Risk Taker, Spy Maker: Tales of a CIA Case Officer

By Barry Michael Broman

“Broman’s true tales of putting his life on the line recruiting and running spies in a dozen countries are the stuff of action movies.” —Peter Arnett, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Live from the Battlefield

Joining the CIA after fighting in Vietnam as a Marine, Barry Broman’s first posting was war-torn Cambodia. He was present at the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975, escaping just before the Khmer Rouge took power. During his career, he was twice chief of station, once a deputy chief of station, and he supervised an international paramilitary project in support of the Cambodian resistance to Vietnamese invaders. He was actively involved in several assignments in counter-narcotics operations in Southeast Asia including a major bust that yielded 551 kilograms of high-grade heroin from a major drug trafficker. His favorite agent against a variety of hard targets was a fellow whose only demand was that his assignments be “life threatening.” (He survived them all.)

As amazing as the characters Broman has met are the places he’s been, with visits to little-known and rarely seen places like the Naga Hills on the India–Burma border, the world-famous but off-limits jade and ruby mines of Burma, and the isolated Banda Islands of Indonesia, the home of nutmeg.

Broman’s engaging tone is complemented by photographs taken throughout his career, many of them his own, made using the skills he learned as a teenager working for the Associated Press in Southeast Asia—including Marines in action in Vietnam, the ravages of war in Cambodia, and opium buyers forcing growers to sell in Burma.

“[A] remarkable life story.” —Booklist

• Language: English
• Publisher: Casemate Publishers
• Release date: Jul 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781612008974

Barry Michael Broman

Barry Broman was a teenage photographer for the Associated Press in Southeast Asia, then a Marine Corps infantry officer in combat in Vietnam before spending a quarter century as a “head-hunter” with dozens of recruits for the Clandestine Service in operations around the world. Mr. Broman received a BA in Political Science in 1967 followed by an MA in Southeast Asian Studies a year later. A lifelong photographer and traveler he has published many articles and books.

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Preface

For much of my working life I was employed by three organizations that are easily identified by their initials: AP, USMC, and CIA. I was a photographer for the Associated Press in Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia and a photo editor in Chicago and New York. I served in the 5th Regiment of the Marine Corps in Vietnam and then as a liaison officer in Thailand. After two weeks as a civilian, I entered the Clandestine Service of the Central Intelligence Agency, which kept me busy for the next 25 years, mostly in Southeast Asia. It was certainly my good fortune to have been associated with these challenging and iconic organizations but my greatest luck was to have met and married a Hawaiian lady, Betty Jane (BJ) Apilado. During my career with CIA I was chief of station twice, deputy chief of station once, branch chief twice, and managed a large international paramilitary project.

This memoir is largely a collection of stories about the people I encountered along the way. Unfortunately, not all the people can be identified. Some of the best stories cannot even be told. When I retired from the CIA in 1996 I signed a secrecy agreement, which I will honor. The text of this book has been read and approved by the Publication Review Board of the CIA. I never kept notes or a diary. Thus, these stories are all from memory, and I hope they are accurate.

Why write this book? If the CIA is a secret organization, why talk about it? I think the American people have a right to know, within limits, what the Clandestine Service of the CIA really does, and how it operates. A senior retired Agency officer I respect once told me that he wrote a memoir at the urging of a former director of central intelligence, Richard Helms, also a reluctant memoir writer, who reasoned that there was no one better able to tell what the Agency really does than someone from the Agency. I believe also that there is a lot of misunderstanding by the public about what the CIA does. This is not a kiss-and-tell book. I very much enjoyed my years in the Agency, especially those spent in the field, which in my case were 19 years out of 25, a ratio I am proud of. Every good case officer I know wants to be in the field and not at headquarters. It is the same with newsmen and also Marines. You want to be where the action is. In my case the action was in Southeast Asia, and I turned down jobs in other places to stay in the part of the world that I loved. As my old friend and colleague, known to his friends as the Bear, remarked in Southeast Asia in the late 1970s, They paid us to live here. I nodded in agreement.

In addition to discussing my career in the CIA, I want to share some stories as a teenage wire service photographer in Thailand, Cambodia, and South Vietnam in the early 1960s, a time when Americans were just beginning to read regularly about these remote places. After college, I went back to Asia, this time as a Marine lieutenant in combat. Like all veterans of the Vietnam War, I have war stories. I also have tales from my service as a liaison officer for the R&R program in Thailand, a little known offshoot of the shooting war and a lot more amusing.

