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Photograph courtesy of Bill Noyes
The Innocents: This 1970 photo is one of the images Bill Noyes brought back from Vietnam.
Life During Wartime
Area Vietnam veterans muster a photo exhibit of in-country images to display at Tet Festival
By Genevieve Roja
It was September 20, 1968, when 21-year-old Bill Noyes left Travis Air Force for Vietnam, not knowing whether he'd make it back.
"They [his parents] were sad to see me go, and I was sad to go," says Noyes, who now lives in Campbell. "But I had gotten used to the fact that we [draftees] were going somewhere. Some guys had other duties like Europe, but unfortunately most of us were destined to go across the pond and fight the big war."
Almost three decades later, Noyes and fellow veteran and former Campbell resident Jim Barker are telling the straight story from their point of view. The two are gathering photos, poems, stories and paintings from area veterans for display at the annual Tet Festival to be held Feb. 5 and 6 at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds. Entries will be narrowed down to 130 to 150 for the weekend exhibit.
"There's never really been an organized way ... [of] dealing with the wider Vietnam experience," says Barker, who arrived in Vietnam as a special Vietnamese linguist for the Army in October 1971, toward the end of the American involvement. "So this Vietnam is faces and images of Vietnam. [The exhibit] is the first of its kind in the Bay Area where vets are invited to present their pieces of reality in the visual form."
Noyes, 52, recalls several details of his arrival in Ton Son Nahut civilian airport near Saigon, particularly the bus in Bien Hoa that eventually transported Noyes and his colleagues to their respective destinations. The windows were obscured by narrow slots of metal, making it impossible for the enemy to chuck grenades inside the vehicle.
"Like most soldiers, if you're not scared for your life, then what are you scared for?" Noyes says. "I'd say we were generally uptight and scared of [people] in black pajamas. It was funny, because no one [the townspeople] around us was scared."
As he settled into his outfit as a soldier for the 25th Infantry Division at Chuchi base camp north of Bien Hoa, Noyes found the locals unfazed by the Americans' presence. "Everyone was pretty calm and ordinary," Noyes says. "You get used to it after awhile."
Noyes and the 10 men in his squad lived as close to an ordinary life as possible. They woke at dawn and ate a breakfast of scrambled eggs before any military activity. Then the men piled onto armed personnel carriers (APCs). The trick to APCs was to ride on top of the vehicle to reduce the risk of being incinerated or killed by shrapnel while inside. If the APC was hit, jumping off it offered a better chance of survival.
Photograph by Chad Pilster
Lens of History: Bill Noyes is co-organizing the first-of-its-kind photo and art exhibit for the Tet Festival.
The squad had two types of soldiers walking in front of the APC: mine sweepers with metal detectors, and infantry provisional security, who protected their squad from North Vietnamese. "We'd find about 50 percent of the [mines]," Noyes says. "We'd find one, stick dynamite in and blow them up."
For a year and a half, this was Noyes' Vietnam. Search-and-destroy missions by day, then dinner, ambush patrol, and listening for the enemy encroaching on their camp by night. Other times, Noyes' Vietnam was the one everyone else saw broadcast on their television sets: firefights, helicopters and body bags.
"It was pretty scary, 'cause we made contact [with the enemy]," Noyes says. "Guys got blown up and killed and that takes a little adjusting, too. We were getting used to someone out there waiting to kill you. It's quite an emotional adjustment. Once you adjust, you're a smarter, better soldier."
Not that being smarter had anything to do with luck.
"I was walking point when he [the minesweeper] called me back," Noyes says. "He said, 'There's your foot print.'" Noyes had stepped right on top of the mine--but luckily not with enough force to trigger it. As was customary, the squad blew the mine and moved on, with little time to reflect on their brush with death.
"Guys who should have been safe were killed," he says. "Guys who should've been killed, managed to make it on through."
As a member of the latter group, Noyes began snapping pictures of the Vietnamese countryside with his Tesina 35 mm camera. Noyes, who had taken a photography course at San Jose State University admits the camera wasn't too versatile.
"The thing was just very impractical," says Noyes, who rolled his own film. "I couldn't get it dirty, and it could only take small pictures."
He upgraded to a Yoshika 35 mm at the local PX then added on a telephoto zoom lens he purchased during an R&R trip to Singapore. One of the first subjects he photographed were the children in all the neighboring Vietnamese towns.
"Kids have no fear," Noyes says. "They were farmers' kids. The [rest] were basically people selling you stuff--Coke, ornaments, lighters, dark glasses, novelties, whatever was portable. They were friendly enough to an extent. Most were businesslike."
Drafted: Noyes awaits orders on the road to Tay Ninh.
Photograph courtesy of Bill Noyes
After his tour ended, Noyes returned to the United States, eager to showcase his picture collection in a book on Vietnam. But the country didn't share his enthusiasm. It was 1970, and America was angry, home of bedlam and sacked with protest.
"People were getting fed up with the whole Vietnam thing," he says.
Giving up on his personal project, Noyes lent his and his colleagues' photos to a man working on a book titled The Vietnam Experience, which was published in 1989. Years later at Mission College in Santa Clara, Noyes bumped into Barker, who was teaching Vietnamese part-time at De Anza College in Cupertino while working at the VA Hospital in Palo Alto. The two agreed that the children of Vietnamese refugees needed to see the country their parents fled.
"The younger people don't have a visual connection [with their ancestors]," Noyes says. "So he [Barker] was saying that it was a great idea if these ex-GIs from Vietnam could submit pictures of street scenes and villages."
The project Barker has spearheaded is only an extension of his current work on the in-patient team at the VA Hospital, where he has been for more than 20 years.
"It's kind of gratifying," says Barker, 53. "But there's a sadness to that, too, to see the long-term effects of the problems of their adjustment. I know them quite well, but their problems can be complex."
Campbell resident Doug Yelmen, a former Marine stationed in Da Nang who will contribute his acrylic paintings to the Tet exhibit, knows all too well the complexity of emotions in dealing with Vietnam.
"For me, it's healing," he says. "I hope I get to help other people."
Area Vietnam veterans who are interested in submitting their artwork or photographs can contact Bill Noyes at 408.547.3647 or Jim Barker at 650.493.5000, ext. 65021.
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Campbell, California
