Blog
Losing Henri
Posted by Michael Putzel • February 10, 2020
This reminiscence was included in the book Henri Huet: J’etais Photographe de Guerre au Vietnam by Horst Faas and Hélène Gédouin. Published in French in 2006, the book includes a collection of photographs by Huet, one of four news photographers killed when their helicopter was shot down over Laos on February 10, 1971–49 years ago.
By Michael Putzel
© 2006 All Rights Reserved
I went looking for Henri to give him a message. It was February 10, 1971, in the mountainous northwestern corner of what was then South Vietnam. We were both covering the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese invasion of Laos to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail, but we had been with separate units when the operation kicked off, and we hadn’t seen each other in a couple of days. I […] READ MORE
Gone, but not forgotten
Posted by Michael Putzel • January 16, 2020
WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 – The remains of four war photographers and their companions shot down in Laos during the Vietnam War were removed from the defunct Newseum here Tuesday and returned to U.S. military custody for safekeeping until a permanent resting place is found.
In an informal gathering that included the son and a grandson of famed LIFE magazine photographer Larry Burrows, who was killed in the helicopter crash on Feb. 10, 1971, the museum’s registrar and collections director unscrewed a dedicatory plaque and removed a small stainless steel box from beneath the floor of the Journalists Memorial and delivered it to a military archaeologist for storage at a laboratory at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Neb.
Nick Gayliard, grandson of photographer Larry Burrows, photographs a plaque bearing his grandfather’s name […] READ MORE
“American Jihadi” returns
Posted by Michael Putzel • January 13, 2020
The dramatic new podcast feature produced and hosted by Christof Putzel revealing his long-secret communications with an Alabama-born terrorist returned to the air Jan. 13 with the fifth episode of an eight-part series. “You will not want to miss what Omar reveals to me next,” Putzel said. ”Trust me: You want to keep listening.”
In previous episodes, the investigative reporter described his years seeking to understand the transition of Omar Hammami from popular high-school kid in Daphne, Alabama, to chief propagandist and guerrilla soldier for Al Shabaab, the Islamist rebel group headquartered in Somalia. Hammami eventually reacted in a cryptic email message that triggered nearly two years of clandestine exchanges between the two young men.
Endeavor Audio, a division of William Morris/Endeavor, will release the remaining episodes on Apple Podcasts and a wide array […] READ MORE
The reporter and the terrorist
Posted by Michael Putzel • January 02, 2020
Jennifer Parker called it a “stunning and addicting podcast.” In a review for the online writers’ magazine Across the Margin; Parker wrote, “I couldn’t recommend more getting hooked on American Jihadi. I am.”Us Weekly pronounced it “explosive.”Rolling Stone asked, “What’s it like to accidentally become confidants with a terrorist?” Forbes said it looks like a movie play by Endeavor, the famed William Morris talent agency turned producer.
American Jihadi, the new podcast from Endeavor Audio, is the story of a secret connection between Omar Hammami, an American-born terrorist, and investigative reporter Christof Putzel. Putzel reveals their clandestine connection in an eight-episode series now unwinding on a wide array of popular podcast networks and directly from the producer. [You may know Christof is my son.]
Putzel wonders if the remarkable communications they shared may have crossed an invisible line between reporter and source. “I’m a […] READ MORE
Viral obit of a Vietnam vet
Posted by Michael Putzel • December 20, 2019
This obituary of Bill Ebeltoft, a Huey helicopter pilot during the Vietnam war who never recovered from his combat experience, was written by his brother Paul and almost immediately went viral on the web. It is reprinted here from the funeral home’s website.
“Not everyone who lost his life in Vietnam died there.” The saying is true for CW2 William C. Ebeltoft. He died on December 15, 2019 at the Veteran’s Home in Columbia Falls, Montana. He died 50 years after he lost, in Vietnam, all that underpinned his life. He was 73 years old.
