“Seabee71 in Chu Lai: Memoir of a Navy Journalist with a Mobile Construction Battalion” by David Lyman Submitted photo

CAMDEN — Photographer and journalist David H. Lyman will give an online presentation at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 6, presented by the Camden Public Library. Lyman will describe how he came to write a memoir about his time in Vietnam, and provide strategies to help people unwrap their own stories. The program will be hosted on Zoom. Email jpierce@librarycamden.org to request a link to attend.

Photographer David Lyman on a recent assignment in Scotland. Submitted photo

David Lyman was a U.S. Navy Photojournalist (JO3) in 1967, stationed in Chu Lai, South Vietnam. Submitted photo

Many war veterans and non-vets have tales from their lives that go untold. Lyman’s book, “Seabee71 in Chu Lai: Memoir of a Navy Journalist with a Mobile Construction Battalion,” was published in 2019 and discusses the 14 months he spent with Military Construction Battalion 71 as the editor of the unit’s monthly newspaper. His unit spent seven months in Chu Lai as they engineered the infrastructure of war — roads, runways, heliports and base camps for troops on the edges of the conflict.

During his time in Vietnam, Lyman was shot at, almost blown up by a road mine, spent nights in a mortar pit as rockets bombarded a nearby Marine runway and rode along on convoys through Viet Cong territory to photograph the villages outside “The Wire.” The stories and photographs in Lyman’s book are from the battalion’s newspaper, from memory and from recent conversations with shipmates.

Lyman has a long career as an entrepreneur, sailor, storyteller and memoir writer. In 1973, he founded the Maine Photographic Workshops, a school for photographers, filmmakers and writers located in Rockport. He was the school’s director for 34 years, and the school continues today as Maine Media Workshops and College.

To learn more about this and other library programs, visit librarycamden.org.