SKF NOTE: Jazz music and names of jazz greats appear in unlikely places.

Here’s an excerpt I highlighted from a book about brave war photojournalist Dickey Chapelle. She worked at the battle front in WW II, Korea, and Vietnam, where she was killed. In this excerpt Chapelle is on patrol with a tough anti-Communist militia group in Vietnam called the Sea Swallows.

“Sometimes when the air was cool enough, the militia’s radio picked up the Saigon jazz station that was piped through an enormous Pioneer loudspeaker, washing the village in Coleman and Coltrane, Evans and Getz, Mingus and Roach. The resounding percussive of tanggu drums called the devout to evening prayers at the Our Lady of Victory Chapel. In the dark, gongs made from flattened mortar shell tips rang out the all clear every hour on the forty-five, except when incoming Viet Cong bullets made them chime like kindergarten triangles. This music played almost every night”

Source: “First to the Front,” by Lorissa Rinehart