Charlie Haughey is not a combat photographer

Follow the Chieu Hoi Project here on Tumblr for weekly updates and progress. Visit our website for more info about The Chieu Hoi Project.

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The Chieu Hoi team is currently working with Phillip Stewart and Clifton Burt to design a print book with over 100 of Charlie's images, and an accompanying iPad book with nearly 150 images. The print book will be a high-quality, large format, hardbound collection of images. The iPad book, in addition to containing more images, will have audio commentary from Charlie. 

At this time, there is no tentative release date. The team is taking time to put together the strongest possible representation of Charlie's photo collection, and is being careful not to rush the process. 

Stay tuned to this blog, and our Facebook page, for more updates!

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Hello everyone! We've been quiet here for a bit now, as some of the hype around Charlie's photo collection has died down a bit. Charlie and the team is happy to have some downtime after months of hard work. Still, we're working hard. One of Charlie's sculptural wooden spheres was recently featured in the lobby of the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall here in Portland, as part of the World Domination Summit 2013. Charlie is also working daily to prototype a new, smaller-diameter wooden sphere. The big news is that the team is now working with a few very talented book designers. We're working to have a print and iPad companion book with Charlie's images and stories very soon. We'll keep you all posted as we make progress.  We hope you're all having a fantastic summer!

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It has been quite a week for the Chieu Hoi project team!

In the days following the second airing of CBS's interview with Charlie, we've been receiving a lot of emails and communication from family members of individuals in Charlie's images. It has been deeply touching to hear from these families. 

The above images are: Jim O'Neal of the 3rd Brigade 82nd Airborne (Tunnel Rat photos), and Sergeant Frederick W. Kempster of 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry (Captured Mortar Rounds photos, originally featured in Tropic Lightning News Vol. 4 No. 2, January 13, 1969). 

Our deep and heartfelt thanks to the family members of these men who reached out to us to identify these men. Identifying the men in the images is a daunting task, considering the amount of time that has passed and the lack of records by Charlie. We sincerely appreciate the assistance; identifying individuals in the photos and getting the images to them and their family members is one of the prime objectives of the project. 

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Charlie's extended CBS interview, filmed at ADX, aired this morning on CBS Sunday Morning.

Heartfelt thanks to all active service members and veterans for everything you do. Have a blessed and safe Memorial Weekend!

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We've just broken 1,000 Tumblr followers!

Thanks no-colorssss for being number 1,000, and thanks to every single one of you following us here! Your support and interest means everything to Charlie and the Chieu Hoi team.

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We've added 11 more photos from Charlie's collection to our Flickr gallery. Have a look! 

The gentlemen in these images are at this moment unidentified, though we'll update with more info when we have it. 

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"Sarge" Krause of the 2/12 Warriors has ID'd another individual in one of Charlie's photos: 

In the Flickr collection, in the photo titled jungle color-1, sitting with the red hair is 1LT Richard Wiggins who was Alpha Co.’s commanding officer from Sept to Jan ’69. We play golf together when we are both down in Palm Springs. 

Second photo courtesy of 212warriors.com. 

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"Sarge" Arnold Krause from 2/12 Warriors contacted us with more names of the faces of individuals in some of Charlies images. The above image ran on the Boston.com Big Picture piece with the following caption: 

Captain William N. Parish HHC and a group of young soldiers near Cu Chi. Parish was a very popular officer in the 2/12. Other names and details about photo unknown.

Sarge provided this background and information:

The attached photo is of 1st Plt, Charlie Co. According to the officer chronology that I have been able to put together, CPT William Parish, later promoted to Major in ’69 when he was the battalion S-3 officer, served as our company commander for about a week from August 30th until about Sept 7th 1968.  He relieved 1Lt Ron Hendricks and then himself was relieved by 1LT R.W. “Bud” McDaniel, my platoon leader who was promoted to C.O. This photo was taken at our laager site south of Hoc Mon when I believe Parish was our temp C.O. The crypts in the photo could only have come from one place, and that was Hoc Mon. The laager site backed up to a cemetery.

This is a promotion ceremony, likely the guys were promoted to SP4. Elmer Lightner, my friend in 1st Plt has help ID some of the guys. Zimmerman and I reported to the company at the same time. I have a few shots of Billie in my own collection. Jimmy Sheffield was killed on 3 DEC 68 along with 4 in his squad when they tripped a booby trapped artillery round. The rest of the guys that are ID’d in this photo made it home okay. Elmer and I are in touch with Billy Zimmerman and Jesse Anderson. We have not made contact with the rest of the group and are looking to locate them.

 Jesse Anderson and Elmer Lightner left Charlie Co in the fall of ’68 to join HHC as part of the resupply team and both were promoted to SGT. We’re trying to see if we can locate someone who can ID the other two fellows in the picture.

