For years, Bernie Duff suffered flashbacks and recurring nightmares, panic attacks and haunting memories of the men he couldn’t save as a 19-year-old Army medic serving in the jungles of Vietnam.

But after moving to Vietnam two years ago to help its children, Duff set out earlier this month on an ambitious 1,068-mile “Orange Walk” from Ho Chi Minh City north to Hanoi. The walk continues through June.

His goal: to call attention to the effects of the herbicide Agent Orange, which is blamed for birth defects in 300,000 Vietnamese children. The former Muskegon, Mich., resident is joined by a congregation of walkers from Australia, the United States and Vietnam.

Exposed to Agent Orange “many times” in 1969 and 1970, Duff suffers from chronic skin problems, but he resolutely downplays his own medical condition.

“My reason for taking part in this walk is that I am very tired of adults arguing about something we should just do something about,” he said. “This is the right thing to do.”

Doc, as everyone calls him, originally tried to exorcise his Vietnam nightmares by painting visions of a war he couldn’t leave behind, writing poetry and going through intensive therapy after being diagnosed in 1998 with severe post-traumatic stress disorder.

But Duff finally decided the only way he could find peace was to return to the scene of war. In 2005, he and 17 other veterans dedicated a medical clinic for children in Chu Lai built in memory of Sharon Lane, an American Army nurse killed in 1969 by enemy fire.

He was so moved by the experience that he decided to move to the country in 2006.

“I got a welcome home that I needed, here in Vietnam, the last place on Earth I thought I’d get it,” he said.

For the past two years, Duff has used his pension and disability payments, and any money he earns from his paintings, to help support the children at Cay Bang Primary School in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon).

The father of four children living in the United States, Duff has decided to devote the rest of his life helping Vietnamese children. He has provided scholarships and food for the youngsters he lovingly calls his “Garbage Pail Kids,” who eke out a living by going through dumps to find plastics to recycle.

“These kids are my heart. They need so much help,” he said.

No one has captured his heart as much as the children who suffer from the effects of Agent Orange, many of them born with terrible physical disabilities directly linked to the chemical dumped on Vietnam by U.S. forces almost 40 years ago.

The children – born without arms and legs, born with enlarged heads and distended or deformed eyes – often live in compounds called “Peace Villages.”

At Christmas time, Duff plays Santa Claus (“No En” in Vietnamese) and passes out presents to the children. But he said he’s anxious to extend his help even further.

“Our walk is not intended to point any fingers, merely to ask the world to help us,” he said. “These kids, like all kids, belong to the world, not any one country.”

Duff’s work in Vietnam shows “what one year out of someone’s life can do,” said David Eling, a Vietnam veteran who is director of Muskegon County’s Department of Veteran Affairs. “Look at how Doc’s life has been so totally altered by that experience. It’s dominated the rest of his life.”

As a kid in Muskegon Heights, people called him Bernie. “Doc” came when he was 17 and dropped out of high school to join the Army. On his 19th birthday – Jan. 12, 1969 – he landed in Vietnam as a medic with the 51st Medical Co., who was supposed to patch up the wounded in the field until they could be evacuated.

He was in Vietnam exactly one day when the carnage caught up to him. He witnessed three teenage boys who had been captured and tortured by Korean soldiers. Their bodies were mutilated and hanging upside down in a small pagoda-like building in Qui Nhon.

“They were all still alive and moaning loudly, with blood dripping everywhere,” Duff said.

As a medic, he says, he should have stopped, but his driver kept going.

“I made a promise to myself that one day, I would return to that spot and place three roses in the place where their blood pooled below them,” he said. “I will do that while on this walk.”

Duff stayed in the Army for 10 years. He finished his active duty as an Army illustrator at Fort Hood. He went back to school, earned his high school degree then added an associate’s degree and eventually a bachelor’s degree in fine arts.

He moved to Grand Rapids in 1995 to work with homeless vets. But he was married four times, and in 2000, was forced to retire because his PTSD was so disabling.