-On being reunited with his wife in Vietnam:
Ruth Ann and I, again, as I said, we got married on Labor Day of '65, at her insistence, just in terms of the date, not in terms of the relationship, I mean. [laughter] She swore she was going to come to Vietnam for our first anniversary and I swore she wasn't … and she was going to bring the top of our wedding cake, which she did, with dry ice, and, as that article kind of explains, she got accredited as a correspondent, that Parade Magazine article, the Star-Ledger, what was then the Daily Home News, but, then, couldn't get any approval to go and she went up through Congressmen and all the way to President Lyndon Johnson. … Of course, her parents were not behind this at all and I wasn't. My colonel, Colonel Peterson, was very supportive, but, then, he comes to me the day before and says, "Your wife can't come. They won't give her any credentials," or what have you. I said, "Fine." She actually got a telegram from the White House saying she couldn't go, and you know Ruth Ann, [she] hid it away some place and hopped on the airplane.
… So, I found out … she was coming, and then, the Colonel is very good, he says, "I'll give you a helicopter. Russ and Dennis," again, my two friends from armor school and flight school, "they'll take you down to Saigon." Another fraternity brother ... got us a hotel, … the Majestic Hotel on Tu Do Street, [now Dong Khoi Street] I think is the answer. So, she got there. We got together and rode some old, dirty bus from Tan Son Nhut to downtown Saigon and she brought some cameras, which she borrowed from a photographer in one of the papers, and we left the cameras on the bus. [laughter] This is before I was a photographer. This is the beginning of my photographic interest. We left the cameras and we got to our hotel and we're fine, and then, the next morning, we go down and the desk clerk says, "I have a note for you," and it says, "I have your cameras. Come see me at." I said, "Oh, God, my wife's first day in Vietnam. Am I being ambushed here? What the heck?" but, no, it was a very nice guy, found the cameras and, somehow, found, I don't know what [it] was, it must have been a tag or something on the bags that he found us [through]. So, she spent two weeks. As I said, everybody else, … all my buddies, got to go to Bangkok or Hong Kong, and I got to spend two weeks in Saigon. [laughter]
