Journalists Memorial: Final resting place

Ten years ago this week, a U.S. military search team digging into a mountainside in southern Laos found camera parts, film, broken watches and bits of wreckage -- proof that a South Vietnamese helicopter had been shot down there in 1971, a UH-1 Huey that was carrying four top-rated war photographers and seven Vietnamese soldiers.

Only scant traces of human remains were found, but a sealed capsule containing those remains is finally to be interred in a place of honor.

Today, relatives, diplomats from five countries and veterans of the wartime Saigon press corps will dedicate the capsule at the Newseum, a $439 million Washington museum. The unusual burial comes a day before the formal dedication of the museum's Journalists Memorial gallery.

The death of the photojournalists wasn't the first multiple loss for the Saigon press corps, but the deaths of four of its most respected members at once was an almost incomprehensible blow. They were:

• Larry Burrows, 44, a tall, gaunt Londoner, who was widely considered the war's premier photojournalist, producing dramatic essays for Life magazine.

• Henri Huet, 43, who spent more time in combat than many soldiers and was the most popular member of the AP's Saigon staff.

• Kent Potter, 23, of United Press International who was the youngest-ever member of the Saigon press corps when he arrived in 1968 and had distressed his Philadelphia Quaker family by opting to become a war photographer.

As with any eulogy of war correspondents, the question arises: What induces people to risk their lives to tell a story? The answers may be as varied as the 1,843 names etched on the walls of the Journalists Memorial gallery, dating back to 1837: adventure, opportunity, camaraderie, or the idea of trying to discourage war by telling what it's like. Nobody understood the dangers better than the four who died over Laos, yet nothing would have kept them from getting aboard that helicopter.