A Story Meant to Be Told
For decades, Paul Reed has shared the extraordinary journey that began with a small diary recovered during a combat reconnaissance mission in Kontum Province, South Vietnam, near the tri-border area of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
It is a story of two soldiers who stood on opposing sides of war, the words that crossed the distance between them, and a journey that eventually brought Paul Reed and Nguyen Van Nghia face-to-face.
But every audience brings something different to the story.
For veterans, the journey can open conversations about the battles that sometimes continue long after the shooting has stopped.
For faith communities, it can explore forgiveness, reconciliation, and the possibility of peace where hatred once existed.
For civic, community, and educational audiences, it offers a deeply personal window into war, memory, humanity, and what can happen when former enemies finally encounter one another as men.
The story remains the same.
The doorway into it can change with the audience.
SPEAKING TOPICS
THE ENEMY HAD A NAME
For years, the enemy had been known by labels rather than as individual men.
Then a captured diary began revealing the person behind one of those labels.
The Enemy Had a Name follows Paul Reed’s journey from the battlefields of Vietnam to the discovery of Nguyen Van Nghia—and ultimately to the moment when two former enemies stood face-to-face.
It is a story about what can happen when the word enemy is finally replaced by a name.
THE SECOND BATTLEFIELD
The shooting stopped.
But another battlefield remained.
For years, Reed did not recognize the struggle taking place in what he describes as the gray matter between his ears—a battlefield between beliefs formed during war and truths that would emerge much later.
The Second Battlefield explores memory, guilt, hatred, forgiveness, and the difficult choices that followed when Reed could no longer see the enemy as he once had.
The first battlefield had been fought with weapons.
The second would be fought with truth.
WHAT WAR COULD NOT DESTROY
A small diary recovered during combat began a journey neither Paul Reed nor Nguyen Van Nghia could have imagined.
Across years, nations, cultures, and former enemy lines, their separate stories would eventually become intertwined.
What War Could Not Destroy is the broader presentation—the remarkable journey of the diary, the two men connected by it, and the friendship and reconciliation that followed.
Some parts of that journey have been witnessed by television audiences in both countries.
Others belong to the personal story behind the journey.
INVITE PAUL TO SPEAK
Paul Reed speaks to veterans organizations, churches and faith communities, civic and community groups, schools, historical organizations, and other audiences interested in the remarkable journey behind What War Could Not Destroy.
Presentations can be adapted to the audience and the time available while remaining grounded in the same true story.
Whether the focus is war and remembrance, the Second Battlefield, forgiveness and reconciliation, or the extraordinary journey of a little diary and the two former enemies connected by it, the purpose remains simple:
Tell the story truthfully.
Honor those who were lost.
And leave room for others to consider what the journey might mean to them.