"Slowly she is unpacking what has been held back for years. This will provide our boys and their wives a video of their mother talking about a very moving experience that makes her the woman she is today."

These words come from a man who arranged for his wife to speak with the War & Life Project. She served with the Red Cross in Vietnam as a "Donut Dollie." Traveling from firebase to firebase in 1969-1970, she talked with soldiers, organized games, told jokes--all designed to give combatants some respite from the burdens of war. In hospitals, she wrote letters for soldiers too wounded to do so themselves. She cried with a soldier who received a Dear John letter. She was close friends with Hannah Crews, a Donut Dollie who died in Vietnam after an accident.

"My daughter was thankful to learn details of my Vietnam experience that she didn't know until yesterday." This was from a Marine evacuated after he was wounded near the DMZ that divided North and South Vietnam. He published a memoir, but the discussion he referred to brought out details family members didn't know.

These are two recent notes similar to others I've received over the years. Sometimes family members write to say they knew........

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