François Sully
Encyclopedia
François Sully was a French
journalist
and photographer best known for his work during the Vietnam War
. Sully was one of the earliest journalists to cover the Vietnam War and spent 24 years in Indochina
. At the time of his death, he was viewed as the dean of the Saigon press corps.
Sully was born in 1927 or 1928 in France
and fought against the Nazis in the French Resistance
as a teenager and was wounded on his seventeenth birthday in Paris
. After the liberation of Paris he enlisted in the French Army
, fought the Nazis in Germany
and then volunteered for the French Expeditionary Forces
, arriving in Saigon when the Japan
ese surrendered in 1945. Discharged in Saigon, Sully tried his hand as a tea planter and rancher before turning to journalism
. In 1947 he joined Sud-Est Asiatique, a now defunct French magazine, working for them until 1953. He was assigned to cover the battle of Dien Bien Phu
by Time-Life
. He escaped from behind the Viet Minh
lines. In 1959 he joined United Press International
(UPI). He wrote articles for Time magazine
and his photographs were carried by Black Star
until he joined Newsweek
in early 1961.
In March 1962, Sully was to be expelled from South Vietnam
by President Ngo Dinh Diem
, egged on by Madame Nhu, as his reporting was deemed "helpful to the enemy". Unofficially, Diem intended the expulsion to serve as a warning to all journalists reporting the failings of his U.S.-assisted war against the Viet Cong. The other journalist on the expulsion list was Homer Bigart
of the New York Times. Diem backed down after the U.S. Mission explained that expulsion would only worsen an already bad relationship with the press. Five months later, however, in August 1962, Sully was sent packing after some seventeen years in Indochina. The Newsweek issue of August 20, 1962 carried a long article by Sully "Viet Nam: The Unpleasant Truth". His expulsion became a major political affair between Saigon and Washington
. Sully departed Saigon on September 9, with most of the press corps at the airfield in a show of solidarity. After his expulsion Sully proceeded to Harvard where he put in a year at
the Nieman Foundation and worked in bordering countries to Vietnam. He returned to the Newsweek bureau in Saigon after the November 1963 Coup
and assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem.
During his work as Newsweek's Saigon Bureau Chief, Sully also wrote for a number of other newsmagazines including The Nation
and The New Republic
. In 1967 and 1968, Sully wrote articles for McGraw-Hill
's business-reporting service World News which distributed them to Business Week, Medical World News
, Engineering News Record, and other publications. In addition to writing news stories and taking photographs, Sully wrote Age of the Guerrilla: The New Warfare (New York: Parent's Magazine Press, 1968; reprinted by Avon, 1970) and compiled and edited We the Vietnamese: Voices from Vietnam (New York: Praeger, 1971).
Sully was the insider's insider amongst the press corps in Vietnam. His sources were numerous inside the Viet Minh
and Viet Cong, inside the Palace
in Saigon and at grassroots levels in every province in the North and South. He spoke several languages and was fluent in French
, English
, Vietnamese
and Lao
.
Sully died in February 1971. He was aboard a command helicopter as it turned west towards Cambodia
. The helicopter of General Do Cao Tri
('Patton of the Parrots Beak') had lifted off from Tay Ninh
airstrip and was heading towards a firebase just across the
Vietnam-Cambodia border. As the helicopter was nearing its destination it burst in flames. Sully alone leaped from the burning craft and plunged seventy five feet to the ground. All others died in the crash. Sully died from injuries suffered in the fall at Long Binh
hospital. Sully was buried in Mac Dinh Chi Cemetery
in Saigon. He left his insurance policy of 18 million piasters to Vietnamese orphans.
(The "François Sully" credited in the 1942 movie "The Foreman Went to France
" was not the French journalist, but the British
character actor Francis L. Sullivan
.)
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
and photographer best known for his work during the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. Sully was one of the earliest journalists to cover the Vietnam War and spent 24 years in Indochina
Indochina
The Indochinese peninsula, is a region in Southeast Asia. It lies roughly southwest of China, and east of India. The name has its origins in the French, Indochine, as a combination of the names of "China" and "India", and was adopted when French colonizers in Vietnam began expanding their territory...
. At the time of his death, he was viewed as the dean of the Saigon press corps.
Sully was born in 1927 or 1928 in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and fought against the Nazis in the French Resistance
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
as a teenager and was wounded on his seventeenth birthday in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. After the liberation of Paris he enlisted in the French Army
French Army
The French Army, officially the Armée de Terre , is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces.As of 2010, the army employs 123,100 regulars, 18,350 part-time reservists and 7,700 Legionnaires. All soldiers are professionals, following the suspension of conscription, voted in...
