In 1968, college student Kieu Cong Tin was visiting his family in the Vietnamese city of Hue when he was hit by shrapnel during the Tet Offensive and had his leg amputated by a U.S. Army surgeon.

Bruce Bickel was also in Hue that year. As a U.S. Navy gunfire officer, he directed air strikes against Communist forces ringing the city, then helped build an orphanage because, he says, "I really wanted to do something constructive in a destructive environment."

Though Mr. Tin's mother became the director of the orphanage, the naval officer and the young amputee didn't know one another. In fact, it would take 39 years for the two men to meet and begin to heal each other from the effects of the war.

Today, Kieu Cong Tin is recuperating in a hospital in Kenya run by a Pennsylvania-based charity called CURE International, where a surgeon repaired his badly damaged leg and will fit him with a new prosthetic limb.

And Bruce Bickel, who manages private foundations for PNC, is back in Pittsburgh, marveling at how a group of Christian friends and fellow servicemen helped him raise more than $30,000 to bring wholeness and peace to Mr. Tin -- and to himself.

A sudden explosion

In January 1968, Communist forces swept into Hue at the start of the Tet Offensive, named after the Vietnamese New Year.

Mr. Tin was a political science major at Da Lat University, but he had come home to be with his family for the holiday celebrations.

When the fighting began, the family tried to flee to a refugee camp in the section of the city controlled by American and South Vietnamese forces.

Suddenly, Mr. Tin recalled in a telephone conversation from Kenya, "I was hurt by piece of bomb, a rocket. I didn't know where it came from."

His father carried him to the central hospital in Hue, but when they arrived, they found that all the doctors had fled because it was under attack.

They stayed there through the night, and Mr. Tin lost a lot of blood. "I thought I would die," he said simply.

But in the morning, an American surgeon arrived and saved his life. "He told my father, 'If your son was in the United States we could save his leg, but here all we can do is immediately cut it off.' "

The amputation below Mr. Tin's left knee was done without anesthesia or blood transfusions. "My father prayed. I think it was a miracle that I survived."

Eventually, Mr. Tin became a tour guide in postwar Vietnam, limping around on a series of ill-fitting prosthetic limbs. The most recent one had become so decrepit that he had to wrap it in duct tape.

He was in constant pain, and earlier this year, had to give up his job because he could no longer walk well enough to keep up with his tour groups. "The French and American tourists did not agree to use me because tourist guides must walk very fast," he said.

Bruce Bickel, who earned a doctorate in theology some years after leaving the Navy and is now serving as temporary pastor at Bellefield Presbyterian Church in Oakland, knew none of this when he returned to Vietnam in May with 11 other Naval Academy veterans who had served "in country."

Dr. Bickel said his main purpose in returning was to find out what had happened to the orphanage he helped build in 1968, after the Battle of Hue had ravaged the city and left scores of parentless children on the streets.

The orphanage project began because of a bumpy Jeep ride.

As the young officer was driving to a meeting in Hue one day, his New Testament fell out of his flight suit onto the street.

"A young man came by on a moped and picked it up and saw it was a Bible and brushed it off and came over and pointed at me and said 'Christian?' and I said yes. He then pointed at himself and said, 'Christian.' And that's how I met Pastor Nguyen."

Duong Dinh Nguyen headed the only Protestant church in Hue, and soon he and Dr. Bickel were discussing what kind of project they could do together.

The result was a simple rectangular building of wood, tin and cement that became an orphanage run by the church. Dr. Bickel, who had studied engineering at the U.S. Naval Academy, arranged for Seabees from nearby Phu Bai to lay the concrete slab, found other building materials, and designed the structure, which was built by church members.

Two years later, Dr. Bickel was shot down and badly injured while flying a mission over Cambodia. When he got back to the States, he made sure the Hue orphanage was listed by the Christian charity World Vision, and he worked to channel money and supplies to it for the next five years.

