Discovering The Kon Tum Diary, Twice: A Veteran’s Journey Of Reconciliation And Healing

This interview analyzes Paul Reed’s journey from a young and eager paratrooper in the 173rd Airborne Brigade, to an angry veteran, to a messenger of peace, reconciliation, and healing. He shares his story of healing from Post-Traumatic Stress and moral injury through humanizing his former adversary and finding pathways to reconciliation. The key to his transformation was found in the “Kon Tum Diary,” a journal he discovered in a captured enemy rucksack. Paul Reed was born in 1948 in Dallas, Texas, and grew up with his four-year-older sister. His father was a petroleum engineer and his mother raised the children. When Paul was 12, he started a paper route, which gave him his work ethic and taught him the importance of financial independence. Delivering papers, he met Tony Middleton, who suggested they combine routes to save time. Tony also had a motorcycle, which thrilled Paul. He asked his father if he could get a motorcycle, and they agreed that if Paul could save half the money, he could get a bike. At the age of 14, Paul bought his first motorcycle for $275, a brand-new Honda 50. Between the ages of 14 and 18, Paul continually upgraded his motorcycle, selling his old one to purchase something newer and more powerful, owning the Honda, three BSA (Birmingham Small Arms Company, a British manufacturer) bikes, and a Triumph 650 (another British company) before he left for Vietnam. Once, he and two buddies were riding their Hondas and decided to cross a narrow footbridge over a creek. Paul went first, and his front tire ran off the plank, causing him to fall six or seven feet into the rocky creek below. The fall knocked him out and he gashed his head on the sharp rocks. His buddies were able to wake him up, put him on the back of a bike, and get him to his house, where his mother nearly fainted before rushing him to the hospital. Paul was almost expelled from high school for riding his motorcycle through the halls of the school during exams. The principal caught him and expelled him before his mother came to the school and told the principal, “Do you realize if he doesn’t pass those final exams, you'll get him back next year?” The principal arranged for him to take the one exam he was missing, geography, and the geography teacher made him write an essay covering everything he knew about an automobile between the two bumpers. Paul earned an A+ and graduated in 1966 after a brief stint in summer school to improve some of his other grades. Based on what Paul was seeing on the nightly news about Vietnam, and President Kennedy’s exhortation, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what can you do for your country,” Paul felt the need to do his part and join the Army. Paul’s father had earned an ROTC commission during World War II, but he never shared his military experience with his son, intimating that he remained in the United States throughout the war, even though he had a box of wartime gear, including a German bayonet in the garage. His father told him he could not join the Army until he had his high school diploma, and once he did, Paul enlisted, volunteering for the Airborne. Paul had always been attracted to the Airborne after seeing some photographs his neighbor showed him about his experience as a paratrooper, and taking Paul “parasailing.” Paul’s “parasailing” experience was with a surplus WWII parachute, pulled behind a pickup truck in a 40-acre lot. Paul was strapped in the harness, and had to run as fast as he could as the pickup truck drove off, filling the chute with air. Paul rose to about 100 to 150 feet in the air and was exhilarated, until the truck stopped and the parachute returned to earth. Paul had no training in executing a PLF (Parachute Landing Fall) and fortunately was not injured. This experience convinced him that he definitely wanted to be Airborne. Paul was stationed at Ft. Polk, Louisiana, for Basic Training and describes it as “a different experience,” where he was exposed to people from all walks of life, including some who came from less privileged backgrounds. He enjoyed Basic Training, but felt that some of the training that reflected WWII experiences was not as helpful as the “Tigerland” element that tried to resemble Vietnam with villages and role players. AIT at Ft. Gordon, Georgia, followed Basic Training, with Airborne school at Ft. Benning after that. He describes “Jody Calls” (running cadences where boys back home were stealing the trainees’ girlfriends) as a way to channel aggression towards the enemy. In Airborne school he recalls jumping from C-119s. He eventually conducted 30 airborne jumps, mostly with the 82nd Airborne Division, where he served for a year before deploying to Vietnam. Serving in A Company, 2nd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment in the 82nd, he learned the role of an 11C Mortarman. In November of 1967, he recalls a newspaper article about the Battle of Dak To, where 225 paratroopers were killed, and he remembers thinking “I gotta do my part.” In February 1968, he deployed to Vietnam, flying in a civilian aircraft from San Francisco, through Guam, to Bien Hoa Air Base. When he landed, the airbase was under mortar attack, and they were kept on the plane for 30 minutes. One of his earliest impressions of Vietnam were the Vietnamese women in their traditional Ao Dai dresses. He reported to the replacement depot in his clean khaki uniform, where he was assigned to Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry, 173rd Airborne Brigade. He saw a 173rd veteran with a “1,000 yard stare,” and a high school friend who looked older. Paul noticed that his boots were worn and his uniform was filthy. One veteran