Vietnam War

John McAuliff’s journey from Vietnam War protester to peace advocate spans decades — from refusing the draft to helping normalize U.S.-Vietnam relations. Now living in Riverhead, he reflects on a life shaped by resistance and reconciliation.

Gary Joyce of Aquebogue spent 27 months in Vietnam as a paratrooper on long-range recon missions. “Every day you’re living on a red line,” he says — and decades later, the war is still the first and last thing on his mind each day.

"It just turned out it was wrong. We shouldn't have been there," Vietnam War veteran Fred McLaughlin of Riverhead said. War is "a waste of life, he said. "What does it accomplish?”

Ronnie Smith, 76, of Riverhead, reflects on the "11 months, 24 days and 7 hours" he was deployed in Vietnam in 1967-1968 before he'd even turned 20 years old —and how it deeply affected the rest of his life.

Former Riverhead VFW Post Commander Joseph Edler recalls his combat experience in Vietnam, including being wounded and losing close friends, as well as his return home and faced hostility instead of honor, shaping his silence about the war for decades.

Today marks 50 years since the end of a war so divisive that even half a century later, it remains a source of controversy and pain for those who lived through it, fought in it, or lost loved ones to it. More than 58,000 U.S. service members died in Vietnam, and the scars of that conflict still run deep.

"I think the Lord told Joe to pull out his phone to show us pictures of his buddies lost in Vietnam." A chance meeting at Papa Nick's on Main Street led to an East Setauket woman helping to connect Vietnam War veteran Joseph Edler with the family of his fallen buddy, who grew up in the same upstate town as Vitello over half a century ago.

Christmas came early this year for disabled Vietnam War combat veteran Thomas Kurpetski of Riverhead. More than half a century after his service, the Marine Corps lance corporal today received the medals he earned during his service in Vietnam.

Tuesday marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Garfield Langhorn Jr., an Army radio man who threw himself on a live grenade to save fellow soldiers after an ambush in the Vietnamese jungle on Jan. 15, 1969.

Though the war that took more than 58,000 American lives ended nearly 40 years ago, emotions still run high among veterans and most...