What War Could Not Destroy
A true story of war, forgiveness, reconciliation, and a friendship no battlefield could have predicted.
Years after his service with the 173rd Airborne Brigade Paul Reed began uncovering the remarkable story behind a small diary recovered during war—a story that would eventually carry him back to Vietnam and face-to-face with the man who had written it.
The diary belonged to Nguyen Van Nghia, a North Vietnamese Army officer who had been promoted to Second Lieutenant.
What began with words written during war would eventually grow into a friendship neither man could have imagined when they stood on opposing sides.
But What War Could Not Destroy is about far more than the meeting of two former enemies.
It is the story of what happened between the battlefield and reconciliation—the memories carried home, the unanswered questions, the Second Battlefield that remained undiscovered for years, and an unexpected journey that would eventually challenge what Reed thought he understood about the enemy, the war, and himself.
Kontum Diary: Captured Writings Bring Peace to a Vietnam Veteran told one man’s story; What War Could Not Destroy: Two Soldiers, One Diary, and Crossing From War to Peace brings both men’s stories together, intertwining their separate journeys into the fuller story neither could have told alone.
The website introduces the journey.
The book takes you inside it.
TWO LIVES. ONE STORY.
Kontum Diary introduced readers to a remarkable story born from a diary recovered during the Vietnam War.
What War Could Not Destroy goes further.
For the first time, the journeys of Paul Reed and Nguyen Van Nghia are brought together within the same story—two men who experienced the same war from opposite sides and whose lives became connected by words written in a little diary.
Their paths began separately.
The diary brought those paths together.
But what happened afterward could not be understood completely through the story of either man alone.
What War Could Not Destroy follows their intertwined journeys beyond the battlefield and beyond their first meeting, revealing events, struggles, relationships, and consequences that unfolded across decades and across two countries.
It is not simply the story of an American soldier.
It is not simply the story of a Vietnamese officer.
It is the story of what happened when their two stories became one.
CONTINUE THE JOURNEY
The website has shown where the journey began.
It has shown how a little diary crossed from one side of a war to the other—and how, twenty-five years later, it made an extraordinary journey back toward the people and the life from which it had first departed.
But Full Circle was not the end of the story.
It was the beginning of another part of it.
There were other journeys. Other discoveries. Other moments neither man could have anticipated when they first stood on opposing sides of a war.
Those chapters belong to the book.
What War Could Not Destroy
Discover the rest of the journey.
Voices Along the Journey
The book feels “real,” almost as if you’re sitting with a cup of coffee having an intimate conversation with Paul himself.
— Bibi Brown, Dallas, Texas
“As a young boy and son of the Province Chief of Kontum during Paul’s time there, I never imagined that decades later, his remarkable journey would touch my heart so deeply and remind me that even the deepest wounds of war can heal through kindness, forgiveness, and friendship.”
— DT Nguyen