Restoring photographs brings back memories for Vietnam vet

But on that day, during a fight in the Ben Cat district, he jumped out of his armed personnel carrier directly onto a land mine. The explosion blew off his leg. He was sent home to Longview, where he received an artificial leg and began a career at Longview Fibre Co.

Half a century later, those photos he took during his tour of duty have become part of a popular photo documentary of his time in Vietnam. Thanks to a partnership with McGee’s friend and avid photographer Lloyd Smith, 800 of McGee’s photos have been restored and uploaded to Google Drive. The photos and the response to them have helped speed up McGee’s emotional healing process and serve as a reminder of a pivotal time in his life.

Smith’s photography obsession

Smith and McGee were acquaintances at Columbia Heights Assembly of God who shared little beyond small talk — until October, when McGee mentioned his slides from Vietnam. Smith, a lifelong photographer, was immediately intrigued.

“Two months went by, and I wanted to get involved in the project, so I called Bill,” Smith, 77, said. “He brings 700, 800 (slides) up — boxes of stuff that he shot in Vietnam.”

Smith said his interest in photography started in his teen years in the mid-’50s after watching his father develop photos.

“My dad had a dark room,” he said. “That interest was there, and I used to go through his albums and take a look, and then I would get interested in how he was doing it.”

After helping with the yearbook both in high school and college, Smith eventually wound up teaching middle school photography, along with math and science, at a middle school in Grants Pass, Ore.

In 2000, Smith retired and moved to Longview. Since then, he’s been deeply involved in photography, documenting weddings and events for Longview Parks and Recreation.

Smith said he sometimes will shoot 1,000 photos a week and has gone on trips to 38 countries, including less traveled ones such as Tanzania and Bangladesh, camera in hand.

“There’s a couple mission groups that I’m tied with,” he said. “Once, someone asked, ‘Can you be in Belize in 48 hours?’’

“I said, ‘Sure!’’

Smith describes his photography as “street photography,” because he generally focuses on random people he meets on his travels.

“When people look for pictures, you can show a beautiful mountain, a beautiful lake,” he said. “But when you see that person, and see his life on his face, it really shows the impact of life. I think it impacts the person looking at it.”

Smith estimates he has 1.4 million photographs stored on his computer. Some he has taken himself, and some, like McGee’s Vietnam pictures, are taken by others and meant for preservation. He even has 2,000 glass negatives from the 1890s, all of which he’s scanned onto his computer.

Photos from Southeast Asia

After getting McGee’s permission, Smith uploaded the hundreds of his friend’s photos from Vietnam onto Facebook groups such as Cowlitz County Veterans.

The photos garnered a massive reaction on social media: His initial Dec. 12 post of 15 photos onto the Cowlitz County News group received 323 reactions (mostly thumbs up and hearts) and 59 comments, most of which thanked McGee for his service.

McGee’s photos focus on a myriad of subjects, including some light-hearted images that show a few troops drinking and having a good time. Many shots feature a young McGee posing in uniform or shirtless with his armed personnel carrier. In one, a soldier grins with two young Vietnamese children with U.S. Army helmets and rifles. There are also many slides of the vast, muddy Vietnamese landscape.

“As you look through his pictures, you see a 19-year-old kid, never really being out of Longview, never really being in a foreign country, and you see through his eyes what was interesting to him,” Smith said of McGee’s photos. “That’s what photographers do: seeing what’s important to them at the time.”

McGee, now 70, said he was a complete amateur and only brought a camera because he wanted to have something to remember his time in Vietnam.

“I wanted to get a record of what had happened over there, at least with me,” he said. “I also wanted to get a lot of the countryside because — my goodness — the poverty that those people live in is just unbelievable. We are just really blessed to live here (in the U.S.).”

Smith said some of McGee’s slides were well-preserved, but others had deteriorated badly.

“Some of them look like the day he took them,” Smith said. “Others were so bad, they shifted so badly, the picture was almost gone. The other (issue) is dust. Some of them look like they put salt-and-pepper on it, others there wasn’t a thing on them.“

McGee’s Vietnam experience

As a teenager, McGee enlisted for multiple reasons. For one, he figured he would get drafted eventually. For another, he said he was inspired by President John F. Kennedy’s iconic 1961 inaguration speech, in which he urged: “Ask what not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

“A lot of us took to heart what John F. Kennedy said.”

Still, despite volunteering, McGee said he was nervous and “fighting tears the whole time” while his parents drove him up to Fort Lewis. He said he’d never left the West Coast before.

After spending some time in Fort Lewis and Fort Polk in Louisiana, McGee deployed to Vietnam, where he spent his time in two places. One was 40 miles south of Saigon (now known as Ho Chi Minh City) with the U.S. Army’s 9th Infantry Division. The other was in a town 30 miles north of Saigon.

The veteran said he thought of his Vietnam experience as “a positive event” for the most part.

“It was a beautiful country — except for the humidity and the snakes. I could’ve done without that. And people shooting at you, I could’ve done without that,” McGee joked. “But it was a really pretty country, great place to visit. I’ve thought about going back.”

McGee was actually wounded twice before his leg was blown off: The first time was when shrapnel from a B-40 rocket got lodged in his back and in his buttocks. The second, on New Year’s Eve, was when his armed personnel carrier hit a mine. His war ended for good in January when he stepped on another mine.

McGee said he was never bitter about his disability, saying it led him to Christianity.

“I was angry and upset about other things, but not about losing the leg,” McGee said. “I was upset with God. You could say that I stuck my fist right under his nose. I knew other people that, at least in my view, were much worse sinners than I was. But God didn’t create on a curve, so that doesn’t matter.”

The “other things” McGee was angry about included the hostile reception he got on his return to the US from anti-war protesters.

“The mistreatment by some was a hard pill to swallow,” he said. “I had a couple people (say), ‘(You) deserved exactly what (you) got.’ One person told me it would’ve been better had I not come back.”

“It’s one thing being opposed to the Vietnam War,” McGee added. “It’s another thing to take it out on the people that actually went.”

In recent years, however, McGee said people in recent years have been much kinder.

In November, while visiting family in Livermore, Calif., McGee said he was invited to his great-niece’s school’s Veteran’s Day celebration. He was hesitant at first, but he eventually acquiesced.

“It was an amazing tribute,” he said, holding back tears. “I wrote her a thank-you note, and … I said it was like saying, ‘Welcome home,’ finally.”

The Vietnam photos’ impact

According to McGee, seeing his Vietnam photos in a new light has helped him cope with some of those post-war emotional struggles, along with plenty of support from his local church.

“(Having the photos restored) brings back a lot of memories,” he said. “It’s also helped … with a healing process that began with Pastor Kent Doehne. They’ve always recognized veterans at the church, but he gave a really long tribute on Memorial Day 2016.”

McGee said that after Smith shared his photos online, he’s had encouraging interactions with other people online, which helped heal his emotional scars.

“Most of the responses (online) were positive; I don’t know of any negative responses,” he said.

Smith said he was thrilled to participate in the restoring of his friend’s old Vietnam photos.

“I just like the idea that … (McGee) would come to me and I can preserve this and share it,” he said. “That’s my whole goal, to preserve and share.”

Meanwhile, McGee is simply happy that he’s finally being recognized for his sacrifice 50 years ago, serving in Vietnam.

“A lot of veterans, at least the guys that I know in the local area, didn’t think that people really cared. And you find out that people really do care.”