A Tiny Photo of a Child; How One Veteran Found Peace

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show...(the opening lines of David Copperfield as written by Charles Dickens;inspired by MTM). Or at least this ACCOUNT will, perhaps, have a reflection on whether I'm going to be the hero in my own life


Rich Luttrell remembers writing home to his Mom, just hours after killing 3 enemy soldiers... and---I went and dug a prone position that night and I went to write my Mother a letter and I just broke down and started bawling. Just like a baby. I mean you know, how do you tell your Mom that you just killed three people?

This story is so captivating that it cuts to the core of what paths the Hands of Fate, Providence, and Prayer will intercede to bring us our Redemption; our Phoenix. No more needs to be said at this point. The TRANSCRIPT itself, says EVERYTHING.


One veteran heals through a battlefield keepsake: It was just a tiny photograph of a child, but it would launch an epic journey



LUTTRELL: It's like somebody just jammed you in the gut with a bayonet or something. I mean it's always there.
He's pushing 60 now -- young for a great-grandfather, though his wife jokes that he looks much older.
Perhaps it's because he has seen the future -- through his own turmoil -- for thousands of American service people.
It’s time now, he says, to warn them.

LUTTRELL: How many more people out there that are-- experiencing the same thing as I am?
A great many of them, as we will find out later.
Rich Luttrell has spent years working with veterans, most of whom, just like him, are deeply proud of their service.
Volunteers. True patriots.
He knows all too well what many of them are in for... back home.

LUTTRELL: These guys need somebody to talk to they really do. I mean they really do. You know that was the worst thing for me was to come home and bury that ... all those years, just to bury it
Bury it? Bury what? The flip side of the valor our men and women practice in war. The price they pay for what they do for us.
And Rich Luttrell? Well, what happened to him is, as you'll see, almost beyond imagining.

RICH LUTTRELL: It was the one moment, and the one act in combat that has been a burden for me for 33 something years.
It was 1967. Richard Luttrell, just barely old enough to sign up, was where he wanted to be -- in the 101st airborne.
He volunteered for Vietnam.

LUTTRELL: The day I got to my unit, the chopper came down in the jungle -- and I saw the members of my platoon standing around my age... and these were some tough-looking guys. Just their eyes. And I can remember thinking My God, what have I got myself into?
And so this puny kid from the projects found himself in a world for which no amount of training could adequately prepare. It is hot here, or wet, or both. No roof, no bed, no rest, no break from the fear. Just a scrawny kid with a back pack almost as big as he was who learned that the first rule is, you keep going and going and going.

LUTTRELL: There was times I can remember really trying to choke the tears back -- like "God, please stop, I can't go no more." And we'd do that from daylight til dark. And I thought, "What am I gonna do if we get in a firefight? I can't move, I'm so tired. What do I do in a firefight? And I never was prepared for that ...
And then came the day that changed everything. It was hot, as always, like wearing a coat in a steam room, he had no idea his enemy was just a few feet away in the jungle.

LUTTRELL: Out of the corner of my right eye I see movement ... I could see an NVA soldier leaning over with an AK 47, squatting.

KEITH MORRISON, Dateline NBC: First time you'd ever seen a North Vietnamese soldier.

LUTTRELL: Right, in my whole life, ever seen one.
He was barely 18, suddenly flooded with fear. His body seemed to freeze. He couldn't let it.

LUTTRELL: I had to react. I had to do something, it was my decision.
He was in the enemy's gun sight. Death was a heartbeat away.
He turned, and looked the enemy soldier full in the face.

LUTTRELL: It seemed like we stared at each other for a long time.
And then, like it was all in slow motion, he pulled the trigger.

LUTTRELL: And I just started firing, full automatic. And he went down. It turned into a pretty heavy firefight. And I wasn't smart enough to hit the ground -- and somebody tackled me, and took me to the ground.

MORRISON: Did you realize that particular North Vietnamese soldier could have killed you before you even saw him?

LUTTRELL: Absolutely, absolutely. And I've wondered even today - I go through my mind and I wonder why didn't he fire?
But that is not what played on Rich, haunted him, year after year after year: Not the gunfight, nor living in the moment of that terror. There would be a lot of that.

No, it was the one thought he hadn't truly considered before... hasn't prepared for it.

