Annotated Transcript Of Episode 8
ANNOTATED TRANSCRIPT BURNS EPISODE 8 The History of the World (April 1969-May 1970)
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MINUTES 1-10
1
00:00:01,566 --> 00:00:03,000 ANNOUNCER: MAJOR SUPPORT FOR "THE VIETNAM WAR"
2
00:00:03,000 --> 00:00:06,500 WAS PROVIDED BY MEMBERS OF THE BETTER ANGELS SOCIETY,
3
00:00:06,500 --> 00:00:10,466 INCLUDING JONATHAN AND JEANNIE LAVINE,
4
00:00:10,466 --> 00:00:13,366 DIANE AND HAL BRIERLEY,
5
00:00:13,366 --> 00:00:15,766 AMY AND DAVID ABRAMS,
6
00:00:15,766 --> 00:00:18,266 JOHN AND CATHERINE DEBS,
7
00:00:18,266 --> 00:00:21,166 THE FULLERTON FAMILY CHARITABLE FUND,
8
00:00:21,166 --> 00:00:23,233 THE MONTRONE FAMILY,
9
00:00:23,233 --> 00:00:25,566 LYNDA AND STEWART RESNICK,
10
00:00:25,566 --> 00:00:28,333 THE PERRY AND DONNA GOLKIN FAMILY FOUNDATION,
11
00:00:28,333 --> 00:00:29,333 THE LYNCH FOUNDATION,
12
00:00:29,333 --> 00:00:32,200 THE ROGER AND ROSEMARY ENRICO FOUNDATION,
13
00:00:32,200 --> 00:00:35,633 AND BY THESE ADDITIONAL FUNDERS.
14
00:00:35,633 --> 00:00:37,533 MAJOR FUNDING WAS ALSO PROVIDED
15
00:00:37,533 --> 00:00:39,266 BY DAVID H. KOCH...
16
00:00:41,566 --> 00:00:43,766 THE BLAVATNIK FAMILY FOUNDATION...
17
00:00:46,100 --> 00:00:48,533 THE PARK FOUNDATION,
18
00:00:48,533 --> 00:00:50,700 THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES,
19
00:00:50,700 --> 00:00:52,900 THE PEW CHARITABLE TRUSTS,
20
00:00:52,900 --> 00:00:55,566 THE JOHN S. AND JAMES L. KNIGHT FOUNDATION,
21
00:00:55,566 --> 00:00:58,333 THE ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION,
22
00:00:58,333 --> 00:01:01,000 THE ARTHUR VINING DAVIS FOUNDATIONS,
23
00:01:01,000 --> 00:01:03,200 THE FORD FOUNDATION JUSTFILMS,
24
00:01:03,200 --> 00:01:04,400 BY THE CORPORATION
25
00:01:04,400 --> 00:01:05,633 FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING,
26
00:01:05,633 --> 00:01:07,600 AND BY VIEWERS LIKE YOU.
27
00:01:07,600 --> 00:01:08,733 THANK YOU.
28
00:01:13,266 --> 00:01:15,400 ANNOUNCER: BANK OF AMERICA PROUDLY SUPPORTS
29
00:01:15,400 --> 00:01:20,300 KEN BURNS' AND LYNN NOVICK'S FILM "THE VIETNAM WAR"
30
00:01:20,300 --> 00:01:22,700 BECAUSE FOSTERING DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES
31
00:01:22,700 --> 00:01:25,300 AND CIVIL DISCOURSE AROUND IMPORTANT ISSUES
32
00:01:25,300 --> 00:01:27,600 FURTHERS PROGRESS, EQUALITY,
33
00:01:27,600 --> 00:01:29,600 AND A MORE CONNECTED SOCIETY.
34
00:01:34,066 --> 00:01:38,100 GO TO BANKOFAMERICA.COM/ BETTERCONNECTED TO LEARN MORE.
35
00:01:41,400 --> 00:01:43,266 ♪ MOVIE "SO PROUDLY WE HAIL":
36
00:01:46,300 --> 00:01:48,733 ...you got through! Did you pass Chee on the road?
37
00:01:48,733 --> 00:01:50,200 No. Where are the children?
38
00:01:50,200 --> 00:01:51,900 Kansas found a shelter for them.
39
00:01:51,900 --> 00:01:53,633 Get down, everybody!
40
00:01:56,633 --> 00:01:59,533 JOAN FUREY: My older sister and I one time,
41
00:01:59,533 --> 00:02:03,766 uh, we're watching the movie So Proudly We Hail on TV.
42
00:02:03,766 --> 00:02:05,233 MOVIE: Listen, we still have a few minutes!
43
00:02:05,233 --> 00:02:07,133 FUREY: That's a story about the nurses
44
00:02:07,133 --> 00:02:12,033 who were trapped on Bataan and Corregidor during World War II.
45
00:02:12,033 --> 00:02:14,133 MOVIE: (explosion)
46
00:02:14,133 --> 00:02:17,866 It was the first, probably, time in my life that...
47
00:02:17,866 --> 00:02:19,800 I, uh...
48
00:02:19,800 --> 00:02:24,100 I realized that women could do brave and courageous things.
49
00:02:24,100 --> 00:02:26,733 It wasn't just something men could do.
50
00:02:26,733 --> 00:02:29,133 (helicopter blades whirring)
51
00:02:29,133 --> 00:02:32,300 ♪
52
00:02:32,300 --> 00:02:35,266 NARRATOR: Second Lieutenant Joan Furey
53
00:02:35,266 --> 00:02:40,166 had wanted to be a nurse ever since she was a small child.
54
00:02:40,166 --> 00:02:41,933 She attended nursing school,
55
00:02:41,933 --> 00:02:45,333 and, when a high school classmate was killed during Tet,
56
00:02:45,333 --> 00:02:49,600 joined the Army to do what she could for the wounded.
57
00:02:51,033 --> 00:02:54,833 Furey was assigned to the 71st Evacuation Hospital
58
00:02:54,833 --> 00:02:58,500 at Pleiku, in the heart of the Central Highlands.
59
00:03:00,100 --> 00:03:03,833 Nothing had prepared her for what she saw and did
60
00:03:03,833 --> 00:03:06,233 over the next 12 months.
61
00:03:06,233 --> 00:03:07,766 (indistinct chatter)
62
00:03:08,900 --> 00:03:10,200 (grunts)
63
00:03:10,200 --> 00:03:12,466 Wounded men were choppered in
64
00:03:12,466 --> 00:03:15,233 at all times of the day and night.
65
00:03:15,233 --> 00:03:18,300 So were Viet Cong and NVA soldiers,
66
00:03:18,300 --> 00:03:21,366 who sometimes spat at the medical personnel
67
00:03:21,366 --> 00:03:25,200 trying to save their limbs or lives.
68
00:03:25,200 --> 00:03:28,366 (explosions)
69
00:03:28,366 --> 00:03:31,000 Whenever the hospital came under mortar fire,
70
00:03:31,000 --> 00:03:34,700 Furey stayed with the most seriously wounded men
71
00:03:34,700 --> 00:03:36,033 in the ICU.
72
00:03:36,033 --> 00:03:37,866 (distant explosions)
73
00:03:37,866 --> 00:03:39,400 FUREY: We had flak vests and helmets,
74
00:03:39,400 --> 00:03:41,200 and we crawled around on the floor.
75
00:03:41,200 --> 00:03:42,700 (explosion, clattering, men shouting)
76
00:03:42,700 --> 00:03:43,966 I mean, you really,
77
00:03:43,966 --> 00:03:45,933 you just could not leave them unattended.
78
00:03:45,933 --> 00:03:47,466 (explosion)
79
00:03:47,466 --> 00:03:50,733 We just kind of had to swallow your own fear.
80
00:03:52,266 --> 00:03:55,100 NARRATOR: A triage officer made the grim decisions
81
00:03:55,100 --> 00:03:57,266 as to who might be saved
82
00:03:57,266 --> 00:04:00,766 and those for whom there was no hope.
83
00:04:00,766 --> 00:04:03,900 FUREY: One of the things that initially was so difficult
84
00:04:03,900 --> 00:04:06,833 was what we called "expected" patients.
85
00:04:06,833 --> 00:04:09,533 And these were patients that would be brought in
86
00:04:09,533 --> 00:04:12,100 from the battlefield and it was determined
87
00:04:12,100 --> 00:04:14,800 they had no chance to survive.
88
00:04:14,800 --> 00:04:17,399 But they weren't dead yet.
89
00:04:18,533 --> 00:04:19,966 They brought in a...
90
00:04:19,966 --> 00:04:23,433 a young soldier who had a head injury,
91
00:04:23,433 --> 00:04:27,000 and they said, "He's expected."
92
00:04:27,000 --> 00:04:29,366 I kind of freaked out, uh,
93
00:04:29,366 --> 00:04:32,533 and I decided that, no, they were wrong,
94
00:04:32,533 --> 00:04:35,700 and I was gonna take care of this patient.
95
00:04:35,700 --> 00:04:38,300 I told the corpsman to get me blood.
96
00:04:38,300 --> 00:04:40,066 And he's saying, "Well, Lieutenant,
97
00:04:40,066 --> 00:04:41,866 the patient is expected."
98
00:04:41,866 --> 00:04:43,866 I said, "Get me blood."
99
00:04:43,866 --> 00:04:46,933 So, I take off the dressing, and...
100
00:04:46,933 --> 00:04:50,566 the whole back of his head had been gone.
101
00:04:50,566 --> 00:04:52,200 When that happened,
102
00:04:52,200 --> 00:04:55,533 all the blood I had been giving him came out.
103
00:04:55,533 --> 00:04:59,900 A friend of mine who came over just walked me out of there.
104
00:04:59,900 --> 00:05:03,533 And a few minutes later, you walk right back in...
105
00:05:05,500 --> 00:05:07,466 ...and you get back to doing it.
106
00:05:10,900 --> 00:05:12,800 (amplified heartbeat)
107
00:05:14,666 --> 00:05:19,433 ("Dazed and Confused" by Led Zeppelin playing)
108
00:05:31,100 --> 00:05:33,233 ♪ Been dazed and confused
109
00:05:33,233 --> 00:05:35,266 ♪ For so long, it's not true... ♪
110
00:05:35,266 --> 00:05:38,266 NARRATOR: Richard Nixon had taken office as president
111
00:05:38,266 --> 00:05:41,333 in January of 1969,
112
00:05:41,333 --> 00:05:43,666 pledged to restore law and order
113
00:05:43,666 --> 00:05:46,000 and end the war with honor.
114
00:05:46,000 --> 00:05:48,266 (gunfire) Things were calmer at home,
115
00:05:48,266 --> 00:05:51,266 but in Vietnam, peace was no closer.
116
00:05:51,266 --> 00:05:54,900 ("Dazed and Confused" continues)
117
00:05:54,900 --> 00:05:58,400 American soldiers still died pursuing guerrillas
118
00:05:58,400 --> 00:06:01,300 who appeared and disappeared like phantoms.
119
00:06:02,500 --> 00:06:05,566 Americans still died capturing hills
120
00:06:05,566 --> 00:06:08,966 only to give them up and have to take them back again.
121
00:06:08,966 --> 00:06:13,233 Men and materiel were still flowing into the south
122
00:06:13,233 --> 00:06:16,866 despite the controversial bombing of Cambodia.
123
00:06:16,866 --> 00:06:20,566 Through it all, Hanoi remained immovable.
124
00:06:20,566 --> 00:06:23,666 The communists insisted there could be no peace
125
00:06:23,666 --> 00:06:27,500 until the Saigon government was replaced
126
00:06:27,500 --> 00:06:32,000 and the United States withdrew from Vietnam.[1]
127
00:06:32,000 --> 00:06:36,033 Meanwhile, the American public was losing patience.
128
00:06:36,033 --> 00:06:37,733 ♪
129
00:06:43,100 --> 00:06:44,933 (men shouting)
130
00:06:44,933 --> 00:06:46,933 (gunfire fades)
131
00:06:46,933 --> 00:06:51,866 Privately, Nixon knew that military victory was impossible,
132
00:06:51,866 --> 00:06:53,500 that things would have to be settled
133
00:06:53,500 --> 00:06:56,800 at the bargaining table in Paris.
134
00:06:56,800 --> 00:06:58,233 He had to find a way
135
00:06:58,233 --> 00:07:00,633 to extricate Americans from Vietnam
136
00:07:00,633 --> 00:07:02,866 without seeming to surrender.
137
00:07:02,866 --> 00:07:04,833 Nixon also believed
138
00:07:04,833 --> 00:07:07,800 his reputation as an implacable anti-communist
139
00:07:07,800 --> 00:07:10,766 could work to his advantage with Hanoi.
140
00:07:10,766 --> 00:07:13,200 "We'll just slip the word to them," he said,
141
00:07:13,200 --> 00:07:17,166 "you know, 'Nixon's obsessed about communism.
142
00:07:17,166 --> 00:07:19,533 "'We can't restrain him when he's angry,
143
00:07:19,533 --> 00:07:22,533 "and he has his hand on the nuclear button,'
144
00:07:22,533 --> 00:07:25,800 "and Ho Chi Minh will be in Paris in two days
145
00:07:25,800 --> 00:07:28,800 begging for peace."
146
00:07:28,800 --> 00:07:32,966 But Ho Chi Minh was old and ailing now.
