Pittsburgh Vietnam veteran reunites with fellow soldiers decades after serving together in combat

This year marks the 51st anniversary of the end of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

Thousands of men and women from western Pennsylvania served in what was the longest war in American history before the war in Afghanistan.

In May, Pittsburgh native Thomas Fitzgerald and Phil Brown of Kentucky had this reunion on the way to visit Duane Hardesty, who's battling age-related health issues.

All three are Vietnam vets, friends reuniting in Tacoma, Washington, 57 years since Vietnam, since the A Shau Valley.

"I went to Vietnam in 1968. I was 24 years old. Second lieutenant when I got in the country," said retired Colonel Duane Hardesty.

The three ran together in an M-113 armored personnel carrier. They saw the worst war and had some interesting times. Including that of a fellow soldier who'd regale them with his harrowing combat stories involving delivering them meals.

"There was a cook who'd bring out the food in a big brown can, and snipers would shoot it all up."

Tom Fitzgerald was a medic in country who'd become an Allegheny County police detective.

"He saved more lives and was nothing but a skinny little old 19-year-old kid."

Fitzgerald's flair for courage was displayed when he left the safety of his APC to save the lives of other Americans severely injured when their vehicle was hit on March 23, 1969, all in a hail of enemy small arms fire. He was awarded the Silver Star.

"He should have had a Medal of Honor."

Philip Brown left Vietnam and returned to Kentucky, to his family farm. Hardesty made the army a career. Fitzgerald would return to Vietnam in 1995.

"It was crazy. I never seen anything like it," Fitzgerald recalled.

The return trip was captured by now-retired KDKA reporter Mary Robb Jackson and her husband, now-retired KDKA chief photographer Michael Challik, two decades after the fall of Saigon.

"We put a group together and raised $50,000, and built a school together in Da Nang."

Now, 30-plus years after that, these three men, once strong in the flower of their youth, are still strong but wilting a little. These men, who were once strangers, turned soldiers, became brothers, and were together one more time.

"I went over there to help. Now, I feel I did something, I left something there."