This is the story of brave veterans who return to Vietnam to heal their emotional wounds. The Veteran’s Vietnam Restoration Project was founded in 1988 to conduct peacemaking trips back to Vietnam. Americans who once fought there now help to build much needed medical clinics. Steven Stratford has gone back to Vietnam four times. The guilt and pain he felt as a result of his experiences in the Vietnam War drove him to use drugs and eventually landed him in prison. His involvement with the VVRP on the return trips to Vietnam—along with the extraordinary spirit of forgiveness by the Vietnamese people he has met—has helped him learn to begin to heal the wounds of war.

Themes

• Why would Vietnam Veterans return to Vietnam in peace time?
• Why is it so hard for veterans to talk about their experiences in Vietnam?
• How do so many Vietnam Veterans become addicted to drugs and alcohol?
• In what ways are so many Vietnam Veterans plagued by their experiences in the War?

You can’t go back and change the past. It’s there. You have got to learn to cope with it somehow, and it seemed….I needed to overlay the bad memories, with good memories about Vietnam.”

—Steven Stratford