147
00:07:32,966 --> 00:07:35,133 And Le Duan and the other men
148
00:07:35,133 --> 00:07:38,300 who had been calling the shots in Hanoi for years
149
00:07:38,300 --> 00:07:40,800 had no intention of giving up their goal
150
00:07:40,800 --> 00:07:44,566 of uniting their country under communist control.
151
00:07:44,566 --> 00:07:46,733 ("While My Guitar Gently Weeps" by the Beatles playing)
152
00:07:46,733 --> 00:07:50,366 Richard Nixon, having promised a swift end to the war,
153
00:07:50,366 --> 00:07:53,600 would, like all the presidents who came before him,
154
00:07:53,600 --> 00:07:55,933 end up widening it.
155
00:07:55,933 --> 00:07:59,633 In the process, he would re-ignite opposition to the war
156
00:07:59,633 --> 00:08:01,466 on American campuses
157
00:08:01,466 --> 00:08:05,100 that threatened to tear the country apart again.
158
00:08:05,100 --> 00:08:08,700 ♪ I look at you all
159
00:08:08,700 --> 00:08:12,366 ♪ See the love there that's sleeping ♪
160
00:08:12,366 --> 00:08:14,700 (crowd clamoring)
161
00:08:14,700 --> 00:08:17,200 ♪ While my guitar
162
00:08:17,200 --> 00:08:19,133 ♪ Gently weeps
163
00:08:22,233 --> 00:08:25,200 ♪ I look at the floor...
164
00:08:25,200 --> 00:08:27,266 MERRILL McPEAK: The late '60s
165
00:08:27,266 --> 00:08:31,466 were a kind of confluence of several rivulets.
166
00:08:31,466 --> 00:08:33,400 BEATLES: ♪ Still my guitar...
167
00:08:33,400 --> 00:08:36,433 McPEAK: There was the antiwar movement itself...
168
00:08:36,433 --> 00:08:39,600 ♪
169
00:08:39,600 --> 00:08:44,366 ...the whole movement towards racial equality,
170
00:08:44,366 --> 00:08:46,933 the environment...
171
00:08:46,933 --> 00:08:49,833 the role of women.
172
00:08:49,833 --> 00:08:52,333 And the anthems for that counterculture
173
00:08:52,333 --> 00:08:56,866 were provided by the most brilliant rock-and-roll music
174
00:08:56,866 --> 00:08:58,900 that you can imagine.
175
00:08:58,900 --> 00:09:00,766 BEATLES: ♪ And I notice...
176
00:09:00,766 --> 00:09:05,233 I don't know how we could exist today as a country
177
00:09:05,233 --> 00:09:09,400 without that experience.[2]
178
00:09:09,400 --> 00:09:12,533 With all of its warts and ups and downs,
179
00:09:12,533 --> 00:09:16,333 that produced the America we have today,
180
00:09:16,333 --> 00:09:18,000 and we are better for it.
181
00:09:18,000 --> 00:09:19,933 (gunfire) ♪ Surely be learning...
182
00:09:19,933 --> 00:09:21,966 McPEAK: And I felt that way in Vietnam.
183
00:09:21,966 --> 00:09:23,900 ♪ Still my guitar...
184
00:09:23,900 --> 00:09:26,433 McPEAK: I turned the volume up on all that stuff.
185
00:09:28,533 --> 00:09:32,166 That represented what I was trying to defend.
186
00:09:32,166 --> 00:09:35,133 ♪ EPISODE 8: THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD (APRIL 1969 - MAY 1970)
187
00:09:35,133 --> 00:09:38,433 (gunfire, artillery fire, shouting)
188
00:09:43,100 --> 00:09:44,500 (explosion)
189
00:09:46,366 --> 00:09:48,900 ♪ Oh, oh
190
00:09:48,900 --> 00:09:51,800 (fading): ♪ Ooh, ooh, oh, oh...
191
00:09:55,466 --> 00:09:57,300 HAL KUSHNER: PRISONER OF WAR I never prayed
192
00:09:57,300 --> 00:09:59,966 the whole time I was in the P.O.W. camp,
193
00:09:59,966 --> 00:10:02,900 but I had, like, a mantra.
194
00:10:02,900 --> 00:10:05,266 Every night when I went to sleep,
195
00:10:05,266 --> 00:10:08,466 after a certain point, I would say,
196
00:10:08,466 --> 00:10:12,766 "I'll be here when the morning comes."
197
00:10:12,766 --> 00:10:15,066 And I felt if I could just live one more day,
198
00:10:15,066 --> 00:10:18,533 then I could live one more day, and then one more day.
MINUTES 10-20
199
00:10:18,533 --> 00:10:21,466 NARRATOR: At the peace talks in Paris,
200
00:10:21,466 --> 00:10:26,100 the Nixon administration had introduced a new demand--[3]
201
00:10:26,100 --> 00:10:28,233 U.S. troops would not withdraw
202
00:10:28,233 --> 00:10:31,600 until all American prisoners had come home
203
00:10:31,600 --> 00:10:34,266 and Hanoi had provided a strict accounting
204
00:10:34,266 --> 00:10:36,633 of those missing in action.
205
00:10:36,633 --> 00:10:40,100 No one knew how many prisoners there were.
206
00:10:40,100 --> 00:10:44,066 Most were airmen held in or around Hanoi,
207
00:10:44,066 --> 00:10:46,866 but a handful of others, like Hal Kushner,
208
00:10:46,866 --> 00:10:50,400 were struggling to survive in makeshift jungle camps
209
00:10:50,400 --> 00:10:53,200 in South Vietnam.
210
00:10:53,200 --> 00:10:56,866 Hanoi would not reveal the names of the men they held,
211
00:10:56,866 --> 00:11:00,933 because they still insisted they were not prisoners of war,
212
00:11:00,933 --> 00:11:03,133 but war criminals.
213
00:11:03,133 --> 00:11:06,466 They subjected many to brutal torture,
214
00:11:06,466 --> 00:11:08,666 extracted "confessions,"
215
00:11:08,666 --> 00:11:10,933 and refused to permit inspections[4]
216
00:11:10,933 --> 00:11:13,966 by the International Red Cross.
217
00:11:13,966 --> 00:11:18,133 The Johnson administration had generally downplayed the issue,
218
00:11:18,133 --> 00:11:22,200 hoping quiet diplomacy might bring the men home.
219
00:11:22,200 --> 00:11:23,900 The Nixon administration
220
00:11:23,900 --> 00:11:26,833 launched a "go public" campaign instead,
221
00:11:26,833 --> 00:11:29,533 meant to put the plight of American prisoners
222
00:11:29,533 --> 00:11:31,700 and those missing in action
223
00:11:31,700 --> 00:11:33,800 at the center of things.
224
00:11:33,800 --> 00:11:36,000 It also provided a rebuke
225
00:11:36,000 --> 00:11:38,166 to those in the antiwar movement
226
00:11:38,166 --> 00:11:40,333 who seemed more sympathetic
227
00:11:40,333 --> 00:11:43,566 to North Vietnamese civilians who had been bombed
228
00:11:43,566 --> 00:11:45,333 than they were to U.S. airmen
229
00:11:45,333 --> 00:11:48,966 who had been shot down doing that bombing.
230
00:11:48,966 --> 00:11:53,566 Sybil Stockdale, whose husband, Commander James Stockdale,
231
00:11:53,566 --> 00:11:56,366 was the highest-ranking prisoner in Hanoi,
232
00:11:56,366 --> 00:11:58,766 formed the National League of Families
233
00:11:58,766 --> 00:12:02,366 of Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia,
234
00:12:02,366 --> 00:12:05,100 and led delegations of wives to Paris
235
00:12:05,100 --> 00:12:08,600 to confront North Vietnamese negotiators.
236
00:12:08,600 --> 00:12:13,300 Five million Americans began wearing tin or copper bracelets
237
00:12:13,300 --> 00:12:15,933 engraved with a missing man's name
238
00:12:15,933 --> 00:12:18,433 and date of loss.
239
00:12:18,433 --> 00:12:22,766 More than 50 million P.O.W./M.I.A. bumper stickers
240
00:12:22,766 --> 00:12:26,466 would be sold over the next four years.
241
00:12:26,466 --> 00:12:28,900 Despite what their jailers had told them,
242
00:12:28,900 --> 00:12:33,200 the prisoners had not been forgotten by their country.
243
00:12:33,200 --> 00:12:35,733 Eventually, one journalist wrote,
244
00:12:35,733 --> 00:12:38,000 many "people began to speak
245
00:12:38,000 --> 00:12:42,100 "as though the North Vietnamese had kidnapped 400 Americans
246
00:12:42,100 --> 00:12:46,633 and the United States had gone to war to retrieve them."
247
00:12:46,633 --> 00:12:51,200 At the same time, the Saigon government of Nguyen Van Thieu
248
00:12:51,200 --> 00:12:54,533 was holding prisoners of its own.[5]
249
00:12:54,533 --> 00:12:56,466 There would eventually be
250
00:12:56,466 --> 00:13:00,333 some 40,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers
251
00:13:00,333 --> 00:13:02,433 in four crowded camps. [6]
252
00:13:02,433 --> 00:13:06,466 Another 200,000 South Vietnamese civilians
253
00:13:06,466 --> 00:13:10,366 would also be held, many without trial.
254
00:13:12,066 --> 00:13:14,400 NGUYEN TAI: Puppet intelligence officers tortured me on the orders of the C.I.A. They wanted me to confess. They used different methods of torture. They used electricity from the wall outlet to shock me. They poured water in my mouth and held my mouth shut so the water couldn't come out. When I stopped breathing, they had to stop. The most painful thing was being hung up and beaten at night. I still feel pain. The pain was unbelievably deep.[7]
255
00:14:31,766 --> 00:14:34,766 JAMES GILLAM: ARMY There are certain rules to tunnel warfare.
256
00:14:37,000 --> 00:14:39,800 Don't turn on the light
257
00:14:39,800 --> 00:14:42,900 unless you're really, really, really sure you're alone.
258
00:14:42,900 --> 00:14:46,600 Use your senses.
259
00:14:46,600 --> 00:14:49,833 Do your first killing as quietly as you can.
260
00:14:49,833 --> 00:14:51,900 That means don't shoot.
261
00:14:53,200 --> 00:14:56,000 I chased somebody into a tunnel,
262
00:14:56,000 --> 00:15:01,433 met them at a bend in the corner, in the dark.
263
00:15:01,433 --> 00:15:03,033 I thought I was alone
264
00:15:03,033 --> 00:15:06,333 and then I smelled their breath.
265
00:15:06,333 --> 00:15:12,433 And we had a wrestling match in the dark.
266
00:15:12,433 --> 00:15:14,900 And I got the upper hand
267
00:15:14,900 --> 00:15:18,233 and crushed this person's trachea,
268
00:15:18,233 --> 00:15:20,866 held him down while he died...
269
00:15:22,600 --> 00:15:24,500 ...and then got out.
270
00:15:27,233 --> 00:15:30,033 I beat and strangled someone to death
271
00:15:30,033 --> 00:15:31,933 in a tunnel
272
00:15:31,933 --> 00:15:34,000 in the dark.
273
00:15:34,000 --> 00:15:35,700 Um...
274
00:15:35,700 --> 00:15:38,233 But that wasn't the only casualty.
275
00:15:38,233 --> 00:15:42,500 The other casualty was the civilized version of me.
276
00:15:51,333 --> 00:15:53,433 (gunfire)
277
00:15:59,300 --> 00:16:01,233 (gunfire continuing)
278
00:16:01,233 --> 00:16:03,066 (shouting)
279
00:16:03,066 --> 00:16:06,066 NARRATOR: April 1969
280
00:16:06,066 --> 00:16:09,133 marked the high point of American military commitment
281
00:16:09,133 --> 00:16:10,666 to South Vietnam.
282
00:16:10,666 --> 00:16:18,133 543,482 men and women were now in country,
283
00:16:18,133 --> 00:16:22,266 and tens of thousands more were stationed
284
00:16:22,266 --> 00:16:25,266 at airbases and aboard ships beyond its borders.
285
00:16:26,566 --> 00:16:31,366 40,794 had died.
286
00:16:31,366 --> 00:16:36,400 And more than $70 billion had been spent.
287
00:16:36,400 --> 00:16:40,000 (explosion in distance)
288
00:16:40,000 --> 00:16:42,433 That spring, a new battle
289
00:16:42,433 --> 00:16:44,633 caught the attention of the American public,
290
00:16:44,633 --> 00:16:49,433 a struggle to take still another numbered hill--
291
00:16:49,433 --> 00:16:53,166 Hill 937 on military maps.
292
00:16:53,166 --> 00:16:55,166 CHET HUNTLEY: For nine days,
293
00:16:55,166 --> 00:16:57,133 American and South Vietnamese troops have been trying
294
00:16:57,133 --> 00:16:59,166 to take a mountain near the Laotian border,
295
00:16:59,166 --> 00:17:02,200 and ten times they have been thrown back.
296
00:17:02,200 --> 00:17:03,466 (booming, shouting)
297
00:17:06,366 --> 00:17:07,433 (gunfire)
298
00:17:17,500 --> 00:17:19,700 (shouting over radio)
299
00:17:26,666 --> 00:17:29,366 The casualties have been so high--
300
00:17:29,366 --> 00:17:32,733 50 Americans and 250 North Vietnamese killed--
301
00:17:32,733 --> 00:17:35,500 that the mountain has come to be known as "Hamburger Hill."
