From behind the Lens
By Catherine Cecil
William Jerome Bell
June 24, 1941-August 13, 2009
William Jerome Bell laughing, recalling people relaxing on White Sandy Beaches at Nha Trang, Vietnam when he arrived on his first tour. (Photo courtesy of https://memory.loc.gov/diglib/vhp/bib/loc.natlib.afc2001001.71809).
William Jerome Bell saw the first televised war up-close and personal as a Black combat photographer in Vietnam. In March of 2009, William was interviewed about his military experience for the Veterans History Project, telling his story about his time as a Company Clerk and Combat Photographer all while the United States underwent desegregation and a tremendously unpopular war.[1] William passed away just five months after his interview on August 13th, 2009 in Denver, a husband to Debra Green-Bell and five children, and was interred at Fort Logan National Cemetery.[2] His legacy speaks to the Black military experience and how we remember Vietnam today.
Born June 24, 1941, William was an only child. His father was Canadian, and the family lived in Canada until William was nine years old. His parents divorced and he moved with his mother back to New York City where she remarried. Even though the change was difficult for a young child, William felt lucky that he had “two fathers that really took care of [him].”[3]
Just barely out of high school, William joined the military in 1961.[4] He was sent to Fort Monmouth in New Jersey where he completed infantry training and some finance education for his future role as a Company Clerk. He was first stationed in Vietnam just a month after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. In the summer of 1964, U.S.-backed South Vietnamese (ARVN) ships attacked two islands in the Gulf of Tonkin, within North Vietnamese Army lines (NVA). The U.S. warship, the Maddox, reported to the area and encountered three NVA boats. The U.S. Maddox fired warning shots first, which were returned by torpedoes and machine-gun fire.[5] The next day, the U.S. sent in the destroyer ship, Turner Joy, for backup. On August 4, the ships reported an unprovoked torpedo ambush.[6] President Lyndon B. Johnson then commenced air strikes against NVA assets, and initiated the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in Congress, which gave him near unilateral power to wage war.[7]
The timing of William’s deployment coincided with the immediate call to patriotic duty from the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. In his own words, William “had a wife and a kid on the way and wasn’t making enough money to support [his] family;” and patriotism had nothing to do with his decision.[8]
Nha Trang Beach in 1967. Photo curtesy of Jack McCabe, https://saigoneer.com/vietnam-heritage/19355-photos-wander-along-the-beach-in-1967-nha-trang
When he arrived in Vietnam, he was stationed at Nha Trang, which he remembered as a resort with miles of white sandy beaches, thinking to himself, “oh my God, did I luck out,” because “being stationed in Nha Trang was good living.”[9] It helped that William was popular in his role as a company clerk because he delivered mail from loved ones. In his down time, William recalled that soldiers spent most of the time drinking, smoking, and chasing women, chuckling while recalling that “there’s not a lot of constructive things to do in a combat zone.”
Before combat pay was guaranteed, William had to participate in five missions per month to get the pay he signed up for in the first place. On one mission, William’s truck was ambushed by NVA forces. His truck veered in a panic and rolled off the side of the road down a steep mountain side. William’s truck grinded to a halt, wedged steady between several rocks. Miraculously, no one was hurt in the accident. At the bottom of the fall, William’s skin felt like it was burning off, and he panicked, thinking he had been shot. He hadn’t been shot; he had rolled right onto a pile of fire ants. Somehow, everyone left alive that day, although some sustained injuries from the fire ant hill. When William left his first tour in Vietnam, he came home to a new daughter. He was introduced to his daughter Monica when he returned; she took her first steps that day.[10]
After his first tour, William was able to remain stateside for several years on the condition he attended college. He went to photography school back at Fort Monmouth. He was eventually relocated to the Army Pictorial Center in New York City, which was “the Army’s equivalent to Hollywood.”[11] William was called up to return to Vietnam, thought it was supposed to be only a 45-day temporary duty considering he was half Canadian, an only child, and now a father to three daughters. All three of his parents were “unglued” about his return to a combat zone, especially when “temporary duty” translated to ten months assigned to capturing Vietnam’s most dramatic moments.[12]
Now a Staff Sergeant, William returned to Vietnam just after the January 1968 Tet Offensive, where NVA and Vietcong (VC) forces launched attacks on upwards of one hundred ARVN cities and military bases.[13] Though the NVA aim was to spark South Vietnamese rebellion was not successful, the Tet offensive did break down American confidence that the conflict in Vietnam would soon be won. In a desperate response, the U.S. called up 200,000 more troops to escalate a counteroffensive.[14] William was sent with the Army Pictorial Center to do a film with a civilian director “from la-la-land” as he recalled. Actors were real ex-VC soldiers who had defected in the Chieu Hoi Program, an ARVN psychological tactic to convince VC to switch allegiance. Propaganda, psychological warfare, and incentives to defect were all somewhat effective as over 100,000 VC defected, although it was not clear how many were genuine.[15] The “actors” had AK-47s with live ammunition; William was apprehensive, explaining that “if anybody turn[ed] around, I’m greasing him.”[16]
