Beautiful Photos -- A Few Thoughts

Thanks for the beautiful photos. I also juggled an M-16 and a 35mm during my tour in 1967-68.

I'm sure I recognized the response from the aging Vietnam Era war resister (draft dodger) who assumed that you and I had killed all these beautiful children. I also recognized the Saigon warrior who had told his child the myth about the bomb in the teddy bear. Your photos tell the truth, that you had no reason to fear the children.

And finally, I see in your photos the same feelings that I see in my own ... like 2.5 million other GI's, you understood that you were in South Vietnam to protect these people, and that putting your life on the line for that objective was in our own nation's best interest. I suspect that you "got to know" a couple of the kids or the montagnards in your photos. When I look at your photos, I think of my own, and I know that Robert Macnamara didn't understand the American mission in Vietnam as well as you and I did. He was not alone in failing or not wanting to understand, and our country was diminished as the result.

Thanks again.