While in graduate school at the University of Washington, my favorite professor asked what I planned to do after my four years’ service in the Marine Corps. I said I didn’t know, but thought of the Foreign Service. He asked if I had considered the CIA. I said no. He suggested I give it some thought and offered an introduction to a CIA recruiter, which I accepted. Hearing that I had already worked in Indochina as a newsman and that I was earning a master’s degree in Southeast Asian Studies with Thai as my grad school language, the recruiter said I was the kind of person the Agency was looking for. I survived the war, contacted the recruiter, and went from the frying pan of the Marine Corps to the fire of the Agency.

The last section of the book deals with events in my post-government years, when I had the opportunity and time to return to writing and photography, resulting in over a dozen books and a lesser number of documentary films, which I produced. In places the book takes the form of a travelogue of new and usually rarely visited areas that I was allowed into, usually for filmmaking. An example was a film I produced on the heroin trade in the forbidden hills of northeastern Burma known as the Golden Triangle.

The book is presented chronologically, providing some insights of life—and sometimes death—in various wars and other dangerous enterprises. It also includes anecdotes about some of the more entertaining and always interesting people and places I had the great fortune to meet and visit.

For reasons of national security, the Publication Review Board has asked me to take out some place names and dates. Some names have been changed or removed.

CHAPTER I

Early Years

During World War II my father was a glider pilot and saw action in Europe when he crossed the Rhine in the largest glider operation in history. He didn’t talk about it much but over the years I heard stories about the short and brutal lives of glider pilots. The family photo album included a small black and white snapshot of young pilots with a baby seated in front with a bottle of beer between his legs. Pappy, his nickname from his wartime years when most of his men were usually a decade younger, and the name he liked me to use, would point to the young pilots in the photo saying:

He was killed in the Normandy landings. He died in Holland in the Arnhem assault. He was killed on Operation Varsity, crossing the Rhine in 1945 not far from me. That’s Henry Palmer. He was famous for rescuing survivors of an airplane crash in New Guinea. Henry and I are the only survivors from that group. That’s me. The baby is Barry.

Like most Americans, the Bromans were immigrants, in this case from Sweden. My grandfather, Frank Broman, arrived from Eskilstuna early in the 20th century. He was a custom tailor, traveled widely in the West, and prospered. He married my grandmother, Lillian Wallenberg, an American girl of Swedish extraction who was born during the great blizzard of March 1888 in Minneapolis. Lily met Frank in California sometime after she survived the San Francisco earthquake in 1906. They married and settled in Los Angeles, where my father, Harry, was born a year later.

Eventually, the Bromans settled in Seattle where Harry graduated from Broadway High School and entered the University of Washington. As a freshman he played baseball and was coxswain of the frosh crew. When he was accepted into the school of architecture, he had to give up sports. An only child, Pappy joined Kappa Sigma fraternity where he immediately had brothers, some of whom engaged in the illegal but popular pursuit of manufacturing bath tub gin during the era of Prohibition. Despite the rigors of the school of architecture, Pappy was active in the Army’s Reserve Officer Training Corps and was captain of the rifle team. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in 1935.

While still in college, Pappy met and married a cute Canadian girl, Hilda Foley, who immigrated to the United States at the age of 18. On her father’s side, she was Irish. The family left County Waterford in the 18th century bound for New Waterford on the west coast of Prince Edward Island, Canada, a little Erin unfettered by English tyranny. My great grandfather, Thomas Foley, led the family west to Vancouver, where he later owned an outfitting company for the Yukon gold rush. Tom had eight children, one of whom was Thomas Edward Foley, my grandfather. Young Tom farmed in the Fraser River valley town of Dudney and gained local fame for once going three rounds in an exhibition bout with world heavyweight boxing champion Tommy Burns in Nanaimo, BC. Tom married Regina Marquette of Mission, BC, whose father was the local constable (sheriff). They had two sons and five daughters, one of whom was Hilda, my mother. Regina died young of tuberculosis and Tom drowned in a boating accident, making orphans of the children. All the girls immigrated to the United States as soon as they turned 18 to begin new lives.