LUTTRELL: After the firefight is over. After the adrenaline rush is over, and you're all soaking wet, and you feel like your legs won't hold you And it hits you -- I just took a life.
And that's when he saw it: the tiny photograph.
Right there on the jungle path is where it began to weave a whole new story for his life.

LUTTRELL: I seen this picture sticking out partially out. It looked like (closes eyes) the face of a little girl with some long hair or something. And I pulled it out and it was real tiny. And it was a picture of a soldier and a little girl. I can remember holding the photo and actually squatting and getting close to the soldier and actually looking in his face and looking at the photo, and looking at his face.
Here was the man he had just killed. But who was that little girl? His daughter?
They seemed so serious. So, sad, somehow. Like the picture was taken just before they said goodbye. Before her father went off to war.

MORRISON: And that hit you?

LUTTRELL: It hit me really hard.
Not for long, mind you. Rich stuffed the tiny picture into his wallet. And within minutes they moved out again.
Not for a moment, by the way, should you believe that Rich was a reluctant soldier. When it came time again to use his weapon he did not hesitate.
He developed an uncommon expertise at the dangerous and gruesome business of clearing underground tunnels of enemy personnel.
He became skilled at hand to hand combat, at surviving.

LUTTRELL: I can remember being on a hill one night and mortar rounds just pounding in the dark, and hearing guys screaming and getting blown out of holes. And pulling my rucksack over my head and thinking, “God, don't let one hit me.”
He had just 20 days left, when the bullet ripped into his back. The wound that sent him home...

LUTTRELL: I can remember, when I got on the helicopter, all of a sudden this tremendous guilt hit me, like, “Where are you going? What are you doing? What are you leaving these guys for?”
Rich came home to a case full of medals and married his hometown sweetheart, Carole. And as the ‘60s gave way to the ‘70s, the ‘80s he tried to put Vietnam behind him.

CAROLE: He really didn't talk about Vietnam for years. It just was something he kept very personal, and very hidden.
But all the while, there in his wallet, was that picture. The little girl who would not let him go.
Of course, he didn't know yet - how could he? What that little image had in store for him.

LUTTRELL: I really formed a bond, especially with the little girl in the photograph...
It was so odd, so strange. All the horrors rich had seen in battle ...and it was this little face that kept coming back to haunt him.

LUTTRELL: Here's a young daughter doesn't have a father thanks to me.
Year after year, he kept it in his wallet. As the torment he felt failed to go away... as it settled on his life like a darkening cloud.

CAROLE: The only thing I could ever say was, why don't you just get rid of it. You know? Let it go. And get it out of your life and you can forget it and go on.
And, 20 years after his return from Vietnam, that is what Rich determined to do.
They were on vacation, he and Carole, in Washington, D.C. And when he saw the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, rich knew what he could do with that now tattered little photograph.

LUTTRELL: I said, you know that picture? I said, I'm going to leave it at the wall. And her face lit up. I could just see, this was something good.
And, sitting in their hotel, he decided to do it right.

LUTTRELL: I sat down on the bed with just a scratch pad that was in the hotel room, I started thinking, I thought, if there was any way possible that you could talk to that soldier, what would you say, you know? And in like, just a couple of minutes, I scribbled out a little note.
In it, he said those few little things he'd always wanted to say. Not that he regretted being in that war... not that he regretted serving his country. No, he didn't. It was instead that unending guilt, that uncontrollable sorrow, at having taken away a young father's life.

LUTTRELL: “Dear Sir, For 22 years, I've carried your picture in my wallet. I was only 18 years old that day we faced one another on that trail in Chu Lai, Vietnam. Forgive me for taking your life. So many times over the years, I've stared at your picture and your daughter, I suspect. Each time, my heart and guts would burn with the pain of guilt. Forgive me sir.”
The next day, Rich placed the photo and the letter at the foot of the Memorial, under the names of 58,000 Americans who lost their lives in Vietnam.

LUTTRELL: And at that moment, it was like I had just finished a firefight and dropped my rucksack and got to rest. That load I was carrying was gone. It was gone.

MORRISON: All lifted off.

LUTTRELL: Oh, all lifted off. Just felt great. I felt free. Felt relieved, I felt free.

Or so he thought. Every day, hundreds of people say goodbye to bits and pieces of the war and leave them here along these granite walls and every single thing - sacred or profane - is collected and boxed up by park rangers. Including Rich's photo. Which just happened to land at the top of one of those boxes, which just happened to land face up ...which just happened to be seen by another Vietnam veteran who knew right away that this was something different.