302
00:17:35,500 --> 00:17:39,233 Today, another 600 allied[8] troops were thrown into the battle.
303
00:17:39,233 --> 00:17:41,833 (helicopter blades whirring)
304
00:17:41,833 --> 00:17:44,300 (gunfire)
305
00:17:44,300 --> 00:17:47,000 (explosion, screaming)
306
00:17:50,866 --> 00:17:53,266 NARRATOR: A weary G.I. told a reporter
307
00:17:53,266 --> 00:17:55,400 that his battalion commander
308
00:17:55,400 --> 00:18:00,366 "won't stop until he kills every damn one of us."
309
00:18:00,366 --> 00:18:01,733 (explosion, gunfire)
310
00:18:06,700 --> 00:18:09,100 After 11 days of fighting,
311
00:18:09,100 --> 00:18:11,800 the Battle for Hamburger Hill ended.
312
00:18:13,266 --> 00:18:16,066 56 Americans died.
313
00:18:16,066 --> 00:18:20,466 420 more were wounded.
314
00:18:20,466 --> 00:18:24,166 A week later, the Americans abandoned the hill,
315
00:18:24,166 --> 00:18:27,166 just as they had abandoned so many other hills
316
00:18:27,166 --> 00:18:31,700 they had taken at great cost over the years in Vietnam.
317
00:18:33,833 --> 00:18:36,833 REPORTER: General, could you explain for us again the strategy involved[9]
318
00:18:36,833 --> 00:18:39,933 in the decision to withdraw American troops
319
00:18:39,933 --> 00:18:43,066 after they had taken Hill 937, or Hamburger Hill?
320
00:18:45,266 --> 00:18:49,266 GEN. JOHN WRIGHT: No piece of ground, as such,
321
00:18:49,266 --> 00:18:51,766 is important to us. Our mission. . .
322
00:18:51,766 --> 00:18:53,600 HUNTLEY: In the United States Senate,
323
00:18:53,600 --> 00:18:55,433 Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts delivered
324
00:18:55,433 --> 00:18:57,333 a brief speech criticizing what he called
325
00:18:57,333 --> 00:19:00,366 a "senseless and irresponsible military pride
326
00:19:00,366 --> 00:19:02,933 "in which American men are sent to their deaths
327
00:19:02,933 --> 00:19:05,766 in pointless battles like this one for Hamburger Hill."
328
00:19:05,766 --> 00:19:07,966 Kennedy[10] called upon President Nixon
329
00:19:07,966 --> 00:19:10,200 to issue new orders to commanders in Vietnam
330
00:19:10,200 --> 00:19:11,833 to halt such actions
331
00:19:11,833 --> 00:19:13,733 and he charged that they contradict
332
00:19:13,733 --> 00:19:15,200 the president's stated intentions
333
00:19:15,200 --> 00:19:16,900 of seeking a negotiated peace.[11]
334
00:19:19,733 --> 00:19:23,166 NARRATOR: There had been more deadly weeks during the war,
335
00:19:23,166 --> 00:19:27,633 costlier battles, larger numbers of casualties.
336
00:19:27,633 --> 00:19:33,933 But more and more Americans seemed to have had enough.[12]
337
00:19:33,933 --> 00:19:36,400 The following month, Life magazine
338
00:19:36,400 --> 00:19:38,533 published the names and photographs
339
00:19:38,533 --> 00:19:41,366 of all 242 Americans
340
00:19:41,366 --> 00:19:45,333 who had died in combat in just one week.[13]
341
00:19:45,333 --> 00:19:49,300 For the first time, in a national publication,
342
00:19:49,300 --> 00:19:53,166 casualty statistics came with human faces.
343
00:19:56,066 --> 00:19:58,900 KARL MARLANTES: The only way they could measure success in Vietnam
344
00:19:58,900 --> 00:20:01,100 was, was was kill ratios--
345
00:20:01,100 --> 00:20:03,366 how many of them versus how many of us.
346
00:20:03,366 --> 00:20:05,633 Well, the only thing that's important
347
00:20:05,633 --> 00:20:08,033 to the American people is the "us."
348
00:20:08,033 --> 00:20:11,700 You know, if there's three us dead, that's the number.
349
00:20:11,700 --> 00:20:14,933 Not 30, you know, Vietnamese dead.
350
00:20:14,933 --> 00:20:18,100 And, so, politically, an attrition strategy
351
00:20:18,100 --> 00:20:20,366 just can't last very long.
352
00:20:20,366 --> 00:20:21,933 We don't care what the ratio is,
353
00:20:21,933 --> 00:20:23,266 we just want the absolute number
354
00:20:23,266 --> 00:20:26,000 of how many American kids died.
MINUTES 20-30
355
00:20:26,000 --> 00:20:29,366 NARRATOR: A Gallup poll now found that most Americans
356
00:20:29,366 --> 00:20:33,233 believed Vietnam had been a mistake.[14]
357
00:20:33,233 --> 00:20:36,300 Richard Nixon knew he needed to signal to the public
358
00:20:36,300 --> 00:20:38,533 that an end was in sight.
359
00:20:40,400 --> 00:20:43,900 The National Security Council had warned Nixon
360
00:20:43,900 --> 00:20:46,033 that the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
361
00:20:46,033 --> 00:20:48,800 the Secretaries of State and Defense,
362
00:20:48,800 --> 00:20:53,833 the C.I.A., and the U.S. Embassy in Saigon
363
00:20:53,833 --> 00:20:56,966 all privately agreed that without U.S. combat troops,
364
00:20:56,966 --> 00:20:58,666 the South Vietnamese
365
00:20:58,666 --> 00:21:03,400 "cannot now, or in the foreseeable future,
366
00:21:03,400 --> 00:21:05,600 "stand up to both Viet Cong[15]
367
00:21:05,600 --> 00:21:09,333 and sizeable North Vietnamese forces." [16]
368
00:21:09,333 --> 00:21:11,366 Nonetheless,
369
00:21:11,366 --> 00:21:14,533 Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird said,
370
00:21:14,533 --> 00:21:18,066 the war was now to be "Vietnamized."[17]
371
00:21:18,066 --> 00:21:21,800 Saigon's troops would gradually take over responsibility
372
00:21:21,800 --> 00:21:24,433 for engaging the enemy.[18]
373
00:21:24,433 --> 00:21:27,633 It would be General Creighton Abrams' task
374
00:21:27,633 --> 00:21:30,033 to ready the ARVN for that role,[19]
375
00:21:30,033 --> 00:21:32,833 and to make sure that American casualties
376
00:21:32,833 --> 00:21:35,066 were held down in the interim.
377
00:21:35,066 --> 00:21:37,533 ("The Letter" by The Box Tops starts playing)
378
00:21:37,533 --> 00:21:42,833 Meanwhile, American troops would start to go home.
379
00:21:42,833 --> 00:21:45,766 ♪ Gimme a ticket for an aeroplane ♪
380
00:21:45,766 --> 00:21:48,133 ♪ Ain't got time to take a fast train ♪
381
00:21:48,133 --> 00:21:49,800 DUONG VAN MAI ELLIOTT: When Nixon came in
382
00:21:49,800 --> 00:21:53,666 and he announced the phase withdrawal,
383
00:21:53,666 --> 00:21:56,200 turning over the fighting to the Vietnamese,
384
00:21:56,200 --> 00:21:58,733 which was something the French had tried before.
385
00:21:58,733 --> 00:22:00,666 They call itjaunissement--
386
00:22:00,666 --> 00:22:04,066 yellowizing the war.
387
00:22:04,066 --> 00:22:10,200 We knew that the Vietnamese Army was not up to fighting this war.
388
00:22:10,200 --> 00:22:12,766 If they couldn't do it with the Americans,
389
00:22:12,766 --> 00:22:15,933 how were they going to do it without the Americans?
390
00:22:15,933 --> 00:22:19,100 ♪ Lonely days are gone
391
00:22:19,100 --> 00:22:22,033 NARRATOR: Although Washington planned to vastly increase
392
00:22:22,033 --> 00:22:25,066 military support of the South Vietnamese Army,
393
00:22:25,066 --> 00:22:28,366 General Abrams knew that Vietnamization alone
394
00:22:28,366 --> 00:22:30,766 could never defeat the enemy.
395
00:22:30,766 --> 00:22:33,300 But he had his orders.
396
00:22:33,300 --> 00:22:36,100 McPEAK: The reason I was ordered home early
397
00:22:36,100 --> 00:22:38,033 was because Nixon... President Nixon
398
00:22:38,033 --> 00:22:41,433 announced the policy of Vietnamization.
399
00:22:41,433 --> 00:22:45,633 Now, Vietnamization was a lie,
400
00:22:45,633 --> 00:22:49,600 but it had an element of truth in it.
401
00:22:49,600 --> 00:22:51,966 We were leaving, okay?
402
00:22:51,966 --> 00:22:53,900 And that sealed the South's fate.
403
00:22:53,900 --> 00:22:55,400 I knew it.
404
00:22:55,400 --> 00:22:58,433 And I think anybody who was conscious
405
00:22:58,433 --> 00:23:00,333 and could see what was going on 406
00:23:00,333 --> 00:23:01,633 knew it.[20] 407
00:23:01,633 --> 00:23:04,233 NARRATOR: Nixon then flew to Midway Island
408
00:23:04,233 --> 00:23:07,900 to meet with South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu.
409
00:23:07,900 --> 00:23:11,133 He had not dared invite Thieu to Washington
410
00:23:11,133 --> 00:23:14,133 for fear of sparking mass demonstrations.
411
00:23:14,133 --> 00:23:15,600 ♪ Lonely days are gone
412
00:23:15,600 --> 00:23:17,800 NIXON: President Thieu informed me
413
00:23:17,800 --> 00:23:21,700 that the progress of the training program
414
00:23:21,700 --> 00:23:23,466 and the equipping program
415
00:23:23,466 --> 00:23:25,766 for South Vietnamese forces
416
00:23:25,766 --> 00:23:30,900 had been so successful, uh, that he could now recommend
417
00:23:30,900 --> 00:23:34,300 that the United States begin to replace
418
00:23:34,300 --> 00:23:38,700 U.S. combat forces with Vietnamese forces.
419
00:23:38,700 --> 00:23:41,266 (speaking Vietnamese)
420
00:23:43,866 --> 00:23:46,366 NARRATOR: Thieu had said no such thing
421
00:23:46,366 --> 00:23:49,000 but felt he had to go along.
422
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:51,800 "There is nothing I can do," he told a friend.
423
00:23:51,800 --> 00:23:54,233 "Just as we could do nothing about it
424
00:23:54,233 --> 00:23:56,933 "when Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson
425
00:23:56,933 --> 00:24:00,000 decided to come in."
426
00:24:00,000 --> 00:24:03,133 "We were clearly on the way out of Vietnam,"
427
00:24:03,133 --> 00:24:06,366 National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger remembered,
428
00:24:06,366 --> 00:24:09,200 "by negotiation if possible,
429
00:24:09,200 --> 00:24:13,100 by unilateral withdrawal if necessary."
430
00:24:13,100 --> 00:24:16,166 He and the President were redefining
431
00:24:16,166 --> 00:24:19,133 what victory would look like.
432
00:24:19,133 --> 00:24:22,166 TOM VALLELY: Nixon and Kissinger...[21]
433
00:24:22,166 --> 00:24:24,300 They...
434
00:24:24,300 --> 00:24:26,666 Their job is to clean up.
435
00:24:26,666 --> 00:24:28,366 They're, they're...
436
00:24:28,366 --> 00:24:30,400 The war's over, okay?
437
00:24:30,400 --> 00:24:33,966 When Nixon and Kissinger, when they come, they're...
438
00:24:33,966 --> 00:24:35,433 they're not gonna win the war.
439
00:24:35,433 --> 00:24:37,866 ("Taps" playing) So they develop
440
00:24:37,866 --> 00:24:39,633 a secret strategy.
441
00:24:39,633 --> 00:24:43,500 They surrender without saying they surrendered.
442
00:24:45,966 --> 00:24:49,266 This is not a bad strategy, this is the only strategy.
443
00:24:49,266 --> 00:24:53,233 ("Circle for a Landing" by Three Dog Night starts playing)
444
00:24:53,233 --> 00:24:55,633 (indistinct announcement over P.A.)
445
00:24:57,466 --> 00:25:01,166 NARRATOR: As American soldiers began leaving South Vietnam,
446
00:25:01,166 --> 00:25:04,366 American weaponry and materiel poured in.
447
00:25:05,933 --> 00:25:08,133 ♪ Circle for a landing
448
00:25:08,133 --> 00:25:10,433 ♪ Get your feet back on the ground ♪
449
00:25:10,433 --> 00:25:13,533 More than a million M16 rifles,
450
00:25:13,533 --> 00:25:19,566 40,000 grenade launchers, thousands of wheeled vehicles--
451
00:25:19,566 --> 00:25:21,300 so many, one congressman complained,
452
00:25:21,300 --> 00:25:24,600 that it seemed as if the United States taxpayer
453
00:25:24,600 --> 00:25:28,900 was being asked to "put every South Vietnamese soldier
454
00:25:28,900 --> 00:25:31,400 behind the wheel."[22]
455
00:25:31,400 --> 00:25:33,666 NEIL SHEEHAN: It didn't make any sense, of course,
456
00:25:33,666 --> 00:25:36,666 because we tried that in 1962 and '63.
