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Suel Jones, 70, of Kerrville, Texas, served as a Marine in the Vietnam War from May 1968 to June 1969, and now lives part of the year in Da Nang, Vietnam. As a fire team leader along the Demilitarized Zone, Jones took part in some of the fiercest combat of the war, an experience that altered him profoundly. He says that while he didn't necessarily believe in the war, "I believed in my country," a faith that steadily eroded as the body count grew. "It was kind of like taking water out of the ocean," he says. "I realized we weren't accomplishing a thing in the world except getting people killed and killing a lot of people." Struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, Jones  started therapy in 1995 and returned to Vietnam for the first time in 1998. He lived four years in Hanoi, working with Agent Orange victims, and eventually wrote a book about his experiences in combat and as a returning veteran. Jones says that while he has come to terms with the guilt he felt in the past, he is still angry that he and others were sent to fight in "an unjust war." "What I did was wrong," he says. "They stole my pride. They stole my morale. They stole my pride in being a Marine. My government stole it from me, and I'll never forgive them for that." He frequently lectures in the United States and elsewhere about the senselessness and brutality of war. "I don't want to be the Marine who recruits the next Marine," he says. Feb. 11, 2013.
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