We Were There

Vietnam was a bloody and divisive war that shaped a generation. In 1968, with the elimination of law school draft deferments, Steve Bailey's door to academia slammed shut. Another door opened to two years of training through Louisiana's swamps, Panama's jungles, and Officer Candidate School. In May 1970, he arrived in Vietnam as a 24-year-old Army infantry lieutenant for his one-year tour.After a brutal 72-hour firefight near the Iron Triangle and Cu Chi, Bailey searches the body of a fallen North Vietnamese soldier and finds the unexpected: a waterproof-wrapped art book of delicate sketches of palm trees, mountains, and portraits. The enemy soldier was an artist who carried his humanity into battle. That discovery haunts Bailey for fifty years.He returns home to a divided nation where scorn pains as deeply as any battlefield wound.We Were There confronts the moral weight and reality of combat, from a 14-year-old girl executed by the Viet Cong, to a friend killed during aerial reconnaissance, to memories that won't fade. Bailey writes about what soldiers carry home: not just trauma, but the responsibility to honor the fallen. His decades-long quest to return the art book culminates in 2022, when he meets with the Vietnamese Ambassador in Washington, D.C., and formally returns the drawings to the Vietnamese people. It is an act of reconciliation that transcends the war.This is an honest, unflinching memoir where brutality and compassion collide, where courage and doubt coexist. In war's aftermath, duty remains: to honor the fallen and bear witness for those who can no longer speak.