On 4 July 1967, Private Raymond Griffiths was killed in Vietnam. He was 19 years old - the average age of US combat troops in the war. He was one of more than 30,000 American service personnel killed or wounded in eight years of vicious fighting, which also saw the deaths of a million and a half Vietnamese soldiers and civilians.

This powerful documentary tells the stories of the GI's in their own words, words they wrote home in letters from Vietnam. They were young and, like all soldiers, they wanted to return home alive.

A montage of news footage is accompanied by readings from the letters backed by the evocative music of those years from the Doors, Jimmy Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Buffalo Springfield, the Band and others - all merging into a portrait of a cataclysmic war. Featuring the voices of Robert de Niro, Martin Sheen, Matt Dillon, Kathleen Turner, Michael J Fox, Ellen Burstyn, John Heard, Sean Penn, Robin Williams, Willem Dafoe, Tom Berenger and Harvey Keitel.

Based on the book "Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam"