It is an honor for me to participate in this program at this place. Committed to protecting and sharing the rich legacy of the units its maybe and its a particular pleasure for me to be with you. Last year, my wife susan and i, attended a performance of hamilton in new york. Many lines from the play struck me and stayed with me but one of them kept running through my head. Eliza hamilton, the widow of alexander hamilton, saying with the chorus of the Founding Fathers who lives, guys, tells your story. This is relevant to my remarks and its relevant to my book because in any war, any war and in any armed confrontation, i guess, the first questions are the determinative ones, who lives guys. Stripped of all other explanations about the purposes and to the goals of war, this is the fundamental human question that those who go to war must face. Indeed, its the cool purpose of war. Its best never to forget this, who lives, guys. Thats why i had so much trouble in recent years as politicians and pundits have talked about boots on the ground as a metaphor for sending in combat troops. I keep pointing out that were not talking about shoe leather, we are talking about flesh and blood. Were talking about our young and were asking of them who lives and dies. The burden after all of the shooting stops in any war is the lingering question tells your story. Who tells your story . That shared narrative of battles fought, of the dead forever young and the memories of the survivors. This is critical for framing that story, that narrative of war. It provides an assessment of why lives were lost. It reminds us of they were and it marks forever the lives of survivors who knew them. Survivors will carry their memories. I believe in a most perverse and cool way there may be nothing more human than war. Individuals and more testing their courage and testing their values, testing themselves and needing to do so much instinctively that theyve been taught all their lives not to do instinctively. They must confront that basic question of who lives and dies. I interviewed a number of people for this book and hanging with me always is one conversation that i had with a man who didnt go to vietnam himself. He was a teenager when his brother was in vietnam, 14 or 15 years old. He lived in small town in pennsylvania. There was a knock on the door when he was home alone one day and he went to answer the door and there were two soldiers they are and they asked if his parents were home and he said no but they had just called and they were running an errand and should be back 15 minutes or so. He said, please, wait if youd like to. Theyd sit on the porch and he joined them there. He told me he was so enthused to have the soldiers they are that i have a brother who was in the army and my brothers a helicopter pilot. Hes in vietnam, im so proud of him and what he does and hell be home in a couple of months. I cant wait to see him. Do you know my brother . He was struck by the fact that these two soldiers sitting on his porch really didnt say much of anything to him but didnt acknowledge his questions. His parents came home and, of course, the soldiers informed them that his brother would not be coming home because his helicopter had been shot down and was dead. He told me he iran up in the woods behind the house and wept and wept and wept thinking about his brother and embarrassed about sitting there asking the soldiers do you know my brother when they had come to inform the family that his brother was dead. We all need to assist in the responsibility of caring and sharing these stories. These stories needed to become embedded more international narrative, the human face of war. Its critical to note that this narrative is not simply our only about those who died and those who served with them, also have important reflections to share. And they need to have an opportunity to do that rather than to remain burdened with this silent memories that so many war veterans do carry. In this country, the narratives of Wartime Service have really been subdued since world war ii. Many people point to the vietnam war as a factor in a declining interest in veterans and their experiences and there is no doubt the Vietnam Veterans were seldom celebrated and that clearly related to the fact that by the late 1960s war had become a popular. It didnt necessarily follow that the unpopularity of their war also made them unpopular. The outright hostility toward the men who served while unfortunately it was president was not widespread. What was widespread was an indifference. Maybe even in embarrassed indifference and an unwillingness to engage them, to talk to them. If americans really did not know what was happening on the ground of vietnam its also the case that most were not eager to learn veterans. So, their stories remained largely unfold. In my book, i quote from a poem that was shared with me by a sailor that he had been serving on a patrol vote, a swiftboat, down in the mekong delta in april of 1969, he watched a very close friend of his, a buddy, died when their vote was ambushed by enemy troops on a narrow waterway of the delta. It was pretty hostile territory for those in the small votes. This sailor had gone to saigon a month later on a brief r r and he described in his diary sitting in his room, looking out the window and watching a storm come onto the city and he wrote the sky is black now, illuminated now and then by silence strobes of lightning. People bustling about before the storm and before the curfew. Soon the reins will calm and cool us off and slow the motion in the city will become quiet under the soothing rhythm of the rain. People will move inside and watch the monsoon downpour from a darkened window and some perhaps will reflect on the day the just ended. That closing line and some, perhaps will reflect on the day that just ended. I can assure you that those who were there have never stopped reflecting and its long past time for the rest of us to understand something of their experience in this for telling their story, hearing it and all of us reflecting on it is a burden we share. I