Tex Stiteler returned to Vietnam in 2001, more than three decades after his first visit as a U.S. Marine ended with a neck wound that left him hospitalized for eight months. Since then, he's been back 17 times.

Stiteler, 63, is the president of Vietnam Battlefield Tours (VietnamBattlefieldTours.com), a not-for-profit organization based in San Antonio that is dedicated to taking veterans back to where they served and fought more than four decades ago.

The Marines called him GTO.  Mike Neil thought of him as a son.  Now, 40 years later, Neil returns to battle his demons – and find the boy.

GTO was a boy befriended by Neil's platoon.  He was 11, the ringleader of a group of children who wandered over regularly from their village to a nearby bridge the Marines were guarding.  His father was the village barber.

For Don Alsbro and many other Vietnam War veterans, Hanoi, Hue, Khe Sanh, Da Nang and villages such as An Khe are names encased in a vivid, 40-year-old time capsule.

Opening that time capsule by entering it had several objectives for Alsbro, of Benton Harbor, and a small group of veterans and their wives who headed for Southeast Asia on April 19 for a 19-day trip.

Recently VBT helped a woman named Judy find the site where her young husband had been shot down in 1969.  The couple's daughter, Marcie, was only 35 days old when she lost her father, and she dreamed of visiting Vietnam to learn more about her father's death.  Unfortunately, Marcie died before she could visit Vietnam.  Her mother, Judy, made the trip to honor both her husband and daughter.