Gunshots, pen to paper, recorded tapes. This was the life of Lt. Colonel Donald Carl Lundquist as he fought his way through the Vietnam War while sending more than 300 letters and over 60 hours of audio tapes back to his wife and three-and-a-half-year-old daughter in Germany over the span of a year.
His daughter, five-year-old Jacqueline Lundquist, lost him to a heart attack six months after he returned from war. The letters and tapes were transported in a tattered box from Germany back to America, where Jacqueline was born. Her mother decided to settle into the Wedgewood West apartments of Annandale, where these mementos of her father stayed untouched.
As an adult, Jacqueline decided to write a book about her experience with her father’s letters, called Letters from Vietnam: A Daughter’s Search for Her Father, and later produce a documentary, Letters from the Battlefield, which will be shown in the auditorium on April 8th at 6pm following the 5:15pm reception held by the PTSA (Parent Teacher Student Association). A Q&A will be held after the screening with Lunquist, Jude Pago and Andre Jones, all 1982 AHS alumni.
Thirty years after her father’s death, when Lundquist was pregnant with her son, Sam, she finally decided to read the letters and listen to the recordings, which her mother had given to her as a teen.
“I pretty much pretended my dad never existed because I think it was just so hard. Becoming a parent myself made me want to get to know my dad. I read the letters and listened to his voice on the tapes. It was remarkable,” she said.
After writing a draft of her book, her publisher sent her to Vietnam to finish the story, and Lundquist
eventually wrote letters back to her father as she retraced his steps.
Ten years later, Lundquist developed her award-winning book into a film. In Vietnam she connected with a production company owned by siblings who were shocked when she told them the story of her father and recounted that their own father, a North Vietnamese soldier, had written letters to his own wife and daughter on the same dates as Lundquist’s letters.
The documentary tells the side-by-side story of these two soldiers as they fought, yet stayed connected with their families.
“[This film] humanizes war and gives you the story from both perspectives. Here are these two men that every morning wake up with the goal of killing each other, but every night they write the same letter back to their wife and daughter; it’s a story about reconciliation and the pointlessness of war,” Lundquist said.
Although initially wanting to create a feature film, Lundquist had the opportunity to reconnect with Pago, a documentarian who she knew of during her time at AHS.
Pago, the film’s director, worked with Jacqueline to get interviews for the film and Annandale native Jones, leading the videography crew, filmed scenes at AHS.
Since the film’s release on April 18, 2024, it has screened at ten film festivals, winning eight of the nine juried, and is nominated for an award at an upcoming festival in May.
“I had a hard time believing it was as good as it was . . . . [At a festival] about three weeks ago [the audience was transfixed]. It was the first time that I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is good,” Pago said. “I’ve seen different demographics watch it and be affected by it. Anybody that watches this film is going to leave saying it made them feel good,” he added.
It was a no-brainer to show the film at AHS, especially with three Atoms on the production team and the importance of Annandale to Lundquist’s story.
“Letters from the Battlefield is more than just a reflection on history. It is a testament to the power of understanding different perspectives and finding connections across cultures, something that defines who we are as an Annandale community,” Principal Shawn DeRose wrote in an email to the community.