, fought the Nazis in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and then volunteered for the French Expeditionary Forces
French Far East Expeditionary Corps
The French Far East Expeditionary Corps was a colonial expeditionary force of the French Union Army sent in French Indochina in 1945 during the Pacific War.-Pacific War :...
, arriving in Saigon when the Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese surrendered in 1945. Discharged in Saigon, Sully tried his hand as a tea planter and rancher before turning to journalism
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...
. In 1947 he joined Sud-Est Asiatique, a now defunct French magazine, working for them until 1953. He was assigned to cover the battle of Dien Bien Phu
Battle of Dien Bien Phu
The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was the climactic confrontation of the First Indochina War between the French Union's French Far East Expeditionary Corps and Viet Minh communist revolutionaries. The battle occurred between March and May 1954 and culminated in a comprehensive French defeat that...
by Time-Life
Time-Life
Time–Life is a creator and direct marketer of books, music, video/DVD, and multimedia products. Its products are sold throughout North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia through television, print, retail, the Internet, telemarketing, and direct sales....
. He escaped from behind the Viet Minh
Viet Minh
Việt Minh was a national independence coalition formed at Pac Bo on May 19, 1941. The Việt Minh initially formed to seek independence for Vietnam from the French Empire. When the Japanese occupation began, the Việt Minh opposed Japan with support from the United States and the Republic of China...
lines. In 1959 he joined United Press International
United Press International
United Press International is a once-major international news agency, whose newswires, photo, news film and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines and radio and television stations for most of the twentieth century...
(UPI). He wrote articles for Time magazine
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
and his photographs were carried by Black Star
Black Star (photo agency)
Black Star is a New York City-based photographic agency that offers photojournalism, corporate assignment photography and stock photography services worldwide....
until he joined Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
in early 1961.
In March 1962, Sully was to be expelled from South Vietnam
South Vietnam
South Vietnam was a state which governed southern Vietnam until 1975. It received international recognition in 1950 as the "State of Vietnam" and later as the "Republic of Vietnam" . Its capital was Saigon...
by President Ngo Dinh Diem
Ngo Dinh Diem
Ngô Đình Diệm was the first president of South Vietnam . In the wake of the French withdrawal from Indochina as a result of the 1954 Geneva Accords, Diệm led the effort to create the Republic of Vietnam. Accruing considerable U.S. support due to his staunch anti-Communism, he achieved victory in a...
, egged on by Madame Nhu, as his reporting was deemed "helpful to the enemy". Unofficially, Diem intended the expulsion to serve as a warning to all journalists reporting the failings of his U.S.-assisted war against the Viet Cong. The other journalist on the expulsion list was Homer Bigart
Homer Bigart
Homer William Bigart was a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune from 1929 to 1955 and the New York Times from 1955 to his retirement in 1972...
of the New York Times. Diem backed down after the U.S. Mission explained that expulsion would only worsen an already bad relationship with the press. Five months later, however, in August 1962, Sully was sent packing after some seventeen years in Indochina. The Newsweek issue of August 20, 1962 carried a long article by Sully "Viet Nam: The Unpleasant Truth". His expulsion became a major political affair between Saigon and Washington
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
. Sully departed Saigon on September 9, with most of the press corps at the airfield in a show of solidarity. After his expulsion Sully proceeded to Harvard where he put in a year at
the Nieman Foundation and worked in bordering countries to Vietnam. He returned to the Newsweek bureau in Saigon after the November 1963 Coup
1963 South Vietnamese coup
In November 1963, President Ngô Đình Diệm of South Vietnam was deposed by a group of Army of the Republic of Vietnam officers who disagreed with his handling of the Buddhist crisis and, in general, his increasing oppression of national groups in the name of fighting the communist Vietcong.The...
and assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem.
During his work as Newsweek's Saigon Bureau Chief, Sully also wrote for a number of other newsmagazines including The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
and The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
. In 1967 and 1968, Sully wrote articles for McGraw-Hill
McGraw-Hill
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., is a publicly traded corporation headquartered in Rockefeller Center in New York City. Its primary areas of business are financial, education, publishing, broadcasting, and business services...
's business-reporting service World News which distributed them to Business Week, Medical World News
Medical World News
Medical World News is an American magazine for the medical profession published by H E I Publishing Company of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, part of Miller Freeman Publishing.Medical World News was founded in April 1960 by Maxwell M Geffen, a New York publisher...
