In 2010, the British newspaper Evening Standard, in honor of the approaching 35th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, reissued a 1975 compilation of front line stories by Standard war correspondent Max Hastings.

Searching For Albert, Part 2Hastings, who came to Vietnam with the first wave of British combat troops in 1967 and left the country only when the last Western diplomats were being evacuated from Saigon in 1975, was widely respected throughout Britain both for the clarity of his reports and his ability to empathize with the "squaddies"(foot soldiers) who made up the backbone of the British expeditionary force in Vietnam. 2nd installment of Tommies by Chris OakleyHastings also enjoyed a substantial following in Canada and the United States, where his stories appeared in over a hundred newspapers via the Associated Press, and in Australia, where millions of listeners faithfully tuned in to his monthly radio commentaries for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.


Also on this day in 2010, the New York Times printed a guest op-ed article by American film director Oliver Stone defending Ken Loach's adaptation of Searching For Albert. Stone was no stranger to controversy when it came to Vietnam movies-- he'd generated a fair amount of it himself with his 1986 drama Platoon. In his Times commentary Stone described Albert as "a needed window into a chapter of the war seldom told in most U.S. history books". When Albert made its American theatrical debut in Los Angeles ten months later, Stone was among the VIP guests who attended the premiere.