Re: Digest for vietnam-old-hacks@googlegroups.com - 3 updates in 2 topics
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Dawson
Dec 11, 2025, 5:57:22 PM12/11/25
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It's also a shame or convenient (choose one) that Alex Shimkin was killed later that year (1972) in a battle in Quang Tri province and cannot write or speak his recollection. I've already written my opinion about the photos used in The Stringer.
Shimkin was a hard worker -- a freelancer. He and UPI's Chad Huntley got caught in a bad place on a particularly bad day during the 'Easter offensive' and only Special Forces vet Huntley lived another day to write about it.
73
On Fri, Dec 12, 2025 at 3:13 AM <vietnam-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Gijs Kijlstra <gijs.k...@gmail.com>: Dec 11 11:25PM +0800
washingtonpost.com
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/12/10/i-was-there-when-napalm-girl-was-photographed-this-is-what-i-saw/>
I
was there when ‘Napalm Girl’ was photographed. This is what I saw.“The
Stringer” does nothing to shake my strong belief that Nick Ut captured the
famous image.
December 10, 2025 at 9:15 a.m. EST
------------------------------
[image: image.png]
*Journalists gathered outside the village of Trang Bang, where authorities
had strung concertina wire across the road to limit foot traffic. Freelance
reporter Alex Shimkin is at far left. (David Burnett/Contact Press Images)*
*David Burnett is a photojournalist based in New York.*
One of the filmmakers’ main justifications for the documentary “The
Stringer” is that there needs to be truth, even uncomfortable truth, in all
that we do as journalists.
“The Stringer
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/movies/2025/01/26/napalm-girl-the-stringer-nick-ut/>,”
released in November on Netflix, documents an investigation by photographer
Gary Knight into the provenance of the unforgettable 1972 photograph
formally titled “The Terror of War,” but more commonly known as “Napalm
Girl.” The searing image shows 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc running naked
toward the camera in terror and agony — she had torn off her burning
clothes — along with other children caught in an errant South Vietnamese
napalm attack. Associated Press photographer Nick Ut
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/02/nick-ut-vietnam-war-photo-kim-phuc/>
won a Pulitzer Prize for the photograph, but the film posits that another
person, a freelance stringer named Nguyen Thanh Nghe, actually took the
photo, only to be inexplicably denied credit when an AP editor attributed
it to Ut.
[image: image.png]
*Associated Press photographer Nick Ut won a Pulitzer Prize for “The Terror
of War,” shot outside the village of Trang Bang, Vietnam, on June 8, 1972.
The children, from left to right, are Phan Thanh Tam; Phan Thanh Phouc;
Phan Thi Kim Phuc, Ho Van Bon and Ho Thi Ting. (Nick Ut/AP)*
Of course we as journalists should always honor the truth. I am among only
a handful of journalists still alive who were on the scene that day when
the napalm strike led to so many civilian casualties and then the famous
photograph. I chose not to participate in the making of “The Stringer” out
of concern that the filmmakers were seeking to prove only a prior
conclusion. (Several of my photos — initially shown to Knight in
colleagueship and good faith — were used in the film without my permission
or attribution, potentially creating the inaccurate impression that I
agreed with the filmmaker’s viewpoint.) This is the truth of what I
observed of a film intended to get at the truth.
I recall the moment with great clarity: Just minutes after the napalm
attack, I was standing on the road outside the village of Trang Bang with
Ut and freelance reporter Alex Shimkin when we saw the first of the
children fleeing toward the road through a cemetery. I was preoccupied with
trying to put a new roll of film into my vintage Leica, a camera that was
incredibly difficult to load
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/forty-years-after-napalm-girl-picture-a-photographer-reflects-on-the-moment-that-might-have-been-his/2012/06/13/gJQAfoToeV_story.html/>
if you didn’t doubly trim down the film leader (which I never did).
*Follow* Opinions on the news
My attention was primarily on my camera, but Ut and Shimkin’s reaction when
they saw the victims remains powerfully fixed in my mind. Without
hesitating, they began sprinting down the road, advancing well beyond all
the other journalists except for the United Press International stringer
who ended up on the right side of the uncropped version of the photograph
(also reloading his camera).
