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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...

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NEW: Putzel's account of a soldier's postwar agony included in 'War and Moral Injury'War and Moral Injury: A Reader
"One of the best books yet published on soldiers' total 'Vietnam experience'--intense combat in-country and then dealing with its aftermath...a must read."Jerry D. Morelock, Vietnam Magazine
"A great story...that needs to be told"Bob Schieffer, CBS News
"An 'All Quiet on the Western Front' of the war in Vietnam"Bill Kovach, former New York Times and Atlanta Journal-Constitution editor, co-author of 'Blur: How to Know What's True in the Age of Information Overload'
"This book is a triumph of both dogged, fair, accurate journalism and a singularly brilliant immersion into a world most readers will find literally incredible."Randolph C. Harrison, combat veteran, journalist, author
"Superb, one of the finest books of the Vietnam War era"'Avid Reader,' Amazon.com
"Readers will never again be able to delude themselves that men who go to war can walk away from it unscarred, even if those scars take years to surface."Robert Timberg, author of 'The Nightingale's Song,' a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; and 'Blue-Eyed Boy,' his memoir of being grievously wounded and his struggle to build a new life.
'Price' named Indie Book of the Year for war and military nonfiction.Foreword Review's top pick of books from independent & university presses.

indiefab-gold-award

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.

Read a sample chapter

Michael's Blog

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.


51 Years

Posted by Michael Putzel • February 10, 2022

More than a half-century ago, on February 10, 1971, I lost a dear friend, and the world lost a great photographer of war. He wasn’t alone. Three other photographers for Western publications and Sergeant Tu Vu, a South Vietnamese army combat photographer, went down, too, along with the crew of their South Vietnamese air force helicopter and two senior officers. The chopper apparently got lost and flew over a known enemy machine-gun position during the invasion of Laos, the most intensive helicopter combat ever.

This reminiscence of my friend and colleague, Henri Huet, was included in the book Henri Huet: J’etais Photographe de Guerre au Vietnam by Horst Faas and Hélène Gédouin. Published in French in 2006, the book contains many of Henri’s greatest photos, an enduring record of the brutality, […] READ MORE