My name is Jim Smith. I was an Army reporter for Stars and Stripes, the Defense Department’s daily newspaper in Vietnam, from Jan. 1 to Aug. 1, 1972.

I had worked part time and full time for four years as a sports reporter during college at Newsday, the Long Island newspaper. Newsday held a job for me and I returned there after I was discharged in 1973.

I had enlisted in the Army in 1970 to avoid going to Vietnam as an infantryman but was sent as a clerk on Aug. 1, 1971. I spent five months in Cam Ranh Bay processing GIs in and out of the country, then applied for and received a job at Stars and Stripes in Saigon. I wrote about 75 bylined articles and saw every major city in Vietnam from the Delta to the Demilitarized Zone. While I was there, I knew someday that I would write a book. For seven months I used helicopters as taxis and specialized in secondhand accounts of heroism. I began the book with about 15 of my strongest vignettes, a section called “Combat Heroes.”

I was under fire twice during the North Vietnamese Easter Offensive, which began about April 1, 1972. My friend and I were taking pictures of each other posing on top of a captured Russian tank and four rockets roared in short, long, right and left. I jumped off it, fell face down, breaking my glasses and my camera lens.

The closest thing to the “big picture” I got came from meetings with John Paul Vann, who was killed in June 1972 and was the hero of Neil Sheehan’s Pulitzer-Prize winning book, “A Bright Shining Lie.” I had more respect for Mr. Vann – for that is what I always called him – than for anybody else I met in Vietnam. After Vann died, I held back from punching a captain who said Vann had been a showoff. Three vignettes are about Vann.

I invested $12,000 of my own money and self-published “Heroes to the End: An Army Correspondent’s Last Days in Vietnam,” to validate my tour and dispel the notion of the stereotype of Vietnam vets: high all the time, abusing alcohol, shooting up water buffalos, torching villages, raping women. I saw committed people going about their jobs right up to the end of the war. Some of them realized it was a hopeless cause, but they fought for what they believed in, anyway. Some were frustrated that they couldn’t do more. I wrote about medics, chaplains, truck drivers, tankers, helicopter door gunners, Rangers and airmen.

I was no hero. I had only four months up close to the fighting, most of which was done by the South Vietnamese. But I interviewed advisors at far-flung outposts and was able to catch up with some who had been heroes. I never fired a shot. But I was viewed by the brass and by enlisted men as somebody who could be trusted. Of course, I was encouraged to look for positive stories and I did.

I am the Board chairman of United Veterans Beacon House, which runs 34 homeless shelters for veterans on Long Island, and I am donating the proceeds from my book sales and speaking fees to the nonprofit. I have spoken at VFWs, American Legion Halls, libraries and a Vietnam Veterans of America meeting.

I have raised $4700 for Beacon House as of March 21.
~ Jim Smith, Vietnam veteran and author of “Heroes to the End: An Army Correspondent’s Last Days in Vietnam” available on his Web site www.heroestotheend.com from publisher iUniverse of Bloomington, Ind.

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