My father served a full tour there with the Marines as Crew Chief on one of those big Chinook helicopters. I remember he took home 8mm movies too. I was in grade school at the time, and I haven't seen them since, but I remember them as being mostly him and his buddies around DaNang and some in flight shots too. Will have to ask him about them this weekend.

So, for me, there is a lot of his past to question Kerry about, but this isn't one of them.

Raoul,
did your father recreate or stage footage to make himself look brave, daring or heroic, or did he simply shoot what was happening for the sake of having a record of his friends and the events they shared? Kerry's footage seems to be about self-glorification.

After all, the "next JFK from Massachusetts" has to document his "PT 109 Moments" for his future Presidential campaign commercials.

Bush should bring out his archival footage of his exploits with the Alabama Air National Guard. That should be far more entertaining.

uhh..on second thought, maybe not.

I wonder if Kerry's footage includes the time he shot a VC corpse with a .50 calibre?

Medved had one of the gunners from Kerry's boat on today. In some footage Kerry has fragmentation grenades hanging off his belt. The gunner said that noone in the swift boat command were issued frag grenades, they were not allowed. Kerry must have borrowed his props from some Army guy. He painted a pretty sorry picture of Kerry. There are 250 Swift boat veterans who have come out to denounce Kerry, only 11 support him.

Spent a year in combat in a rifle Co. and never saw one photo taken in combat. Believe me, it's the last thing on your mind. Of course, that was an infantry experience, but Raoul's dad's films also bear that out in other units. Pictures were taken in reserve or enroute somewhere but never in close combat. If someone tried, it's not inconceivable one of his buddies might have hurt him in anger.

The days of the combat photographers ended in WW2. Some good film came out of Vietnam, but damn little considering the time we were there.

I've read that Kerry brought his dates home to show the films. Unbelievable, but he had to make the most of his four weeks, and he still is.

Genecis:

Kerry probably thought the films were aphrodisiacs. They must have been for him.

genecis;

Combat photography will be back in a few years. I hate to use a movie example, but the camera thing in Aliens will be standard USA issue in the not distant future. Just like planes have gun cameras, the average infantry man will have a video / still camera mounted on him, plus detachable units. If Sarge says "watch that hill", there'll be both human and electronic eyeballs scanning it. There will be "camera rounds" for grenade launchers which will fling radio linked cameras off in to the distance. I expect even sooner (if not already in the field) is light pipe cameras. These are cameras with fiber optic cables attached to them. Because the cable is flexible, you can stick it around a corner instead of your head to see what's over there. And all of this doesn't even consider all of the unmanned surveillance drones that will be flitting about.

As an example in consumer electronics, I've got a D70 camera. One of the things you can do with it is called "trap focus". You can lock the camera's focus at fixed distance and then point it somewhere where nothing is at that distance. As soon as something comes in to view and is focusable, the camera takes a picture. It's great for catching, say, your child sliding in to home base. But imagine how wonderful an infantry man would find that if the camera altered him with an instant message containing the photo.