457
00:25:36,666 --> 00:25:38,566 The people hadn't changed.
458
00:25:38,566 --> 00:25:40,200 They were just giving 'em more furniture.[23]
459
00:25:42,400 --> 00:25:45,400 NGUYEN THOI BUNG: VIET CONG They tripled the amount of weapons they gave the Saigon Army. The puppet Army was strengthened. But to me, if the American army couldn't win, the puppet army would never win.[24]
460
00:26:03,300 --> 00:26:07,233 NARRATOR: South Vietnamese armed forces were expanded
461
00:26:07,233 --> 00:26:11,600 from 850,000 men to over a million.
462
00:26:11,600 --> 00:26:13,633 But nothing could alter the fact
463
00:26:13,633 --> 00:26:15,200 that rampant corruption
464
00:26:15,200 --> 00:26:18,733 continually eroded their effectiveness.
465
00:26:18,733 --> 00:26:20,933 DON WEBSTER: The way it works is this:
466
00:26:20,933 --> 00:26:23,466 a man makes a deal with his commanding officer,
467
00:26:23,466 --> 00:26:26,200 perhaps to pay the officer his full salary.
468
00:26:26,200 --> 00:26:29,266 In exchange, you never have to show up for duty,
469
00:26:29,266 --> 00:26:31,866 except perhaps once a week at the ceremony.
470
00:26:31,866 --> 00:26:34,000 So while you're theoretically in the Army,
471
00:26:34,000 --> 00:26:36,400 you can hold a full-time civilian job.
472
00:26:37,666 --> 00:26:40,533 LAM QUANG THI: SOUTH VIETNAMESE ARMY Another form of corruption was adding men to the rosters who never existed. Commanders could then pocket the salaries of those "ghost soldiers."
473
00:26:53,300 --> 00:26:56,466 (gunfire)
474
00:26:56,466 --> 00:27:00,133 NARRATOR: Many ARVN units did fight well.
475
00:27:03,233 --> 00:27:05,366 They had borne the brunt of the fighting
476
00:27:05,366 --> 00:27:06,900 during the Tet Offensive,
477
00:27:06,900 --> 00:27:09,833 and, by the middle of 1969,
478
00:27:09,833 --> 00:27:14,533 90,000 of them had been killed in combat.
479
00:27:14,533 --> 00:27:20,033 Their bravery was often overlooked by Americans.
480
00:27:20,033 --> 00:27:23,766 VALLELY: We were disdainful of them.
481
00:27:23,766 --> 00:27:26,833 We overstated their incompetence
482
00:27:26,833 --> 00:27:30,666 because we wanted to overstate our importance.
483
00:27:30,666 --> 00:27:32,600 (booming in distance)
484
00:27:32,600 --> 00:27:35,733 (men shouting, gunfire)
485
00:27:42,566 --> 00:27:47,833 VALLELY: Part of going to war in Vietnam I, I enjoyed.
486
00:27:47,833 --> 00:27:52,700 If you survive it, it's, it's quite thrilling.
487
00:27:52,700 --> 00:27:55,600 It's the history of the world.
488
00:27:57,066 --> 00:27:58,566 It's hard to survive.
489
00:27:58,566 --> 00:28:00,600 I mean, in, where I was, survival is an issue.
490
00:28:00,600 --> 00:28:04,766 I would have loved to have been in the National Guard.
491
00:28:06,966 --> 00:28:08,433 Period.
492
00:28:08,433 --> 00:28:09,900 ("Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival playing)
493
00:28:09,900 --> 00:28:12,833 VALLELY: I knew the core issue
494
00:28:12,833 --> 00:28:15,766 of what was acceptable in war and what wasn't.
495
00:28:15,766 --> 00:28:17,166 I knew that.
496
00:28:17,166 --> 00:28:20,033 I didn't need to get that from the Marine Corps.
497
00:28:20,033 --> 00:28:23,566 I got that from Sunday school.
498
00:28:23,566 --> 00:28:26,566 NARRATOR: Thomas John Vallely was born in Boston,
499
00:28:26,566 --> 00:28:28,033 the son of a judge,
500
00:28:28,033 --> 00:28:31,000 and brought up in the suburb of Newton.
501
00:28:31,000 --> 00:28:36,500 Undiagnosed dyslexia kept him from doing well in school.
502
00:28:36,500 --> 00:28:38,633 By 1969,
503
00:28:38,633 --> 00:28:42,333 Vallely was a radio operator[25] in the Marine Corps,
504
00:28:42,333 --> 00:28:45,500 part of a massive search-and-destroy mission
505
00:28:45,500 --> 00:28:49,766 in Quang Nam Province in the northern part of South Vietnam.
506
00:28:49,766 --> 00:28:51,466 (men shouting, gunfire)
507
00:28:51,466 --> 00:28:53,200 On August 13,
508
00:28:53,200 --> 00:28:55,000 his company was ambushed
509
00:28:55,000 --> 00:28:58,600 and came under heavy machine gun fire.
510
00:28:58,600 --> 00:29:00,000 (gunfire)
511
00:29:05,966 --> 00:29:10,200 VALLELY: It was a "grab 'em by the belt" type of situation.
512
00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:13,100 And we lost a lot of people.
513
00:29:14,633 --> 00:29:15,966 So did they.
514
00:29:17,833 --> 00:29:20,000 Lot of people laying around.
515
00:29:20,000 --> 00:29:22,533 (gunfire, explosion)
516
00:29:22,533 --> 00:29:24,966 NARRATOR: Vallely radioed for reinforcements.
517
00:29:24,966 --> 00:29:28,600 Then he picked up a rifle and ammunition
518
00:29:28,600 --> 00:29:31,100 from a wounded Marine,[26]
519
00:29:31,100 --> 00:29:33,233 and, firing as he went, took up a position
520
00:29:33,233 --> 00:29:36,166 just ten feet from an enemy machine gun.
521
00:29:36,166 --> 00:29:41,700 He hurled a smoke grenade to mark their position.
522
00:29:41,700 --> 00:29:45,700 And then, as enemy fire swept back and forth
523
00:29:45,700 --> 00:29:47,966 across the field,
524
00:29:47,966 --> 00:29:49,633 he moved from Marine to Marine,
525
00:29:49,633 --> 00:29:51,400 pointing out targets among the trees
526
00:29:51,400 --> 00:29:54,166 and encouraging his comrades.
527
00:30:00,166 --> 00:30:03,166 For his conspicuous gallantry,
528
00:30:03,166 --> 00:30:07,033 Tom Vallely was awarded the Silver Star.
529
00:30:07,033 --> 00:30:09,366 VALLELY: You want to tell your grandchildren
530
00:30:09,366 --> 00:30:12,600 it has a lot to do with courage,
531
00:30:12,600 --> 00:30:16,200 uh, but it, it's really quite reactive.
532
00:30:16,200 --> 00:30:18,600 It's survival.
533
00:30:18,600 --> 00:30:20,800 Either you're...
534
00:30:20,800 --> 00:30:23,466 It's, it's...
535
00:30:23,466 --> 00:30:25,933 There's no choice here.
536
00:30:25,933 --> 00:30:29,966 You react or you're not gonna have grandchildren.
MINUTES 30-40
537
00:30:32,800 --> 00:30:34,133 COUNTRY JOE McDONALD: Give me an "F"!
538
00:30:34,133 --> 00:30:35,133 CROWD: "F"!
539
00:30:35,133 --> 00:30:36,466 McDONALD: Give me a "U"!
540
00:30:36,466 --> 00:30:37,466 CROWD: "U"!
541
00:30:37,466 --> 00:30:38,666 McDONALD: Give me a "..."!
542
00:30:38,666 --> 00:30:40,566 "..."! Give me a "..."!
543
00:30:40,566 --> 00:30:41,566 "..."!
544
00:30:41,566 --> 00:30:42,900 What's that spell?!
545
00:30:42,900 --> 00:30:44,900 NARRATOR: Two days after the battle
546
00:30:44,900 --> 00:30:47,166 in which Tom Vallely distinguished himself,
547
00:30:47,166 --> 00:30:48,966 and while half a million Americans
548
00:30:48,966 --> 00:30:51,366 were still in Vietnam,
549
00:30:51,366 --> 00:30:53,366 half a million Americans gathered
550
00:30:53,366 --> 00:30:56,266 on a dairy farm in upstate New York
551
00:30:56,266 --> 00:30:59,600 for a music festival: Woodstock.
552
00:30:59,600 --> 00:31:02,100 ♪ Way down yonder in Vietnam
553
00:31:02,100 --> 00:31:04,300 ♪ Put down your books and pick up a gun ♪
554
00:31:04,300 --> 00:31:05,766 ♪ We're gonna have a whole lot of fun ♪
555
00:31:05,766 --> 00:31:10,166 ♪ And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for? ♪
556
00:31:10,166 --> 00:31:12,600 ♪ Don't ask me, I don't give a damn ♪
557
00:31:12,600 --> 00:31:15,066 ♪ The next stop is Vietnam
558
00:31:15,066 --> 00:31:17,333 ♪ And it's five, six, seven
559
00:31:17,333 --> 00:31:19,566 ♪ Open up the pearly gates
560
00:31:19,566 --> 00:31:22,733 ♪ Well, there ain't no time to wonder why, whoopee ♪
561
00:31:22,733 --> 00:31:24,833 ♪ We're all gonna die
562
00:31:24,833 --> 00:31:27,966 ("Soul Sacrifice" by Santana playing)
563
00:31:50,533 --> 00:31:51,866 ♪ Contrasting video images of Woodstock and Vietnam
564
00:32:17,866 --> 00:32:19,200 (song ends, crowd cheering)
565
00:32:19,200 --> 00:32:23,600 MAN: Ladies and gentlemen, Santana!
566
00:32:23,600 --> 00:32:26,433 ARMY MAJOR: You've been told once, you've been told twice.
567
00:32:26,433 --> 00:32:28,100 That's all-- spread it out!
568
00:32:28,100 --> 00:32:30,100 ("Time of the Season" by the Zombies playing)
569
00:32:30,100 --> 00:32:31,500 ♪ What's your name?
570
00:32:31,500 --> 00:32:33,666 GILLAM: This guy from Arkansas
571
00:32:33,666 --> 00:32:38,100 told me he would not carry the radio for me.
572
00:32:38,100 --> 00:32:43,100 He said, "I will not follow you like Cheetah follows Tarzan.
573
00:32:43,100 --> 00:32:45,333 It's not gonna happen, Sarge."
574
00:32:45,333 --> 00:32:50,166 And I thought, "Oh, this is gonna be a really long year."
575
00:32:50,166 --> 00:32:52,333 I've got people down there sweeping,
576
00:32:52,333 --> 00:32:53,666 so get 'em down there.
577
00:32:53,666 --> 00:32:55,433 ♪ It's the time
578
00:32:55,433 --> 00:32:58,700 GILLAM: He evolved a little bit.
579
00:32:58,700 --> 00:33:01,566 You know, he, he kind of got the idea
580
00:33:01,566 --> 00:33:04,733 that the enemy's bullets are colorblind.
581
00:33:04,733 --> 00:33:08,033 They would shoot anybody, not just me.
582
00:33:10,600 --> 00:33:14,466 NARRATOR: African-Americans had served in every American war
583
00:33:14,466 --> 00:33:16,966 since the revolution.[27]
584
00:33:16,966 --> 00:33:19,433 In the early years of the Vietnam War,
585
00:33:19,433 --> 00:33:21,900 they suffered a disproportionate number
586
00:33:21,900 --> 00:33:23,966 of combat deaths.
587
00:33:23,966 --> 00:33:27,233 When civil rights leaders complained,
588
00:33:27,233 --> 00:33:30,166 the Defense Department made a concerted effort
589
00:33:30,166 --> 00:33:32,333 to right that balance,
590
00:33:32,333 --> 00:33:35,933 and by 1969, it had succeeded.
591
00:33:35,933 --> 00:33:37,933 But behind the lines,
592
00:33:37,933 --> 00:33:41,600 African-American soldiers were still treated differently
593
00:33:41,600 --> 00:33:43,966 from their white counterparts.
594
00:33:43,966 --> 00:33:45,866 ("Respect" by Otis Redding playing)
595
00:33:54,666 --> 00:33:56,933 SOLDIER: And here there's all, all these beast mother...
596
00:33:56,933 --> 00:33:58,166 walking around here with their hair
597
00:33:58,166 --> 00:34:00,800 looking like goddamn girls,
598
00:34:00,800 --> 00:34:02,133 and we can't wear our hair
599
00:34:02,133 --> 00:34:03,866 mother... three inches long.
600
00:34:03,866 --> 00:34:06,233 The mother... regulation is three inches.
601
00:34:06,233 --> 00:34:09,000 And most of the brothers can wear a afro,
602
00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:10,933 the hair gonna be mother... two inches.
603
00:34:10,933 --> 00:34:12,666 And why we got to get our hair cut?
604
00:34:12,666 --> 00:34:14,166 That's what I want to know.
605
00:34:14,166 --> 00:34:16,166 ♪ Yeah, man, ooh, yeah
606
00:34:16,166 --> 00:34:19,166 WAYNE SMITH: Vietnam was a microcosm.
