Free Republic

For most of her life, Phuc writes in a new memoir, she tried to run away from that moment when she became the Napalm Girl. Throughout "Fire Road," she explains how she came to see her life instead as a journey toward faith and peace. Phuc's survival and the errant bombing of civilians in her village outside Saigon by the South Vietnamese military have been comprehensively explored by journalists in the decades since the war, and in Denise Chong's 1999 book, "The Girl in the Picture," that detailed the war from the Vietnamese perspective. "Fire Road," written with Ashley Wiersma,...

*excerpt* Life under the new regime became tough. Medical treatment and painkillers were expensive and hard to find for the teenager, who still suffered extreme headaches and pain. She worked hard and was accepted into medical school to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor. But all that ended once the new communist leaders realized the propaganda value of the `napalm girl' in the photo. She was forced to quit college and return to her home province, where she was trotted out to meet foreign journalists. The visits were monitored and controlled, her words scripted. She smiled and played her...

...It only took a second for Associated Press photographer Huynh Cong "Nick" Ut to snap the iconic black-and-white image 40 years ago. It communicated the horrors of the Vietnam War in a way words could never describe, helping to end one of America's darkest eras. "I really wanted to escape from that little girl," says the subject of photo, Kim Phuc, now 49. "But it seems to me that the picture didn't let me go." ...She worked hard and was accepted into medical school to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor. But all that ended once the new communist...