The Unbowed Brit

On the dark sea off Viet Nam one night last week, British Freelance Photographer Tim Page was along for the ride as the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Point Welcome routinely searched for enemy gunrunners. Suddenly, two U.S. Phantom jets flashed out of the sky, inexplicably assuming that the cutter was an enemy trawler. Page drowsily stumbled on deck and was immediately riddled with shrapnel. At 22, Page had become the first allied correspondent to be wounded three times in the Viet Nam war--and survive.

A gangling figure in baggy fatigues, Page has a frightening knack for being close--sometimes too close--to the action. Near Chu Lai last August, he took memorable LIFE color pictures of the Marine operation, as well as a painful piece of Viet Cong shrapnel in his rear. In the thick of the recent Buddhist revolt in Danang, Page was again working for LIFE when a rebel grenade exploded near his face and cost him two pints of blood before medics could patch up his eight wounds.

Bandits & Opium. As one of his many admiring colleagues puts it, Page is "a daredevil, an adventurer of the old school, not for publicity's sake, but because he is incredibly bored at doing anything else but the hairiest of man's feats." The son of an auditor, Page led a fairly normal life until his graduation from a good grammar school near London, then bought a Volkswagen bus and started driving from Amsterdam to Nepal. It took him a year; he then blithely climbed a few Himalayan mountains, began hitchhiking to Laos.

Before he fetched up there, Page had survived being bushwhacked by Burmese bandits, "gone dead broke seven times," sold ice cream in Bombay, taught English in Bangkok, worked in hotels everywhere, given driving lessons anywhere, and even smuggled a little opium. Once in Laos, he persuaded U.P.I, to take him on as a stringer photographer, though he had no professional experience. He soon moved to Viet Nam, turned freelancer, and has been covering the war ever since--except for a few brief vacations like the one to Singapore, where he began a motorbike ride back to Saigon through Laos, Cambodia and the Viet Cong. He soon totaled himself and the bike, and was forced to reach Saigon by safer means.

Perfect Buggers. For all his flair and dare, Page has developed into a sensitive photographer who has the respect as well as friendship of almost the entire Saigon press corps. Many of them gathered last May to celebrate his 22nd birthday. He had just been wounded in Danang, but suddenly showed up in Saigon announcing: "All you can do up there is drink vodka Collins. Besides, they're perfect buggers, those Buddhist rebels. It's my birthday, mate; let's order some champagne. I never thought I'd live to see it." Hardly anyone else did, either. "Congratulations for having made it," toasted a veteran correspondent, "but haven't you gotten the message?" Apparently not.

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