In addition to the Chieu Hoi Program film, William photographed several burials of Vietnamese casualties in mass graves and a brutal Napalm drop. Napalm bombs were a devastating mixture of harmful gasses and gasoline, suffocating people and irreparably burning them; Napalm’s legacy remains a symbol of the brutality inflicted in Vietnam.[17] William recalled feeling “gross” about capturing events like these. He recounted that, “one of the things that war teaches you…it’s a shame…that you don’t value human life except for your own and the people in your company…everybody else…oh well.”[18] William remembered feeling eerily invincible at times, remembering that “once you put up the camera and take pictures, you feel like you’re bullet proof, which of course you’re not.”[19]
According to Bell, he was one of two Black combat photographers in his unit. In his own words, “there [were] two armies. There was a Black army, and there was a white army…during combat, everybody was pretty much equal. Once you came out of combat…Once you came back to the rear, you had Blacks and whites.”[20] Black disillusionment with the Vietnam War was exacerbated by the hypocrisy of “fighting for freedom” abroad while racism and resistance to Jim Crow ran hot at home. Though Vietnam was technically the first integrated war, racist policies and treatment remained. As William recalled, “so many of the soldiers were Black. When we went into the service, we went into Airborne, Infantry, Artillery, because we had recruiters say that’s for the tough guys and we’re off the streets, we like being tough. We didn’t realize that’s who got shot first.”[21] Institutionally, Black soldiers faced much higher rates of draft selection, financial incentives for the most dangerous combat assignments, segregated living conditions, little room for promotion, and disproportionate casualties.[22] William returned from his first tour in 1965 in the height of the Civil Rights movement. He had a firm sense that he, and fellow Black members of the armed forces, were “as good as anybody else, [we would] not take crap from anybody else.” This sentiment and resistance helped to push U.S. racial tensions over the edge towards structural change.
After a much longer than anticipated ten months in Vietnam, William’s Canadian father “raised hell” and demanded he’d be sent home. Ironically, William’s tour was ending anyways, and he returned in 1971, though he continued to work stateside until his official discharge in 1981. Though he felt he “was one of the lucky ones,” remarking that “when I left Vietnam, I left Vietnam there,” war still took its toll. William had a newly hot temper, explaining that “I wouldn’t take a whole lot from anyone, which I still don’t. I spoke my mind more, which I still do.” Mostly, William was glad to get back to his family.[23] Looking back, William viewed U.S. presence in Vietnam as a waste, pointing out how much he felt lied to, and his financial hardship and sense of adventure taken advantage of. He “didn’t want to go in the first place…going to Vietnam was strictly for money. Nothing was patriotic about me going.”[24] William thought Vietnam was a beautiful country, his true strength of character had been brought out, and his army friendships were forever, but he wished he “could have figured out a better way to see the world.”[25]
Footnotes ↓
[1] William J. Bell, interview by Jason Lehigh, March 2009, Veterans History Project, Library of Congress.
[2] “William J. Bell Obituaries and Memorials.” Libraries Database Access. Denver Post, October 13, 2009. https://infoweb-newsbank-com.du.idm.oclc.org/apps/news/document-view?p=WORLDNEWS&t=favorite%3ADPCC%21Denver%2BPost%2BCollection%2Bwith%2BHistorical%2BArchives&sort=YMD_date%3AD&maxresults=20&f=advanced&val-base-0=%22William+J.+Bell%22&fld-base-0=alltext&bln-base-1=and&val-base-1=2009&fld-base-1=YMD_date&docref=news%2F12A31B9F1A8B5D48.
[3] William J. Bell, interview by Jason Lehigh.
[4] U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010,” ancestry.com (accessed July 21, 2021), entry for William Jerome Bell
[5] Greenspan, Jesse. “The Gulf of Tonkin INCIDENT, 50 Years Ago.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, August 1, 2014. https://www.history.com/news/the-gulf-of-tonkin-incident-50-years-ago.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] William J. Bell, interview by Jason Lehigh.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] History.com Editors. “Tet Offensive.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, October 29, 2009. https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/tet-offensive.
[14] Ibid.
[15] “U.S. Marine Corps Chieu HOI Program Vietnam WAR 25384 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming.” Internet Archive. Accessed August 2, 2021. https://archive.org/details/25384USMarinesChieuHoi
[16] William J. Bell, interview by Jason Lehigh.
[17] Budanovic, Nikola. “Liquid Fire - How Napalm Was Used in the Vietnam War.” WAR HISTORY ONLINE, March 31, 2017.
[18] William J. Bell, interview by Jason Lehigh.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Lucks, Daniel. “African American Soldiers and the Vietnam War: No More Vietnams.” The Sixties 10, no. 2 (2017): 196–220. https://doi.org/10.1080/17541328.2017.1303111.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Ibid.
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