Contrary to the constraints that were put upon the press in
subsequent conflicts, and even to the embedded programme used in the
recent Iraqi war, correspondents and photographers in Vietnam could,
as Walter Cronkite wrote in LIFE,
“accompany
troops to wherever they could hitch a ride, and there was no
censorship . . . That system—or lack of one—kept the American public
well informed of our soldiers’ problems, their setbacks and their
heroism.”
'Reaching Out' is a quintessential example of the powerful imagery
that came out of Vietnam.
“The colour
photographs of tormented Vietnamese villagers and wounded American
conscripts that Larry Burrows took and LIFE published, starting in
1962, certainly fortified the outcry against the American presence
in Vietnam,”
Susan Sontag wrote in her essay “Looking at War,” in the December 9,
2002, New Yorker.
“Burrows
was the first important photographer to do a whole war in
colour—another gain in verisimilitude and shock.”
Burrows was killed when the helicopter he was riding in was shot
down over Laos in 1971