want to share a few of my reflections on the days of that war, now ended the years of that war now ended to discuss the very Human Experience of those americans who served in vietnam. In 1965, when the american ground for began president johnson sent marines into march of 1965 and he sent insignificant army units throughout that spring. The dominant public image in the United States that year, of those serving in vietnam, was of young heroes finding communism in the jungles of southeast asia. There was a protest against the war and there was dissent about president johnson escalating it by sending in Ground Troops but most americans thought of those kids were over there as being heroic americans on the front lines in the battle against communism. Within a few years, as american casualties increased significantly, as the draft picked up andrew more and more Young Americans into the army and its people read stories about some of the things that were happening to the viennese as a result of this major war being fought near their villages and as people began to have less confidence in a resolution to the war the attitude toward those serving their changed, not in a negative way but many now consider them to be objects of sympathy with been sent over to fight a very cool and very illadvised war but after the story of me lie became public in late 1969 and in the minds of some of those who protested the war, those who are over there fighting it became the perpetrators of that cruel war, the stereotype of the drug addled psychotics who were in vietnam and the apocalypse now will be image i have described in this book a movie apocalypse now as vietnam woodstock. It may indeed be a very good movie and its considered a good movie and its not a story of the vietnam experience, though. A few weeks ago in burbank, california i made that same statement in the first question from a member of the audience following my comments was i was a screenwriter on that movie and it was accurate. We worked very hard to make it accurate. I did not defeat that point with him. I would say that excepting for some remarkable books written by the veterans particularly the fiction of people like tim obrien and jim webb, few of the popular accounts of the vietnam war recognize those who served for what they were, scared kids. Scared kids with signed up for a difficult and very scary assignment. We knew them as the baby boome boomers, as the 60s generation, as the woodstock celebrants and the antiwar protesters on our campuses in streets. The stereotype hippies challenged the boundaries of American Culture but also its clear to me and said it should be clear to everyone else that this is not the face, the full face of this generation, not at all. For example, about 40 of the 60 generation served in the military and about 10 went to vietnam and more of them died in vietnam then went to canada or went to prison for evading the draft. So, my book tells the story of and reminds us of some of the members of that generation. It is enriched by over 160 interviews that i completed with men and women who served in combat or medical units in vietnam. I really did focus on the ground action, the combat, the war fighting in vietnam. I describe in some greater detail in the book the spring of 1969 which i think of as a private point in the nature of the war. I talked to my interviewees about why they went, what was on their mind. I talked to them about the experience of serving in vietnam and i talked to many of them about being with friends when they died and i talked to them about coming home and their experience when they came home. I also interviewed members of families confronted a military delegate at the front door told them that their son or daughter would not be coming home. So, a couple of weeks ago, in late march, i sent out personally inscribed copies each of these 160 people that i interviewed for the book and told them that they were collaborators in my effort to tell the story. In this book i tried to describe what it was like to grow up in that post world war ii baby boomer generation. About the exciting america of those years. About the expansion of possibility and of opportunity and about the emphasis on education. It was a heavy time for those of us that remember growing up then but i also detail the scary world in which this generation grew up. About worries of impending nuclear tax, certainly, for the first half of the 1950s we were warned regularly that it could happen at any time. We needed to be ready. I talked about the duck and cover drills that we had in the schools where literally kids in schools and small midwestern town like mine were trained to get under the desk, duck and cover if the Nuclear Bombs started hitting their. And about the conviction, shared fear that the world would be at war and the reminder that this nation, this time, had to be prepared to fight this inevitable war that this nation and its citizens would need to step up and all of us would have to assume that responsibility that came with citizenship in this republic. It was an era of peacetime draft and my High School Graduating class in 1957, there were 25 boys in about 13 of us enlisted immediately after graduation, five of us in the marines, i was still 17. It was part of going into the service was a part of life and part of the culture that. Now, i am not in this book or anyplace else sympathetic to those political leaders took us to vietnam but my interest here is less in assessing the foreign policies and the commitments of president s from truman to nixon, other historians have done this and more will provide this history. My interest is in relating what it was like to grow up in the world that was described by political and cultural leaders and educational and religious leaders is a place where we all needed to be prepared to stand up for freedom. The world war ii veterans, the children of the munich generation and this indelible lesson of world war ii that failing to stand up to aggression or dictators only encourages more of it. These are the parents of the baby boomers and they warned