Category: Holidays

Green Beret David Christian was unquestionably a war hero in the Vietnam war and as he says, fought valiantly on behalf of the USA. My team and I conducted more than 200 interviews in 1989 from people who had lived through the 1960s and had strong feelings about what they had witnessed and lived through, not only during the war, but in the 1950s growing up and in the time since that war has ended. David Christian was wounded 7 times receiving 7 purple hearts as well as the Distinguished Service Cross for heroism. When he returned from the war, he worked as he does today, to help Vietnam veterans. Bill Ehrhardt, who presents his story in my very popular video clip, “Magnificent Storyteller Soldier” shared his personal experience. Many of my subscribers have reacted to it. I feel that David Christian is an equally powerful storyteller whose war perceptions and experiences were quite different. In this video he reflects on his early upbringing in the 1950s, his Catholicism, his powerful relationship with his mother, his experiences with college protesters in the antiwar movement, his return to America and his battles to help his fellow veterans deal with PTSD, job opportunities and other issues that they have confronted. His story evolves during the interview as he expresses more and more deeply, how he felt and what he saw and how he dealt with it. – Filmmaker David Hoffman

Update: David Christian’s Distinguished Service Cross citation is here.
[h/t Dan Patterson.]