DUERY FELTON: I thought "what is this?" So I reached down and picked it up.

Duery Felton is curator of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial collection. He has seen just about everything here.
But a picture of an enemy soldier?

DUERY FELTON: I really did a double take.

MORRISON: Don't often see a thing like that at the wall?

DUERY: Well, I haven't seen it in about 30 odd years, that green uniform.
And he read Rich's letter of apology.

DUERY: I read that letter and it was about taking a life. It's very difficult to do that. That decision has to be made in a matter of seconds. And you have to live with those decisions the rest of your life. So it was somewhat comforting, if that's the proper term, to know that someone else has been through that, and they set it down on paper.
And before long the little photo and all the emotion it conjured up, infected this veteran, too. A tiny determined spirit floating from one old soldier to the next, reminding them both of the price they paid for pulling the trigger.

DUERY: That haunted me for years and years as to who the little girl was.

MORRISON: What is it about that image that was so powerful that you'd hang on to it? That he'd hang on to it? That you couldn't let it go in a way?

DUERY: I think it resonated some place in my psyche. You have to understand I was in a combat unit. This is about taking someone's life.
Of course Rich knew none of this back in Rochester, Illinois. He was getting on with his life. He thought he was finished with that little girl. Except she... wasn't yet finished with him.
There is a powerful silent emotion that surrounds the monuments to America's wars. And at this one, the remarkable Wall, a great and ever growing collection of the bits and pieces of survivor memories and grief.
When Duery Felton was asked to help produce a book, "offerings at the wall," he had a warehouse of objects and images from which to choose.
He put the little girl, and Rich's letter, right there in the middle.
And of course Rich, who by now worked for Veterans Affairs, received a copy.

LUTTRELL: And I turned to page 53 and there was the picture of the picture I had left at the Wall, and the note I'd wrote to the soldier.
It was as if she were staring right at him, refusing to go away. As if she was accusing him of trying to abandon her...

LUTTRELL: For me, that moment was, it was almost a nightmare. It was like, you know, “Little girl, what do you want from me? You know, what do you want from me?”
Now the obsession returned full force. He knew he had to get the picture back. So he contacted Duery Felton, who'd become so attached to the photo himself he personally flew from Washington D.C. to Illinois to hand deliver it back to Rich. And anyone who didn't understand might have found it rather strange that two middle aged men, who didn't know each other, had never met, would hold on and weep real tears for a small girl neither knew.
LUTTRELL: And I was talking to my wife one evening and I said, “You know, I don't know if it's something mystic, or fate, but I said ... somehow I have to return this picture.” And she said, “What do you mean?” And I said, “I'm gonna find that little girl, I'm gonna find that family of that soldier.”
A ridiculous idea, of course. He no longer knew the country, or the language, or what she looked like now, or even if she was alive.

CAROLE: I didn't badger him and say "You can't do it. Just give up. forget it. It ain't happening. It's not worth the effort, I'm tired of hearing it." I didn't say any of that, because it wouldn't have stopped him.

MORRISON: Did you get tired of hearing it?

CAROLE: Yeah.

MORRISON: This is an obsession?

CAROLE: (emotional) Yep.

MORRISON: Hard on you as much as on him?

CAROLE: Yep.

MORRISON: How much did you want that to go away?

CAROLE: I don't know that I wanted it to go away. I wanted him to find peace with it.
So Rich called a newspaperman he knew in St. Louis.

LUTTRELL: And we sat, probably a couple of hours talking about it. And the story made the front page of the Post Dispatch on Sunday, I believe.
The plan kept forming as he went. He folded up the article, and stuck it in a letter to the Vietnamese ambassador in Washington D.C.

LUTTRELL: And he told me he would forward it to Hanoi. And he said something to the effect of, “Maybe we'll get lucky.”

MORRISON: It's a needle in a haystack. It's a, it's a big country.

