Can Marines Own Cameras In Deployment

The Vietnam War was the nation'southward first televised state of war. Inside hours, gainsay footage of immature Americans in uniform in the jungles of South Vietnam could be seen in living rooms across the state. Among those capturing the footage was Corporal William T. Perkins Jr., a 20-yr-old Marine deployed to Vietnam as a combat photographer.

Armed with a Bong and Howell 16mm pic camera and his personal 35mm still camera, Perkins documented the actions of his beau Marines as they supported and defended the South Vietnamese people confronting the communist Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces. For his heroism in protecting those Marines, Perkins became the only combat photographer ever honored as a recipient of the Medal of Honor.

On a boat with waves in the background, a young man with blonde hair holds a video camera to his face. He wears a military vest and pants with bare arms. In front of him--the subject he is filming--is a gun or other military equipment on the boat. An operator's forearm is visible holding/manipulating the gun or equipment.

Born on August ten, 1947, Perkins grew upward hearing rich stories of his family's military service in the Ceremonious War and World War 2. After Perkins expressed an interest in photography, his father bought him a Kodak camera that he used to acquire about the hobby while a member of his high school photography club. Subsequently graduation, in 1965, Perkins enrolled at Los Angeles Pierce College to study photography. Restless and patriotic, the post-obit twelvemonth Perkins enlisted in the Marine Corps.

Black and white portrait of a young man wearing a military uniform with a white hat. He has a smile, square chin, young face, and attractive eyes.

During kicking military camp, Perkins expressed a want to be a Marine photographer. After receiving this consignment, to his chagrin, he found the work as a notwithstanding photographer at Marine Corps Supply Eye, Barstow, California, irksome and unfulfilling. "All I do is have photos of the general in parades," he told his family, every bit his father recalled years later.

That fall, Perkins requested assignment to the U.S. Regular army Signal Center at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, to receive training in motility picture photography. His headquarters agreed, but with a caveat: Perkins could attend the schoolhouse, but his follow-on assignment would likely include service in the Republic of Vietnam. Undeterred, Perkins headed eastward and eagerly immersed himself in the art. "I can't believe how lucky I am to be doing exactly what [I desire] to be doing," he wrote home to his family.

Two photos. A young man with short blonde hair is indoors operating a film video camera. He wears a uniform. He looks into the viewfinder in one image and adjusts a setting in the second image.

On July 17, 1967, Perkins arrived in the Republic of Vietnam. The following day in Phu Bai, the Marines assigned Perkins as a photographer with Service Company, Headquarters Battalion, 3d Marine Segmentation (Reinforced), and issued him a Bell and Howell 16mm Filmo motility picture camera and a .45 automated pistol. The Bell and Howell proved Perkins'southward primary weapon in the field, supplemented with his personal 35mm nevertheless camera. About weekly, Perkins mailed his family rolls of his film, taken throughout the Marine bases in the northern provinces of S Vietnam.

Below are examples of photographs Perkins took during his travels in and around the northern provinces of the Commonwealth of Vietnam in August and September 1967, paired with words he wrote home in letters to his family unit.

Two photographs of military equipment. The first has a background with trees and mountains. The second has a background seen from a helicopter--a rocky, green, mountainous landscape.

Three children (probably boys), who are barefoot, stand in front of a building with a hut-style thatched roof. The entry way in front of them is made of wood. A garden on both sides of the boys.

Photo taken on the water, a calm river. Thre small canoe-style boats in the water around one much larger boat with wide netting around it held up by wooden poles. About 12 people total in the boats.

On October 11, Perkins joined the men of Charlie Visitor, First Battalion, First Marine Regiment, for Operation Medina. The performance intended to find, fix, and destroy enemy North Vietnamese Army (NVA) bases in the Hai Lang National Forest. The post-obit day, NVA forces ambushed the Marines in a shower of grenades and bullets. Equally the ambush intensified, other Marines established a defensive perimeter where they cleared fields of burn down and prepared a landing zone to fly out the 11 wounded and ane killed and bring in reinforcements. Medevac helicopters arrived that afternoon and Perkins filmed the unabridged operation.

Just equally the last helicopter flew off from the clearing in the dusk'due south fading calorie-free, all hell broke loose. Three NVA companies assaulted Charlie Visitor on two sides. Enemy smash and fragmentation grenades rained downwards upon the Marines from NVA soldiers who tied themselves loftier upward in the trees on the perimeter border. Dark-green tracers of the enemy weapons slashed across the American lines every bit friendly red tracers answered back, the roar of battle punctuated by screams of the wounded. Enveloped by darkness, Perkins took upwards a position by a log on the edge of the landing zone perimeter together with Marine Corporal Fred Boxill and Lance Corporals Michael Cole and Dennis Antal.

Black and white photo taken from a low position on the plant-covered ground. Military personnel huddle around the opening of a helicopter with blades spinning, loading someone in. Behind them, a young man in uniform is filming or photographing the scene.

Enemy fire was relentless. Suddenly, an enemy grenade appeared in the air, silhouetted confronting the flash of some other explosion. Antal saw the grenade falling, as did Perkins. Propping himself up on his artillery, his Bell and Howell yet strapped to his chest, Perkins cried out "incoming grenade" as the explosive landed behind the log, three feet from the huddled Marines. Perkins pigeon at the grenade, kicking Antal in the procedure, and tucked it securely below his chest. The grenade exploded, the blast lifting Antal in the air as shrapnel wounded both him and Boxill.

As a fellow Marine treated the two wounded men, a navy corpsman arrived to check on Perkins. When Antal asked, "Is he all right?" the corpsman shook his head. As dawn bankrupt on October 13, 1967, viii Marines—including Perkins—lay expressionless, 39 men were wounded, and forty enemy lay dead scattered in and around the landing zone perimeter.

Photograph of a film camera. Viewfinder and film reel are visible. It appears to be worn and hard-used, perhaps slightly destroyed in some areas.

In a individual ceremony at the White House on June 20, 1969, President Richard M. Nixon presented Corporal Perkins'southward posthumously awarded Medal of Honor to his parents, William and Marilane Perkins. The citation accompanying the decoration proclaimed how Perkins,

in a valiant human action of heroism, hurled himself upon the grenade arresting the bear upon of the explosion with his own trunk, thereby saving the lives of his comrades at the cost of his own. Through his exceptional courage and inspiring valor in the face of certain death, Corporal Perkins reflected great credit upon himself and the Marine Corps and upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

Black and white posed photo taken outside the White House. A woman holds a Medal of Honor in a frame. She wears white and stands beside a man in a suit. Around then, President Nixon and others.

50 years after his heroic act, Perkins's deportment are not forgotten. In the Medal of Honour section of the museum's exhibitionThe Price of Freedom: Americans at State of war, visitors volition be able to view Perkins's posthumously awarded Medal of Honour and Imperial Heart beginning in early November 2017. These decorations accompany Perkins's Bell and Howell camera, bearing the scars of an enemy grenade and dirt from the Hai Lang Forest. The camera is on loan to united states from the National Museum of the Marine Corps; this display is the get-go fourth dimension the camera and Medal of Honor have ever been presented together. They'll be on display here for at to the lowest degree a year. Perkins's films from his fourth dimension in Vietnam remain preserved for viewing at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. His footage captures the faces and deportment of his fellow Marines, images preserved by a selfless young man whose love of land and photography made him a national hero.

Photograph of Medal of Honor. Blue ribbon with a square-shaped section with many gold stars. Medal is a gold star with anchor and beautiful, intricate image engraved in it, including a robed woman.