So hoping she gets relief from her pain

Laser treatment could end pain for iconic ‘napalm girl’: 'Napalm girl' Kim Phuc has a chance to heal her burns with laser treatment, accompanied by the man who captured iconic Vietnam War photograph.

In the photograph that made Kim Phuc a living symbol of the Vietnam War, her burns aren't visible - only her agony as she runs wailing toward the camera, her arms flung away from her body, naked because she has ripped off her burning clothes.

More than 40 years later she can hide the scars beneath long sleeves, but a single tear down her otherwise radiant face betrays the pain she has endured since that errant napalm strike in 1972.

Reunited with photographer, Nick Ut - the man who made her suffering the indelible image of the Vietnam War and helped turn the tide of public opinion in the United States - she has traveled to America.

Now she has a new chance to heal - a prospect she once thought possible only in a life after death.

The girl in the picture (an interview with Kim Phuc)

Thinking of the Vietnam War lately, for some reason

The war ended when I was 8 years old. My father did three tours of duty in Southeast Asia. For some reason, this song always reminds me....

This makes me sad.....

Dogs at War: Left Behind in Vietnam

Reichenbach never had another dog. After the war ended, he didn't try to track down Major the way that some handlers did, sending inquiries after their dogs, hoping to adopt them (all unsuccessfully). Someone sent him an email once, saying they'd found a record noting that Major died of a jungle disease that had been killing off their dogs. But even if Major was still alive by the time the United States forces pulled out of Vietnam, he, like all but a few of the dogs still in country, would have been left behind.

And many of these military dogs met with an unhappy end—likely euthanized by the South Vietnamese Army, with whom they were left, or worse. Many of the handlers didn't find out for years that their canine partners never made it out of Vietnam alive.

This is one of the darkest parts of war dog history, especially considering how valuable they were to U.S. troops. Roughly 4,000 dogs served in the war, leading patrols with their handlers through dense jungle terrain. Overall, they are credited with saving upward of 10,000 lives.

This was quite possibly my favourite song growing up

We had it on a 45 record. Someone pieced together a wonderful and powerful video to go along with it.

Years after Vietnam, effects still linger from Agent Orange

Agent Orange's catastrophic legacy still lingers: 3 million Vietnamese exposed to chemical suffered illnesses, country says

Her children are 21 and 16 years old, but they still cry through the night, tossing and turning in pain, sucking their thumbs for comfort.

Tran Thi Gai, who rarely gets any sleep herself, sings them a mournful lullaby. "Can you feel my love for you? Can you feel my sorrow for you? Please don't cry."

Gai's children — both with twisted limbs and confined to wheelchairs — were born in a village that was drenched with Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. She believes their health problems were caused by dioxin, a highly toxic chemical in the herbicide, which U.S. troops used to strip communist forces of ground cover and food.

American veterans exposed to Agent Orange suffer from a variety of ailments, sometimes crippling. There are links to birth defects in their children such as spina bifida (one reason I'm glad I was born before my father went to Vietnam). But in Vietnam itself, many more people were exposed to the herbicide, and there are many birth defects that may be linked to it. The American government provides some aid to the cleanup of dioxin and help to those who were affected by it, but insists that a causal relationship has not been established when dealing with the Vietnamese even for the illnesses for which it pays benefits to former servicemen exposed to the chemical.

"American and Vietnamese Agent Orange victims haven't been treated the same way, and it's not fair," said Tran Xuan Thu, secretary general of the Vietnam Agent Orange Victims Association, whose suit against the U.S. manufacturers of Agent Orange in 2005 was rejected by a U.S. court. "It's not in keeping with the humanitarian traditions of the United States. I hope the American people will raise their voices and ask their government and the chemical companies to take responsibility."

A life, once fragile, blossomed

Surely everyone knows of the picture in which a little girl who was running, burned, down a road after being doused with napalm in Vietnam. But what happened to her?

Reunited with the Vietnamese 'girl in the picture'

A Vietnamese photographer, Nick Ut, was also covering events in South Vietnam that day.

As Kim [Phuc] ran down the road, her arms outstretched and screaming for help, he took what is now seen as one of the most memorable images of the Vietnam War.

She was still running when Chris [Wain, a reporter for ITN] stopped her and poured water over her, while directing his crew to record the terrible scenes.

"We were short of film and my cameraman, the late, great Alan Downes, was worried that I was asking him to waste precious film shooting horrific pictures which were too awful to use. My attitude was that we needed to show what it was like, and to their lasting credit, ITN ran the shots."

Nick took Kim to the nearest hospital, the US-run Saigon First Children's Hospital. Shortly afterwards, his photograph and the film footage appeared all over the Western media.

One result was that everyone wanted to know what had happened to the little girl.

It was Chris who found Kim the following Sunday, in a small room at the British hospital.

"I asked a nurse how she was and she said she would die tomorrow," he says. So he got her moved to a specialist plastic surgery hospital, for life-saving treatment.

Kim stayed in hospital for 14 months and went through 17 operations, remaining in constant pain to this day.

For years she lived in Vietnam, and at times her story was used as propaganda. She and her husband finally made it to Canada, where she now lives with him and her children. She has established the Kim Phuc Foundation, which provides medical and psychological assistance to child victims of war.

Thirty-eight years ago, the nine-year old Kim looked to be on death's door. It's nice that she has gone on to live her life and is making a difference in the lives of other children touched by warfare.

I'm a little late with this

It's been 35 years since the fall of Saigon, effectively ending the Vietnam War, as America pulled out. In the last hours of their presence in the city, they evacuated thousands of Vietnamese, but left many more behind.

The first six years of my life, my father did several tours in Southeast Asia with the US Air Force. He was home for good by 1973, but had spent time in Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia. At some point he had a girlfriend in Thailand. I've always wondered if I might have any half-brothers or -sisters from that relationship.

The Vietnam War was polarising, and in many ways it defined the generation that both served in it and protested it. I know it had a profound effect on my father. For those of us left behind, it shaped us as well. And Vietnam was a different war than those previous or since--soldiers were not greeted with fanfare, but treated as if they were shameful, not only because they didn't 'win', but because there had been so much opposition. In the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, at least, even those of us who oppose the war have kept respect for the men and women who serve, for the most part.

The following is a History Channel montage of the last day in Saigon:


This is a tribute to those who helped airlift babies in the last days of the war:


Finally, images of the Vietnam War set to Barry McGuire's 'Eve of Destruction':