Pappy found work as an architect for Edwin J. Ivy in Seattle for the princely sum of $30 per week. The depression was in full spate and he was lucky to get the job. He never suffered though. His father was well off and Pappy drove a Stutz Bearcat sports car. He and Mom lived a happy life as war clouds were gathering. In 1941, Pappy left his architecture practice and turned down an offer to join the Army Corps of Engineers. He wanted to fly. He volunteered to be a fighter pilot but was too old. The same with bombers. He was 32 and learned that the age limit for glider pilots was 35 so he signed up. He didn’t know what he was in for. War correspondent Walter Cronkite wrote in his foreword to a book about the glider corps: I’ll tell you straight out. If you’ve to go into combat, don’t go by glider. Walk, crawl, parachute, swim, float—anything. But don’t go by glider. Cronkite knew what he was talking about. He rode a glider into battle in the ill-fated Operation Market Garden, British General Montgomery’s bridge too far in Holland in 1944.

Much of Pappy’s glider training took place in desolate parts of Texas, largely unhampered by trees or other glider-unfriendly obstacles. Once, during a night landing, Pappy lost sight of his wingman and the little light on his wingtips. He turned his CG-4A glider sharply away and landed safely. His wingman had flown into the side of a freight train crossing the Texas prairie, killing the pilot and co-pilot. Another time he also lost sight of his wingman in the dark and guided his plane, The Hilda B, to a safe landing. His wingman had hit the only farmhouse in 10 miles, killing the pilot and co-pilot. The farmer survived.

While their husbands were away trying to fly fragile aircraft with no engines, a hardy group of wives followed their husbands to dry, dusty Texas towns with names like La Mesa and Dalhart. The young war brides were on their own. They had no government support and were not allowed on base. The wives stayed in small hotels, sometimes four to a room, seeing their husbands on weekends. This is where my mother learned to play bridge. About once a week, the bridge games would be interrupted when an Air Corps officer would arrive and inform a wife that she was now a widow. Glider training came at a high cost. The bridge games would stop, the girls helped the new widow pack her things and put her on a bus or train. The bridge games then resumed.

I was born in Kentucky in 1943 while my father was assigned to Bowman Field near Louisville. I suffered from colic, which earned me a prescription for Kentucky bourbon whiskey, which solved the problem. I shared the bottle with Pappy, the first of many. Pappy shipped out in 1944, first to England and then to France. He got into the war in the spring of 1945 when he participated in Operation Varsity, the crossing of the Rhine River into Germany, the largest glider operation in history. As a captain he led a flight of 16 gliders into action behind German lines to secure a beachhead for British forces crossing the river in boats. His glider was hit by fire from an anti-aircraft gun, killing all the infantrymen in the back. A high-tension wire slowed the plane’s descent, taking off part of the nose of the aircraft. For the next two days Pappy and his co-pilot hunkered down in a destroyed farmhouse until British soldiers broke through and rescued them. More glider pilots were killed crossing the Rhine than at the D-Day landings in Normandy. Gliders and airborne parachutists went in first, in the dark, behind German lines.

Back at his base in Melun, not far from Paris, Pappy was preparing for another glider assault in Germany but after crossing the Rhine, resistance was slight and the Allies moved fast heading for Berlin. The drop was cancelled and on May 8 Pappy was visiting Rheims Cathedral with a few buddies when senior German officers, also in Rheims, signed the official surrender to the Allies. Pappy’s war was over.

Released from the Air Corps in 1945, Pappy returned to architecture in Seattle where he was made a partner in his firm and stayed in the reserves. My sister, Jennifer, joined the family in 1947 and Pappy settled down for a quiet career as an architect in Seattle. Fate intervened. He was recalled to active service for the Berlin Airlift crisis of 1948 and released after a year, only to be called up again for the Korean War in 1950. In 1954, when he was about to be released from the Air Force, he was offered any assignment in the world to keep him in uniform. He had to make a hard decision. He opted to stay in the military and took the job of base engineer at RAF Manston, a Battle of Britain fighter base on the English Channel near Dover. During the war it was the closest Allied base to occupied Europe. Although it was a Royal Air Force base, its only aircraft were American F-86 Sabre jets and some air/sea rescue helicopters. Pappy was going back to England and we were going with him.

***

Pappy flew to England before us in mid-1954. My mother, younger sister Jennifer, and I followed in December. My first airplane ride was from Seattle to Minneapolis to see my grandmother en route to England. The four-engine aircraft encountered heavy turbulence over the Rockies. My mother sat with my sister. I sat in front of them next to a young Marine who looked like he had never flown before either. As the stewardess carried a tray of coffee and soft drinks down the aisle, the plane hit a downdraft. The beverages went flying over passengers just as many of them lost their lunch. But not me or the Marine. I thought this was how all flights were, so it just needed getting used to. We flew on to an air base in Connecticut a few days later, then on to Prestwick, Scotland, via a USAF C-54 aircraft without incident. After a chilly night in Ayrshire, we caught The Flying Scotsman, Scotland’s finest steam train, to London.