remarked, “I hope you like killing, because you’re going to get to do a lot where you’re going, buddy,” which left an impression. He completed in-country jungle school before reporting to his unit, and learned to use “det cord” and C4 to quickly clear trees and vegetation. Paul was an 11C mortarman in the Weapons Platoon, responsible for carrying the heavy 28-pound 81mm mortar tube and 14-pound rounds (totaling 50–60 lbs. of extra gear) through triple-canopy jungles. Every night, the mortar crew had to dig a 12-foot diameter 2-foot-deep hole for their firing position. Paul notes that they could be ready to fire within 3 or 4 minutes of receiving the call. He fought against both the Viet Cong, who he describes as “sympathizers” and “not professional,” shooting and running away, and the North Vietnamese who, on the other hand, were “smart, rugged, and good engineers.” Paul describes an incident that occurred as he was signing into the unit. He was inprocessing and overheard the Company Clerk being chewed out by the Executive Officer. The clerk had been returning letters addressed to deceased Soldiers after writing KIA (Killed In Action) across the envelope. The Executive Officer was furious and told the clerk that there was a better, more sensitive way of returning mail through official channels and that returning them with KIA written on the envelope was exceedingly cruel. Paul remembers a time when his unit was guarding Bridge 24 along Highway 19 near An Khe. Paul had befriended a nearby family and had even given them tins of sardines that his mother had sent in a care package. The family invited Paul to dinner, and he accepted, remembering the guidance he had received when he first arrived in-country: “If you ever get invited to a South Vietnamese home for dinner, you must eat everything on your plate. Otherwise, it’s going to be a bad insult.” Paul had taken his seat at the small table on the dirt floor of their mud and rice straw hut, and began to eat what he thought was rice with raisins (it turned out to be rice and flies) and when all the flies flew, he thought about the family latrine behind the house. The next dish that was brought out was a meat dish, and as Paul was chewing his first bite, he noticed that the family dog, who he had nicknamed “Frag,” was not about. When he asked, the mother, in her broken English said, “Frag go make GI stew.” Paul’s company was operating along the western border of South Vietnam, attempting to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail that snaked its way south along the Trường Sơn mountain range through eastern Laos and Cambodia. Near Kon Tum, A Company occupied terrain that was higher than the Trường Sơn mountains and Paul recalls watching B-52 “Arc Light” strikes devastating the ridges across the border. He describes in detail a battle that took place at Hill 1064 in Kon Tum in March 1968. Paul asserts that “the enemy knew we were coming,” and “I knew we were being observed.” This was to be his first experience seeing dead Soldiers. After the mortars established a position, they began firing practice rounds. The unit had landed in a valley and as A Company began moving up the ridge line, they began taking fire from snipers in front of the main NVA position. In the opening volley, Jimmy Richardson and Patrick Tremblay were killed and the Sky Troopers were initially unable to recover their bodies. Daniel Burr was shot later that afternoon as the company established a Night Defensive Perimeter (NDP) on a smaller, adjacent hill. Paul crawled over to Daniel under fire to comfort his friend. Daniel said, “Don’t worry about me, man.” When Paul asked why, Daniel replied, “I’m going home… you have to stay in this hell hole.” After several attempts to land in the hot LZ, the Huey pilot, who had been shot in the foot, managed to load Daniel and take off. Within five minutes Daniel had died of his sucking chest wound, but Paul notes that he had “gone home.” That night, LT Doan proposed a plan for conducting a nighttime reconnaissance of the suspected enemy position, because he speculated that the enemy pulled out of their fighting positions and rested during the night at an alternate location. The proposed reconnaissance would confirm or deny his speculation. A small 7-man team was selected for the mission including SSG Dave Dever, LT Doan, Reed and Steve Charbonneau (who was known as Johnny Cavanaugh). Moving silently, the team left a security element at the bottom of the hill and Dever, Doan, and Charbonneau continued creeping slowly up the hill. Charbonneau discovered a hole and, sticking his hand into it, he learned that it was an NVA latrine. Discovering the NVA bunker line, Charbonneau reached in and touched a sleeping NVA Soldier (who stopped breathing when he was touched). Doan ordered Charbonneau to kill the enemy with his bayonet, but Charbonneau refused, and the team retreated down the hill. Once the team was back in the American perimeter, A Company fired mortars and later called in a Napalm strike on the hilltop. Before assaulting the hilltop, Paul recalls hearing a single gunshot, and suspects that the Soldier who failed to alert the NVA camp when Charbonneau touched him was executed. After the napalm strike, the F-4 Phantoms executed a “victory roll” that inspired the members of A Company. CPT Davis then ordered a team to survey the damage in the enemy position and recover any equipment or documents they could find. Paul was on the team searching the site. On the hilltop, Paul discovered eight enemy dead in the open and several shallow graves. They also recovered 52 enemy rucksacks. Paul notes that the base camp was “well engineered,” and “their humanity hit me in the face,” contradicting what he had been conditioned