This is a psyops visit to a village in late 1969 in the Bassac River. That's me with my back to the camera, handing out candy to the kids and vitamins to the adults. Note the expressions on the faces of the adults -- and the fact that they are voting with their feet by crowding toward the boat. Kids and adults loved to have their pictures taken with our Polaroid -- the magic of having their picture right away and most of them didn't even know what a camera was!

Sadly, this village was attacked a day or so later by the Vietcong. They literally beat the village chief and his wife to death with clubs and hacked a 4-inch hole in their daughter's skull with a machette. We ran the little girl to Binh Thuy to the hospital at 0230 with me sitting on the fantail holding her. We never did find out if she lived or not... she was alive when I handed her to the corpsman.

Dave Wallace
Former OinC PCFs 32 & 65
CosDiv 13 / Cat Lo & Sa Dec, RVN