The meeting was remarkable in part because of where it took place: on the bank of a canal in Vietnam's Mekong Delta.
One of the veterans was then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who had once patrolled the surrounding waterways as an American naval officer during the Vietnam War.
The other was Vo Van Tam, a native of the area who spent the war fighting for the communist-led "Viet Cong" insurgency. In February 1969, Kerry and Tam had been on opposite sides of a firefight on a nearby river. During that battle, Kerry killed one of Tam's comrades who tried to fire a rocket at Kerry's patrol boat. But now the two former enemies clasped hands and expressed admiration for each other. "I'm glad we're both alive," Kerry told Tam. (Full Story)
Vietnam War perspective: the unreconciled conflict
"On a Saturday morning last January, I witnessed a remarkable reunion of two military veterans," Edward Miller writes in an Op-Ed piece in USA Today.
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