Our speaker this month is Dennis Johansen who served with the 25th Infantry Division in Vietnam as a Combat Photographer. Dennis will show a selected number of his photos taken while stationed at Cu Chi, Republic of Vietnam from February 1968 to February 1969.

Dennis arrived during the Tet Offensive of 1968 and endured daily attacks and shelling at the support base where he was stationed. He was attached to the Public Information Office (PIO) which was a new innovation for the U.S. Army in an attempt to control information fed to the Press and Wire Services. He was offered the job of Combat Photographer who would then spend up to two weeks with selected combat units in field before returning to base camp where film was processed, photos printed and articles written. The PIO office at the 25th Infantry Division would then feed stories and photos to Stars and Stripes, the wire services such as Reuters, United Press International, and Associated Press. The Division also printed its own tabloid-sized newspaper once per week and a quarterly news magazine which also showcased photos and stories produced by the 17 photographer-writers in the field.