Posted 5/20/2010 06:55:00 PM by Douglas

The horrible history of a horrible picture.

Kim Phuc, the girl in one of the unforgettable images of the Vietnam War, has been reunited for a BBC radio programme with Christopher Wain, the ITN correspondent who helped save her life 38 years ago.

When Chris last saw Kim, she was lying on a hospital bed with third-degree burns to more than half of her body, after a South Vietnamese napalm bomb attack.

"We were short of film and my cameraman, the late, great Alan Downes, was worried that I was asking him to waste precious film shooting horrific pictures which were too awful to use. My attitude was that we needed to show what it was like, and to their lasting credit, ITN ran the shots."

One result was that everyone wanted to know what had happened to the little girl.

Her story is quite interesting:

In 1992, Phúc and Toan married and went on their honeymoon. During a refuelling stop in Gander, Newfoundland, they left the plane and asked for political asylum in Canada. It was granted. The couple now live in Ajax, Ontario, and have two children. In 1996, Phúc met the surgeons who had saved her life. The following year, she passed the Canadian Citizenship Test with a perfect score and became a Canadian citizen.

What a way to become a Canadian. Be careful where you refuel, commies! Back to the picture:

"I wanted to escape the picture because the more famous it got, the more it cost me my private life. It seemed to me that my picture would not let me go," she says.

Good lord, how could it ever?