John Laemmar
Vietnam Veteran Sent Movie Film Home to Dad
Reels Show War to TV Viewers 32 Years Later
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John Laemmar grew up in a family where his mom and dad filmed every holiday, family birthday and vacation with a 16-millimeter movie camera. So when he arrived in Vietnam and saw an Argus Super 8 movie camera for sale in a ship’s store, he plunked down the $70 to buy it without much thought.
"It was a kind of surreal world for me in Vietnam," said Laemmar. "I guess I realized that someday, I’d wonder if this all really happened." The hour’s worth of video footage, shot during his first tour in Vietnam, includes firefights, flame throwers, and beach attacks, showing in very real terms what war was like.
His film provides a backdrop for WILL-TV’s new documentary, Vietnam: Soldiers’ Stories. Laemmar’s combat footage is woven with other archival footage and photographs to set off powerful stories told by 13 Illinois and Indiana Vietnam veterans, including Laemmar.
Laemmar, 52, of Evanston, Ill., said now he regrets not doing more filming. "I wish I had shot more of the routine daily stuff," he said. "We’d spend three or four hours on weapons maintenance. It was just like breathing or eating, so I didn’t think of filming it. I wish I had film of us cooking C-rations over C-4 plastic explosives."
All of the footage is from the first of three tours he spent as a gunner and boat captain on a Navy armored gunboat in Vietnam. "I experimented with ways to film while I was firing. I’d hold the camera on top of the gun, and that finally just totally destroyed the camera," he said. He frequently filmed when he couldn’t return fire for some reason, such as not wanting to endanger friendly personnel.
He sent his film home to his dad, who had it developed, along with 300 to 400 slides Laemmar took with a still camera. After Laemmar came home, it was several years before he looked at the movie film. "I was busy with other things and there was no urgency about looking at it," he said. Several minutes of Laemmar’s film was used in a recent Discovery Channel special on the river war in Vietnam. The rest has never been televised before.
Laemmar has now found a different medium to communicate what the Vietnam War was like. He’s one of the contributing artists for the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum in Chicago. Two of his paintings, "Last Patrol," and "The Aftermath," hang in the museum. "It’s a way to express things that can’t really be put into words," said Laemmar.
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