607
00:34:19,166 --> 00:34:21,033 Everything that was happening in America
608
00:34:21,033 --> 00:34:22,900 was happening in Vietnam, really,
609
00:34:22,900 --> 00:34:25,133 in one way, shape, or form.
610
00:34:25,133 --> 00:34:27,066 In the rear,
611
00:34:27,066 --> 00:34:30,666 there were Confederate flags flying.
612
00:34:30,666 --> 00:34:33,833 SOLDIER 2: I mean, of all things to have over here, man,
613
00:34:33,833 --> 00:34:36,166 why a Confederate flag?
614
00:34:36,166 --> 00:34:38,433 As a matter of fact, I think there ought to be
615
00:34:38,433 --> 00:34:42,433 some goddamn law to ... outlaw them goddamn flags, man.
616
00:34:42,433 --> 00:34:46,666 The ... Confederacy is gone, man.
617
00:34:46,666 --> 00:34:49,166 SMITH: When one is in an environment
618
00:34:49,166 --> 00:34:53,933 where everyone has a gun, automatic weapon,
619
00:34:53,933 --> 00:34:56,666 I'll be goddamned if someone's gonna call me a nigger
620
00:34:56,666 --> 00:34:58,733 or give me a bull... order.
621
00:34:58,733 --> 00:35:02,800 I mean, that was the attitude, to risk my life for what?
622
00:35:02,800 --> 00:35:04,333 REDDING: ♪ Sweeter than honey
623
00:35:04,333 --> 00:35:07,333 ROGER HARRIS: There was all kind of craziness happening,
624
00:35:07,333 --> 00:35:10,666 because white people were still calling, you know, us niggers,
625
00:35:10,666 --> 00:35:13,666 and then there were some black people calling us Uncle Toms.
626
00:35:13,666 --> 00:35:15,200 There were the antiwar folks
627
00:35:15,200 --> 00:35:17,533 who were calling us baby killers, say...
628
00:35:17,533 --> 00:35:19,533 You know, you can say what you want, but you can say it
629
00:35:19,533 --> 00:35:21,266 from over there because if you get in range,
630
00:35:21,266 --> 00:35:25,266 you're gonna get serious damage done to you.
631
00:35:25,266 --> 00:35:26,933 Say what you want from a distance,
632
00:35:26,933 --> 00:35:29,100 but if you get close to me, I'm gonna rip your throat out.
633
00:35:29,100 --> 00:35:30,766 You know?
634
00:35:30,766 --> 00:35:34,433 JUAN RAMIREZ: MARINES But when we walked outside that wire,
635
00:35:34,433 --> 00:35:37,466 we went out into the bush, we were tight.
636
00:35:37,466 --> 00:35:39,800 Even with our differences.
637
00:35:39,800 --> 00:35:41,900 Maybe we had threatened each other,
638
00:35:41,900 --> 00:35:45,066 we'd had a fight back in the base,
639
00:35:45,066 --> 00:35:47,833 but when we were out there, you know,
640
00:35:47,833 --> 00:35:51,400 we, we were a, a fighting unit.
641
00:35:52,866 --> 00:35:56,800 And it's almost like an identity crisis.
642
00:35:56,800 --> 00:36:01,000 I was born here, and my parents were born here.
643
00:36:01,000 --> 00:36:03,333 I felt, in a way,
644
00:36:03,333 --> 00:36:06,500 more American than Mexican.
645
00:36:06,500 --> 00:36:08,166 MAN: ...hand and repeat after me...
646
00:36:08,166 --> 00:36:12,566 NARRATOR: The U.S. military did not officially count Hispanics,
647
00:36:12,566 --> 00:36:17,300 but an estimated 170,000 would serve in Vietnam
648
00:36:17,300 --> 00:36:21,433 and more than 3,000 lost their lives.
649
00:36:21,433 --> 00:36:24,166 Like their fathers and grandfathers,
650
00:36:24,166 --> 00:36:28,300 many saw military service as both a patriotic duty
651
00:36:28,300 --> 00:36:31,166 and an opportunity to advance their standing
652
00:36:31,166 --> 00:36:33,800 in the United States.
653
00:36:33,800 --> 00:36:37,000 But as casualties mounted
654
00:36:37,000 --> 00:36:39,133 and with a burgeoning Chicano identity movement
655
00:36:39,133 --> 00:36:41,600 among farm workers and college students,
656
00:36:41,600 --> 00:36:46,366 anti-war sentiment in Hispanic communities grew.
657
00:36:46,366 --> 00:36:50,100 PROTESTOR: We're protesting against the discriminatory draft laws
658
00:36:50,100 --> 00:36:52,266 that give deferments
659
00:36:52,266 --> 00:36:55,533 to all the Anglo middle-class people of this country
660
00:36:55,533 --> 00:36:58,633 and make the heaviest burdens of the war
661
00:36:58,633 --> 00:37:01,866 fall on the poor, fall on the Mexicano.
662
00:37:01,866 --> 00:37:04,233 RAMIREZ: I had learned
663
00:37:04,233 --> 00:37:08,266 about my sister and my mother's antiwar activities
664
00:37:08,266 --> 00:37:10,266 while I was still in Vietnam.
665
00:37:10,266 --> 00:37:12,533 In fact, my sister wrote and said,
666
00:37:12,533 --> 00:37:15,066 "I hope you're okay with this."
667
00:37:15,066 --> 00:37:16,800 And she was honest with me.
668
00:37:16,800 --> 00:37:18,800 She told me what they were doing.
669
00:37:18,800 --> 00:37:22,033 She says, "I'm doing it for you, 'cause I want you to come home."
670
00:37:22,033 --> 00:37:23,933 (indistinct chanting)
671
00:37:29,166 --> 00:37:30,333 (TV clicks on)
672
00:37:30,333 --> 00:37:33,666 TOM SMOTHERS: In line with our policy of taking a stand
673
00:37:33,666 --> 00:37:35,500 on the pressing issues of the day,
674
00:37:35,500 --> 00:37:38,500 we now present another in our continuing series of editorials.
675
00:37:38,500 --> 00:37:39,500 The subject:
676
00:37:39,500 --> 00:37:42,433 are our draft laws unfair?
677
00:37:42,433 --> 00:37:44,600 Here again, speaking for our program,
678
00:37:44,600 --> 00:37:47,266 is Mr. Patrick Paulsen, vice president.
679
00:37:47,266 --> 00:37:49,000 (applause)
680
00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:51,400 PAT PAULSON: Now, we don't claim the draft is perfect,
681
00:37:51,400 --> 00:37:53,566 and we do have a constructive proposal
682
00:37:53,566 --> 00:37:55,700 for a workable alternative.
683
00:37:55,700 --> 00:37:57,833 We propose a draft lottery
684
00:37:57,833 --> 00:38:00,300 in which the names of all eligible males
685
00:38:00,300 --> 00:38:02,033 will be put into a hat,
686
00:38:02,033 --> 00:38:05,700 and the men will be drafted according to their head sizes.
687
00:38:05,700 --> 00:38:09,333 The tiny heads will go into the military service
688
00:38:09,333 --> 00:38:13,800 and the fat heads will go into government.
689
00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:15,800 SOLDIER (on radio): Roger, 3-1 is on his way.
690
00:38:15,800 --> 00:38:18,533 SOLDIER (over radio): 5-8-1.
691
00:38:18,533 --> 00:38:22,666 VINCENT OKAMOTO: A 19-year-old high school dropout says,
692
00:38:22,666 --> 00:38:25,600 "Why are we here?"
693
00:38:25,600 --> 00:38:27,466 And the, the standard response,
694
00:38:27,466 --> 00:38:29,500 at least on an official level, was,
695
00:38:29,500 --> 00:38:32,466 to prevent international communism
696
00:38:32,466 --> 00:38:35,466 from conquering the world.
697
00:38:35,466 --> 00:38:39,266 The men say, "Hey, that, that's bull..."
698
00:38:41,500 --> 00:38:43,133 So the other reason put forth,
699
00:38:43,133 --> 00:38:45,266 at least in the latter days of the war,
700
00:38:45,266 --> 00:38:47,766 was to maintain America's international credibility
701
00:38:47,766 --> 00:38:50,433 with our allies, and our enemies.
702
00:38:50,433 --> 00:38:54,600 Uh, no 19, 20-year-old kid wants to die to maintain
703
00:38:54,600 --> 00:38:57,900 the credibility of Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon.
704
00:38:57,900 --> 00:39:01,466 And so, within a relatively short time,
705
00:39:01,466 --> 00:39:03,700 the guys were saying,
706
00:39:03,700 --> 00:39:06,566 "Look, we shouldn't be here, but we are.
707
00:39:06,566 --> 00:39:08,566 "So my only function in life
708
00:39:08,566 --> 00:39:11,833 "is to try and keep you alive, buddy,
709
00:39:11,833 --> 00:39:15,000 "and to keep my precious ass from being killed.
710
00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:18,666 And then to go home and forget about this."
711
00:39:21,133 --> 00:39:23,900 SOLDIER: The grunts, uh,
712
00:39:23,900 --> 00:39:27,133 don't always do what the captain says, you know.
713
00:39:27,133 --> 00:39:30,700 We got, uh-- the captain will stay back,
714
00:39:30,700 --> 00:39:32,700 he'll tell the platoon or something
715
00:39:32,700 --> 00:39:35,500 to go out so many hundred meters, you know.
716
00:39:35,500 --> 00:39:37,333 We don't do it.
717
00:39:37,333 --> 00:39:39,233 We only go as far as we get out of sight,
718
00:39:39,233 --> 00:39:40,766 sit down, and come back in. JOHN
719
00:39:40,766 --> 00:39:42,633 PILGER: What happens to an unpopular officer
720
00:39:42,633 --> 00:39:44,766 out in the field?
721
00:39:44,766 --> 00:39:47,800 Mostly unpopular officers, from what I've heard,
722
00:39:47,800 --> 00:39:50,533 if they, if they mess with a grunt too much,
723
00:39:50,533 --> 00:39:53,533 they get shot at.
724
00:39:53,533 --> 00:39:57,033 NARRATOR: It had always been a part of war.
725
00:39:57,033 --> 00:40:00,166 In Vietnam, it was called "fragging,"
726
00:40:00,166 --> 00:40:04,500 after the fragmentation grenades most often used.
727
00:40:04,500 --> 00:40:08,333 Beginning in the summer of 1969,
728
00:40:08,333 --> 00:40:12,300 as thousands of American troops began going home,
729
00:40:12,300 --> 00:40:15,966 the number of reports of the murder or attempted murder
730
00:40:15,966 --> 00:40:18,100 by enlisted men of their superiors
731
00:40:18,100 --> 00:40:21,233 increased alarmingly.
732
00:40:21,233 --> 00:40:26,466 The Army would investigate nearly 800 cases.
733
00:40:26,466 --> 00:40:28,533 Most took place far from the fighting,
734
00:40:28,533 --> 00:40:31,333 usually the violent outcome of arguments over race
735
00:40:31,333 --> 00:40:33,600 or women or drugs
736
00:40:33,600 --> 00:40:36,700 rather than the war itself.
737
00:40:36,700 --> 00:40:39,366 But there were exceptions.
MINUTES 40-50
738
00:40:39,366 --> 00:40:41,366 OKAMOTO: It's a totally different army
739
00:40:41,366 --> 00:40:45,300 than what we sent to Vietnam in 1965.
740
00:40:45,300 --> 00:40:49,433 And the new lieutenant comes in, all gung-ho for body count.
741
00:40:49,433 --> 00:40:53,000 He wants contact, he goes crazy, and says,
742
00:40:53,000 --> 00:40:55,400 "I want a volunteer for this."
743
00:40:55,400 --> 00:40:58,100 (rapid gunfire)
744
00:40:58,100 --> 00:41:04,033 That new gung-ho officer was a clear and present danger
745
00:41:04,033 --> 00:41:07,833 to the life and limb of the grunts.
746
00:41:07,833 --> 00:41:10,500 They'd have subtle hints, like a little note saying,
747
00:41:10,500 --> 00:41:13,233 "We're gonna kill your ass if you keep this up."
748
00:41:13,233 --> 00:41:16,300 Or instead of a fragmentation grenade,
749
00:41:16,300 --> 00:41:20,133 they may throw a smoke grenade in an officer's hooch or bunker.
750
00:41:20,133 --> 00:41:24,200 And if they didn't correct their behavior and outlook,
751
00:41:24,200 --> 00:41:27,700 yeah, they would frag them.
752
00:41:27,700 --> 00:41:31,466 RAMIREZ: I saw it happen in a very, uh, strange way.
753
00:41:31,466 --> 00:41:39,700 We were in a base and a Marine started running towards me.
754
00:41:39,700 --> 00:41:41,866 I didn't realize that what he...
755
00:41:41,866 --> 00:41:44,100 what he was doing back in the dark over there
756
00:41:44,100 --> 00:41:46,366 was actually throw a hand grenade
757
00:41:46,366 --> 00:41:49,933 underneath the space that is underneath a hooch.
758
00:41:49,933 --> 00:41:51,333 (explosion)
759
00:41:51,333 --> 00:41:53,733 And when it exploded, I went, "Holy ..."
760
00:41:53,733 --> 00:41:57,166 And I knew right away what he had done.
761
00:41:57,166 --> 00:42:00,533 And he was an African-American Marine.
