As of today, we are no longer enemies
A soldier’s long journey to forgiveness
Richard Luttrell was just eighteen when, in 1967, he came face to face with a North Vietnamese soldier on a jungle trail near Chu Lai. The man had his weapon raised but chose not to fire. Luttrell, trained to kill without hesitation, did not do the same. Afterward, as fellow soldiers searched the man’s body, a photograph slipped to the ground—an image of the soldier with a little girl. Luttrell picked it up and placed it in his wallet, where it remained for twenty-two years, creased and quietly burning with guilt. In November 1989, no longer able to carry its weight, he knelt at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., and laid down the photograph along with this letter of apology.
18th November 1989
Dear Sir,
For 22 years I have carried your picture in my wallet. I was only eighteen years old that day we faced one another on that trail in Vietnam. Why you did not take my life I'll never know. You stared at me for so long armed with your AK-47 and yet you did not fire. Forgive me for taking your life, I was reacting just the way I was trained: to kill... Hell, you weren't even considered human.
Since that day in 1967 I have grown a great deal and have a great deal of respect for life and other peoples of the world.
So many times over the years I have stared at your picture and your daughter. Each time my heart and guts would burn with the pain of guilt. I have two daughters myself now. One is twenty. The other one is twenty two, and has blessed me with two granddaughters, ages one and four.
Today I visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in D.C. I have wanted to come here for several years now to say goodbye to many of my former comrades.
Somehow I hope and believe they will know I’m here, I truly loved many of them as I am sure you loved many of your former comrades.
As of today we are no longer enemies. I perceive you as a brave soldier defending his homeland. Above all else, I can now respect the importance that life held for you. I suppose that is why I am able to be here today.
As I leave here today I leave your picture and this letter. It is time for me to continue the life process and release my pain and guilt. Forgive me Sir, I shall try to live my life to the fullest, an opportunity that you and many others were denied.
I’ll sign off now Sir. Until we chance to meet again in another time and place, rest in peace.
Respectfully,
Richard A. Luttrell
101st Airborne Div.
The photograph and letter were catalogued and, in 1995, reproduced in a book titled, Offerings at the Wall, reigniting the guilt that had once consumed him. Determined to find the child in the picture, he wrote to the Vietnamese ambassador in Washington, ultimately leading to a story in a Hanoi newspaper alongside an appeal: “Does anyone know these people?” Against all odds, a man recognised the soldier and forwarded the paper to the family. The girl—Lan—now an adult, reached out to Luttrell with a note that eventually reached him:
Dear Mr. Richard, the child that you have taken care of, or through the picture, for over 30 years, she becomes adult now, and she has spent so much sufferance in her childhood by the missing of her father. I hope you will bring the joy and happiness to my family.
It was in 2000 that Luttrell finally returned to Vietnam and met Lan for the first time. The photograph now lives in its rightful home.
Below: Richard Luttrell meets Lan in Vietnam, 2000 (Dateline NBC)
Many thanks to Thomas Thurber for suggesting this letter. As always, submissions are very much welcomed and should be sent to shaun@lettersofnote.com.
Details were gleaned from William Updike’s 2000 piece in National Parks magazine, the above Dateline segment, and PBS.
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I'm awash with tears, when will we stop making men, and women, pit themselves against each other and take lives. It can only haunt you or shut you down so that you can't feel it. The carnage of war lasts so much longer than the battlefield, for the soldiers and all their families. We have to be better than this.
Oh my that was one of the most emotional things I've read