Flynn.

This is coolbert: By now, we are all of course familiar with the pictures from the Abu Ghraib fiasco. Where the prisoners were subjected to maltreatment and then photographed by American guards. Photographs that have been seen world-wide and have created such a storm. A storm that has never totally abated. A storm that gave the U.S. Army such a black-eye.

Those photographs taken at Abu Ghraib were historically preceded by "atrocity" photography of another war, the VIETNAM WAR. Photographs, such as the famous picture of General Loan executing a captured Viet Cong [VC] terrorist, also made international headlines and caused reverberations that turned the U.S. public big time against the war.

Even before the incident involving General Loan and the captured VC, there was another photograph [a captured VC hanging upside down] from the Vietnam War that illustrated the harshness and rigor of that conflict. A picture, also published world-wide, and taken by the photojournalist Sean Flynn. Sean Flynn, at the time twenty four years old, and of course, the son of the famous actor, rake, and bon vivant Errol Flynn.

"Sean Flynn was, of course, the incredibly handsome son of movie actor Errol Flynn. 'Looks like me but better,' the father had the grace to say. He'd been in a few rather bad movies himself. And he certainly had the appearance of the worldly sophisticate when he arrived at the tender age of 24 in Vietnam as a freelance photojournalist. But the truth was, Flynn had never worked as a photographer, never been a journalist before and just didn't understand the rules."



"It was routine to interrogate Viet Cong suspects while hanging them upside down; it wasn't routine to photograph them in the process."

[Sean Flynn]



Looks bad, doesn't it?! Man hanging upside down. Face grimacing with pain. Captors squatting nonchalantly around the victim. A man at the mercy of his merciless tormentors.

This is not the whole story of course. When is it the whole story?! Almost never is!

"As so often happens with coverage of Allied harshness, neither the picture nor many of its captions told the whole story."

"A Viet Cong sniper had opened fire on a group of refugees near a Catholic church, killing a baby. The Nungs, tough fighters of Chinese ancestry, ran a patrol out after him, picked up a Vietnamese without any identity papers -; as the Viet Cong usually travel. After 15 minutes hanging upside down, he confessed to being the sniper, was cut down unharmed and hauled off to prison. So reported the photographer Sean Flynn, 24, the son of Errol Flynn, who has been following the action in Viet Nam for three months as a combat correspondent for Paris-Match. Flynn's dispatch was largely ignored, but the inflammatory picture was not."

Dispatch largely ignored - - inflammatory picture NOT!!

Sean Flynn evidently met an untimely end during the latter part of the Indo-China war. Was captured by communist forces and executed? This has never been verified. But is probably the case. Too bad! Seems to have been another talented persons whose abilities could have taken him far.

coolbert.