On the back of his helmet he had painted in bright colors a small cluster of flowers and the words I Don't Dig it Either. This was the helmet he was sure to wear when dropping off and picking up surveillance and combat patrols in the jungles of Vietnam. He was 21 years old. A Warrant Officer. A highly-trained helicopter pilot. And for ten months straight, he flew "insertion" and "extraction" missions several times a day.

Sometimes the "landing zones" would be so small and cluttered with foliage that he'd squirm the helicopter down between the trees, the rotor blades chopping greenery along the way like a food processor. Countless times he was sure there was no way in, or no way out if he DID get in. But he went in anyway. It was his job. Sometimes the only available place to land was in flames. Sometimes the smoke was so thick he couldn't see his way. But, of course, he'd go in anyway. At these times, he'd angle the craft in such a way that the rotor blades would act as a fan blowing back the flames and the smoke.

Often he did this while taking on enemy fire. He knew it, but he couldn't distinguish it from "friendly" fire and rocket cover. So he did what he could to put it away, to put it someplace else in his mind so that he could just go about his business.

When "inserting," he'd go in as quickly as possible. Hovering for the briefest moment before impact not only made him and his crew and his payload more vulnerable to enemy fire but also was an unintentional invitation to the troops to jump from the ship prematurely, risking busted bones, ankles, knees. So he landed quickly. At times the ground was so precarious he'd balance the ship on one skid. At these times his challenge was to maintain a steady balance while the weight on his ship kept shifting as troops, one by one, jumped to the ground.

When "extracting" it was the same thing, in and out as quickly as possible, giving spent troops only the time they needed to get from cover and to scramble aboard with their wounded, their dead, their prisoners. And this is how he lived for ten consecutive months of his life, when he was 21, when most American young men his age were in classrooms, roaming college campuses, going to movies, to Canada, to football games, rooting for the home team, protesting a war they had no understanding of whatsoever. That was 30 years ago. And for the most part, those years have been reasonably quiet.

Today Dennis Kistler lives with his wife, son and daughter, in Stow, a town of 6,000 known for its apple orchards and golf courses. The town has a traffic light, a donut shop with a counter, a small airport where people fly their small private planes in for breakfast or lunch, a couple of pizza shops, a grocery store, a video rental store. Town business is taken care of by open town meetings where the majority rules. Dennis makes a living for himself and his family by managing a construction company, which he founded 20 years ago. Kistler & Knapp Builders, Inc., an $8 million dollar company based in Acton, employs 30 people who build multi-million dollar homes throughout Eastern Massachusetts. In his spare time, Dennis plays jazz on an electric guitar he designed and built himself. Occasionally he plays local jazz concerts with fellow jazz musicians.

For the past 30 years, Dennis has done what was necessary to put Vietnam behind him, to make it "just another episode in my life." But like thousands and thousands of Vietnam veterans, he has felt the dark cloud, the stigma, that hangs over them all. For 30 years, he's quietly endured the intensity of public and private attitudes that have ranged from callous indifference to blatant icy hostility. So over the years he learned to say little. He learned to keep Vietnam to himself. Few friends and neighbors know of his war background. The subject has hardly ever come up. Mostly he's just gone about his day with Vietnam and its haunting memories imbedded deep below the surface, away from the critics, away from himself.

Until recently.

Through the Internet he found himself reconnected with an old flight-school buddy who introduced him to a periodical published by an association of helicopter pilots who flew in Vietnam. In the first issue was a lead line asking for pilots who had flown troops from the Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol, F Company, 51st Infantry, anytime during 1967 to 1969, to call a particular telephone number.

This was Dennis. So he called.

This is Don Hall, said the voice on the other end. And Dennis' life angled sharply. Hall, a former "Lurp" (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol), the organization for whom Dennis provided transportation, said he was producing a documentary about the Lurps for television. Since the helicopter pilots had been such an integral part of their mission, and the Lurps had such admiration and respect for their skill and courage, would Dennis be interested in going to Florida and being interviewed on camera by the film director? In 30 years no one had ever said the words to Dennis. No one had ever talked about his "skill," his "courage."

After several more phone conversations and an exchange of e-mail messages with Hall and a few other Lurps, Dennis found himself sitting in a make-shift studio in Florida with an off-camera interviewer asking him detailed, pointed questions about his experiences in Vietnam. There were so many memories, and so little time. He never got to the one about his attempt to rescue badly wounded Cambodians. They were desperately hacking a landing zone out of the jungle, and he tried getting in, weaving his tail boom in spaces between trees too narrow for the main rotor.

When he got through most of the jungle canopy he knew that the remaining vegetation made it hopeless. He knew if he continued he'd kill his crew and the Cambodians under him. He realized that his need to bring out the wounded had almost corrupted his judgment as a pilot, and he knew he no longer had a choice. He had to leave. Their faces, as he pulled up and away, are clear in his mind to this day.

