221st Signal Company (Pictorial) U.S. Army Vietnam Southeast Asia Pictorial Center 1967 - 1972 221st Crest

The Ballad of Sgt. Rock is a complete album that I wrote, and we recorded vocals using instrumental music that I had on tapes. Title tune was indeed about the illustrious Alan T. Rockoff.
- Sp5 Evan Mower


I was brand-new in country - arrived April - but it struck me that everyone was excited about the Cambodian thing and happy to be going anywhere..... Shortly after that back in Long Binh Rockoff told me he had heard there were Vietnamese in some kind of prison camps in Phnom Penh and we should go. I suggested that might be well beyond the incursion boundary set by our very own President Richard Nixon. Rockoff persuaded me that we should simply go and being a moron I agreed. We hitched a ride on a PBR up to Neak Luong, spent the night with some advisors and then took a ferry across the river and a taxi (paying with cigarettes) to Phnom Penh. At one point guys with assault weapons came out of the woods and I figured we were screwed but they were some kind of local militia. We got a hotel room and spent a couple of days photographing compounds where, indeed Cambodians of Vietnamese descent had been locked up. One afternoon we were relaxing by sitting at a sidewalk cafe (wearing jungle fatigues, of course) when a limo with US flags on the fenders came to a halt. Our bad luck that it was the military attache who was very, very cranky that we were in Phnom Penh and we were to get the hell back to Long Binh by sunset. He apparently imagined us on the cover of Newsweek or something with a headline: Richard Nixon: Liar, liar pants on fire." We left and went home the way we got there. Back at SEAPC our masters were somewhat stunned by our dumb-ass stunt. Not sure if they ever sent our film through.

  - Sp4 Chris Jensen


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While I was on my 2nd tour Al ETS'd and went home. Some time later I was walking through the company area and there he stood in the same fatigues as before. I just stared at him not believing my eyes. Finally he said "what are you looking at?" I shook my head and said "didn't you ETS." He said yes. He said he reenlisted and they sent him back here. He showed me some pic's from Florida. I took a pic of him (the one I lost). Soon after I ETS'd. Some years later I was working at a small Newspaper listening to the radio when the announcer said that Cambodia had Fallen and UPI had a photographer named Rockoff in the Victory Parade. I knew it had to be him.  Then of course the Movie "the Killing Fields" I saw it with my wife and told her I knew the real Rockoff. I always thought Al was one of the finest photographers we had.
   
- Sp4 Tim Marks


Ballad of Sgt Rock.mp3