Pappy met the train. For our first dinner in London after our arduous journey from Seattle, Pappy took us to one of his favorite wartime haunts, The Brompton Road Bar and Grill in Knightsbridge. It was hot, noisy, and smoky from grilling at tables, but the beef was good. The smoke was getting to me so I asked to be excused, pleading a need to visit the toilet. Instead, I went outside into the crisp night air and went for a short walk. I promptly got lost. By luck I spotted a London policeman, a bobby, and told him my problem. After I described the smoky bistro, the bobby figured out where I belonged and walked me to the grill. I thanked him for his help, returned to our table, and never mentioned my foray outside or my first English friend.

As a result of his wartime experience in England and his rescue by the British Army in Germany after he evaded German capture for three days in the Rhine-crossing operation, Pappy was a dedicated anglophile. With a pencil moustache, he even looked the part. RAF Manston was perfect for us. Located near Dover in Kent, an hour from London by train, its Spitfires saw heavy service during the Battle of Britain in 1940 as they fought to stop German bombers heading for London. Later in the war, the runway was lengthened to accommodate crippled bombers trying to make it back to England. As a result, Manston had the longest runway in Britain.

We lived in a 19th-century country home called Deepdene in Herne Bay, 18 miles from the base. Instead of sending me to an American boarding school near London, Pappy opted to put me in a private English school in Herne Bay. I was the only American at Eddington House Boys’ Preparatory School. It was a boarding school, but also accepted dayboys such as me. Many of the boarders were boys from families overseas, such as Malaya, Kenya, and Cyprus, where wars were raging that required the evacuation of children. I commuted by bicycle less than a mile from our house on the Canterbury Road, a two-lane road originally built by Romans two thousand years ago.

Our headmaster was G. E. Hunt, a Cambridge graduate who wore his black robes daily. He was a fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and had the head of a mounted wild boar outside his office with a small plaque saying Gambia 1935. He was an affable fellow and presided over morning assembly and prayers before school started. I enjoyed school despite having to attend on Saturday mornings, with sports in the afternoon, and suffering occasional beatings of six of the best. These were strokes of a cane or sometimes a tennis shoe across the bottom of the miscreant inflicted for various minor infractions. Slipping sheets of blotting paper down the backs of trousers reduced pain. We wore uniforms with the school badge on the jacket and at age 11 I was introduced to Latin, French, Shakespeare, and the history of the British Empire. We played cricket, field hockey, and football (soccer) depending on the season. We were a prep school that prepared boys for public school, which was actually a private high school. Most boys went on to King’s School, Canterbury, which claimed to be the oldest continuously operated school in the world, founded in the year 597. Once I got the hang of the lingo—Churchill once remarked that America and Britain were two countries separated by a common language—I loved the place.

My favorite subject was English, which consisted mainly of poetry, Dickens, and Shakespeare. The English master, Mr. Troughton, was my own Mr. Chips, the best teacher I ever had. He was large and hairy and from Northumberland. He spoke in a deep, resonating voice and never smiled. He chain-smoked cheap cigarettes and his fingertips and teeth were a deep shade of brown. His mission, he said, was to make every boy, Except you, Broman, speak the Queen’s English without any regional or working-class accent. The mark of an educated Englishman, he explained, was to be unable to tell where he was from.

Eddington House Boys’ Preparatory School cricket team, Herne Bay, Kent, England 1956. B. Broman, front row, left. Slow-spin bowler.

My best sport was cricket, which I enjoyed without ever understanding the nuances of the game, such as how you can fight for a draw in a match. I was a slow-spin bowler and a fair batsman for the First Eleven of the school team. At first I had the vexing habit of throwing my bat when hitting the ball, as is done in baseball. Not in cricket. We played matches with other prep schools in east Kent. One day we were playing a school near Dover and to my great surprise my father showed up to watch. We were in the field when my father walked up in uniform to watch the match with other parents. I was bowling at the time.