to understand about the enemy. They found a hospital with bloody gauze, hammocks strung between trees, a stream for drinking and bathing, food and ammunition storage areas, and hand hewn steps cut into the hillside for a quick escape. In one of the rucksacks, Paul found two flags (a Viet Cong flag and a regimental flag), a faux-alligator skin covered diary, several photos of the NVA Soldier and his family, a newspaper, and North Vietnamese money and postage stamps. After the American Soldiers looked through the rucksacks, their officers ordered them to load all of the captured items onto a helicopter so they could be exploited for intelligence. Paul secretly kept the diary and photos, sealed them in a C-Ration box, and threw it to the crew chief in a hovering Huey, who promised to mail it. The box arrived at Paul's parents' home in Dallas, where it sat unopened in an attic for 20 years. After returning home, Paul suffered from severe Post Traumatic Stress, leading to self-destructive choices, the loss of his livelihood, and homelessness. Hitting rock bottom, Paul had lost his family, his house and land, his cars, and a high-paying job. At one point, his father found him living under a highway overpass and brought Paul and his four-and-a-half year old son home. One night, sitting around the dinner table in 1987, conversation about Paul’s combat experience in Vietnam reminded his mother of the unopened package Paul had sent them from Vietnam. As Paul and his parents looked through the North Vietnamese items in the old C-Ration box, his mother gave him some life-changing advice: “Get it translated. Maybe there's something in there that can help you change your life for the better, and then you can write a book about it.” Getting the diary translated was the first issue, and many of the South Vietnamese that Paul knew refused to translate the diary when they learned it was from a North Vietnamese Soldier. Eventually, Paul found a man named Cho who translated the book. When he finished, Cho said, “I got to tell you true... I hate this guy just like you do, because he enemy. But I got to tell you true, he good man.” Learning that he was a “good man” initially enraged Paul, because he lost friends fighting against the “good man’s” unit. Paul wadded up the translation and threw it into the corner of his room. In a fit of anger, Paul blamed God for how his life had turned out and his troubles. God answered Paul and told him, “There's a reason that it happened to you, and you are exactly where you are supposed to be right now.” Paul felt inspired to look towards his desk, and “rediscovering” the translation he began reading. Reading the diary changed Paul’s heart and opened his eyes to the humanity of his former enemy. The diary was full of poetry, and three poems in particular struck him. “To Mother” is a touching poem about a soldier missing his mother in the springtime. “I Stand Here” is a patriotic poem about the Ben Hai Bridge, which separated North and South Vietnam. “Love” is the poem that changed everything. It began and ended with the line “Love bears no grudge.” That single line struck Paul to his core, as he realized he had been living a life consumed by grudges and hatred for over 20 years. The humanity of the NVA Officer, Nguyen Van Nghia — a son who missed his mother, a patriot who loved his country, and a man who understood love — jumped off the page and shattered Paul's perception of his enemy. In that instant, Paul said, “I was a different man... my eyes had been opened.” Again, God spoke to Paul and said, “This is your life for the rest of your life. You’re going to tell this story of what I’ve done to your heart. You’re going to tell this story the rest of your life.” Paul tried to argue, pointing out his practical limitations. “I’m not an author. I’m not a speaker. How am I going to do that?” God replied, “Don't worry, I’ll handle it.” This set Paul on a 40-year mission of peace and reconciliation. Published in 1997, Paul’s book, “Kontum Diary: Captured Writing Bring peace to a Vietnam Veteran,” caught the attention of documentary producers for PBS who wanted to film Paul returning the diary to Nguyen Van Nghia’s wife, under Paul’s assumption that the author had died of his wounds in Vietnam. While shooting the documentary, Paul discovered that Nguyen Van Nghia had, in fact, lived, and after nearly having his leg amputated and spending two years walking north on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, he finally returned home. In November 1993, Paul finally met the owner of the “Kon Tum Diary” in Hanoi, sparking a friendship that lasted until Nguyen Van Nghia’s death at the age of 96 in 2025. When he landed in Hanoi, Paul was named an “Ambassador of Good Will” by the Vietnamese. Three years later, Paul brought Nguyen Van Nghia to the United States for a tour and medical treatment. Paul later started a non-profit, Valor Administration, to bring US Veterans back to Vietnam to meet their former adversaries on a mission of healing. Near the end of the interview, Paul describes one of his most traumatic experiences from Vietnam. Following a fight at the Minh Yang Pass on Highway 19, the Soldiers had to bury their fallen enemy in a mass grave. Paul remembers sitting on a pile of bodies eating a can of peaches; “We handled it like it was nothing.” Paul’s work bringing healing to other Veterans has helped him reconcile his own traumatic memories from the war. Now Paul occasionally attends reunions to reconnect with other Veterans and friends. He concludes the interview stating that “war is war,” but his “understanding of the people has changed. They are human.” Now his service means life and being mentally and emotionally healthy. Helping others heal is Paul’s reward.