In Country

Market on Highway 1 north of Phu Bai. Photo Courtesy: Mike Kujawa [mikekujawa@hotmail.com]

Face of War..... A little Vietnamese girl with a grim, dirty face peering out from her yard onto the streets of Hue in 1969. Framed by the rusty oil drum and a barbed wire fence she has the stare of a combat veteran. Copyright 1969, Mark Austin Byrd.

Nyen Ti Coy... Nyen Ti Coy was a popular "hooch maid" for many Scarface pilots seen in front of the officers water tower at Phu Bai in winter of 1969. She did our laundry, cleaned the hooch and made the beds, all for very little money. She lived in the vicinity of Hue. When the record breaking rains of late 1969 flooded the region and uncovered a secret mass grave containing over 1000 South Vietnamese executed by the Communists in the Tet siege of Hue, She at last learned the fate of about ten male members of her immediate family - they had all been shot in the back of the head and thrown in a ditch. Copyright 1969, Mark Austin Byrd.

Cathedral at Hue City. Photo Courtesy: Mike Kujawa [mikekujawa@hotmail.com]