Years after the end of the war, the plight of the Viet Nam veteran in this country remains a painful and emotional subject. For the TIME correspondents who worked on this week's revealing cover story it also proved to be the source of a moving assignment. Boston Bureau Chief Barry Hillenbrand, who covered Viet Nam for TIME from 1972 to 1974, discovered that his war experience provided an important link with the veterans he met. Says Hillenbrand: "For months after leaving Indochina, the innocent whoosh of a water heater could trigger the memory of a rocket attack. It was not hard for me to know how veterans felt when they returned." New York Bureau Chief Peter Stoler, who served as an infantryman in Korea for 14 months, was also able to bring a soldier's point of view to his conversations with the head of Viet Nam Veterans of America. In Washington, D.C., Correspondent David Jackson spent time with debilitated victims of the toxic herbicide Agent Orange and reported on their disheartening battle with the federal bureaucracy. Says Jackson: "I understood the hurdles that veterans face when their fears, and sometimes even their symptoms, aren't enough to get them satisfactory answers." The story brought some TIME reporters face to face with the generational ironies of the war. Correspondent Jeff Melvoin talked with a Navy veteran in Los Angeles who was his own age, 28: "I realized that at the same time I was flying to Harvard for my freshman year, he was on a ship steaming for Viet Nam." Atlanta Correspondent Anne Constable, who demonstrated against the war as a student at Simmons College, was struck by "how antiwar politics had prevented me and my generation from separating the war from the warrior. I hope we can finally welcome them home."

The story was researched by Eileen Chiu and Brigid O'Hara-Forster and written by Senior Writer Lance Morrow, who wrote a much acclaimed Essay on Viet Nam veterans (TIME, June 1). Says Morrow: "Viet Nam was a shattering blow to this country. Americans are slowly beginning to face that complicated era and are giving Viet Nam veterans the help, acknowledgment and respect that they deserve."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.