I didn't take a lot of photographs initially. I was just trying to learn what I was supposed to do, and I just wanted to be careful about what I did and not get myself hurt or hurt somebody else. But after a couple of weeks, I asked the officer in charge if it was OK if I bring my camera out on a mission. And he said, “Well, you can bring it out but if you screw up once, the camera is going.”

I don't have a single picture of combat because if we were in a combat situation, I wasn't using the camera. So I’d take pictures on the helicopter ride in or, if we were taking trucks, on the truck ride in. Every hour we took a five-minute break while on patrol, and then I'd pull the camera out and take pictures of the guys around me. And then if we had a day off I would take pictures in our base camp.

When I took pictures of villagers -- I didn't speak Vietnamese -- I would just point to the camera and point to them and most people nodded yes or something else. So I took their pictures and if they said no, I said fine. It was just courtesy. We were trying to win the hearts and minds of local people. Some of the villages, we knew some Viet Cong were embedded there, so we'd rather be talking to them and be friendly than have them throwing grenades at us.

When I got back, I was well aware of the fact that the majority of people were upset with the war. So I got home, took the uniform off, put it away and never put it back on again. Basically, I just didn't talk about it, and that continued for 40-plus years. Many friends and co-workers did not know I was a Vietnam vet.

I just didn't want to get into a big argument with somebody. Right or wrong, I thought it was right at the time, and I wanted to get on with my life, and I've met a lot of other vets who've done the same thing. Some still won't talk about it. Others will.

That only changed in 2013 when a local high school English teacher asked me to give a talk to her class. The teacher is a friend of the family, and so she had known I was a Vietnam veteran.

Steven Burchik served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. While he was deployed, he bought a camera and took photos of his fellow soldiers, Vietnamese villagers and the countryside – photos he didn't show anyone for 40 years after he got home. He was photographed in his home on Sept. 13, 2017. — Steven Burchik served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. While he was deployed, he bought a camera and took photos of his fellow soldiers, Vietnamese villagers and the countryside – photos he didn't show anyone for 40-plus years after he got home. He was photographed in his home on Sept. 13, 2017. (Bert Johnson/KQED)

I was a little apprehensive. I put the presentation together, and it went very well, and I actually talked to two sections of her class. The students were respectful, and it was a good conversation. I thought that was the end of it.

Well, two nights later the teacher invites my wife and I to dinner, and then she hands me a folder with 60 letters from the students. Each student wrote a short letter saying, thank you for sharing your story. And that was the first time in more than 40 years that anybody had said, “We appreciate your service, whether the cause was right or wrong.”

That was a major turning point for me. It was very emotional after all those years of not talking about it, to have somebody say something positive. So my life has turned around 180 degrees.

I think the biggest thing is the reaction I've gotten. I anticipated the same reaction that I probably would have gotten in 1969, and it was hard for me to believe that people's views would change. Part of it is time has passed, so it's not quite as raw for a lot of people.

But I'm a little older now, I'm in my early 70s, and a lot of the population wasn't even born during the Vietnam War. So as far as I'm concerned, and I guess other Vietnam vets as well, it's very fresh in our minds. But for a lot of the population it's something different and far removed.

Since 2013, Burchick has begun giving talks and exhibiting his photos in galleries and museums, and he has published two books about his time in Vietnam. He lives in the East Bay with his wife, whom he married immediately after returning from the war.

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