Or the one about lying under a truck for cover while his home base was being shelled. He shared the cover with a buddy. But there was only one helmet. With explosions rocking the truck, the two argued about who was going to wear the helmet. Each one wanted the other to wear it. Nor was he able to get to the memory of being on the ground in the jungle in an elongated clearing. At one end was intense enemy fire, at the other trees so tall he had no way of getting over them. He had passengers and he had a tough choice to make. He chose the trees, in spite of the tail wind. Drawing on every ounce of flying skill he could muster, balancing the unbelievably tight tolerances and holding his breath, he was somehow able to clear the trees. To this day he marvels at his own accomplishment, of "almost defying the laws of physics."

For a long full day Dennis and the Lurps shared stories and talked about the good times as well as the bad. He found that contact with men who understood and were grateful for the role he played was food for his soul. And as quickly as it had started, it was over. He was back home, this time, though, with bubbled-up memories, and with books written by and about Lurps, and with a significant shift in attitude. He was tired of the stigma. Tired of the silence. Tired of the awkwardness. Tired of the closet. No more. He now knew in the marrow of his bones, that he was proud of how he'd served, of how he'd performed, of the extraordinary courage he'd had. He knew that, without question, he'd served his country with style and grace. And he knew that if anybody didn't understand that it was not his problem, it was theirs.

The Vietnam war was piped into everybody's living room. People at home ate their TV dinners while watching live coverage nightly. TV news, always hungry for sensationalism, went out of its way to emphasize the most negative imagery it could find. Quickly, it established a stereotype of the Vietnam veteran that the country bought into without even trying. According to the stereotype, at best veterans were children, most of them drafted. They were portrayed as victims of a political system, most of them hooked on drugs. They were supposed to be ill trained. Most of them fought under the influence of hallucinogens. When their tour was over they continued to wear camouflage fatigues or jeans with military patches. They had very long hair and beards. They all suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and suffered from ungodly nightmares. They were all lost, and drank themselves senseless. They couldn't hold families together. They were ready to attack gasoline stations at a moments notice. A good deal of them were homeless.

They told incredible horror stories. Almost all of them somehow mysteriously belonged to elite fighting forces that worked behind enemy lines. They were all involved in covert operations. They had hand-to-hand combat with the enemy. They were snipers. They all ate strange things from the jungles just to survive. At their very worst, they were killers of old women and babies. They were all like William Calley of My Lai infamy. And this was the stereotype. And for the most part the country bought it hook line and sinker. And, of course, it left absolutely no room at all for the bright young man interested in serving his country, for the efficient, well-trained soldier performing selflessly and professionally, for the veteran who while feeling real pride in the way he served his country returns home, manages the memories, and gets on with life. This image simply didn't make very interesting television.

Like thousands of other real Vietnam combat veterans, Dennis has felt the full force of the TV stereotype for 30 years, from the moment he stepped off the plane in the U.S. when his tour of duty was over. For 30 years he has felt the awkwardness and the rejection of being a veteran of an unpopular war. Every war has its phonies. For some reason a sizable percentage of veterans tend to exaggerate their war experiences. Some just simply make them up. And a lot of these veterans are naively awarded medals. WWII -- the "good" war -- had its percentage of phonies. But the stories veterans told were about good American boys saving good American boys, and about good American boys dying in each other's arms.

Vietnam was different. Here, the made-up stories were about covert operations, vicious jungle fighting and all manner of atrocities. The truth is that most real Vietnam war heroes, like Dennis, are, for the most part, anonymous. And most of them have had their valor stolen by thousands of the phonies celebrated by television looking for a good story.

Dennis Kistler has no medals. He has no Medal of Honor. No Distinguished Service Cross. No Bronze Star. Nothing symbolic of his bravery. He just flew his missions several times a day while being shot at a good part of the time. There was nobody there to write him up, to put him in for a medal. His unit was just too busy for all that. They had a job to do, and the focus was on doing it, not on awarding itself medals. For ten months out of his life, at the most tender of ages, he was in harm's way, risking life and limb... because "that's what my country asked me to do." There was no more to it than that.

Come winter, the story of the "Lurps" and the helicopter pilots that got them in and out of the jungle, will be told on television, on PBS or the History Channel. It is most likely going to be titled, "Men with Painted Faces." (The North Vietnamese Army was terrified of the Lurps. Their leaders were always warning them to "watch out for the men with painted faces.") Dennis has no real explanation as to how he came back alive and with all his parts. Being a very good pilot had something to do with, he acknowledges. But that wasn't all. "I was very lucky," he says, and he leans back in his chair, folds his arms across his chest. His body tightens, and he looks at a corner of the room. "The day I arrived in Vietnam, most of the helicopters there had been shot down," he says. "The odds were not with me."

He's quiet for a moment. Then his eyes fill up.