Keith Morrison Correspondent • Profile

LUTTRELL: It's like somebody just jammed you in the gut with a bayonet or something. I mean it's always there.

He's pushing 60 now -- young for a great-grandfather, though his wife jokes that he looks much older.

Perhaps it's because he has seen the future -- through his own turmoil -- for thousands of American service people.

It’s time now, he says, to warn them.

LUTTRELL: How many more people out there that are-- experiencing the same thing as I am?

A great many of them, as we will find out later.

DUCKKWORTH: We've learned a lot of lessons from the Vietnam era and the things that were put in place from that time is what we're using to to take care of our younger vets now.

Rich Luttrell has spent years working with veterans, most of whom, just like him, are deeply proud of their service.

Volunteers. True patriots.

He knows all too well what many of them are in for... back home.

LUTTRELL: These guys need somebody to talk to they really do. I mean they really do. You know that was the worst thing for me was to come home and bury that ... all those years, just to bury it

Bury it? Bury what? The flip side of the valor our men and women practice in war. The price they pay for what they do for us.

And Rich Luttrell? Well, what happened to him is, as you'll see, almost beyond imagining.

RICH LUTTRELL: It was the one moment, and the one act in combat that has been a burden for me for 33 something years.

It was 1967. Richard Luttrell, just barely old enough to sign up, was where he wanted to be -- in the 101st airborne.

He volunteered for Vietnam.

LUTTRELL: The day I got to my unit, the chopper came down in the jungle -- and I saw the members of my platoon standing around my age... and these were some tough-looking guys. Just their eyes. And I can remember thinking My God, what have I got myself into?

And so this puny kid from the projects found himself in a world for which no amount of training could adequately prepare. It is hot here, or wet, or both. No roof, no bed, no rest, no break from the fear. Just a scrawny kid with a back pack almost as big as he was who learned that the first rule is, you keep going and going and going.

LUTTRELL: There was times I can remember really trying to choke the tears back -- like "God, please stop, I can't go no more." And we'd do that from daylight til dark. And I thought, "What am I gonna do if we get in a firefight? I can't move, I'm so tired. What do I do in a firefight? And I never was prepared for that ...

And then came the day that changed everything. It was hot, as always, like wearing a coat in a steam room, he had no idea his enemy was just a few feet away in the jungle.

LUTTRELL: Out of the corner of my right eye I see movement ... I could see an NVA soldier leaning over with an AK 47, squatting.

KEITH MORRISON, Dateline NBC: First time you'd ever seen a North Vietnamese soldier.

LUTTRELL: Right, in my whole life, ever seen one.

He was barely 18, suddenly flooded with fear. His body seemed to freeze. He couldn't let it.

LUTTRELL: I had to react. I had to do something, it was my decision.

He was in the enemy's gun sight. Death was a heartbeat away.

He turned, and looked the enemy soldier full in the face.

LUTTRELL: It seemed like we stared at each other for a long time.

And then, like it was all in slow motion, he pulled the trigger.

LUTTRELL: And I just started firing, full automatic. And he went down. It turned into a pretty heavy firefight. And I wasn't smart enough to hit the ground -- and somebody tackled me, and took me to the ground.

MORRISON: Did you realize that particular North Vietnamese soldier could have killed you before you even saw him?

LUTTRELL: Absolutely, absolutely. And I've wondered even today - I go through my mind and I wonder why didn't he fire?

But that is not what played on rich, haunted him, year after year after year: Not the gunfight, nor living in the moment of that terror. There would be a lot of that.

No, it was the one thought he hadn't truly considered before... aasn't prepared for it.

LUTTRELL: After the firefight is over. After the adrenaline rush is over, and you're all soaking wet, and you feel like your legs won't hold you And it hits you -- I just took a life.

And that's when he saw it: the tiny photograph.

Right there on the jungle path is where it began to weave a whole new story for his life.

LUTTRELL: I seen this picture sticking out partially out. It looked like (closes eyes) the face of a little girl with some long hair or something. And I pulled it out and it was real tiny. And it was a picture of a soldier and a little girl. I can remember holding the photo and actually squatting and getting close to the soldier and actually looking in his face and looking at the photo, and looking at his face.

Here was the man he had just killed. But who was that little girl? His daughter?

They seemed so serious. So, sad, somehow. Like the picture was taken just before they said goodbye. Before her father went off to war.

MORRISON: And that hit you?

LUTTRELL: It hit me really hard.

Not for long, mind you. Rich stuffed the tiny picture into his wallet. And within minutes they moved out again.

Not for a moment, by the way, should you believe that rich was a reluctant soldier. When it came time again to use his weapon he did not hesitate.

He developed an uncommon expertise at the dangerous and gruesome business of clearing underground tunnels of enemy personnel.

INTERACTIVE On killing's cost Dateline producer Vince Sturla considers the psychological costs of combat. Dateline NBC

He became skilled at hand to hand combat, at surviving.

LUTTRELL: I can remember being on a hill one night and mortar rounds jut pounding in the dark, and hearing guys screaming and getting blown out of holes. And pulling my rucksack over my head and thinking, “God, don't let one hit me.”

He had just 20 days left, when the bullet ripped into his back. The wound that sent him home...

LUTTRELL: I can remember, when I got on the helicopter, all of a sudden this tremendous guilt hit me, like, “Where are you going? What are you doing? What are you leaving these guys for?”

Rich came home to a case full of medals and married his hometown sweetheart, Carole. And as the ‘60s gave way to the ‘70s, the ‘80s he tried to put Vietnam behind him.

CAROLE: He really didn't talk about Vietnam for years. It just was something he kept very personal, and very hidden.

But all the while, there in his wallet, was that picture. The little girl who would not let him go.

Of course, he didn't know yet - how could he? What that little image had in store for him.

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