762
00:42:00,533 --> 00:42:02,600 African-Americans were treated
763
00:42:02,600 --> 00:42:05,066 with disrespect by their superiors.
764
00:42:05,066 --> 00:42:09,033 This was not uncommon.
765
00:42:09,033 --> 00:42:14,033 So in a ways, as bad as this sounds,
766
00:42:14,033 --> 00:42:16,533 maybe that guy had it coming to him.
767
00:42:16,533 --> 00:42:18,000 I don't know.
768
00:42:21,233 --> 00:42:24,166 HUGH DOWNS(?): In Paris, the 29th session of the so-called peace talks
769
00:42:24,166 --> 00:42:25,166 took place.
770
00:42:25,166 --> 00:42:27,066 There was no progress.
771
00:42:27,066 --> 00:42:30,500 In Vietnam, it was announced that 139 Americans
772
00:42:30,500 --> 00:42:32,100 lost their lives last week,
773
00:42:32,100 --> 00:42:34,800 bringing total deaths in our longest war...
774
00:42:34,800 --> 00:42:37,800 NARRATOR: The four-way peace talks in Paris
775
00:42:37,800 --> 00:42:40,500 continued to go nowhere.
776
00:42:40,500 --> 00:42:44,166 To break the logjam, Nixon directed Henry Kissinger
777
00:42:44,166 --> 00:42:46,933 to begin secret talks,
778
00:42:46,933 --> 00:42:49,666 the first in a series of clandestine meetings
779
00:42:49,666 --> 00:42:52,533 with the North Vietnamese alone.
780
00:42:52,533 --> 00:42:54,866 They first met in an apartment building
781
00:42:54,866 --> 00:42:57,000 on the Rue de Rivoli.
782
00:42:57,000 --> 00:43:00,033 The Viet Cong and the South Vietnamese government
783
00:43:00,033 --> 00:43:02,900 were not included.
784
00:43:02,900 --> 00:43:05,933 Hanoi remained immovable.
785
00:43:05,933 --> 00:43:09,800 They would not even admit they had troops in South Vietnam,
786
00:43:09,800 --> 00:43:13,833 let alone discuss withdrawing them.
787
00:43:13,833 --> 00:43:15,700 Now Kissinger warned
788
00:43:15,700 --> 00:43:19,000 that if there were no change in their position by November 1,
789
00:43:19,000 --> 00:43:21,033 the one-year anniversary
790
00:43:21,033 --> 00:43:23,466 of President Johnson's bombing halt,
791
00:43:23,466 --> 00:43:25,266 President Nixon
792
00:43:25,266 --> 00:43:28,166 would "consider steps of grave consequence."
793
00:43:40,700 --> 00:43:44,300 NARRATOR: September 2, 1969,
794
00:43:44,300 --> 00:43:46,666 was the 24th anniversary
795
00:43:46,666 --> 00:43:50,566 of Ho Chi Minh's declaration of Vietnamese independence
796
00:43:50,566 --> 00:43:52,933 in Hanoi's Ba Dinh Square.
797
00:43:54,933 --> 00:43:59,833 At 9:45 that morning, Ho died.[28]
798
00:43:59,833 --> 00:44:04,633 He was said to be 79, but like so much about him,
799
00:44:04,633 --> 00:44:10,033 the precise date of his birth was shrouded in mystery.[29]
800
00:44:10,033 --> 00:44:12,733 He had been "Uncle Ho" for decades,
801
00:44:12,733 --> 00:44:16,133 the living embodiment of the struggle against the Japanese,
802
00:44:16,133 --> 00:44:19,133 the French, the Saigon government,
803
00:44:19,133 --> 00:44:22,100 and then the Americans.
804
00:44:22,100 --> 00:44:24,200 ♪
805
00:44:24,200 --> 00:44:27,066 In a speech to the National Assembly,
806
00:44:27,066 --> 00:44:31,600 Le Duan, the First Secretary of the Communist Party,
807
00:44:31,600 --> 00:44:33,000 who had been the architect
808
00:44:33,000 --> 00:44:35,666 of North Vietnamese military policy
809
00:44:35,666 --> 00:44:37,033 for a decade,
810
00:44:37,033 --> 00:44:41,133 promised to fulfill what he said was Ho's vision:
811
00:44:41,133 --> 00:44:47,000 the reunification of the country on communist terms.
812
00:44:48,566 --> 00:44:51,333 Nothing had changed.
813
00:44:51,333 --> 00:44:53,200 ROBERT FRISHMAN: Hanoi has given the false impression
814
00:44:53,200 --> 00:44:56,566 that all is wine and roses and it isn't so.
815
00:44:56,566 --> 00:44:59,033 NARRATOR: The same day Ho Chi Minh died,
816
00:44:59,033 --> 00:45:01,766 an unusual press conference was held
817
00:45:01,766 --> 00:45:04,766 at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center.
818
00:45:04,766 --> 00:45:07,533 Two ailing prisoners of war,
819
00:45:07,533 --> 00:45:11,100 Robert Frishman and Douglas Hegdahl,
820
00:45:11,100 --> 00:45:13,466 who had recently been released by the North Vietnamese,
821
00:45:13,466 --> 00:45:15,700 spoke in public for the first time
822
00:45:15,700 --> 00:45:17,600 about the severe treatment
823
00:45:17,600 --> 00:45:21,066 they and their fellow prisoners had received.
824
00:45:21,066 --> 00:45:23,633 I don't think solitary confinement,
825
00:45:23,633 --> 00:45:27,533 forced statements, living in a cage for three years,
826
00:45:27,533 --> 00:45:31,466 being put in straps, not being allowed to sleep or eat,
827
00:45:31,466 --> 00:45:35,033 removal of fingernails, being hung from a ceiling,
828
00:45:35,033 --> 00:45:37,400 having an infected arm which was almost lost,
829
00:45:37,400 --> 00:45:39,733 not receiving medical care,
830
00:45:39,733 --> 00:45:42,000 being dragged along the ground with a broken leg,
831
00:45:42,000 --> 00:45:45,033 or not allowing exchange of mail to prisoners of war
832
00:45:45,033 --> 00:45:46,466 are humane.[30]
833
00:45:46,466 --> 00:45:50,766 NARRATOR: Douglas Hegdahl was quiet, self-effacing,
834
00:45:50,766 --> 00:45:53,433 and so apparently clueless,
835
00:45:53,433 --> 00:45:55,600 his North Vietnamese guards
836
00:45:55,600 --> 00:45:58,433 had called him the "stupid one."
837
00:45:58,433 --> 00:46:00,000 But once released,
838
00:46:00,000 --> 00:46:03,366 he was a gold mine of information.
839
00:46:03,366 --> 00:46:07,366 He had memorized the names of more than 200 prisoners
840
00:46:07,366 --> 00:46:11,100 to the tune of "Old McDonald Had a Farm."
841
00:46:11,100 --> 00:46:14,033 Thanks to him, scores of American families
842
00:46:14,033 --> 00:46:16,233 would find out for the first time
843
00:46:16,233 --> 00:46:21,500 that their sons and husbands and fathers were still alive.
844
00:46:21,500 --> 00:46:25,100 Within a few days of the press conference,
845
00:46:25,100 --> 00:46:28,966 Hanoi's treatment of the prisoners began to improve.
846
00:46:28,966 --> 00:46:32,933 "A lot less brutality," one captive remembered,
847
00:46:32,933 --> 00:46:35,466 "and larger bowls of rice."
848
00:46:38,100 --> 00:46:40,300 (explosion)
849
00:46:40,300 --> 00:46:41,966 (men yelling)
850
00:46:41,966 --> 00:46:43,866 (rapid gunfire)
851
00:46:50,233 --> 00:46:51,666 DEVALLIER: All right, who's wounded?
852
00:46:51,666 --> 00:46:54,400 All right, give me some cover!
853
00:46:54,400 --> 00:46:57,166 RICHARD THRELKELD: Devallier is the lone medic in the platoon.
854
00:46:57,166 --> 00:46:58,433 He's scared,
855
00:46:58,433 --> 00:47:00,933 scared from the moment he gets out of the chopper
856
00:47:00,933 --> 00:47:02,466 to the moment it picks him up.
857
00:47:02,466 --> 00:47:05,466 Scared that someday he's going to get killed
858
00:47:05,466 --> 00:47:08,566 picking up a wounded buddy.
859
00:47:08,566 --> 00:47:10,466 (rapid gunfire, men yelling)
860
00:47:12,200 --> 00:47:14,500 WAYNE SMITH: ARMY MEDIC I was the replacement
861
00:47:14,500 --> 00:47:18,200 for a medic who had been killed.
862
00:47:18,200 --> 00:47:21,866 First time out, we were assigned to do a patrol.
863
00:47:21,866 --> 00:47:25,366 MAN: Remember to stop the bleeding!
864
00:47:25,366 --> 00:47:31,066 SMITH: And we stumbled actually into an ambush.
865
00:47:31,066 --> 00:47:33,800 (explosion)
866
00:47:33,800 --> 00:47:37,266 And it was incredibly terrifying.
867
00:47:37,266 --> 00:47:39,666 Guys were screaming and yelling.
868
00:47:39,666 --> 00:47:42,033 There was shooting everywhere.
869
00:47:42,033 --> 00:47:46,100 That first firefight, I remember praying to God,
870
00:47:46,100 --> 00:47:52,333 if He got me through this that I would make a difference.
871
00:47:52,333 --> 00:47:56,733 That I really would make a difference.
872
00:47:56,733 --> 00:47:59,900 MEDIC: Sometimes their lives depend on you, I mean;
873
00:47:59,900 --> 00:48:03,000 you hold it in your hands, as a medic.
874
00:48:03,000 --> 00:48:05,966 It's just hard to say but right then,
875
00:48:05,966 --> 00:48:08,300 you hold life and death in your hand.
876
00:48:08,300 --> 00:48:12,100 NARRATOR: In Vietnam, medics and navy corpsmen
877
00:48:12,100 --> 00:48:14,666 accompanied infantry units on patrols,
878
00:48:14,666 --> 00:48:16,633 search and destroy missions,
879
00:48:16,633 --> 00:48:20,233 and large-scale combat operations.
880
00:48:20,233 --> 00:48:24,100 Nearly 2,000 would lose their lives.
881
00:48:24,100 --> 00:48:26,000 (helicopter whirring)
882
00:48:27,766 --> 00:48:30,433 Unlike in previous wars,
883
00:48:30,433 --> 00:48:33,833 many medics in Vietnam chose to carry weapons,
884
00:48:33,833 --> 00:48:36,333 and when the shooting started,
885
00:48:36,333 --> 00:48:39,133 were willing to use them to protect themselves
886
00:48:39,133 --> 00:48:42,100 and their wounded comrades.
887
00:48:42,100 --> 00:48:45,600 SMITH: I carried an M16,
888
00:48:45,600 --> 00:48:48,766 but I did not know if I could kill.
889
00:48:48,766 --> 00:48:52,466 Part of being a medic was to save lives.
890
00:48:52,466 --> 00:48:58,800 I wondered, if the scenario presented itself, would I?
891
00:48:58,800 --> 00:49:03,600 I did participate in shooting at the enemy.
892
00:49:03,600 --> 00:49:06,133 We killed a lot of people.
893
00:49:06,133 --> 00:49:09,400 I feel that responsibility.
894
00:49:10,833 --> 00:49:13,700 I feel blood on my hands.
895
00:49:19,066 --> 00:49:23,800 When you kill someone for your country,
896
00:49:23,800 --> 00:49:26,733 all things change.
897
00:49:28,366 --> 00:49:29,833 ("Come Ye" by Nina Simone playing)
898
00:49:29,833 --> 00:49:32,266 ♪ Come ye
899
00:49:34,666 --> 00:49:38,166 ♪ Ye who would have peace...
900
00:49:38,166 --> 00:49:39,666 SAM BROWN: ANTI-WAR ACTIVIST We believed it's possible
901
00:49:39,666 --> 00:49:41,833 to create a substantial majority in this country
902
00:49:41,833 --> 00:49:43,533 for withdrawal from Vietnam,
903
00:49:43,533 --> 00:49:45,400 and that's what we're about in the long run.
904
00:49:45,400 --> 00:49:47,366 In November, we'll be back again,
905
00:49:47,366 --> 00:49:48,966 in December, we'll be back again.
906
00:49:48,966 --> 00:49:50,933 And we intend to build the movement,
907
00:49:50,933 --> 00:49:53,333 which will make it imperative
908
00:49:53,333 --> 00:49:55,733 that the United States withdraw from Vietnam.
909
00:49:55,733 --> 00:49:58,700 REPORTER: The organizers of the moratorium do not aim
910
00:49:58,700 --> 00:50:01,433 at confrontation or scuffles with the police.
911
00:50:01,433 --> 00:50:04,500 Instead, they want to involve the most people possible
912
00:50:04,500 --> 00:50:07,533 in some gesture of protest, however modest,
913
00:50:07,533 --> 00:50:11,166 so as to show the administration that a large bloc of Americans
914
00:50:11,166 --> 00:50:13,766 care not about winning or losing the war,
915
00:50:13,766 --> 00:50:16,066 but only about ending it.
916
00:50:16,066 --> 00:50:19,400 ♪ Ye who have no fear
917
00:50:19,400 --> 00:50:20,666 Thank you.
