The letter below is excerpted from Annette Langlois Grunseth’s award-winning book, Combat and Campus: Writing Through War, which chronicles her brother Peter Langlois’s combat experience in Vietnam. This was Peter’s first full letter home after landing in Vietnam two weeks earlier. We’re grateful to Annette for sharing this letter with us. You can order
Written by Jim Roberts The story below is adapted from Jim Roberts’s book, MAT 111 Dong Xoai, Vietnam 1971: Stories from 33 Quebec's Tour of Duty. Cluster munitions and cluster bombs are in the news today because of the controversial decision by the United States to supply the ordnance to Ukraine for its war
Photo credit: Rose Carlo Gantner VBC member Richard Sand reports that on May 22, 2023, former Navy pilot Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) introduced House Resolution 8978: “To award a Congressional Gold Medal to members of the Red Cross Supplemental Recreational Activities Overseas (SRAO) program, also known as the ‘Donut Dollies,’ who served
Written by Harry Van Riper I don’t know where I’d be without the Army. Before Vietnam took my arm, the Army saved my life. Harry Van Riper tells his story at a VBC breakfast in September 2016 at the 911th Airlift Wing I was a troubled teen, a real hellraiser. I rolled my
written by Carole Wagener For Bill and Carole Wagener, 1969 was The Hardest Year. Newlyweds separated by 10,000 miles, Bill served in the 865th Engineer Gas Generating Detachment at Cha Rang Valley while Carole was a student at protest-wracked University of Wisconsin-Madison. Their 300-plus letters back and forth are the basis of a new book recounting their
By Todd DePastino Marine veteran Andy Nigut and former NVA soldier embrace at the DMZ Nothing prepared me for the emotional impact of our first VBC trip to Vietnam. In 2018, the VBC decided to offer a guided tour of the country, from Hanoi to the Mekong Delta. Seventeen of us, almost
