This is perhaps the most moving Vietnam story I’ve heard. It broadcast on Snap Judgment Saturday past. It’s a Vietnam story for sure - but more than that it’s a human story, a spiritual story, a story of loss, grief and closure.
In 1969 First Lieutenant Homer R. Steedly, Jr. shot and killed a North Vietnamese soldier. Nearly four decades later he returns to Vietnam to help find his bones.
The Snap Judgment story is here: https://soundcloud.com/snapjudgment/soul-of-a-soldier-snap
You can follow the links to Steedly’s web site.
You can also find this story in a book published in 2009, Wandering Souls: Journeys With the Dead and the Living in Viet Nam.
Another take by Steedly may be found here.
It strikes me that all soldiers fight for God and Country as they define them. Families of the dead and injured share the same grief. No one touched by the Dogs of War will ever be the same, a sacrifice made both willingly and unwillingly.