Catherine Leroy 1967

Wike has two hands on his friends chest, trying to staunch the wound

listens for a heartbeat-- Hill 881

Corpsman in Anguish 1967

Catherine was brought up in a convent in Paris. She was moved by images of war she had seen in Paris Match, and decided she wanted to travel to Vietnam to “give war a human face.” At the age of 21 booked a one way ticket to Laos in 1966, with just one Leica M2 and $100 in her pocket.

On arrival in Saigon Leroy met the photographer Horst Faas, bureau chief of the Associated Press. A year later she became the first accredited journalist to participate in a combat parachute jump, joining the 173d Airborne Brigade in Operation Junction City. Two weeks after the battle for Hill 881, she was wounded with a Marine unit near the In 1968, during the Tet Offensive, Leroy was captured by the North Vietnamese Army. She managed to talk her way out and emerged as the first newsperson to take photos of North Vietnamese Army Regulars behind their own lines. The story made the cover of Life Magazine.

Her most famous photo, Corpsman In Anguish, (1967) was one of three taken in quick succession portraying U.S. Navy Corpsman Vernon Wike. In the pictures the sailor is crouched in tall grass during the battle for Hill 881 near Khe Sanh. He is cradling his comrade who has been shot while smoke from the battle rises into the air behind them. In the first frame Wike has two hands on his friends chest, trying to staunch the wound. In the second, he is trying to find a heartbeat. In the third frame, “Corpsman In Anguish”, he has just realised the man is dead.

Catherine, who went to Vietnam in 1965 at the age of 21 with no experience and transformed herself into one of the most accomplished war photographers of her generation, was a role-model and friend to many at Contact. Her images from conflicts in Southeast Asia, Lebanon, and Iran made her internationally famous, but on a more personal level she was unforgettable: slight but tough, abrasive but funny, she “contained multitudes.” For the last several years, in the midst of a new global conflagration, she made it her business to tirelessly gain exposure for the work and lessons she and her colleagues had brought back from Vietnam — a task in which she was often frustrated, but never defeated.

Related articles