The story of the reunion began in 1998 when Ponder, of Keystone Heights, was featured in The Clay County Line. The article was about Ponder and his search for soldiers who had served with him during the war.

Florida Times-Union photographer M. Jack Luedke was assigned to take a photo of Ponder. Ponder told Luedke he had seen a photo on the Internet tagged, "Mysterious Photojournalist." The only information posted on the site was that she was known as "Patches," because of all the division patches she received and wore on her jacket while covering the Vietnam War.

Ponder said he recognized the photo as that of Helen "Patches" Musgrove, a war correspondent whose articles appeared in the Jacksonville Journal, once the sister newspaper to The Florida Times-Union. Musgrove's columns were under the heading: "Our Woman In Vietnam."

"Even before I went to Vietnam, I always read her column," Ponder said. "She became a real link between families in the Jacksonville area and those fighting in Vietnam."

Although Ponder found many of those who served with him in the war via the Internet, he was unable to find anything else about Musgrove.

Later, Luedke began to search for information about the journalist the old-fashioned way -- by looking in the newspaper's library. He discovered that Musgrove accumulated 401 patches and 12 pounds of pins during her tour, along with 1,800 stories published in the Journal.

"She had a pretty thick file," Luedke said at the time.

An accompanying article about Musgrove noted that "the last time she visited the Jacksonville area was in 1987 after her two-volume book, Vietnam: Front Row Center was published. The following year Musgrove, 68, died in California.

The stories about Ponder and Musgrove were posted to the Times-Union's Internet archives.

A little while later, another Vietnam veteran, Edward J. Russell of Pennsylvania, also began searching for people he served with in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969. He had often thought about Musgrove, whom he describes as "an extraordinary woman who lived in Saigon and reported throughout South Vietnam for many years." She reported often from the Third Field Hospital in Vietnam, where Russell was an assistant pastor.

Russell found the archived County Line articles about Ponder and Musgrove, as well as an Internet posting from a California woman seeking information about an orphaned Vietnamese infant who was brought to the Third Field Hospital after Russell had left.

While reading Musgrove's books, Russell noted a reference to scrapbooks that had been maintained at the field hospital. Through much perseverance, Russell found the scrapbooks at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington. In one of the scrapbooks was a Musgrove column that was published in the Jacksonville Journal on July 7, 1969.

The column was about a young orphan and included the names of all those who had helped save her life. The orphan had been found in the arms of her mother, who had been dead for about two days.

In fact, Musgrove wrote, "Everyone in the village was dead, but this poor little orphan. Somehow she had survived both the [Viet Cong] and the heat."

The infant arrived at the hospital wrapped only in a GI blanket. Those on duty opened their hearts to her, helped restore her to health and clothed her. They also had her baptized, became her godparents and named her Kathleen.

The story of the young orphan may have ended there, if it were not for Russell's persistence. Musgrove may not have known that Kathleen was adopted by an American family and now lives in California with her husband, Billy Epps, and their three children.

Musgrove also never knew that more than 30 years after her story was published and later discovered in an old scrapbook, Russell and Kathleen Epps would be able to track down most of those mentioned in Musgrove's story, people who had never forgotten the infant they helped save.

On April 14, Epps was reunited with many of her rescuers at a get-together at Fort Sam Houston in Texas. The reunion is featured in a documentary, In the Shadow of the Blade, a story of the American soldiers in Vietnam whose lives were impacted by the Huey helicopter.

Kathleen Epps, along with Donna Rowe, the head nurse at the field hospital and Richard Hock, one of the medics, appeared recently on the CBS News Early Show to talk about the reunion.

Ponder was overjoyed hearing about how his comments to Luedke had resulted in the eventual reunion.

"That's just thrilling," Ponder said. "It brings tears to my eyes. But I'm not surprised. You make bonds in the military with people. It's hard to explain. You may not stay in contact, but the bond is always there and you would do anything for those people. And Helen Musgrove was as much of a solider as anyone who served. She brought aid and comfort to the GIs."

The documentary will have its premier Nov. 8 at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, according to Cheryl Fries, the producer.

"I'm just so thrilled to hear about that," Fries said when contacted for permission to use a photograph from the reunion that accompanies this story. "It is so important that these stories not be forgotten."

Thirty-years after Musgrove's column appeared in the Jacksonville Journal and five years after she was featured in The Clay County Line, she is still bringing aid and comfort to those who served.

To see photos of the reunion and read more about it, visit the Web site at www.Jacksonville.com   keyword: blade.