The Men Without Helmets

The Viet Nam footage he screened on his CBS newscast one night last week was particularly poignant for Walter Cronkite. It showed a mortar bar rage at the Khe Sanh airstrip that wounded both the co-producer of his show, Russ Bensley, and CBS Cameraman John Smith. Neither Smith nor Bensley, who was filling in for an injured CBS sound man at the time, was seriously hurt. But three days later, after evacuation to Danang, Producer Bensley was wounded again during a rocket attack. His colon was ruptured and his spleen had to be removed. "The irony of it," said CBS Correspondent Don Webster, reporting from the hospital, "is that for several weeks now we've been planning to do a report about the new war in Viet Nam and on the fact that Viet Nam is a much more dangerous place than ever before."

No group in Viet Nam is more disturbed or disgruntled by the dangers of the "new" war than the U.S. television journalists who are covering it. Since the Tet offensive began, 14 correspondents and crewmen from the U.S. networks have been injured. Last week two ABC men, Bill Brannigan and Jim Deckard, were injured in the bombardment of Khe Sanh.* As a result, many members of TV's standard three-man teams (correspondent, cameraman and sound man) have begged off from hazardous assignments, and the networks are having trouble reporting all the battles. CBS Tokyo Bureau Chief Igor Oganesoff, who was frequently shuttled into Viet Nam for fill-in duty, has refused further combat assignments, ABC's Don North, a veteran of 18 months there, asked to be transferred. ABC's Hong Kong Bureau Chief Sam Jaffe also decided after three recent weeks in Viet Nam that "I won't cover Khe Sanh, and I refuse to go back to Hue." Summed up Jaffe, 38, who saw action as a merchant seaman in World War II and with the Marines in Korea: "The longer you stay here, the more inevitable it is that you're going to be hurt, maimed or killed."

"Nowhere to Hide." The big trouble is that even a rotation system such as NBC's -- a stint working out of Danang, then equal time in Saigon -- no longer affords a man any rest. Says NBC's New York-based News Operations Head Bill Corrigan: "There's nowhere to hide any more. There are no soft assignments." A newsman is in action from the moment his plane touches down at Tan Son Nhut Airport.

TV journalists, to be sure, are not the only ones becoming vulnerable and restive. But the first war to be thoroughly covered by television is most perilous for the TV crews in the van. To the men in the field, network managing editors back in New York seem obsessed with "the wire-service syndrome" -- they ask for coverage of every bit of action. Says one embittered TV staffer: "Editors are so afraid of missing one story that to protect their flanks they have been asking us to risk getting our tails shot off."

Another difficulty is that TV's technological problems are only half-mastered. In addition to their standard infantry pack, TV correspondents must keep pace with the troops while toting a tape recorder; their sound men lug some 20 lbs. of amplifiers and other recording gear; the photographers are draped with more than 40 lbs. of camera, batteries and film. Worse still, to synchronize film with the correspondent's commentary, the three have to be linked by a cable less than 10 ft. long, end to end, which makes them about the fattest target in any outfit.

Rise Up & Zoom In. Of the three-man teams, the cameraman is in most constant danger. Says one of the best of them, NBC's Vo Huynh, a refugee from Haiphong who has covered just about every major engagement since 1960, "During a firefight, you can't lie down and shoot. You have to sit up every so often for at least ten seconds." And the cameraman, unlike his colleagues, finds the G.I. helmet too cumbersome when he rises up and zooms in.

"The tragedy is," says Murray Fromson, CBS's Bangkok bureau chief, "that we get the glory, but cameramen have made the good correspondents." Belatedly aware of that fact, CBS headquarters sent a dispatch directing that reporters give plugs to the helmetless heroes who have shot the film. If the footage is especially good, the New York producers on all three networks "super" subtitles on the screen crediting the cameramen and sound men.

But credit or no, U.S. or native Vietnamese, cameraman or correspondent, some of the best of the TV crewmen are not bugging out. "It's a good story," explains NBC's Vo Huynh, "something I can't miss. So I've got to be here." Agrees Garrick Utley, NBC correspondent since 1963: "You learn in two weeks or even two days out here what takes two years anywhere else." CBS Cameraman Smith insists that he wants "to go back as soon as I can --this month if the doctors will let me."

*Khe Sanh also most likely claimed the life of the 12th journalist to die in Viet Nam: Photographer Bob Ellison, 23, whose work has appeared in many U.S. publications, including TIME'S cover on the Negro G.I. Ellison was listed as one of the 49 men aboard a C-123 transport shot down by ground fire as it circled for a landing.

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