LUTTRELL: Oh I know, yeah. Million to one, million to one.
And so a copy of the photograph made its way all the way around the world again to the capitol of Vietnam, to Hanoi. Where an enterprising newspaper editor recognized a good story when he saw one, and published the photograph along with an appeal: “Does anyone know these people?” If the article failed to hit its mark, well it was a shot in the dark anyway. But there's another way newspapers make their way around. A time-honored tradition -- as wrapping paper.
It just so happened that a man in Hanoi decided to send his mother a care package. He happened to wrap that package in this newspaper, the one containing Rich's photo.
And then, by some bizarre coincidence, probably, the package made its way to a rural village north of Hanoi, where an old woman unwrapped it, saw the photo, took it to a neighboring hamlet, and told a woman there, “Here, this is your father.”
And before long, thousands of miles away, Rich Luttrell received a letter.
The girl had a name: Lan.
She had children herself.

LUTTRELL: It just didn't seem possible, it seemed surreal. I just couldn't believe it was happening. And of course, all that emotion again, and you know, now it's real.
And it was complicated, too. He wrote a letter to Lan and her family, trying to explain how he felt.

LUTTRELL: The difference between guilt and regret. I do carry some guilt because of that action. But I have no regret as a soldier, and participation in that war. And it was important for me to make sure they understood that.
But around then, it finally dawned on him: he would have to go back to Vietnam himself. He would have to carry the photo and give it back.
But how could he face his own closet full of horrors... and how would he face the girl?

LUTTRELL: How do you tell a little girl, “Hi, my name's Rich Luttrell, I killed your father in Vietnam.”

LUTTRELL: There's a risk there, there really is. There's a risk there. I don't know how they're going to react.
Decades after Rich Luttrell aimed his weapon at another human being, and pulled the trigger, in the service of his country, he was about to perform his own personal act of atonement.
It was early one springtime when Richard Luttrell set out in search of a cure for what tortured him.

LUTTRELL: The whole thing's bigger than I am. It's hard for me to understand it sometimes myself.
Years ago, he swore that he would never go back to that place. He had seen too much killing, too many horrors... All that suffering reflected in that one small image.
But now, here he was... on his way to Vietnam. Drawn by a photo no bigger than a postage stamp…
And like a live thing, it had made its way: from a dead man to a dusty trail in Vietnam, to an American GI, a war memorial, to a book, to a wallet, to this bag, on its way home...

LUTTRELL: This is the flight I've been looking for…
He's no teen-aged grunt. And she must be 40 or so.
It’s the smell that hits him first. Every memory has one: Normandy, Vietnam, Iraq.
The day before he is to meet the girl, now woman, in the photo, Rich is almost beyond nervous.

LUTTRELL: I'd almost rather face combat again than face this girl.
It is a cloudy Wednesday morning in Hanoi. Rain is threatening, as Rich boards a van for the two and a half hour drive to Lan's village.
A drive through a world changing fast but still utterly different. Past markets crowded with faces amazed to see this entourage... this white-haired man.
The village draws closer in the van he fidgets, edgy...
And then, suddenly, Rich and Carole are walking. Here is where that somber, serious soldier lived, had his children, the place to which he never returned.

MORRISON: How're you feeling?

LUTTRELL: Nervous.
And then, just around a stone wall, Rich sees a woman. And is sure...

LUTTRELL: I've already seen her, I know who she is.
He takes a moment, to compose himself, then walks toward her.
And here they are.
They had never laid eyes on each other before.
For a few seconds, they don't know what to say.
They are intimate strangers.
He recites a sentence he has learned in Vietnamese:
“Today,” he says, “I return the photo of you and your father, which I have kept for 33 years. Please forgive me.”
Finally, it all comes pouring out.
This terrible, painful release. As if right now at this moment she is finally able to give in to grief, and cry for the father she never really knew.
She clutches Rich as if he were her father himself, finally coming home from the war. Her brother tells us that both of them believe that their father's spirit lives on in Rich. They expect we'll think its just superstition… and, perhaps, they say, it is... but for them, today is the day their father's spirit has come back to them.
The whole village has turned out to see the photo returned...
Once Rich had wondered about formality, ceremony. But not now.

LUTTRELL: Tell her this is the photo I took from her father's wallet the day I shot and killed him and that I'm returning it.
She is 40 years old, and it's the first time she has held the photo of herself and her father in her hands.
And in this moment, and during the afternoon that followed,

LUTTRELL: He died a brave man, a courageous warrior.
In the company of former enemies, Rich Luttrell felt as if his wounded soul had been stitched up and made new again.

LUTTRELL: I'm so sorry.
--{-=@
Hickok