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A Photo Essay
By Karen Hart
 R.
J. Del Vecchio still remembers listening
to President John F. Kennedy's inaugural address in 1961 with tears in
his eyes.
That speech - "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do
for your country" - and Del Vecchio's firm belief that the forces of communism
had to be stopped, made the 1964 Holy Cross alum leave graduate school in St.
Louis and join the Marines in 1965.
"All my years of Jesuit education made me think a lot about principles and the
devotion to freedom and justice," said Del Vecchio, 56. "That's a major part
of what Christianity is about."
Del Vecchio suspects his Holy Cross degree in chemistry
earned him the special assignment of Marine photographer. But after boot camp,
he was stationed in New
Jersey, which was not to his liking. He repeatedly volunteered to be sent to
Vietnam and even volunteered for extended duty to increase his chances of seeing
Southeast Asia. In December 1967, Del Vecchio was finally sent to a Marine
photography unit.
Though many military photographers shot film around
their home bases and at accidents, Del Vecchio found himself shooting more and
more combat photos and earning his
keep with the soldiers.
"Grunts are a tight fraternity and you are
an outsider," he said. "If you had any brains you'd use your people skills. I
helped carry machine gun ammo or extra food. ... If it got really bad you helped
with the wounded or picked up a rifle if you had to."
During his two years in Vietnam, Del Vecchio took hundreds
of photos and slides for the military. He often shot as many as 100 frames only
to have 10-to-15 selected
for recordkeeping; the rest he kept copies of for himself, creating a unique
and extensive archive of two years of Vietnam history. Del Vecchio now owns
some of the last or only photos taken of American soldiers and Vietnamese peasants.
Many
of the faces in his collection belong to people long since dead.
According to Del Vecchio, "The pictures range from being very pleasant to very
grim." One poignant frame, he said, is of a soldier caught at the very moment
of death. Others are of Vietnamese villagers at work. Still others capture
the drama and horrors of the war the way no verbal recreation can: portraits
of wounded
soldiers, dismembered
bodies, and landscapes and villages blowing up and burning.
In 1968 Del Vecchio caught a bullet in his camera hand.
The camera itself was shot straight through and is now on display in the Marine
Corps Museum in Washington,
D.C. Del Vecchio has also kept an archive of live footage from Vietnam. When
other videographers
were wounded or killed, he stepped in for them.
Though war protests on the Holy Cross campus came to
a head in 1969, Del Vecchio said he was unaware of them. By then, he had returned
to the United States and
was enrolled in the University of Maryland to finish graduate school. He also
immersed himself in adjusting
to civilian life.
"The impact of combat changed me," he said. "It blunts you to some extent. ...
I had just seen a bunch of 18-year-old people die. When we came back, a lot of
people didn't want to hear about it so you pushed it back, you compartmentalized
it."
However, despite the United States' eventual loss, and despite the protests
back home, Del Vecchio said he has never faltered in his belief in the purpose
of
the war.
"War has always been horrible," Del Vecchio said. "Whether it's a Roman
arrow or a bayonet through your chest. ... The biggest lesson of Vietnam
for me is not that Americans should never fight overseas for somebody
else's welfare. The lesson is that if we are going to send Americans
out to fight and die we should think it over carefully to decide if ...
we have the resources to achieve the goal. "
Del Vecchio's patriotism, and that of others who served, is best exemplified
by a rare moment in the Vietnam jungle. At the end of one mission, Del Vecchio
and almost 2,500 servicemen attended an entertainment program for troops in
the jungle. Del Vecchio and the others watched in a natural outdoor amphitheater
as the troupe, made up of Filipinos and one Caucasian woman, sang and danced
its way through all the predictable numbers. But at the end of the show, the "round
eye," as the U.S. servicemen called other foreign Caucasians, sang one last
song for the troops. Del Vecchio said they all expected to hear "We Gotta Get
Out of This Place," by The Animals. Instead, the song she sang caught them
by surprise.
"It was 'God Bless America,' " Del Vecchio said, and paused as his voice broke
with emotion. "It still chokes me up. Most of the guys were standing and then
you noticed you were standing and then you noticed the guys were singing and
that you were singing. We weren't young or old or white or black or red or whatever.
We weren't Marines or corpsmen or from Connecticut or California. Just Americans
all together. It's a bond you cannot describe to people."
Several of Del Vecchio's photos have won awards from the U.S. military. Some
have been displayed in museums. Though he has been offered money to sell some
of them, he has declined. He has graciously allowed the use of them for this
special Vietnam retrospective.
For the last 25 years, Del Vecchio has worked for a
variety of top firms in the rubber industry. Today he is a private consultant
and lives in North Carolina.
Karen Hart is a free-lance journalist living
in West Boylston, Mass.
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