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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2Azp8Et:
My contribution to Veteran’s Day is that I just did some scans of original 126 negs from my Dad’s Kodak Instamatic that he carried all around Vietnam with him. He’d had them all reprinted a few years ago– well, at least fifteen years now– and had given away the reprints of a couple of photos at his last unit reunion, to the widow of a man who appeared in the photos. They weren’t great photos of the man, but they were photos of him that she’d never seen.
So I scanned the negatives to give him back his copies. The strips had four frames on them, and he only needed one or two from each strip, but I had to scan the whole strip anyway. I made prints for him, forgot to bring them to him but will next time I go.
But here are a couple of the images, since I have them. One of the strips had a man dressed as Santa Claus, so it’s Christmas of 1968, somewhere in Vietnam. (Plei-ku, I think?)
I have no idea who this guy is. Dad probably wrote who it was on the back of the original print. I’ll have to ask him.
The dork in the foreground is my dad. His hair is longer now, and was dark for most of the intervening years but is light again. There’s… not a whole lot more to him now than there was then, though. I clearly did not inherit my father’s body type.
The man in the background looking away is the one whose widow Dad gave the photo to. It’s not much of a picture, but when it’s what you’ve got, it’s what you’ve got. I have no idea who took the picture, but I know a lot of the photos of Dad were taken by his sergeant, who didn’t survive the war.
Anyway– there’s a John Kelly who hasn’t sold us out to the Russians, at least.
Tidbit: one of Dad’s cousins was doing a course in Russian literature at the time, and would send Dad her books when she was done with them, since he liked to read. Which is why for almost a month of 1968 Dad used his empty gas mask holder (they’d all thrown them away, the masks were useless) to carry around a copy of War and Peace which he’d pull out to read whenever they had a rest stop. It’s possible somewhere on that crowded gear harness is a gas mask holder full of classic Russian literature (in translation).
(Your picture was not posted)
My contribution to Veteran’s Day is that I just did some scans of original 126 negs from my Dad’s Kodak Instamatic that he carried all around Vietnam with him. He’d had them all reprinted a few years ago– well, at least fifteen years now– and had given away the reprints of a couple of photos at his last unit reunion, to the widow of a man who appeared in the photos. They weren’t great photos of the man, but they were photos of him that she’d never seen.
So I scanned the negatives to give him back his copies. The strips had four frames on them, and he only needed one or two from each strip, but I had to scan the whole strip anyway. I made prints for him, forgot to bring them to him but will next time I go.
But here are a couple of the images, since I have them. One of the strips had a man dressed as Santa Claus, so it’s Christmas of 1968, somewhere in Vietnam. (Plei-ku, I think?)
I have no idea who this guy is. Dad probably wrote who it was on the back of the original print. I’ll have to ask him.
The dork in the foreground is my dad. His hair is longer now, and was dark for most of the intervening years but is light again. There’s… not a whole lot more to him now than there was then, though. I clearly did not inherit my father’s body type.
The man in the background looking away is the one whose widow Dad gave the photo to. It’s not much of a picture, but when it’s what you’ve got, it’s what you’ve got. I have no idea who took the picture, but I know a lot of the photos of Dad were taken by his sergeant, who didn’t survive the war.
Anyway– there’s a John Kelly who hasn’t sold us out to the Russians, at least.
Tidbit: one of Dad’s cousins was doing a course in Russian literature at the time, and would send Dad her books when she was done with them, since he liked to read. Which is why for almost a month of 1968 Dad used his empty gas mask holder (they’d all thrown them away, the masks were useless) to carry around a copy of War and Peace which he’d pull out to read whenever they had a rest stop. It’s possible somewhere on that crowded gear harness is a gas mask holder full of classic Russian literature (in translation).
(Your picture was not posted)