The headmaster of the school welcomed him and asked how it was that an American air force major should be interested in a prep school cricket match. That’s my boy pitching, Pappy explained. We call that bowling, the headmaster explained politely and offered a cup of tea. My cricket experience put me in good stead years later when I played for the Seattle Cricket Club and then the Royal Bangkok Sports Club, the only American on either team.

A rare moment of academic glory came my way when Mr. Troughton included me in a team to compete against other schools at King’s School in Canterbury, seven miles away, dealing with an aspect of the English language. I was entered to represent the school in sight reading, a term I had never heard before. It meant I had to read a passage from a book without any preparation. Some boys recited scenes from Shakespeare plays. Little Pugh, with an incredible singing voice, from Wales, played Portia in The Merchant of Venice with great emotion and effect. When it was my turn to perform, I stepped up to the lectern, where a grim-faced master handed me an open book and wished me luck. It was Huckleberry Finn and I had to read a passage of Huck talking to his black friend Jim. Not a problem for me, I even slipped into Jim’s Negro accent. In for a penny, in for a pound, I reckoned. In the end, I won, and went up on the stage to receive my thimble-sized cup, which was awarded by an elderly academic from King’s.

Excellent American accent, Mr. Broman he announced.

Thank you, sir, I replied. His smile disappeared.

Are you American? he asked in a low voice.

Yes, sir, I replied with a touch of pride. He was clearly not amused but mercifully did not ask for the trophy back. As I walked off the stage I saw Mr. Troughton in the audience give me a thumbs up. It was the only time I ever saw him smile.

My elective at Eddington House was riding. My father ponied up for jodhpurs and a black riding hat and I joined five other boys, all of whom had their own horses at home. Every Thursday the school van drove us to stables in Whitstable, where a brawny young woman of Kent put us through our paces on horseback. It was great fun, usually ending with a galloping race across a lush meadow with visions of the doomed Light Brigade at Balaclava in our minds. One day, for a treat, we rode down to the ocean at Whitstable, famous for its oysters and the oldest golf club house in the world. We galloped across the hard sand at low tide until the horses and our instructor told us to stop. A few weeks later a young day-tripper down from London found something sticking up from the sands where we had ridden. It turned out to be a prong from a sea mine from World War II. Army engineers were called in and uncovered a string of six mines that had broken loose and drifted ashore. They were exploded by rifle fire. No more beach riding for us.

Deepdene was a charming mini manor on two acres, with trees, a lawn, fruit orchard, and a large vegetable garden. The house had four bedrooms, a sitting room, a dining room, and a huge ballroom with French doors opening on to the formal garden. The skylight over the ballroom had been painted black during the war so that German bombers couldn’t use it as a landmark. We had a gardener, old Fred Hufham, two days a week. Fred had lost an eye in a childhood accident but was drafted anyway into the British Army in 1916 at the age of 15. When a sergeant saw him at the recruit depot in Dover, he sent him home saying, The King don’t need you yet lad. Fred had never been to London. He told me he saw a film once, a silent film. When I offered to take him to the local Odeon where I was a regular, he demurred, Already seen one, ain’t I? During World War II, Fred served in the Home Guard, going out at night armed with shotguns and pitchforks to round up German aircrews brought down by the RAF. Business was brisk.

The house was the scene of dinner parties on Fridays that usually ended with a walk in the grounds at first light on Saturday mornings. I sometimes served as bartender and perfected the art of making an old fashioned (bourbon-based cocktail). The house had only one drawback; there was no central heating. Each room had a fireplace. It was my job to light fires daily in the sitting room and dining room and to keep the kitchen-stove fire running all the time. There was no heat at all in the bedrooms. We had to make do with hot water bottles. What do you expect for $95 a month?

I joined the Herne Bay troop of Boy Scouts and had a chance to meet working-class boys who were every bit as nice (often nicer) than the upper-class boys at my prep school. I was not required to pledge allegiance to the Queen as my troop mates were. We were a convivial group under the guidance of our scoutmaster, Colin Clissold from Rhondda Valley in Wales. One year I attended a world jamboree of scouts in Sutton Coldfield, where I helped interpret between American and British scouts. My favorite merit badge was the Bookman badge, which involved presenting a reading list to my examiner, the Canterbury librarian. My books invariably dealt with World War II and were almost evenly divided between escape stories of Britons captured by Germans and tales of the Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain. After a rigorous but friendly inquisition, I passed, and my examiner invited me for a cup of tea. I suspect your classmates don’t know the history of the air war over Kent as well as you, Yank. I took it as a compliment. He went on to tell me that during the war he was in Canterbury, which was heavily bombed. One day he saw a German bomber in flames coming down very close to him. Just before the plane crashed the rear gunner waved goodbye to him. Today, when you visit Canterbury Cathedral, make a point to inspect the beautiful stained glass window. All of the original windows were blown out by German bombing, but the cathedral itself still stands. The new window features an RAF Spitfire climbing for altitude to meet the Hun. It was probably based at Manston.

