VIETNAM UNCENSORED: COURAGE AMID CHAOS AND A SEARCH FOR MEANING

I often wondered if the courage we showed on the battlefields and the jungles of Vietnam ever made a dent in the war’s outcome.

The mission statement was unclear: fight the spread of communism. But the truth was we were doing something much more personal. We weren’t fighting some enemy in a distant country that threatened the U.S. We were stepping into danger because our country said to. But mostly, we did it to protect our brothers — those men beside us facing a fierce and relentless enemy.

In the chaos on the killing fields, I wondered if our presence changed anything. A ripple in time, maybe. But I never believed it. I never knew for sure.

What I know is we saved lives — our own and those of civilians caught in a war they didn’t start. It may have been enough and the only thing that mattered. The war’s outcome wasn’t in our hands, but the lives we protected — that we could hold on to.

In retrospect, survival and victory meant changing how we thought. Doubt was an enemy as much as our adversary. If we hesitated, if we questioned, we failed. Failure represented injury and death.

We had to believe our actions mattered. It was clear, too, that we had the power to change our destiny. It became forged with each choice, step, and life we…