greg klavan was born in california but now he lives in vietnam south with his girlfriend he first came here with a u.s. marine unit not long after his eighteenth birthday now only a few faded photos with his friends remind him of that period in his life. this. is. by the one nine hundred sixty s. the had been divided into two parts with the border of the seventeenth. communists led by control of the north washington politicians were. at its peak in the late sixty's the us supported them with more than half a million troops. thinks the most realistic. is francis ford coppola's film apocalypse now. in vietnam u.s. troops stop short of nothing in a bid to achieve their objectives if they burned the jungle that served as a hideouts of vietnamese. but they also used a chemical weapon called agent orange to smoke them to the fullest. i just assumed. i was right and that we needed to be here but after. i started to change my mind. about it i still. couldn't just leave. the. new trees to. destroy the forest nearly forty years ago. but the chemical weapon has had a sting effect on the people. i

marine greg klavan. a form of vietnamese guerilla. nearly forty years ago they were bitter adversaries fighting each other below them lie two hundred fifty kilometers of underground tunnels vietnamese guerrillas would dig them around the clock covering over the fresh earth and disguising numerous entrances to caves . how about going down there i don't want to try. even if the entrance to a tunnel was discovered it was hardly possible for most american soldiers to get inside but vietnam these guerrillas were able to crawl through even with rifles in their hands they would vanish into thin air after taking several shots from a camouflaged dug out. during a raid made by b. at the means guerrillas in the jungle a bullet fired by a sharpshooter narrowly missed greg klavan. on the one hand the jungle was very beautiful very exciting to watch and to be in but on the other hand it was very frightening knowing that any time. enemy could attack the freedom fighters got the medicine and weapons from north vietnam there was a whole system of secr

at the emmys gorillas in the jungle a bullet fired by a sharpshooter narrowly missed greg klavan. on the one hand the jungle was very beautiful very exciting to watch and to be in but on the other hand it was very frightening knowing that any time. could attack the freedom fighters go in and weapons from north vietnam there was a whole system of secret supply routes locals called it the home team in trail american forces potentially. with the help of the vietnamese peasants the guerrillas how to restore the trail constantly. the traces which led to the jungle routes were fully hidden to misguide the enemy. each time we were on the. tracks with a tree branch. and. december one thousand nine hundred seventy two the americans make a last ditch attempt to force north vietnam to surrender. operation linebacker two so the largest heavy bombers strikes since the second. into leaks of continuous raids u.s. aircraft dropped more than twenty thousand tons of explosives on towns in north vietnam. that combined power much thought of the atom bomb dropped on hiroshima in one thousand four hund

southern vietnam province greg klavan forte was a u.s. marine in the one nine hundred sixty s. against vietnamese communist guerrillas today for mob boss or is recall the time when they could only look at one another through the cross as we got better and better at it but still never as good as the be at the means that camouflage found hiding. using the jungle for their advantage the course of the whole shifted when the soviet union sent anti-aircraft missile systems and military specialists to vietnam in his first action targeting u.s. aircraft nicholai kolesnik broke down for almost. the first rockets reached the targets in exploded then the second and the third i can still picture these throwing skies that many of the local fighters trained by soviet missile specialists later rose to the highest ranks of the vietnamese army we were so good at disguising soviet missiles with tree branches that american pilots could see nothing but thick forest that one did fifty eight thousand u.s. army servicemen and over a million vietnamese soldiers dying full how of the wars veterans fed

marine greg klavan returned to vietnam in one nine hundred eighty six he makes a living by giving private english lessons when he left vietnam off to being wounded in the war it never occurred to him that some day he might come back let alone share a table with vietnamese guerrillas so coming back and seeing. developing people . getting jobs and going to school in a normal life made me feel better that we didn't completely destroyed all of the. things that we. have gone through i wish that the people of the united states the people of vietnam and all nations always live in peace and understanding. since the end of five years ago many things in vietnam have changed in some can expected ways. one of the buildings of the u.s. in mates nicknamed the hanoi hilton is now indeed a moat and the hotel. the u.s. flag is often seen side by side with the vietnamese flag on the facades of joint ventures college undergraduates domes to modern pop music near a monument to soviet leader lending. but one thing remains the same. is guarded around the clock by the soldiers of the vietnamese army the army th