A requirement in earning the First Class badge in British scouting is to undertake a 20-mile hike in a 24-hour period and write a log along the way. As second of the Springbok Patrol, I accompanied my patrol leader, Reggie, on his hike. The route followed a 20-mile segment of the Pilgrim’s Way to Canterbury from Watling Street in London as described by Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales. Our walk ended at Canterbury Cathedral and the shrine of Thomas Becket, who was canonized there in 1173. I hope the path is still intact. Reggie didn’t need a map, just a copy of Chaucer.

CHAPTER 2

Photographer

After England, Pappy was assigned to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Springfield, Ohio, where he attended the Air Force Institute of Technology and earned an MA in civil engineering. One of the foreign officers attending the same course was a young Royal Thai Air Force captain, Sudhi Lekhyananda. Sudhi was a Tufts University graduate and an elementary school classmate of Prince Bhumibol Adulyadej, the future King of Thailand. Sudhi’s father was Thailand’s first graduate of Harvard Law School and a fellow student of Prince Mahidol Adulyadej, Bhumibol’s father. He was later a Minister of Justice following World War II. Sudhi was smart and easy-going; he always had a smile on his face. He quickly became Pappy’s buddy and soon they would be working together in Thailand. He would become our first, and best, Thai friend.

The following year took us to Scott Air Force Base near St. Louis where an Air Force sergeant working for the Military Air Transport Service (MATS) introduced me to photography, which was to become my passion. In the summer of 1959 I worked as an attendant at the officers’ club swimming pool on base. By chance, I met Technical Sergeant Lloyd Borguss one day after work. He was part of an elite team of photographers and offered to teach me photography after work and took me under this wing. I had to work my passage. He started by teaching me how to wash and dry photographs. I started at the bottom. Then I learned how to develop and print black and white film. Finally, I got to handle a camera and learned composition and techniques of photo-journalism. Lloyd was a good teacher, in addition to being a top Air Force photographer. This helped me in high school, where I became the school newspaper’s photographer. My first published photo was of Senator John F. Kennedy when he was on a visit to Belleville, Illinois, in 1960 campaigning for president.

My future in photography made a move forward when I went to college. In 1961 I received a four-year academic scholarship to the University of Illinois. I joined a fraternity, Chi Phi, where I was a pledge brother of a freshman of Lithuanian descent from Chicago named Dick Butkus. Dick, a witty and friendly fellow, was on the football team. He went on to a very successful career in professional football and later as a comedian in a television series. Today the Butkus Award is given to the best football linebackers in the country at the high school, college, and professional levels.

Each pledge had to have an activity. Mine was joining the staff of the Daily Illini, the school newspaper, as a photographer. I was disappointed to learn that they didn’t use the elegant 35mm Nikon cameras that I had learned to use from Sergeant Borguss. The Daily Illini used bulky, slow-to-use 4 × 5 Speed Graphics that had been around for decades. Using the relics did teach one thing: fire discipline. On a typical assignment I was given one film holder, which means I had to get the shot with only two frames available. With a Nikon and a small roll of film, I had at least 20 chances. I gained a lot of experience in my year at the University of Illinois, and enjoyed working with an editor, Roger Ebert, who went on to a distinguished career as a film critic, first for the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper and then on television. He was a lot of fun to work with. Unless you missed the shot.

In 1962 my father was assigned as a civil engineer advisor to the Royal Thai Air Force (RTAF). The Vietnam War was heating up. There were US advisors in the country and helicopters to support the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN). Plans were already afoot to build air bases in Thailand to support operations in Vietnam. That was where Pappy came in, working with his friend Captain Sudhi of the RTAF.

To my surprise, Pappy offered to let me drop out of the University of Illinois, give up my scholarship, and live for one year in Thailand to give me some experience of the Far East. It didn’t take me long to accept. It was a decision that changed my life.