918
00:50:20,666 --> 00:50:23,000 NIXON: Now, I understand
919
00:50:23,000 --> 00:50:25,366 that there has been and continues to be
920
00:50:25,366 --> 00:50:28,333 opposition to the war in Vietnam on the campuses
921
00:50:28,333 --> 00:50:31,333 and also in the nation.
922
00:50:31,333 --> 00:50:32,466 Uh, we expect it.
923
00:50:32,466 --> 00:50:34,466 However, under no circumstances
924
00:50:34,466 --> 00:50:37,733 will I be affected whatever by it.
MINUTES 50-60
925
00:50:37,733 --> 00:50:41,666 NARRATOR: Hoping to undercut support for the moratorium,
926
00:50:41,666 --> 00:50:43,966 Nixon canceled the draft calls
927
00:50:43,966 --> 00:50:47,833 for the months of November and December 1969.
928
00:50:47,833 --> 00:50:51,233 And he instituted a random lottery system
929
00:50:51,233 --> 00:50:54,100 based on the date of a young man's birth,
930
00:50:54,100 --> 00:50:57,100 intended to treat rich and poor alike
931
00:50:57,100 --> 00:51:00,866 and do away with unfair deferments.
932
00:51:00,866 --> 00:51:04,566 It was good policy and a brilliant political maneuver.[31]
933
00:51:04,566 --> 00:51:05,966 (siren wails)
934
00:51:05,966 --> 00:51:07,433 On the line, brothers and sisters.
935
00:51:07,433 --> 00:51:08,933 On the line now.
936
00:51:08,933 --> 00:51:10,600 ("Subterranean Homesick Blues" by Bob Dylan playing)
937
00:51:10,600 --> 00:51:12,833 NARRATOR: As people across the country organized
938
00:51:12,833 --> 00:51:14,766 for the peaceful moratorium,
939
00:51:14,766 --> 00:51:16,833 members of a radical faction
940
00:51:16,833 --> 00:51:19,666 of the Students for a Democratic Society--
941
00:51:19,666 --> 00:51:20,966 the "Weathermen"--
942
00:51:20,966 --> 00:51:22,166 took more direct action.
943
00:51:22,166 --> 00:51:23,566 ♪ The man in a trench coat
944
00:51:23,566 --> 00:51:26,266 NARRATOR: Less interested in ending the war
945
00:51:26,266 --> 00:51:28,866 than in sparking a violent revolution,
946
00:51:28,866 --> 00:51:33,700 they staged what they called four "Days of Rage" in Chicago.
947
00:51:33,700 --> 00:51:35,900 DYLAN: ♪ You better duck down the alleyway ♪
948
00:51:35,900 --> 00:51:39,066 MAN: We no longer simply resist the pigs.
949
00:51:39,066 --> 00:51:41,133 We no longer trap ourselves
950
00:51:41,133 --> 00:51:42,766 so that the only possible motion
951
00:51:42,766 --> 00:51:44,933 is in response to pig attacks.
952
00:51:44,933 --> 00:51:47,266 We have gone on the offensive.
953
00:51:47,266 --> 00:51:49,266 It is we who call the shots now.
954
00:51:49,266 --> 00:51:51,533 NARRATOR: "Kill all the rich people,"
955
00:51:51,533 --> 00:51:52,866 one of their leaders said.[32]
956
00:51:52,866 --> 00:51:55,933 "Break up their cars and apartments.
957
00:51:55,933 --> 00:51:58,166 "Bring the revolution home.
958
00:51:58,166 --> 00:51:59,800 "Kill your parents.
959
00:51:59,800 --> 00:52:03,133 That's really where it's at."
960
00:52:03,133 --> 00:52:05,133 MAN: Weathermen takes its name from a line
961
00:52:05,133 --> 00:52:06,900 in a Bob Dylan song which says,
962
00:52:06,900 --> 00:52:08,766 "You don't need a weatherman
963
00:52:08,766 --> 00:52:10,300 to know the way the wind blows."
964
00:52:10,300 --> 00:52:11,933 DYLAN: ♪ Wash the plain clothes
965
00:52:11,933 --> 00:52:13,433 ♪ You don't need a weatherman
966
00:52:13,433 --> 00:52:17,166 ♪ To know which way the wind blows ♪
967
00:52:17,166 --> 00:52:19,566 NARRATOR: The Weathermen assumed
968
00:52:19,566 --> 00:52:22,333 thousands would rally to their cause.
969
00:52:22,333 --> 00:52:25,466 Only 600 did.
970
00:52:25,466 --> 00:52:29,066 They blew up a statue honoring slain policemen,
971
00:52:29,066 --> 00:52:32,400 ran through the streets wielding chains and pipes,
972
00:52:32,400 --> 00:52:34,633 smashing windows and windshields
973
00:52:34,633 --> 00:52:38,266 and charging police barriers.
974
00:52:38,266 --> 00:52:40,033 Six were shot.
975
00:52:40,033 --> 00:52:42,900 250 were jailed.
976
00:52:42,900 --> 00:52:46,233 75 policemen were injured;
977
00:52:46,233 --> 00:52:49,400 a city attorney was paralyzed for life.
978
00:52:49,400 --> 00:52:51,466 (siren wails)
979
00:52:51,466 --> 00:52:54,966 The Black Panthers denounced the Weathermen
980
00:52:54,966 --> 00:52:58,066 as "anarchistic, opportunistic...
981
00:52:58,066 --> 00:53:01,733 Custeristic."
982
00:53:01,733 --> 00:53:04,900 BILL ZIMMERMAN: ANTI-WAR ACTIVIST Probably 1969 was the year
983
00:53:04,900 --> 00:53:07,166 in which most of us were more alienated
984
00:53:07,166 --> 00:53:11,100 and felt more like revolutionaries.
985
00:53:11,100 --> 00:53:15,900 And it led to a lot of crazy responses.
986
00:53:15,900 --> 00:53:19,866 I wanted the country to undergo a radical transformation,
987
00:53:19,866 --> 00:53:22,866 a redistribution of wealth and power.
988
00:53:22,866 --> 00:53:25,233 But to try to bring that about
989
00:53:25,233 --> 00:53:28,066 through armed struggle in the United States
990
00:53:28,066 --> 00:53:30,133 was insane.
991
00:53:30,133 --> 00:53:32,600 These were all infantile fantasies 992
00:53:32,600 --> 00:53:35,500 that people came to out of the frustration
993
00:53:35,500 --> 00:53:38,233 of not having a workable strategy
994
00:53:38,233 --> 00:53:41,600 for ending the war.
995
00:53:41,600 --> 00:53:43,200 REPORTER: What do you think people ought to do, Governor,
996
00:53:43,200 --> 00:53:45,133 who are genuinely opposed to the war
997
00:53:45,133 --> 00:53:47,400 but not in favor of the Viet Cong?
998
00:53:47,400 --> 00:53:51,866 GOV. RONALD REAGAN: Well, I think that we have had... experiences before
999
00:53:51,866 --> 00:53:54,466 of people who have been opposed to wars,
1000
00:53:54,466 --> 00:53:57,433 and I think they deal through their own representatives,
1001
00:53:57,433 --> 00:53:59,933 and it's dealt with in government channels.
1002
00:53:59,933 --> 00:54:02,533 But once the killing starts,
1003
00:54:02,533 --> 00:54:04,500 the very difficult thing then is,
1004
00:54:04,500 --> 00:54:08,433 how do you register these protests
1005
00:54:08,433 --> 00:54:10,500 without lending comfort and aid to the enemy,
1006
00:54:10,500 --> 00:54:12,500 without strengthening his resistance
1007
00:54:12,500 --> 00:54:13,700 and his will to fight
1008
00:54:13,700 --> 00:54:16,333 and thus killing more of our men?
1009
00:54:16,333 --> 00:54:20,533 And most Americans in the past have always respected it.
1010
00:54:20,533 --> 00:54:22,200 CIVILIAN MALE 1: You see, the people in this country
1011
00:54:22,200 --> 00:54:24,266 aren't fighting a Vietnam War.
1012
00:54:24,266 --> 00:54:25,833 The government's fighting it.
1013
00:54:25,833 --> 00:54:27,033 CIVILIAN MALE 2: Well, the government is, uh,
1014
00:54:27,033 --> 00:54:29,266 the government is the people, supposedly, No.
1015
00:54:29,266 --> 00:54:31,533 but in this instance, it is not. Not anymore, it's not.
1016
00:54:31,533 --> 00:54:33,066 CIVILIAN MALE 1: No, I agree with you, it is not.
1017
00:54:33,066 --> 00:54:34,500 Not in this situation, it's not.
1018
00:54:34,500 --> 00:54:36,033 CIVILIAN FEMALE 3: Shouldn't I let my government know
1019
00:54:36,033 --> 00:54:37,266 that I think they're crazy?
1020
00:54:37,266 --> 00:54:38,833 I think they are insane, really.
1021
00:54:38,833 --> 00:54:40,900 This is an insane thing we're doing.
1022
00:54:40,900 --> 00:54:42,466 As a matter of fact,
1023
00:54:42,466 --> 00:54:44,633 Nixon said he will not listen to us
1024
00:54:44,633 --> 00:54:46,333 and that he will not be dictated to
1025
00:54:46,333 --> 00:54:48,233 from the people in the streets.
1026
00:54:48,233 --> 00:54:52,166 The people in the streets are me.
1027
00:54:52,166 --> 00:54:55,133 (chanting "peace now")
1028
00:54:55,133 --> 00:54:59,533 NARRATOR: The moratorium on October 15,[33]
1029
00:54:59,533 --> 00:55:01,200 held all across the country,
1030
00:55:01,200 --> 00:55:04,133 was the largest outpouring of public dissent
1031
00:55:04,133 --> 00:55:05,666 in American history.
1032
00:55:05,666 --> 00:55:09,633 ("Blackbird" by the Beatles playing)
1033
00:55:09,633 --> 00:55:14,433 ♪ Blackbird singing in the dead of night ♪
1034
00:55:14,433 --> 00:55:19,766 ♪ Take these broken wings and learn to fly ♪
1035
00:55:19,766 --> 00:55:23,700 ♪ All your life
1036
00:55:23,700 --> 00:55:28,400 ♪ You were only waiting for this moment to arise ♪
1037
00:55:28,400 --> 00:55:31,266 NARRATOR: It was peaceful, middle-class,
1038
00:55:31,266 --> 00:55:34,366 carefully focused on ending the war.
1039
00:55:34,366 --> 00:55:36,866 "It's nice," one marcher said,
1040
00:55:36,866 --> 00:55:38,700 "to go to a demonstration
1041
00:55:38,700 --> 00:55:43,666 without having to swear allegiance to Chairman Mao."
1042
00:55:43,666 --> 00:55:45,200 ♪ All your life
1043
00:55:45,200 --> 00:55:47,833 FRANK McGEE: Surely this is a day unique in our history.
1044
00:55:47,833 --> 00:55:50,900 Never have so many of our people publicly
1045
00:55:50,900 --> 00:55:53,333 and collectively manifested opposition
1046
00:55:53,333 --> 00:55:56,500 to this country's involvement in a war.
1047
00:55:56,500 --> 00:55:59,533 It is unlikely we will remain unchanged.
1048
00:55:59,533 --> 00:56:02,566 Hundreds and hundreds of thousands
1049
00:56:02,566 --> 00:56:04,766 in cities from New York, with its eight million people,
1050
00:56:04,766 --> 00:56:08,166 to Dubois, Wyoming, with its 800 people,
1051
00:56:08,166 --> 00:56:10,500 have sought to impress upon the president
1052
00:56:10,500 --> 00:56:12,666 their opposition to the war.
1053
00:56:12,666 --> 00:56:15,066 (bell rings)
1054
00:56:15,066 --> 00:56:21,966 CAROL CROCKER: The first large protest march I went to was in Baltimore.
1055
00:56:21,966 --> 00:56:25,633 I'd never been with that many people at one time.
1056
00:56:25,633 --> 00:56:31,800 Just the energy of the crowd itself was tremendous.
1057
00:56:31,800 --> 00:56:34,200 I wondered if everybody was in it
1058
00:56:34,200 --> 00:56:36,300 for the right reasons.
1059
00:56:36,300 --> 00:56:40,966 I wasn't there to drink or smoke pot.
1060
00:56:40,966 --> 00:56:43,300 Not in those situations.
1061
00:56:43,300 --> 00:56:46,933 These, to me, were serious business.
1062
00:56:46,933 --> 00:56:50,500 This was the business of living life.
1063
00:56:50,500 --> 00:56:51,933 This was not a party.
1064
00:56:51,933 --> 00:56:54,700 I didn't just want to be with the crowd.
1065
00:56:54,700 --> 00:56:56,800 I didn't just want to make noise.
1066
00:56:56,800 --> 00:56:58,933 I wanted to make a difference.
1067
00:56:58,933 --> 00:57:03,566 And I in no way wanted to dishonor my brother.
1068
00:57:03,566 --> 00:57:05,200 ♪ For this moment to arrive
1069
00:57:05,200 --> 00:57:07,300 CHARLES QUINN: For most of the government today,
1070
00:57:07,300 --> 00:57:08,833 it was business as usual.
1071
00:57:08,833 --> 00:57:10,700 But at noon on the Capitol steps,
1072
00:57:10,700 --> 00:57:13,200 a thousand young congressional staff employees
1073
00:57:13,200 --> 00:57:15,933 stood in silence for 45 minutes.
