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"I thought I'd seen everything about the American military experience in Vietnam, but here, 40 years later, Putzel's dramatic recounting of the exploits of Staff Sergeant Ed Keith during Operation Lam Son 719 were as riveting as anything I'd read.”
— Peter Arnett, winner of the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Vietnam War for The Associated Press
He called himself Staff Sergeant Keith, but word around C Troop had it that the spooky guy in tiger fatigues wasn't an enlisted man, maybe not even Army. Some thought he was CiA. But the troops were told that he had their commander's blessing, so they took him along. Ed Keith thought he had a special gift for finding the enemy--until his luck ran out...
By the Author of:
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The Price They Paid is the stunning and dramatic true story of a legendary air cavalry commander in Vietnam and the soldiers who followed him into the most intensive helicopter warfare ever—and how that brutal experience has changed their lives in the forty years since the war ended.
War and Moral Injury
A new book about the impact of war on the warriors who make it home includes a chapter by Michael Putzel about one soldier’s half century of agony after he failed to save a mortally wounded friend on a Vietnam battlefield. Putzel, author of The Price They Paid: Enduring Wounds of War, told part of helicopter Crew Chief Ricky Miller’s story in “Price” in 2015. He retold and updated it with Miller’s visit to his lost friend’s Kentucky family and, at last, to his friend’s grave. The Chapter, “Soldiers’ Guilt and Recompense,” appears in War and Moral Injury: A Reader, a comprehensive look at what its editors call “war’s deepest and most enduring invisible wound.”
Michael's Blog
A Sobering Surprise
Posted by Michael Putzel • April 06, 2024
BAYEUX, France—On a trip with our granddaughters to the Normandy beaches where Allied forces landed on D-Day, 1944, our guide surprised us with a detour to a secluded park in the nearby town of Bayeux, where we walked, practically alone, through a touching monument to our colleagues killed in war.
Memorial to fallen journalists in Normandy Photo by Nigel Stewart
On rectangular slabs of white marble standing tall along both sides of a winding path, still muddy from overnight rain, were carved the names of journalists. Some, like Ernie Pyle, were familiar from World War II history. Our guide, Nigel Stewart, pointed us to the name of another, a photographer for The Associated Press, where Ann and I both worked for many […] READ MORE
American filmmaker killed in Ukraine
Posted by Michael Putzel • March 21, 2022
Brent Renaud, an award-winning documentary filmmaker was killed March 13, 2022, by Russian forces who fired on his car at a checkpoint outside the capital city of Kyiv. He was the first foreign journalist killed reporting the war that has devastated Ukrainian cities.