After 5: Shots of War

Emrie, who owns Emrie Photography at 2003 S. Stewart Ave., was drafted into the armed forces after graduating from Glendale High School in 1966. He joined the U.S. Air Force, completed the required testing for photographers and began his military career in Minot, N.D., where he developed film for bomber crews flying missions worldwide.

“Minot was so cold I volunteered to be a combat photographer in Vietnam,” Emrie recalls.

In July 1969, a Flying Tiger airliner jam-packed with U.S. soldiers – a scrawny, 20-year-old Emrie among them – landed in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, not far from the fiercest fighting further inland.

Emrie was given carte blanche to roam freely throughout Vietnam as long as he shot about 30 rolls of “com doc,” or combat documentation, each week.

The Springfield native criss-crossed the jungle-covered country in planes and choppers, with two enormous cameras slung around his neck and a standard-issue M-16 rifle hanging on his shoulder. On one stormy night, the plane ride was so rough he strapped himself down with cargo netting.

Hunkered down on the ground, Emrie snapped his first photo of soldiers bounding out of a Huey helicopter in the A Shau Valley. A short time later, a stream of choppers flew by and dumped large sacks that thudded on the ground below. One of the bags opened to reveal a barely recognizable body.

“Welcome to the war, boys,” the ranking officer told Emrie and his fellow newbies.

Emrie wondered how he would survive a year after being told on the bus ride from the airport that “four of you will be killed.” No one wanted to be a member of the “four club,” he says.

The dread of dodging bullets, landmines and mortars wracked the nerves of Emrie and the men he photographed, and the climate had a knack for making things worse. Mosquitoes thrived in the heat and humidity, and monsoons all but washed away troops waiting for their next deadly assignment. Time and again, Emrie shot photos of miserable soldiers sitting squarely in mud puddles as rain drenched their ponchos.

And perils of sleeping in the brush – namely cobras and other nasty critters – were always a concern.

“I actually woke up one morning to a rat chewing on my thumb,” Emrie said. “The rats there are as big as a cat.”

One of Emrie’s best memories was the time he bartered for a crate of 100 steaks with an arrow he received from natives in Vietnam’s central highlands. Back at camp, the entrepreneurial Emrie charged his comrades $1 a steak, which they washed down with lots of beer.

“This was the closest I came to being a hero,” he says.

Dennis Cochran, the director of pastoral care at Hospice & Palliative Care of Springfield, recently had the privilege of hearing Emrie’s photo presentation at a Springfield’s Best luncheon.

The retired Air Force lieutenant colonel remembers how poorly soldiers were treated when they returned from the unpopular war.

“It especially saddens me and still does – what the Vietnam vet returned to – so I very much appreciate what he’s trying to do through that presentation,” Cochran says, adding that more people should see Emrie’s collection.

Emrie says he’s tentatively scheduled to share his combat photo presentation with the Springfield Southeast Rotary Club this spring.