WAYNE L. FISCHER, THEN CAPTAIN

“THE SOUTH VIETNAMESE PEOPLE I really felt sorry for because during the days, during the daytime, we were going to villages and harassing, looking for ammo stores. The Viet Cong would come in at night and TAKE THEIR YOUNG MEN AND HUSBANDS AWAY and make them soldiers. I felt really sorry for them because, I got a picture of a camp where if we were going to bomb an area, B-52s, they would drop leaflets ahead of time [and] say, "You need to move to this camp to be safe." Christ, YOU DIDN'T KNOW WHO THE GOOD GUYS AND BAD GUYS WERE anyway. Just because they wore black pajamas didn't mean they were bad, that’s just the native wear. You had to have compassion for the families and the kids and stuff, because they were just caught up in the middle of nowhere. The WOMEN WERE CAUGHT UP IN IT ALL and I'm sure some of them were NVA--or Viet Cong. Did they support them? Sure. That was their husband, sons. It’s hard to be critical of that, but there was no doubt they were still the enemy--the Viet Cong, NVA, you couldn't tell them apart from the locals, but still the enemy, so you needed to be cautious.”

This broadside featuring the words of Vietnam War veteran Wayne L. Fischer was printed for the Pritzker Military Museum & Library's 2016 exhibit Hunting Charlie: Finding the Enemy in the Vietnam War. Set in Arial and designed by Kenneth Clarke and Kat Latham.