Vietnam Photographer

There is a photo taken by Gabriel Helen during the Vietnam War. It is of an American soldier rising out of a black zipper body bag. There is a billet hole through his head with a circumference of blood like a tattoo. He holds out his arms as rises, gasping for breath. It looks like a modern day fable of the Resurrection.  

The man’s name is Francis Lebell. His hat is dirty blond, disheveled and curled, dried and unkempt, unwashed and dried with blood. A thin mustache over his lips almost appears red, little hairs also tangled in dried blood. He wears a tank top, a red, white and blue beaded necklace and a bandana tied around his head fashioned after a tennis player. His eyes are tired, bleeding from the inside. They are faded, blue as heaven. 

On either side of him are soldiers who had carried him off the battlefield to this point where he stands as the picture is taken. One soldier looks terrified, as though he bears witness to a demon, almost fixing to pass out. The other soldier holds a hand up as though to praise the lord and with his other hand leads in for a handshake. 

Behind them, smoke rises above the jungle, patches of fire burn red as Hell, catching from stalks and whipping and climbing trees, golden striking pitches of gunfire through the dark in the jungle. The soldier who has risen looks almost directly into the camera. It provokes a sensation with those who see it, that this man is our brother, our savior, ourselves.

Gabriel picked up the camera at a young age and would rise early in the mornings, hike two miles up a mountain to capture the sunrise, and by 1968, at the age of 26, joined the U.S. Army as a cameraman. 

At that point, his hair was long, living as a bum between New York City, Florida, San Francisco, and Austin, Texas, capturing underground rock shows, poetry reading, street life, living like a hippie enhanced Jack Kerouac from On the Road. He was tripping LSD at a house party near Joshua Tree when he held a vision of the war. He traded in his bohemian lifestyle for Army grade boots, a rifle and kept his Nikon F camera. 

He took thousands of photographs in his seven years in Vietnam. They included soldiers smoking weed through shotgun barrels and opium from bamboo sticks, soldiers sitting at camp singing around a guitar player with blood stains on their uniform and with a look in their eyes as though play a remedy for the dead and prayer in the jungle for their own souls; a series on personalized helmet markings, bleeding hearts, calendars with months survived crossed out, demon heads, skulls and kill tallies, plastic squeeze bottles for water and Columbus brand cigarette packs and Chief Talking Bear cans of chewing tobacco strapped over their heads, quotes such as “How do you like your blue eyed boy now, Mr. Death” and “I am the white Devil,” “Born to kill” and “Born to Die” written in their own scribe on the helmet shells, and the insides of helmets which included small copies of biblical gospels, letters from home, pictures of girlfriends, wives, children and parents, nude playmates and actresses; photos he took during a special forces operation which were not released for forty years, a boat down the river in enemy territory at night with the engine turned-off and the faces of Vietcong shining behind fire light on the banks in the  jungle; soldiers burning huts and villages and compuscatung weapons from women and children and soldiers killing women and children both armed and unarmed; marching through jungles with weeds and crop grown as high as their shoulders, marching through rivers muddled up as far as their waists and chests, taking watch in the rain, with blood-shot dead eyes, a fleet of helicopters painted at their front to resemble sharks and tigers, flying directly to the ground over rice fields and villages, kicking up the pieces of the earth snff shaking it to the core with artillery gunfire screaming as shells chink out too fast to count; prostitutes walking the streets of Saigon, leading soldiers through beaded curtain doors and sitting on a patio enjoying saki shots and pint glasses of beer; photos of ambushes where soldiers dive anf hit the ground crawling for cover, firing and praying, in tears with their fingers releasing rapidly on the triggers, enemy gunfire like the eyes of ancient unknown beasts wandering through the jungle of foreign lands, the wounded lying in the dirt, soldiers carrying the wounded over their shoulders and dragging them by the hands and feet over the dirt; barrack hospitals where doctors treat the wounded blood all over the place and soldiers lie on cots in agony like a chorus of ghosts; protestors back home calling the soldiers evil with signs, baby killers, Make love not war and drop acid not bombs; photos of soldiers returning for what was made to be a parade where protestors spat on them, screaming and the spray painting their arriving bus with hatred graffiti; photos of soldiers in the jungle nearly crying, with so much fear in their eyes it could set power to the wilderness; soldiers fighting in the jungle with the gunsmoke clouding the image appearing as clouds upon the earth; soldiers crawling underground into enemy tunnels where maybe not even God knows what occurs. 

He got to know the soldiers he captured, wrote down biographies and captions of them in a booklet to go along with each photo. You can read the names of the dead, their history, where they’re from and their high school accolades, the books and music they enjoy, those loved ones they miss, the lives to be had when the war is over.

His personal favorite photos were of soldiers laughing. Usually, this was at camp, where bong smoke masked them, a radio playing American Rock n Roll, crates of beer being cracked and opened and handed out, with the soldiers experiencing for a brief moment in an awful tenure of Hell, the chance to smile, feel the presence of enjoyment like a neighborhood cookout back home in the States, the sensation of freedom.