CHARLOTTE, N.C. — When 72-year-old Raymond Hait was drafted during the Vietnam War, he immediately knew he wanted to serve.

“I got my notice and my father told me, 'you don’t have to go,you could get a college deferment',” Hait explained. “But I’m no better than anyone else, and I owe it to my country. So I went.”

He admits however, the war left him with mental scars.

“We did ambushes, search and destroys. Our objective was to kill the enemy and we did our job. It was hard,” Hait recalls. “War is nasty. And it does things to you. And you’ll never get over them.”

Hait's biggest challenge has been the result of physical injury, which came after he was hit in the face with a bamboo branch during combat.

“Over a period of time I had an abscess that went across my mouth, both upper and lower. And they drilled behind every tooth and just put cotton in it,” Hait explains. “And told me, 'oh, when you get back to the states they’ll take care of it.'”

But when he returned, Hait says he struggled for years to fix the problem.

“My teeth started getting brittle, they broke, and it was just a fight,” he says. Hait was eventually left with just five teeth and challenges from the most simple tasks.

“I can’t eat well. I can’t chew things,” Hait says. “A peanut, I can take a peanut and it can last me a year and a half. Because I can’t break it. And I love peanuts.”

That all changed however, thanks to the doctors at the Carolina’s Center for Oral and Facial Surgery.

For the last few years, the doctors have chosen one veteran a year to give a custom dental makeover, which is valued at nearly $50,000.

“We’re just so excited that we’re going to be able to provide this treatment for such a great person,” Dr. Hunter Dawson says. “And someone who served our country and has done so many things for all of us.”

As a gift for Veteran’s Day, Hait went under the knife to get two dental implants.

“It’s very stable,” Dr. Dawson explains. “It’s not glue, it’s not a denture, this is truly going to feel like natural teeth again.”

It's their way of not only giving an American hero a full set of teeth, but a way to live life to the fullest once again.

“This goes way beyond,” Hait adds.  “These doctors are trained in what they do, and they are magnificent. And they’re doing that for me. That’s beyond my comprehension. I mean really I can’t...there are no words.”