My brother and I served in Vietnam as Marines during 1968 through 1970. Like many, we returned home feeling confused and bitter, not understanding what was happening. We could not make sense of the maniacal experience we had just encountered in this strange place called Vietnam. We felt we had just endured something unreal; something that could not be happening. Few at home understood, and fewer still had any idea of what kind of hell existed halfway around the world, and what all of those young 19-year-old boys (more than 550,000 of them) were enduring, day and night — especially at night. We felt anger, we was filled with emotion. We had many questions, but there were few answers.
Approaching the LZ, 1969.
A seemingly unreal nightmare was playing out. But it was very real and hundreds of people were dying every week. Those who did return home would never be the same.
My brother got out of the Marine Corps, he gave up his out door sports, including camping and hunting. He started a landscape business, he liked to grow things. Just a year later he developed cancer believed to be caused by the enormous amounts of Agent Orange he was exposed to while serving in the Marine infantry on the DMZ in Vietnam. Ken died leaving a wife and three young children.
Like many, I searched for answers, partly because I was trying to understand what had happened in that strange place from which I had just returned, and partly because I was having difficulty dealing with memories I was not able to erase.
I decided to publish a book. Not fiction; in Vietnam , fact was stranger.
On patrol near An Hoa, 1968.
Jungle rot and waterlogged, 1969.
I wanted to publish a book so others would know what had happened and understood what those young men endured. But Vietnam had many faces, each with its own story. So my book became a series of books. And then pictures were added so the world could see the faces that said what the words could not.
During 1979 I began work on this series of books that would later become known as The Vietnam Experience. It took eleven years to complete and a great deal of money. With the help of International Thomson Organization, Time-Life Books and many others, we published 25 volumes, and then the capstone volume, The American Experience In Vietnam.
All 26 books were favorably reviewed by nearly every major publication. The New York Times called the series "the source on the Vietnam War."
John Kenneth Galbraith twice nominated the books for a Pulitzer Prize in history.
More than 700,000 of you out there subscribed to the series and over 9 million copies were sold.
Writing home from Con Thien, 1969.
Now, nearly 20 years after the completion of this book project, and 30 years following the end of the war, there is a renewed interest in Vietnam. In fact, a great swell of interest has emerged.
I would like to thank all of you who have taken the time to send me e-mails with your comments about this website and about what the book series has meant to you.
To those of you who have requested that we reprint the books, the answer is yes, we would like to, but reprinting 26 volumes would be an enormously expensive undertaking and is probably not practical at this time.
Many of you have asked if we are planning to put more of our information on the web, videos and CDs. Again, the answer is we would like to because Vietnam continues to a backdrop against which so many of our country’s current problems are measured. Vietnam became a defining moment in American history.
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th person to Visit VietnamA Shau Valley, 1969.
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