At that moment, none of the other journalists were moving down the road.
Their sprint separated Ut and Shimkin from the rest of us, and it has been
my long-held strong belief that in the following minute or two, once the
children reached the road, “The Terror of War” was taken.
Shortly after that, within a couple of minutes, the disparate group of
journalists that had been lined up on the road began moving forward toward
where the victims were gathering. There was subsequent additional filming
and photography, but this was definitely after the famous photograph was
taken. In my images of the stunned villagers and the journalists, there are
a few pictures of Nghe, but none show him out in front, where Ut and
Shimkin were.
[image: image.png]
*Nguyen Thanh Nghe (left, in vest) photographs a wounded South Vietnamese
soldier. (David Burnett/Contact Press Images)*
Did I actually see Ut photograph Phuc on the road? Of course not.
Especially in a life-and-death situation, when you are concentrating on
what you yourself see around you, making the pictures that you see, you
aren’t watching what others are doing.
The subsequent return to Saigon and the processing of the film are stories
that are well known. In “The Stringer,” AP photo editor Carl Robinson
claims that bureau photo chief Horst Faas
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/horst-faas-prizewinning-war-photographer-dies-at-79/2012/05/11/gIQAhQbKJU_story.html>
directed him to put Ut’s name on the caption envelope. In my experience,
there is a 2 percent chance that the absolutely wildest claims might be
true, but to me, the account lacks veracity. What is absolutely true is
that once the picture had been printed and was being wired out to the
world, Faas congratulated Ut in a very Faas-like way, saying in his
unmistakable German accent, “You do good work today, Nick Ut.” That is word
for word what he said.
[image: image.png]
*Ho Thi Ting, one of the children of Trang Bang who fled to where the
journalists were on the road. On the right is Associated Press photographer
Nick Ut. (David Burnett/Contact Press Images)*
Thankfully, Phuc survived the attack, though she endured years of treatment
for her burns; now in her 60s, she lives in Canada. Faas died in 2012, so
he can’t speak to the allegation made against him. Nghe maintains that he
took the photograph, and Robinson, who never raised this issue while Faas
was alive, agrees. After an investigation prompted by the documentary, the
Associated Press found
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2025/05/06/napalm-girl-nick-ut-associated-press/>
no reason to remove Ut’s name from the photograph. Ut has said he was
“gratified” by the AP’s finding. “This whole thing has been very difficult
for me and has caused great pain,” he wrote in statement. “I’m glad the
record has been set straight.”
I was gratified, too. In my mind, Nick Ut, having been the first and only
photographer to race down the road toward the oncoming children, was the
only one who could have taken the picture. We are, of course, hemmed in by
the media documentation that survives from more than a half-century ago,
none of which was “time coded” and thus which provides a choppy and
incomplete version of what happened and when. But some things live on as
memories — strong memories — and for me, that day in Trang Bang feels like
yesterday.
Carl Robinson <robinso...@gmail.com>: Dec 12 06:59AM +1100
Fyi, I posted this on my Substack back in June to refute David Burnett's
long-held account of what happened at Trang Bang and, more importantly,
what happened in the AP office afterwards.
In short: *where was Robinson*?
Please read this.
Napalm Girl: The Legend, the Myth, and David Burnett
<https://carlrobinson.substack.com/p/napalm-girl-the-legend-the-myth-and>
On Fri, Dec 12, 2025 at 2:25 AM Gijs Kijlstra <gijs.k...@gmail.com>
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Donald Kirk
Dec 11, 2025, 11:12:29 PM12/11/25
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Thanks. I caught up with Chad Huntley a few times in San Antonio over the years after "the fall." . He told me that Shimkin, speaking Vietnamese, had called out to the North Vietnamese troops thinking he could talk to them. Chad slipped away., as Alex should have done. Chad, however, has totally disappeared since I last saw him more than 30 years ago.. Any idea where he;s gone, what he's been up to., what happened to him?
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