By KALEY LYON

klyon@dailynews.net

WAKEENEY -- On March 26, 1967, Wayne Purinton departed for Vietnam as a young soldier trained and ready for combat.

On March 26, 2009, he again will travel overseas, this time for the purpose of rebuilding in a land he once was trained to destroy.

"I feel like we did something very bad," Purinton said. "I want to go back on this effort to actually help build something instead of tearing everything down."

As part of the Veterans Vietnam Restoration Project, Purinton will join 11 other veterans in constructing a three-room addition to a kindergarten school.

This will be his third time to visit Vietnam since the war. A Trego County native, Purinton served from 1967 to 1968 as a rifleman with C Company, 5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division.

It's the terrible things he experienced during his first trip abroad that have inspired him to return for the purpose of doing good.

Purinton is ready to tell his story -- after his return, he plans to write the final chapter of his book, "The Impact of War: Kansas Farm Boy's Letters Home from Vietnam 1967-1968."

The book was inspired by a box of letters his parents found stashed in a closet. The family kept more than 100 letters Purinton wrote from the battlefield.

Ultimately, Purinton's mission is not only to heal his own wounds. He wants to help the countless other veterans who have seen the same destruction and dealt with the same pain, he said.

"I realize not all Vietnam veterans feel as I do, and they still harbor bad feelings about the war and the Vietnamese people," Purinton writes.

"My hope is that when I return from Vietnam, I will be able to spread the word about the good work VVRP is doing, that peace and healing can come about by facing the past," he writes.

The book also will include pictures from the war and information about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, as well as a transcript from an interview with a chaplain at Topeka's VA Medical Center describing the spiritual effect of combat.

Like many other veterans, it was difficult for Purinton to fit in once he returned home. He couldn't talk about his feelings and experiences, and he tried to "completely block out" the many nagging memories.

During the war, he was hit in the leg with some shrapnel. But he came home physically whole.

"But mentally, when I came home, I was emotionally numb," he said. "I couldn't talk about it at all to my family or my friends."

That changed when he visited a traveling war memorial in the early 1990s. The flood of memories washed in, and he knew he had to go back, he said.

"It seemed like a nightmare, and I just couldn't imagine what Vietnam was like," he said. "So I went back to see it in a whole new light. The Vietnamese people were very friendly, the countryside was very beautiful."

He joined a group of veterans for a 13-day tour in 1995 and made a solo journey back three years later to run a half-marathon. He was the only American in the race, he said.

He also has sponsored a young Vietnamese man through four years of college. He's never met his friend but is hoping for the opportunity to do so this spring.

Purinton, who serves as president of Hays Vietnam Veterans of America, has launched an educational program intended to teach children about the Vietnam War. "Once Enemies, Now Friends," consists of a 30-minute presentation he has shared with thousands of students in the past 12 years, he said.

"It's helped to see those people as friends instead of enemies," Purinton said. "I'm hoping this trip will be my final trip back there, and this trip will be very healing because of the fact that we are constructing, we're doing something good in Vietnam."