Alexander Demitri Shimkin | |
|---|---|
 Alexander Shimkin after he was arrested for civil rights activity in Alabama in 1965 | |
| Born | (1944-10-11)October 11, 1944 Washington, D.C. |
| Died | July 12, 1972(1972-07-12) (aged 27) Quảng Trị Province, Vietnam |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | |
| Occupation | war correspondent |
| Known for | investigatingnon-combatant casualties inOperation Speedy Express |
| Military career | |
| Battles / wars | Vietnam War |
Alexander Demitri "Alex" Shimkin[1] (October 11, 1944 – July 12, 1972) was an Americanwar correspondent who was killed in theVietnam War. He is notable for his investigation ofnon-combatant casualties inOperation Speedy Express.
Born in Washington, D.C., Shimkin moved with his family in 1960 toUrbana, Illinois, where his parents, anthropologists Demitri B. Shimkin and Edith Manning Shimkin, had joined the faculty of theUniversity of Illinois.[2] Although he was baptized anEpiscopalian, Shimkin and his family were members of aMethodist church in Urbana.[3] Intensely interested in military history, he made notebooks listing theorder of battle for World War I armies.[4]
Shimkin graduated fromUrbana High School in 1962,[5] then attended theUniversity of Michigan where he majored in history.[6] He left college in 1965 and became an activist in thecivil rights movement, first with theNorthern Student Movement inAlabama, then with theMississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).[6] After the first of theSelma to Montgomery marches, on March 7, 1965, ended with violent attacks on the peaceful marchers at theEdmund Pettus Bridge, Shimkin traveled toSelma, arriving in time to join the March 9"Turnaround Tuesday" march, led byMartin Luther King Jr.[7] During the leadup and completion of the third, successful, march toMontgomery, Shimkin was arrested on March 18 and again on March 22.[8]
InMississippi, he was among 140 demonstrators arrested inNatchez on October 2, 1965, and detained three days atParchman State Prison Farm, where he and others were kept naked in cold cells with no bedding.[9] He wrote an eight-page "Natchez Political Handbook" outlining the local political structure and the right to demonstrate.[10][11][12]
Shimkin was a full-time MFDP staff member inQuitman County in 1966.[13] On June 9, 1966, he joined theMarch Against Fear organized by activistJames Meredith who had been shot and injured a few days before.[14] InHolmes County, he helped organize aHead Start program and avoter registration drive that registered over 6,000 African Americans for the 1967 election.[15] Together with his father, Shimkin organized a project through which 18 African American students from Holmes County were selected to attend the University of Illinois.[16] In a note that he left behind in Mississippi, Shimkin wrote, "Since I was barely twenty, I've devoted almost every moment of my life to the [civil rights] movement...."[17]
I have no right to be exempt from making sacrifices overseas.
Returning to his studies, Shimkin graduated with "high distinction" in government fromIndiana University Bloomington in 1969,[18] then became a community development worker withInternational Voluntary Services (IVS) in Laos[19] and South Vietnam. While with IVS in Vietnam, Shimkin and another volunteer,Ronald Moreau, became sources for aNew York Times story byGloria Emerson published in January 1971 about the forced use of Vietnamese civilians by South Vietnamese officers and their American advisers to clearland mines near the village ofBa Chúc on the Cambodian border.[20] As Moreau later described the situation,North Vietnamese andViet Cong soldiers planted mines on hillsides near the village to protect their upland positions and successfully resisted combined American and South Vietnamese air and ground attacks. Believing that the villagers knew where thecommunist forces had placed the mines andbooby traps, the American and South Vietnamese officers forced the Ba Chúc villagers at gunpoint to use hand tools to locate and remove the mines, a task that resulted in several deaths and serious injuries among the villagers when the explosives detonated. There were also casualties from mortar attacks by the communists who wanted to disrupt the operation.[21]
After contacting Emerson, Shimkin and Moreau went with her to interview the villagers. According to Moreau, Emerson's story "had an immediate impact", causing thePentagon to order an immediate halt to the mine-clearing operation.[21] The story also brought a halt to Shimkin's and Moreau's service with IVS, which fired them for speaking to the press without permission. According to Moreau, Emerson intervened again, getting Shimkin a job as astringer withNewsweek and Moreau one withThe Washington Post.[21][22]
Alex Shimkin opened my eyes and showed me things about the war that
I had missed even after nearly four years in Vietnam. Traveling with him
and listening to him tell me what Vietnamese in the Mekong Delta were
saying, especially when they did not know he understood Vietnamese,
was one of the most informative and powerful experiences of my life.
Working forNewsweek, Shimkin read documents released by the United StatesMilitary Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV). Reviewing the MACV (pronounced"mack vee") documents about Operation Speedy Express, conducted in theMekong Delta from December 1968 through May 1969, Shimkin noticed the large disparity between the American claims of 10,899 enemy dead and the reported capture of only 748 enemy weapons. Shimkin's conclusion, based on furtherdocumentary research and on interviews with American officials and Vietnamese witnesses, was that a large number of the reported dead were unarmed Vietnamese non-combatants whose deaths, whether accidental or deliberate, were used to enhance thebody count that commanders of theNinth Infantry Division considered the measure of the operation's success.[24][25] Among the specific incidents uncovered by Shimkin was the one atThanh Phong on the night of February 25–26, 1969, in whichUnited States Navy SEALs led byLieutenant (jg) Bob Kerrey, laterGovernor of Nebraska and aUnited States Senator, killed 21 civilians who were added to the body count of enemy dead, information that did not become public until 2001.[26]
Shimkin and his boss,Newsweek'sSaigon bureau chief Kevin P. Buckley, produced a 4,700-word story that specifically alleged "that thousands of Vietnamese civilians have been killed deliberately by U.S. forces."[27] The numbers, if not the deliberate nature of the casualties, were later supported by an official, though secret, U.S. Army report that concluded: "[W]hile there appears to be no means of determining the precise number of civilian casualties incurred by US forces during Operation Speedy Express, it would appear that the extent of these casualties was in fact substantial, and that a fairly solid case can be constructed to show that civilian casualties may have amounted to several thousand (between 5,000 and 7,000)."[28]
Pared back to 1,800 words byNewsweek editors who feared that the allegations would be seen as a "gratuitous attack" on the administration of PresidentRichard M. Nixon following the revelations of theMy Lai massacre,[29] the story was published in the June 19, 1972, issue under the title "Pacification's Deadly Price", but it attracted little attention.[30] A few weeks later, Shimkin was killed.
| External images | |
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 http://lh3.ggpht.com/_HBVKhiKXg8k/SbSnWDS-NNI/AAAAAAAAC_4/RhpxiVxczgE/6kimRunsBehBUR720506_23_33.jpg.jpeg AuthorDenise Chong (The Girl in the Picture: The Kim Phúc Story, Toronto: Viking, 1999, page x.) believes that the man in this photo byDavid Burnett may be Alexander Shimkin. Source: Contact Press Images. | |
| http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_94MHBXuNWGg/TUDZEGUptLI/AAAAAAAAG5c/g68jWzJE-5o/s1600/Napalm%2BGirl%2B.arte_facto%2Bhereges%2Bpervers%25C3%25B5es%2B09.jpg Another photo of nearly the same scene snapped from a different perspective. Source:Corbis. | |
| https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/50121592/alexander-demitri-shimkin#view-photo=71045950 Alexander Shimkin carries a wounded South Vietnamese soldier to safety nearNational Route 13 north of Saigon on or about July 6, 1972. According to a July 7 Saigon newspaper report, Shimkin braved mortar fire to rescue the soldier. Source: E. Shimkin et al., page vii. | |
| https://www.newseum.org/exhibits/online/journalists-memorial/#main/?view_4_search=shimkin&view_4_page=1 Alexander Shimkin in Vietnam. Source: Newseum Journalists Memorial. Photo courtesy of E. Shimkin-Sorock. |
On June 8, 1972, a month before he died, Shimkin was one of the journalists present atTrảng Bàng inTây Ninh Province when photographerNick Ut captured his famous image of the nine-year-old Vietnamese girlPhan Thị Kim Phúc and some other children fleeing anapalm attack. Two South VietnameseSkyraider aircraft went off course and dropped theincendiary bombs near the journalists, resulting in the deaths of two children and inflicting serious burns on others, including Kim Phúc.
"Jesus! People have been bombed!" Shimkin is reported to have shouted.[31] A picture taken byDavid Burnett from behind Kim Phúc shows a running man with his right arm outstretched toward her. AuthorDenise Chong has written that the man in the picture might be Shimkin.[32] A few minutes later Shimkin was on his knees weeping and telling others,"Leave me alone."[33][34]
While covering fighting north of Saigon onNational Route 13 (the highway toAn Lộc) during the first week of July 1972, Shimkin went to the aid of a wounded South Vietnamese soldier and carried him to safety under heavy mortar fire. The rescue was captured in a photograph that appeared July 7 in a Saigon newspaper.[35] The picture later appeared inNewsweek.[36]
On July 12, 1972, Shimkin and another reporter, Charles "Chad" Huntley, became lost inQuảng Trị Province while covering Allied[37]operations to expel North Vietnamese forces that had occupied the area in theEaster Offensive.[38][39] Leaving behind their Jeep, they walked into ahand grenade attack by North Vietnamese soldiers. Fluent in Vietnamese, Shimkin attempted to communicate with the attackers, but was killed. "The last time I saw him he was standing straight up with his arms stretched out with a grenade lying about two feet from his feet", Huntley said. "He looked down once, looked back up and kept trying to explain. An explosion occurred, he started to crumple...."[40]
A veteran of the U.S.Special Forces, Huntley was only slightly wounded and attributed his survival and escape to his military training. After seeing Shimkin fall he counted "about 10 rounds" of Allied artillery fire that "blew away everything in the area."[41][42] Shimkin's body was not recovered, and he was classified "missing in action" by theDepartment of Defense.[43] Former war correspondent Zalin Grant thought he had Shimkin's grave "fairly well pinpointed" in 2002,[44] but as of 2018 Shimkin's remains had not been located.[45] An interview with Chad Huntley about the attack that apparently killed Shimkin is archived at theLibrary of Congress as part of the Vietnam-Era Prisoner-Of-War/Missing-In-Action Database.[46]
Anything which is accomplished through making other people afraid is
wrong. ... Anything which deprives other people of their dignity is wrong.
Shimkin told an oral history interviewer in 1965 that a college course inclassical literature had given him "a certain philosophical perspective."[6] According to information from Shimkin's IVS application, he liked the novels ofWilliam Faulkner andTheodore Dreiser as well as readingpolitical science and American history.[47] At the time of his death he had been accepted for graduate study atPrinceton University and hoped to write the "definitive history" of the Vietnam War.[23] Shimkin's interest in military history led him to donate books on the subject to theIndiana University Library.[48] Shimkin also playedrugby at Indiana.[49]
Over 70 books from Shimkin's military history collection are archived at the library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.[50] Shimkin is also commemorated in the Journalists Memorial at theNewseum in Washington, D.C.[51] A memorial tree honoring Shimkin was planted in 2014 on the campus of Indiana University Bloomington. There is a cenotaph for him at The Homewood Cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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