Everyone called him “Bill.” He was loved by the nursing staff who cared for him. He was loved by the fellow veterans with whom he lived; those he helped when he was able and entertained with […] READ MORE
Christof Putzel launches podcast American Jihadi
Posted by Michael Putzel • December 02, 2019
My son Christof Putzel’s suspense-filled personal story of his search for and eventual intimate communications with an American-born terrorist launched Dec. 2, 2019, as a widely available podcast released by Endeavor Audio. Episode 1 of American Jihadi, an eight-part weekly series, is available on Apple, Google, Spotify and numerous audio outlets that distribute podcasts via the Internet.
Christof, an award-winning investigative reporter and documentary maker, is executive producer and host of the series that chronicles the transformation of Omar Hammami from a typical high school kid raised in Daphne, Alabama, to a radical Islamist fighting and recruiting for Al Shabab, the international terrorist group based in the failed state of Somalia.
Check out American Jihadi’s first half-hour episode, The Matrix, in Apple iTunes, or wherever you prefer to listen to podcasts.
See the video […] READ MORE
Old soldiers’ farewell
Posted by Michael Putzel • December 13, 2018
Members of the once-secret 265th Radio Research Company and of C Troop, 2/17 Cavalry, 101st Airborne Division, offer a final salute to their comrade, Staff Sergeant Ed Keith, at Keith’s burial yesterday at Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington, DC. Keith, who was assigned to the 265th, was flying with C Troop over Laos in March 1971, when their helicopter was hit by enemy gunfire. Keith was severely wounded and lost a leg. In the photo, right to left: Dan Klem, Dan Altstaetter, Bruce Rollman, John Mastro (behind Rollman) John Purgason,Ted Hughes and Dennis Urick.
Vietnam vet dies waiting for Silver Star
Posted by Michael Putzel • October 08, 2018
Staff Sgt. Edward Fulton Keith, who suffered severe pain for decades after he lost a leg in Vietnam, died Thursday, Oct. 4, 2018, in Bakersfield, Calif., waiting for a Silver Star medal that his Army buddies continued to pursue for him nearly a half-century after the war. They testified that his courage under fire saved countless lives.
His brother, William F. Keith, said the cause was multiple organ failure.
Keith, 76, was a signals intelligence specialist in Vietnam, gathering and analyzing information collected from the enemy electronically and passing it along to other U.S. military units. During the invasion of Laos in early 1971, when allied forces were suffering severe casualties, he got himself informally assigned to fly dangerous reconnaissance missions over Laos to help spot enemy forces. Although […] READ MORE
Thanking the docs on his “Alive Day”
Posted by Michael Putzel • July 29, 2018
Many soldiers severely wounded in war celebrate the anniversary of the day they didn’t die. They call it their “Alive Day.”
On July 25, 2018, John Fogle marked the 49th anniversary of his Alive Day by calling the surgeons who saved his life in a makeshift military hospital in Vietnam.
Fogle was a crew chief aboard an Army OH-6 scout helicopter until that day, when his low-flying aircraft surprised a group of North Vietnamese soldiers in a canyon. One of them fired up at the chopper with his AK-47 rifle and hit Fogle in the leg. The bullet ripped open his femoral artery that pumped blood out of his body in huge spurts. The wounded soldier surely would have bled to death without quick and expert surgery performed minutes later after he […] READ MORE
47 years later, a widow and daughter get to say good-bye
Posted by Michael Putzel • June 06, 2018
WASHINGTON–After the ceremony ended and the crowd was gone, two women, dressed in black and facing each other, knelt in silence and bowed their heads at a plaque embedded in the polished stone floor of the Newseum’s Journalists Memorial in Washington. They were there to say farewell at last to an unheralded soldier-photographer killed in war almost a half century ago.
Widow and daughter of photographer Tu VuPhoto by Michael Putzel
Vu Thuy, the younger woman, could not remember her father, a South Vietnamese combat photographer who saw her only twice, once soon after she was born and for the last time when she was 5 months old. He was on a helicopter flying over Laos on February 10, 1971, when the aircraft was shot down by North Vietnamese gunners, killing all […] READ MORE
