I am a huge military history buff, particularly from World War Two on. As a kid, I read everything I could get my hands on and one of the most iconic images to come out of the Vietnam war was of a camouflaged US Navy SEAL, hiding in some reeds and carrying a Stoner.
Turns out, the photo, taken in My Tho Vietnam in 1968 is of this guy, Tom Keith, seen below wearing 30 Seconds Out’s Green Face T-shirt.
“The rifle I’m holding is a US 30 Cal. carbine that was one of the weapons we captured the day of the ambush. When you enlarge the photo, there is a hole through the for grip where a 5.56 mm went through it and the Viet Cong that was holding it. He was their point man. Photo was taken by a Navy combat photographer in 1968 while on ambush outside of My Tho Vietnam.”
– Tom Keith, USN Ret. Seal Team Two.
You can get yours at www.thirtysecondsout.com/products/t-shirt-green-face.
This is badass!
Iconic indeed. Back in 1987, I did a small water colour painting (link below of the scan) of that same image; copied from the Squadron/signal publications book ‘US Elite Forces – Vietnam’.
https://i.imgur.com/3AK9M2s.jpg
Nice!
Damn, that’s cool dude!
That’s nice work MM.
Great rendition MM!
Thanks all for the kind words!
Green Face, Black Flag.
Well said sir
Cool thing about Black Flag: Rollins has done a ton of uso tours and state side work. Vets have a special place in his heart.
That’s gangster.
Pure awesomeness!
Top notch war trophy. Back when customs was cool haha
Cool to have a back story on this iconic photo. Guy looks like he can still turn it on and deal it out when needed too.
Wonderful story, he’s an American hero
I thought of that photo often whilst sucking, at SUT. I know wasn’t the only one, somewhere, at similar training.
I grew up with this picture.. I have it since I was 13 in an Italian encyclopedia about Special Forces and Elite unit (original title is “Corpi d’Elite” which translates to “Elite Unit”)… what a blast to see the real Man… thanks for sharing!
Atacs shared this pic on IG recently, talking about countershading. In the color version his pants are the gold tiger stripe pattern,very cool bit of history.
That is one badass MF right there.
Nice Boonie too . . . Tigerstripe is still one of my favorites.