Arena Season 1, Episode 375

Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam · BBC Four · Friday, April 13

On 4 July 1967, Private Raymond Griffiths was killed in Vietnam. He was 19 years old - the average age of US combat troops in the war. He was one of more than 30,000 American service personnel killed or wounded in eight years of vicious fighting, which also saw the deaths of a million and a half Vietnamese soldiers and civilians. This powerful documentary tells the stories of the GI's in their own words, words they wrote home in letters from Vietnam. They were young and, like all soldiers, they wanted to return home alive.