - engaged and pinned the entire platoon down. "I was behind the lieutenant when he and the machine gunner rushed forward to the point man who was already killed. I was filming when a round pierced through my canteen. I immediately felt wetness and thought I was surely hit. A second round followed, hit my helmet and grazed my forehead before the bullet spun to a stop on the ground. Because the capillaries were so close to the surface of the skin, I bled profusely, making my head wound look worse than it was. I called for cover fire to a group of Marines at a hooch nearby. As they started shooting, I raced to them." Then a young corporal came from nowhere and asked, `What are we going to do now sergeant?' The lieutenant and platoon sergeant were gravely wounded and here I was, the next senior Marine. The Marine Corps command structure is very specific: if a senior Marine is incapacitated and cannot command, the next senior in rank takes over regardless of whether he is a cook, clerk or in my case, a photographer. `All Marines are riflemen first,’ I could hear my DI bark. I put my camera down and picked up the M14 rifle. “A quick assessment was not encouraging. The lieutenant was pinned down about 20 meters in front of us. Those near him, including the Marine who ran up with more ammunition for the M60 machinegun, were dead. All three squads were rendered immoveable by the NVA, now trying to outflank and envelop us. I had two radiomen with me, one on the platoon/battalion frequency; the other in radio contact with several Huey gunships. I popped a green smoke grenade marking our position while the radioman directed the flight parallel to our position. A helicopter made an initial pass. We by then were inside the hooch and observed the action through peep holes. Other Hueys followed and opened fire, launching a volley of M79 grenades from the belt-fed grenade racks while the crew chiefs strafed the treeline with their M60s. The three flybys slowed but did not halt the advancing enemy. Sensing we were about to be overrun, I decided that with three remaining rounds in my pistol, I would take out two NVAs and save the last for myself. As an Asian I wasn’t about to be captured. Then a flight of F-4 Phantoms returning from an aborted mission came up on frequency and asked if we needed help. The radioman couldn’t key the microphone fast enough to respond. As the fighters were lining up, the other radio operator made contact with battalion headquarters for me. The colonel asked if we could be the blocking force as they were sending a rifle company to our rescue. I told the colonel that we had about 60% killed and wounded and would try and hold our position as best we could. “As the Phantoms began their air assault, we shouted to the lieutenant to keep his head down and to tell us how close to bring in the fighters. Napalm exploded about 100 meters from us. The lieutenant shouted back, “closer, closer!” The radioman called in the adjustment. The jets realigned and came in screaming. It was a scene right out of the movie Apocalypse Now as a huge wall of napalm exploded and rolled across the rice fields, destroying the entire village, vaporizing everything in its path. Debris, shrapnel and the overwhelming heat from the napalm sucked the air out of our lungs. I could hear cries of women and children and the fire still raging from the bombing. Nothing else moved. When night fell we crawled to the lieutenant, lifted him on our backs and crawled to safety.
"Hearing us in the dark calling out, Kilo Company found us around 2100 hours. Medevac helicopters airlifted the severely wounded – including the lieutenant that night, their flights occasionally interrupted by sporadic gunfire which Kilo Company quickly suppressed with every weapon on hand. I got tagged to be extracted for the next morning…not before finding my camera and finished filming.“ Lee was awarded the Bronze Star with Valor (V) for calling in the air strike that kept his unit from being overrun. He had no idea that was going to happen to him until the colonel at the Danang press center called and told him to report to General Cushman, commanding general of 3rd Marine Amphibious Force, the counterpart of MACV and General William Westmoreland in Saigon. Lieutenant George Sullivan, the platoon commander survived; however, he lost both legs because of his severe wounds. Sullivan himself received the Navy Cross and put Lee in for his Bronze Star. There were other times when Lee put my camera down as well. Once, he didn’t pick up a weapon; instead he helped a corpsman try to save a wounded Marine during a search and destroy mission in Helicopter Valley when a fierce firefight erupted. Lee was with the main squad when a rifleman nearby was hit. He spun around screaming in pain. The Doc appeared and immediately opened his jacket and saw that he had a severe chest wound and was going into shock. Lee, being the closest, stopped filming and held the Marine down as the Doc tried to find a vein in his arm to insert an IV. “The Marine kept thrashing uncontrollably, making it all but impossible for Doc to insert a line. Suddenly he stopped fighting and relaxed. He looked up to the sky as if he saw something in the far distance. As his eyes began to close he called out for his mother with his last breath. Doc dropped the IV to his side and I gently placed the Marine’s head on the ground.” Today, when he thinks back to his time in country the words bravery, courage, honor, loyalty, discipline, dedication and commitment come to his mind. “Those words are forever embedded in me after being in Vietnam. Today, I could not be prouder than to say I was with the finest company of those Marines and Navy corpsmen, and thank them for giving me the rare privilege to bear witness to their efforts and sacrifices. I wish all the images in my mind could be reproduced because they are far exceptional to my accomplishments as a photographer.” But in an era where thousands of Vietnam veterans are returning to the scene of their transference from youth to manhood, Lee is not one of them. “I thought about going back but didn’t see any value to retrace that time in hell. The only place I have often visited is the Vietnam Memorial. Enough memories were there to remind me of Vietnam much less than having to kick red clay for emphasis.” Lee’s thoughts now turn to what was going through his mind the day he left Vietnam forever. “As the plane climbed from Danang airfield, I felt both tremendous guilt and relief. Guilt that I was leaving behind my photo colleagues; the grunts I accompanied into the bush and became close to, and an overwhelming feeling of disappointment that my intentions to do my part to rescue the Vietnamese from Communism were very naïve. I was going to be the knight on the white horse and save the oppressed. But the white horse died. Progress in combat once measured by securing objectives morphed into daily body counts to justify presence in Vietnam. That mentality was pervasive in the command while far down the chain, the grunts were defining progress as surviving another day. Saddest of all, I was leaving behind the ghosts of men I knew who died in combat: Lt. Piatt and Corporal Dray, killed in action; senior NCO, Gunny Highland and Bernard Fall, (French journalist and historian whose books “Street Without Joy” and “Hell in a Very High Place” helped define the French experience in Indochina), killed when Fall stepped on a landmine; Corporal Bill Perkins, who threw himself on a grenade and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. He was the first combat correspondent in U.S. military history to receive it. And Tex, the recon radioman went home never mentally the same, according to his mother to whom I briefly spoke in 1992. The list of the Dead rolls past like ending film credits in my mind. As the last sight of Vietnam disappeared underneath us, I sighed a breath of relief. I had survived.”

Marc P. Yablonka is a military journalist whose reportage has appeared in the U.S. Military's Stars and Stripes, Army Times, Air Force Times, American Veteran, Vietnam magazine, Airways, Military Heritage, Soldier of Fortune and many others. Marc is the author of Distant War: Recollections of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia
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