Bangkok in 1962 was a quiet city despite a population of several million. Traffic was not a problem, although most streets were two lanes. Canals or klongs flanked many streets, giving Bangkok the name Venice of the East. Wireless Road, for instance, where the American embassy is located, was a tree-lined two-lane road with klongs on both sides. Sathorn Road, nearby, where my father worked at the Joint United States Military Advisory Group (JUSMAG) was also a two-lane road with two large klongs. We lived in the north end of town closer to Don Muang Air Base, where Pappy spent much of his time. We had a large house with a staff of cook, maid, and gardener. The only drawback was the lack of air conditioning and the prevalence of cobras and other venomous snakes, especially when the rains brought them out.

Life in Bangkok in the summer of 1962 was good for a college drop out. My early days were mainly spent playing tennis at the Royal Bangkok Sports Club, an oasis in the heart of Bangkok complete with an 18-hole golf course, lawn tennis courts, and an air-conditioned billiard room (no ladies please). The covered verandah offered excellent inexpensive food and draft Singha beer. The club was founded in 1901 by King Chulalongkorn, largely for the pleasure of Siam’s growing foreign population. It had Thailand’s first golf course, a challenging course with lots of water hazards. Golfers employed fore caddies here, men who went before the golfers to retrieve balls lost in water.

After a hard day of lawn tennis with breaks in the Olympic-size swimming pool, my evenings usually featured attendance at parties hosted by American military or diplomatic dependents in town. As a military brat with years spent moving around the world, I made friends fast. We couldn’t believe our good fortune at being in Thailand where the people were friendly, the food was great, and the weather was hot. A bowl of noodles with barbequed pork cost about 15 cents, the same as a heaped plate of shrimp fried rice. For transportation we used the sporty, open-aired, vehicles known as tuk tuks. These three-wheeled death traps could carry three passengers and were great fun until it rained or they had a close encounter with a Bangkok bus. There were no meters to report the cost of a ride. Each trip needed to be negotiated with the driver. This required some knowledge of Thai language. A ride anywhere in town could be had for two packs of Salem cigarettes, which cost 10 cents each at the American military PX.

This idyll came to a screeching halt after a month of tennis by day and partying by night. My father took me aside one evening as I was preparing to go out. This isn’t what I had in mind, he said, when I let you drop out of school for a year. We now have a new rule. You have to get a job. If you don’t, plan on returning to the University of Illinois in the fall. Finding a job was easier said than done, although the idea was fine with me. There weren’t many jobs available for 18-year-old boys who spoke very little Thai and had few marketable skills.

Armed with a sheaf of my clippings from the Daily Illini, I made my way one morning in August 1962 to the offices of the Bangkok World, one of two English-language daily newspapers in Bangkok. Its editor, Darrell Berrigan, was a true old Asia hand. Berry had been a war correspondent for United Press in Burma and China in World War II. He looked at my clippings and said he would be happy to give me a job at the World but he would have to pay me the same rate he paid his Thai photographers, $40 a month. I asked if he had any idea where I could make more money. He suggested I try United Press International, his alma mater, and gave me their address on Patpong Road. He said to mention his name to the bureau chief, Bob Udick, and wished me luck. At the UPI office I was told that Mr. Udick was out of town. They suggested I try Associated Press down the street.

In those days Patpong was not the center of nightlife it became a couple of decades later. It was a respectable business center. Air France, Air Vietnam, and ESSO were there; also the United States Information Service library. A short and privately owned street, Patpong was closed down every year for the Patpong fair that raised money for a leprosarium in northern Thailand. There were good restaurants. Mizu’s Kitchen, owned by a Japanese soldier who declined to return to Japan after the war, was a favorite of the foreign press corps. My favorite spot was the Red Door, a classy bar and restaurant that served Bangkok’s finest Shanghai fried noodles. The owner, Suzy, let me run a tab.

With not much hope for success, I walked up to the AP offices at 103 Patpong Road. The bureau chief, Tony Escoda, was in. A Filipino with degrees from Yale and Columbia, Tony was polite, looked at my tear sheets, and asked one question, Can you start tomorrow? I said yes. He needed an English-speaking photographer to cover the US Army presence that was coming to Thailand. The day rate of $10 per day wasn’t much better than the Bangkok World was offering but this was the AP, America’s leading wire service. Tony quickly pointed out that this was only the starting wage; there were other perks such as travel and all expenses paid. Did I want the job? I did.