, Engineering News Record, and other publications. In addition to writing news stories and taking photographs, Sully wrote Age of the Guerrilla: The New Warfare (New York: Parent's Magazine Press, 1968; reprinted by Avon, 1970) and compiled and edited We the Vietnamese: Voices from Vietnam (New York: Praeger, 1971).
Sully was the insider's insider amongst the press corps in Vietnam. His sources were numerous inside the Viet Minh
Viet Minh
Việt Minh was a national independence coalition formed at Pac Bo on May 19, 1941. The Việt Minh initially formed to seek independence for Vietnam from the French Empire. When the Japanese occupation began, the Việt Minh opposed Japan with support from the United States and the Republic of China...
and Viet Cong, inside the Palace
Reunification Palace
Reunification Palace formerly known as Independence Palace , built on the site of the former Norodom Palace, is a landmark in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. It was designed by architect Ngô Viết Thụ and was the home and workplace of the President of South Vietnam during the Vietnam War...
in Saigon and at grassroots levels in every province in the North and South. He spoke several languages and was fluent in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, Vietnamese
Vietnamese language
Vietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...
and Lao
Lao language
Lao or Laotian is a tonal language of the Tai–Kadai language family. It is the official language of Laos, and also spoken in the northeast of Thailand, where it is usually referred to as the Isan language. Being the primary language of the Lao people, Lao is also an important second language for...
.
Sully died in February 1971. He was aboard a command helicopter as it turned west towards Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
. The helicopter of General Do Cao Tri
Do Cao Tri
Lieutenant General Đỗ Cao Trí was a general in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam known for his fighting prowess and flamboyant style. Tri started out in the French Army before transferring to the Vietnamese National Army and the ARVN...
('Patton of the Parrots Beak') had lifted off from Tay Ninh
Tay Ninh
Tây Ninh is a town in southwestern Vietnam. It is the capital of Tay Ninh province, which encompasses the town and much of the surrounding farmland....
airstrip and was heading towards a firebase just across the
Vietnam-Cambodia border. As the helicopter was nearing its destination it burst in flames. Sully alone leaped from the burning craft and plunged seventy five feet to the ground. All others died in the crash. Sully died from injuries suffered in the fall at Long Binh
Long Binh
Long Binh is a ward, in District 9 of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.-Long Binh Post:During the Vietnam War, Long Binh Post was located near Bien Hoa, Dong Nai province. Vietnam, 33km from Saigon . The base functioned as a U.S. Army base, logistics center, and major command headquarters for United...
hospital. Sully was buried in Mac Dinh Chi Cemetery
Mac Dinh Chi Cemetery
Mạc Đĩnh Chi Cemetery was a large and prestigious French colonial cemetery in South Vietnam, located in the heart of former Saigon near the US Embassy, Saigon. The cemetery had a wooded, bucolic setting, surrounded by a tall concrete wall, with a gated entrance on Hai Ba Trung Street...
in Saigon. He left his insurance policy of 18 million piasters to Vietnamese orphans.
(The "François Sully" credited in the 1942 movie "The Foreman Went to France
The Foreman Went to France
The Foreman Went to France, also known as Somewhere in France, is a 1942 British World War II war film starring Clifford Evans, Tommy Trinder, Constance Cummings and Gordon Jackson...
" was not the French journalist, but the British
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
character actor Francis L. Sullivan
Francis L. Sullivan
Francis Loftus Sullivan was an English film and stage actor. He attended Stonyhurst, the Jesuit public school in Lancashire, England whose alumni include Charles Laughton and Arthur Conan Doyle.A heavily built man with a striking double-chin and a deep voice, Sullivan made his acting debut at the...
.)
External links
- François Sully Collection at WGBH Open Vault
- Sully, François, 1927-1971: Papers and photographs, University of Massachusetts, Boston
- Francois Sully Collection, William Joiner Center
- FRANCOIS SULLY, The Newseum
- Grant, Zalin. Facing the Phoenix: The CIA and the Political Defeat of the United States in Vietnam. W. W. Norton & Co., 1991.
- Faulkner, Francis D. "Bao Chi: The American News Media in Vietnam, 1960-1975." (Ph.D. Dissertation: University of MassachusettsUniversity of MassachusettsThis article relates to the statewide university system. For the flagship campus often referred to as "UMass", see University of Massachusetts Amherst...
, 1981; Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International, 1981) - "François Sully." NewsweekNewsweekNewsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
, September 17, 1962, p. 68 - "François Sully." NewsweekNewsweekNewsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
, March 8, 1971, p. 75