The US soldiers returning to Vietnam in search of mass graves

As part of the healing process, American veterans work with their former enemies to locate the burial sites of their missing comrades, 50 years after the war.

It is August 2022, and four Americans – all men in their 70s – disembark at a small airport outside Quy Nhon, a city of about half a million located on the south-central coast of Vietnam and the capital of the Binh Dinh province. With its lush landscapes and stunning tropical beaches, it is hard to accept that the region was the setting of fierce fighting during the Vietnam War, which ended 50 years ago this coming April.

The Americans exit the airport and are met by Major Dang Ha Thuy – a uniformed Vietnamese man, also elderly – who greets them warmly. Half a century ago, they would have exchanged gunfire; today, they exchange handshakes and smiles.

They have been drawn together by a shared mission. Thuy has spent 20 years searching for the missing remains of his North Vietnamese comrades lost in battle, and the Americans have come to help. Not only might these veterans know where some of the bodies can be found, but they are the ones who buried them.

The five board a shuttle along with a film crew from VTV4 – a Vietnamese television network facilitating and documenting the trip – which carries them all to Xuan Son Hill, a remote point in the Kim Son Valley. Fifty years ago, it was the site of a brutal battle at the United States Army’s Firebase Bird – and until recently, it was the location of a mass grave containing the remains of 60 people.

By 1966, Vietnam’s civil war had been raging for more than a decade, and US involvement had grown from a smattering of military advisers and special forces to a sprawling army of 400,000. While the violence would not peak for another two years, the casualty rate was already rising fast. Hundreds of US personnel were killed every month, and the Vietnamese losses were much worse. Before ending in 1975, about 58,000 Americans, 350,000 Laotians and Cambodians, and between 1-3 million Vietnamese were killed in the war.