Photos & Text by Greg Michaud, photographer for Stars & Stripes. Reporting from the field. Viet Nam, 1969

Vietnam is a beautiful country, the people are kind, courteous and friendly. We were soldiers in the villages and hamlets and they still respected and treated us well. I know that was not true in every place, but in the Mekong Delta, where I was at, it was true. Water, water was everywhere with many rice fields to cross. I went out with different units all the time , usually no more than a week on any operation, it was a changing mosaic of people and countryside.

You can see our mechanized units ruined their rice fields and even when I went out with infantry units we did not walk on the dikes because they could be mined, but crossed instead though the rice paddies, our feet constantly soaked in paddy water. Infantry did not do the damage of mechanized units, but damage nonetheless.

War equals death, that is what war is about, killing. It was hard to see soldiers die, as a photographer and constantly moving around I only knew soldiers in various units casually, if that, not as close friends. That probably made life easier in its own way, although the sense of isolation and being on my own had its problems. My major takeaway from Vietnam is respect for the many that have died protecting the freedom of America. It is real.

There have been, no surprise, lasting impacts upon my life. The one thing is that it has made me realize the depth of sacrifice in fighting for freedom entails. It seems war is a drug for humanity. The distant past had tribal warfare, city states conquered their surroundings and countries claimed land.

Through it all, citizens must speak up to have a voice and ensure their rights are respected and that the death of soldiers in war was not in vain. It is up to individuals to stay involved in their communities in whatever way they can to support freedom and democracy. That is the legacy of war.

7/25/2024