what would happen if this country did not respond to challenges and threats. John kennedy, at his inauguration, in january of 1961 said, ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country. Now, if this summons to a sense of shared and common responsibility for the wellbeing of the republics seems quaint in 2017, it was not quaint in 1961. There was a sense of a Global Responsibility and we had to be prepared to meet it. Ironically, this Global Responsibility would play out in vietnam, of all places. The vietnam war was never truly about vietnam. It was about this much larger complex and we just had a sense of this is where were being tested and we have to stand up in this place. So, we found ourselves in this war there, that kept escalating. Young americans, the baby boomers, found themselves in impossible places. One of the most succinct descriptions of the Tactical Combat decisions in vietnam was provided by colin powell. He had first gone out there in january of 1963, as a young army officer. President kennedy was sending him more advisers in uniform and they were posted with South Vietnamese troops. Colin powell was sent up to the valley and it is still a desolate place up in the northwestern part of the old South Vietnam and just a few miles from laos. He was with an unit and an outpost unit and after his orientation he asked the South Vietnamese commander of that unit and said tell me, why are we here why is this outpost in this place the South Vietnamese commander said, well, this outpost is here to provide protection to guard this airstrip down below us and there was a small grass airfield down there and colin powell said that make sense but tell me why is the airstrip there. The South Vietnamese officer said to him the airstrip is there to supply this outpost. Colin powell, who would go over again during heavy american combat in the later 1960s, said he wasnt sure he ever heard a better explanation as circular as it was for what we were doing some of these places where they were posted. In working on this book, in addition to my research and reading in interviews and intellectual framing of the story, i certainly knew i needed to visit vietnam, not just the current rest spas and thriving cities but i wanted to get out to the delta, to the high country, the Central Highlands and i wanted to get out to the jungles, the far reaches of those places where the baby boomer generation fought. And for the stories of some of the men i was describing had died. I visited the delta and visiting there even today you can understand what the young kids patrolled along the waterways and canals found them hostile and scary places. Traveling up to, i went to the pilings of the only remains of liberty bridge with so Many Americans who serve their new. I visited the old area that the marines called god city, north of liberty bridge. I left behind some mementos there for dartmouth who were killed in different images with the third battalion seventh marines, one with kilo company in 1968 and a second classmate of the first with another company less than 2 miles away in november of that year. I looked across at charlie ridge, still dark and foreboding 45 years later and i went away and walked around the ancient citadel that have been the site of intense fighting during tet in 1968. I went up along the old Demilitarized Zone in highway nine and out to the rock pile, razorback and mutters ridge. Names that i can assure you most americans never knew but those names rock pile in razorback and mutters ridge are seared into the memory of those served at these outposts. I walked around the field a place that have been soaked in blood in 1968 and i visited other places and spend some time in the highlands and i walked around there in the old airstrip in 299 combat engineers had stood vicious attacks in 1969. Up in the oshawa valley i climbed Hamburger Hill. In late summer heat and humidity and i met in the morning there with two north Vietnamese Army veterans with fought the americans on Hamburger Hill and i met them in the village o. I was surprised he accepted my invitation to climb with me. It was the mountain that the americans called hamburger help because they ground them up like a hamburger grinding machine. Greeted by a brief summer shower, the trail was steep and slippery and i stumbled and slid and i sweated and i wondered how the scared young men of the 101st airborne climb that hell in may of 1969 knowing that they were over 50 years younger than me is not a sufficient explanation. No one was shooting down at me and i wasnt carrying 50 or more pounds of equipment and ammunition of weapons. It took our small group about two hours to reach the top and took them ten days. I should say it took them ten days to reach the top for those who did. Some of those units that come in there by helicopter on may 10th 1969 had 70 and 80 casualties before that fight was over. While we were on top of the hill i told the north vietnamese soldiers that through our interpreter i wanted to share a story with them. I told them i had grown up in an old mist Western Mining town called galena. Galena is the latin name for it led to sulfite and it was a lead mining town that was first settled in the 1820s. I had worked in the mines there after i got out of the marines. One of my bosses was a world war ii veteran, purple heart, would served in europe. I had tremendous regard for him and i came to have an affection for his son. I picked up a couple of pieces of galena led sulfite in the mind and kept them on my desk and a few years in the spring of 1969 i knew that michael, my bosses son, this young kid, had been killed on Hamburger Hill when a rocket propelled grenade had struck him in the chest and killed him immediately. I told these north enemy soldiers about him and i pulled out of my pocket a piece of led sulfite, of galena, that i brought over with me and i said ill bury this here and ill bury this on this hill at the top of this hill where my young friends never reached the top but now a piece of his hometown was here and i assured them that this led, this galena led sulf