Fifty years after a North Vietnamese tank came crashing through the front gate of Saigon's presidential palace and brought an end to the nearly two-decade Vietnam War, the metropolis that has since been called Ho Chi Minh City is gearing up for a celebration.

As a young U.S. intelligence analyst in Saigon during the Vietnam War, Chuck Searcy never thought that 50 years later he would be living in Communist Vietnam and helping its people fight a different war against unexploded mines.

The Vietnam War greatly impacted U.S. society from the passage of the War Powers Resolution that restricts the president’s ability to send troops into extended combat without congressional approval to the cementing of college campuses as centers of student activism.