The darkroom was a challenge. It was essentially a closet, and had electricity but no air conditioning. Daytime temperatures exceeded 100 Fahrenheit. To cool my chemicals for developing and printing photos I would have a block of ice delivered in the morning. It sat in a metal basin with an electric fan behind it to lower the room temperature. When I needed chemicals cooled, I would chip ice off the block and it drop into the developer. When the temperature hit 70 degrees, I would take out the ice and put in the film. Wet negatives would still be wet two days later if left alone, so I dried them with a ladies’ electric hair dryer.

This was truly starting at the bottom. The good news was that Tony was a great guy who hated dealing with photos. In short order, he put me in charge of photos, including the administrative details of dealing with Tokyo Photos from where all AP Asian photos were managed. Here, I fell under the command of Harold Hal Buell, the Asian photo editor, who became a mentor and lifelong friend. Hal also gave the bride away at my wedding in 1968. He appreciated having someone in Bangkok with initiative who loved taking photos for the AP. I was not a staff employee but a stringer, paid only when working. I was delighted. I not only had a job, I could stay in Bangkok for a year.

My first assignment upcountry was to drive to Korat, a city northeast of Bangkok, to photograph the arrival of US Army troops as a show of force against a perceived communist threat. The AP hired a jovial fellow named Noon and his car to drive me. Noon picked me up at the office at 6AM the next morning to beat the traffic. We stopped for breakfast at Noon’s favorite noodle house, an open-air stall at Rangsit, a truck stop just north of the airport. Noon ordered two big bowls of noodles for us.

I was still a neophyte to Thai food and trusted Noon to keep me healthy. The noodle soup was delicious; egg noodles, barbequed pork and spiced with fish sauce and peppers mixed with fresh vegetables. Then I saw it, a large cockroach, feet up in the bottom of my bowl. I almost retched. I had a thought. Maybe this is a delicacy in Thailand. I didn’t want to offend Noon. I ate around the cockroach until it was the only thing left in the bowl.

Then I asked myself if I was supposed to eat the creature. The Thai are fond of things like fried scorpions and lesser bugs and insects. I didn’t want to commit a social faux pas. I had to ask. I gestured to the bottom of my bowl.

Do I eat this, Noon? He peered into my bowl and screamed at the owner who ran to the table. Maybe Noon hadn’t been given a cockroach, I thought, and had missed a treat. The owner, abashed, said something to Noon.

What did he say? I asked.

Do Americans eat roaches?

No, we hate them.

Thai hate them too, Noon said. You get next bowl free. There was no next time. I avoided that noodle shop ever after. Every time we passed Rangsit, Noon would point to the shop and remind me of my close encounter with a cockroach. I am sure he regaled his buddies with the story. I regaled mine.

***

Although my boss in Bangkok was AP bureau chief Tony Escoda, the senior AP staff photographer in Southeast Asia was a West German national, Horst Faas, assigned to the Saigon bureau. Horst was already gaining fame as a war photographer, having covered combat in the Congo and Algeria. He was in Saigon photographing the war years before American ground troops arrived, and was still there when the Americans went home. He was wounded numerous times and earned two Pulitzer Prizes.

Horst would visit Bangkok from time to time, sometimes just to get away from the war. In those days he was in the field often with South Vietnamese troops and had many close calls. By the time American ground forces arrived in 1965, Horst was already an old Vietnam hand. He spent more time in harm’s way than any American soldier or Marine. The first time I met Horst he was appalled at the meager day rate that AP was paying me. He had a short chat with Tony and my salary was raised three hundred percent. Horst informed me that whenever he was in town I was automatically on the clock to assist him. He became a mentor to me, and, among many other things, taught me how to prepare an expense account, a critical skill for any journalist, print or photo.

Horst tasked me to look for interesting feature stories that he could photograph when he was in Thailand. We would do these stories together and had the full approval of Tony, who maintained his hands-off policy when it came to photos. This gave me a chance to learn from the master who was extremely generous with his time and guidance.

During my search for feature photo stories, I heard of an old Chinese medicine man who had a stall on Sundays at a market in the Chinese part of town. He sold fresh cobra livers to clients to increase their virility. The liver was eaten raw, on the spot, chasing the bloody organ down with a shot of rice whiskey. I thought this would make a good photo, and so did Horst. After some effort we found the old fellow in the corner space he rented at the outdoor market. He showed us a sack full of live cobras. He carefully brought each snake out of the bag and hung it by its neck on a line. He was open