In 1975, the Communists took over in Vietnam, and Dr. Bickel lost all contact with the orphanage and the neighboring Tin Lanh Church.

So one of Dr. Bickel's main goals for returning to Vietnam in the spring was to see if the orphanage still existed.

When he arrived, he told his tour guide he wanted to return to the site of the orphanage.

"He said 'What's the address?' and I said 'I don't know, but I know how to get there.' He said, 'It's been 30 some years!' but I said, 'Believe me, I can get you there.' "

As he gave directions to the cabbie in the now bustling metropolis, Dr. Bickel said he was seeing the city as it had existed during the war, with bombed-out buildings and devastation all around.

"The building was right where I remembered," he said. "When I saw it, I went up and looked at it ... and I just came unglued. I just sat there at the fence and broke down and wept, that I had found it. My initials were still in the foundation."

The building is now an elementary school, and when Dr. Bickel asked a young man on the grounds what had happened to the orphanage, the man used gestures and broken English to ask Dr. Bickel to come back the next day and talk to his father.

The father turned out to be Mr. Tin, and that was when Dr. Bickel learned for the first time that this was the son of the woman who had run the orphanage.

Mr. Tin told him that when the Communists took charge in 1975, they had destroyed all the records at the orphanage, but had let the children leave safely.

Bruce Bickel went on to visit Hanoi as part of his reunion tour, and it was only when he was in the air and heading home that he grasped the meaning of what he had experienced. "It hit me that this whole trip was not about me, it was about Tin. It was kind of like a light going off," he said.

He began to check with friends in Pittsburgh and discovered that to bring Mr. Tin here for treatment and recuperation would cost about $90,000.

Several days later, he was talking to Doug Mitchell, vice president of development for CURE International, a Christian medical charity based in Cumberland County.

CURE International was founded 11 years ago by orthopedic surgeon Scott Harrison, a Vietnam veteran who graduated from the University of Pittsburgh, and his wife, Sally, who was trained as a nurse at Shadyside Hospital.

CURE's orthopedic hospital in Kenya would be particularly suited to Mr. Tin's surgery, Mr. Mitchell told Dr. Bickel, and the procedure would cost about $5,000.

Dr. Bickel, began talking about his project at area Bible studies he leads and with fellow servicemen and was able to raise more than $25,000.

He decided to make up the remaining $10,000 needed to travel to Kenya with Mr. Tin and Mr. Mitchell, pay for the medical care and, eventually, bring Mr. Tin here for a thank-you visit.

Badly needed surgery

When Mr. Tin got to the CURE hospital in Kijabe, Kenya, Dr. Tim Mead, his surgeon, said it was obvious why he was having so much trouble.

A piece of Mr. Tin's fibula was protruding from the end of his stump under the skin, Dr. Mead said from Kenya, and a nerve running over top of the bone had formed a golf-ball sized bundle of fibers that caused excruciating pain.

In a one-hour surgery Oct. 24, Dr. Mead cut part of the nerve and smoothed out the end of Mr. Tin's leg. In the days since then, Dr. Mead said, Mr. Tin has been rubbing his stump with lotion and feels no pain there.

Mr. Tin said he is deeply grateful for what Dr. Bickel and the hospital have done for him, but he is homesick and eager to get back to Vietnam.

"I miss my wife and my grandchildren," he said. "And I am a deacon in my church, and we must prepare for the Christmas services. I have to get the children ready to sing the first Christmas song."

As far as he is concerned, it was no accident that Bruce Bickel came into his life. "I don't know why I got this miracle, that he was sent to me. But I prayed and God sent him to me."

Dr. Bickel sees it as the completion of something that began when he was a young Navy officer.

"I viewed this as something that the Lord had me start in 1968, but he just didn't have me finish it until 2007."

And he wasn't able to finish it alone.

"To me, this is about CURE International coming to the plate and saying 'We want to help you,' and all these friends saying, 'Bruce, we want to join you in this.'

"The real story here is when people come together and act responsibly, good things can happen."