"Sarge" Krause is an invaluable ally in our attempts to identify individuals in the images--so far, in fact, he is the only person who has stepped forward to identify anyone, though we have had a few close calls and possibly IDs. 

Big thanks to "Sarge" and to SP4. Elmer Lightner for the hard work of identifying these men.

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We have four new images from the Chieu Hoi collection on our Flickr page. We'll be trying to release 5-10 images a week for the foreseeable future. 

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A colonel and a visiting 4-star general view a perimeter defense demonstration at Fire Support base Pershing.

We have four new images from The Chieu Hoi collection on our Flickr page. 

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It has been a fantastic month here at the Chieu Hoi project. Charlie has been deeply touched by the response from everyone came out to see the show--we estimate the foot traffic at the ADX gallery to be somewhere between 850 and 1,000 people. Thanks to everyone who came out to see the show.

The show came down from the gallery walls Monday the 29th of April. The team packaged up the purchased prints; Charlie signed the prints, mats, and certificates of authenticity; and we prepared them to be transported to their new owners' collections. 

For those inquiring about the possibility of the show traveling around the United States: the team is currently working with Charlie to plan a book of photos, and we hope that we'll be able to have a new show of photos that will travel to promote the book. Stay with us, this is a labor-intensive process! We volunteers are working as hard as we can. 

We are also working to keep up with the requests for a second run of prints with frames. We'll keep you posted when we do another run of prints. 

Our intern Tim will be working with Charlie to record more of his stories from Vietnam, and we'll be updating the blog with those soon. 

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A Soldier's Eye: Rediscovered Photos From Vietnam

Charlie Haughey left almost 2,000 photo negatives of his fellow soldiers from Vietnam in a box for 45 years until a friend encouraged him to look at the images and digitize them.

The Story interviewed Charlie last week and put together this piece about the photo collection and Charlie's experiences in Vietnam. 

Thanks to Lauren Spohrer and Dick Gordon.

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We've been working hard on scanning negatives at high resolution, cleaning them up, and adding them to our Flickr page. We'll keep you posted when we have more up. We just put four color images up today.

We also have a new website on the way, which should launch early this coming week.

And finally: Charlie is starting to get back to recording stories from his time in the 25th Infantry Division. We'll be posting them here as we get them written down. Stay tuned!

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A favorite and popular image among team Chieu Hoi team members and our audience, this color image of a M60 machine gun operator is a vivid and crisp view of the face of a young soldier in the Vietnam jungle. The machine gun operator is clearly young, with eyes that somehow seem fresh and innocent, and still wise and experienced. 

Arnold Krause of the 2/12 Warriors website emailed us to let us know that the soldier in this image is Sgt. William Hill from Astoria, New York. Sadly, he passed away in 2002. Krause and Hill served together as members of 3rd Platoon, Charlie Co., in the 2nd Battalion, 12th infantry. 

If you're a member of Hill's family or know anyone related to him, please contact us. We'd love to get copies of the image to family members and be put in touch with anyone who survived him

Thanks to "Sarge" Arnold Krause of www.212warriors.com.

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Guns and Money

This image is a favorite among Chieu Hoi team members, and was printed and framed in A Weather Walked In. The photo depicts young and fresh-faced infantrymen posing with a stash of US dollars, guns, and other contraband recovered after a raid on a Viet Cong camp. 

The image illustrates one of the problems we have here at the Chieu Hoi project: identification. 

We've been hoping to identify as many people as possible in the photos, but it's tough for us to do from Charlie's records. He only recorded names and hometowns of people in his photos, but had to dispose of notebooks due to lack of storage space in Vietnam. Photos that made print had identifying details transcribed to the captions, but any image that didn't make it to print usually lacks identification of individuals. 

We were very happy to see a link to the 2/12 Warriors website with the second photo, which contains some names of individuals in the photo (as you can see, the composition of the second image is slightly different, as Charlie had three images of similar composition from this scene). 

For us, it always feels like success to put names to the faces in the photos.

Contact us at [email protected] if you recognize anyone in the images or have possible leads on names, faces, and locations. 

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Captured VC Motorcycle

For those of you who weren't able to attend the opening reception of A Weather Walked In, and won't be able to make it to ADX's gallery to see the show before the end of April, you can now see all 28 images curated for the show on our Flickr page.

Captured VC Motorcycle is the companion image to UFO Motorcycle. The motorcycle was captured by US Army G.I.s on a raid of a Viet Cong camp. The G.I.'s called for a helicopter to airlift the little Honda S90 back to the fire support base, where Charlie snapped photos of it.

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Charlie was interviewed this morning at OPB's Portland studio for the American Public Media show The Story. 

The interview should air sometime next week. We'll keep you posted.