1074
00:57:15,933 --> 00:57:20,600 ♪ Blackbird singing in the dead of night ♪
1075
00:57:20,600 --> 00:57:24,100 NARRATOR: The children of several of the President's closest aides
1076
00:57:24,100 --> 00:57:25,600 and cabinet members
1077
00:57:25,600 --> 00:57:28,366 took part in the national moratorium.
1078
00:57:28,366 --> 00:57:31,766 Vice President Agnew's 14-year-old daughter
1079
00:57:31,766 --> 00:57:33,500 wanted to march,
1080
00:57:33,500 --> 00:57:35,133 but he wouldn't let her.
1081
00:57:35,133 --> 00:57:37,233 Coretta Scott King,
1082
00:57:37,233 --> 00:57:40,200 the widow of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
1083
00:57:40,200 --> 00:57:43,000 led thousands of silent demonstrators
1084
00:57:43,000 --> 00:57:46,866 streaming past the White House, where Nixon sat alone,
1085
00:57:46,866 --> 00:57:50,300 writing notes to himself on a yellow pad.
1086
00:57:50,300 --> 00:57:52,300 "Don't get rattled. Don't waver.
1087
00:57:52,300 --> 00:57:54,866 Don't react."
1088
00:57:57,466 --> 00:57:59,366 On November 3,
1089
00:57:59,366 --> 00:58:02,900 the President sought to seize back the initiative.
1090
00:58:02,900 --> 00:58:04,800 RICHARD NIXON: Good evening, my fellow Americans.
1091
00:58:04,800 --> 00:58:08,766 NARRATOR: He went on national television and called for patience
1092
00:58:08,766 --> 00:58:12,100 and asked Americans to rally behind him.
1093
00:58:12,100 --> 00:58:14,033 NIXON: To you,
1094
00:58:14,033 --> 00:58:18,433 the great silent majority of my fellow Americans,
1095
00:58:18,433 --> 00:58:20,433 I ask for your support.
1096
00:58:20,433 --> 00:58:23,500 I pledged in my campaign for the Presidency
1097
00:58:23,500 --> 00:58:25,133 to end the war
1098
00:58:25,133 --> 00:58:28,200 in a way that we could win the peace.
1099
00:58:28,200 --> 00:58:31,966 The more support I can have from the American people,
1100
00:58:31,966 --> 00:58:34,100 the sooner that pledge can be redeemed;
1101
00:58:34,100 --> 00:58:37,633 for the more divided we are at home,
1102
00:58:37,633 --> 00:58:41,366 the less likely the enemy is to negotiate at Paris.
1103
00:58:41,366 --> 00:58:42,700 ("Okie From Muskogee" by Merle Haggard playing)
1104
00:58:42,700 --> 00:58:45,166 Let us be united for peace.
1105
00:58:45,166 --> 00:58:49,533 ♪ We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee ♪
1106
00:58:49,533 --> 00:58:51,766 NARRATOR: The speech was a triumph.
1107
00:58:51,766 --> 00:58:55,666 Nixon's approval rate soared to 68%.
1108
00:58:57,966 --> 00:59:00,433 MAN: All that's in the news
1109
00:59:00,433 --> 00:59:02,733 is the fact that the moratoriums are meeting,
1110
00:59:02,733 --> 00:59:04,800 that our country's sick...
1111
00:59:04,800 --> 00:59:06,666 sick of this and sick of that.
1112
00:59:06,666 --> 00:59:09,400 It's young people are all the ones that are standing up.
1113
00:59:09,400 --> 00:59:12,866 And there is a silent majority, which is no longer silent.
1114
00:59:12,866 --> 00:59:16,200 We're the people who are wanting to show
1115
00:59:16,200 --> 00:59:19,200 that man deserves freedom no matter where he is.
1116
00:59:19,200 --> 00:59:21,500 ♪ A place where even squares can have a ball ♪
1117
00:59:21,500 --> 00:59:24,166 MAN 2: Many brave men died in this country to make it free...
1118
00:59:24,166 --> 00:59:25,933 I believe that.
1119
00:59:25,933 --> 00:59:28,233 and let you... and let you have everything.
1120
00:59:28,233 --> 00:59:31,566 SPIRO AGNEW: Senator Fulbright said some months ago
1121
00:59:31,566 --> 00:59:34,166 that if the Vietnam War went on much longer,
1122
00:59:34,166 --> 00:59:38,100 the best of our young people would be in Canada.
1123
00:59:38,100 --> 00:59:41,000 Indeed, as for these deserters,
1124
00:59:41,000 --> 00:59:45,066 malcontents, radicals, incendiaries,
1125
00:59:45,066 --> 00:59:47,500 the civil and the uncivil disobedience
1126
00:59:47,500 --> 00:59:49,466 among our young,
1127
00:59:49,466 --> 00:59:51,433 SDS, PLP,
1128
00:59:51,433 --> 00:59:52,666 Weatherman one, Weatherman two,
1129
00:59:52,666 --> 00:59:54,966 the Revolutionary Action Movement,
1130
00:59:54,966 --> 00:59:57,200 Panthers, lions, hippies,
1131
00:59:57,200 --> 01:00:00,100 yippies, tigers alike.
1132
01:00:00,100 --> 01:00:02,666 I'd rather swap the whole damn zoo
1133
01:00:02,666 --> 01:00:05,233 for a single platoon of the kind of young Americans
1134
01:00:05,233 --> 01:00:06,633 I saw in Vietnam.
1135
01:00:06,633 --> 01:00:09,600 (applause)
MINUTES 60-70
1136
01:00:09,600 --> 01:00:12,900 NARRATOR: "We've got the liberal bastards on the run now,"
1137
01:00:12,900 --> 01:00:15,533 Nixon told his aides,
1138
01:00:15,533 --> 01:00:19,766 "and we're going to keep them on the run."
1139
01:00:19,766 --> 01:00:21,533 ("My Son" by Jan Howard playing)
1140
01:00:29,933 --> 01:00:34,266 ♪ My son, my son
1141
01:00:34,266 --> 01:00:36,333 JAN HOWARD: My doorbell rang,
1142
01:00:36,333 --> 01:00:38,600 and it was this guy standing there,
1143
01:00:38,600 --> 01:00:41,800 and he said, "Ms. Howard, we're marching in Memphis
1144
01:00:41,800 --> 01:00:44,733 in protest of the Vietnam War."
1145
01:00:44,733 --> 01:00:46,800 I said, "Really?"
1146
01:00:46,800 --> 01:00:50,333 He said, "And we figured in view of what happened..."
1147
01:00:50,333 --> 01:00:53,600 I said, "Yeah, my son's death."
1148
01:00:53,600 --> 01:00:56,466 He said, "Well, we thought you'd like to join us."
1149
01:00:56,466 --> 01:00:58,833 I said, "One of the reasons he died
1150
01:00:58,833 --> 01:01:00,333 "was so you have the right.
1151
01:01:00,333 --> 01:01:03,266 "In this country, you have a right.
1152
01:01:03,266 --> 01:01:05,466 "Go right ahead and demonstrate.
1153
01:01:05,466 --> 01:01:07,533 Have at it."
1154
01:01:07,533 --> 01:01:10,000 I said, "But no, I won't be joining you."
1155
01:01:10,000 --> 01:01:11,733 I said, "But I'll tell you what.
1156
01:01:11,733 --> 01:01:13,566 "If you ever ring my doorbell again,
1157
01:01:13,566 --> 01:01:16,566 I will blow your damn head off with a .357 Magnum."
1158
01:01:26,900 --> 01:01:29,266 TIM O'BRIEN: ARMY: Well, I was stationed in Vietnam
1159
01:01:29,266 --> 01:01:32,766 at a province called Quang Ngai.
1160
01:01:32,766 --> 01:01:34,400 Even back during the time of the French,
1161
01:01:34,400 --> 01:01:38,500 it was a very heavily Viet Minh area,
1162
01:01:38,500 --> 01:01:40,966 and, when I arrived, heavily Viet Cong.
1163
01:01:42,633 --> 01:01:46,300 NARRATOR: No province suffered more during the American war
1164
01:01:46,300 --> 01:01:48,766 than the coastal province of Quang Ngai.
1165
01:01:48,766 --> 01:01:50,833 (artillery fire)
1166
01:01:50,833 --> 01:01:55,666 More than 70% of its villages had been shelled by Navy ships,
1167
01:01:55,666 --> 01:01:59,600 bombed, bulldozed, or burned to the ground,
1168
01:01:59,600 --> 01:02:02,133 and more than 40% of its people
1169
01:02:02,133 --> 01:02:04,800 had been forced into refugee camps
1170
01:02:04,800 --> 01:02:08,366 before Tim O'Brien from Worthington, Minnesota,
1171
01:02:08,366 --> 01:02:10,766 got there in 1969.
1172
01:02:12,833 --> 01:02:14,600 O'BRIEN: It was a province that was viewed
1173
01:02:14,600 --> 01:02:17,066 much as I guess many Americans might view,
1174
01:02:17,066 --> 01:02:19,400 you know, sort of redneck America.
1175
01:02:19,400 --> 01:02:22,866 Sort of country bumpkins.
1176
01:02:22,866 --> 01:02:24,266 And they may have been country bumpkins,
1177
01:02:24,266 --> 01:02:26,833 but they were fiercely independent.
1178
01:02:26,833 --> 01:02:30,300 NARRATOR: Private O'Brien served in Alpha Company,
1179
01:02:30,300 --> 01:02:35,000 3rd Platoon, 5th Battalion, 23rd Americal Division,
1180
01:02:35,000 --> 01:02:38,233 headquartered at a landing zone called Gator,
1181
01:02:38,233 --> 01:02:41,533 "30 or 40 acres of almost-America,"
1182
01:02:41,533 --> 01:02:43,266 O'Brien remembered,
1183
01:02:43,266 --> 01:02:46,500 with hot showers and cold beer.
1184
01:02:48,233 --> 01:02:50,033 O'BRIEN: There was no sense of mission.
1185
01:02:50,033 --> 01:02:51,666 There was no sense of daily purpose.
1186
01:02:51,666 --> 01:02:53,833 We didn't know why we were in a village
1187
01:02:53,833 --> 01:02:56,066 or what we were supposed to accomplish.
1188
01:02:56,066 --> 01:02:58,333 So we'd kick around jugs of rice
1189
01:02:58,333 --> 01:03:01,366 and search houses and frisk people,
1190
01:03:01,366 --> 01:03:03,800 and not knowing what we were looking for
1191
01:03:03,800 --> 01:03:07,300 and rarely finding anything.
1192
01:03:07,300 --> 01:03:08,633 And somebody might die,
1193
01:03:08,633 --> 01:03:10,533 one of our guys, and somebody might not.
1194
01:03:10,533 --> 01:03:13,000 Then we'd come back to the same village a week later
1195
01:03:13,000 --> 01:03:15,333 or two weeks later, do it all over again.
1196
01:03:15,333 --> 01:03:18,233 It was like chasing ghosts.
1197
01:03:18,233 --> 01:03:20,533 (helicopter blades whirring)
1198
01:03:22,200 --> 01:03:24,100 NARRATOR: An American APC
1199
01:03:24,100 --> 01:03:27,733 accidentally crushed one man from O'Brien's company.
1200
01:03:27,733 --> 01:03:32,033 An enemy grenade skittered off O'Brien's helmet and exploded,
1201
01:03:32,033 --> 01:03:35,433 wounding a G.I. standing a few feet away.
1202
01:03:38,366 --> 01:03:42,300 But mines and booby traps were the greatest menace.
1203
01:03:48,800 --> 01:03:51,433 O'BRIEN: Somewhere around 80% of our casualties
1204
01:03:51,433 --> 01:03:53,833 came from land mines of all sorts.
1205
01:03:55,533 --> 01:03:58,566 In Vietnam, for me, just to get up in the morning
1206
01:03:58,566 --> 01:04:01,933 and look out at the land and think,
1207
01:04:01,933 --> 01:04:04,833 "In a few minutes I'll be walking out there,
1208
01:04:04,833 --> 01:04:07,800 "and will my corpse be there or there?
1209
01:04:07,800 --> 01:04:11,100 Will I lose a leg out there?"
1210
01:04:11,100 --> 01:04:15,433 I'd always thought of courage as charging enemy bunkers
1211
01:04:15,433 --> 01:04:17,800 or standing up under fire.
1212
01:04:17,800 --> 01:04:21,233 But just to walk through Quang Ngai,
1213
01:04:21,233 --> 01:04:23,600 day after day, from village to village,
1214
01:04:23,600 --> 01:04:28,066 and through the paddies and up into the mountains,
1215
01:04:28,066 --> 01:04:31,700 just to make your legs move was an act of courage
1216
01:04:31,700 --> 01:04:34,466 that if, say, you were living in Sioux City,
1217
01:04:34,466 --> 01:04:36,200 it wouldn't be courageous
1218
01:04:36,200 --> 01:04:38,800 to walk to the grocery store or down Main Street,
1219
01:04:38,800 --> 01:04:41,433 you know, just to have your legs go back and forth.
1220
01:04:41,433 --> 01:04:43,166 But in Vietnam, for me,
1221
01:04:43,166 --> 01:04:45,366 just to walk felt incredibly brave.
1222
01:04:45,366 --> 01:04:47,933 I would sometimes look at my legs as I walked,
1223
01:04:47,933 --> 01:04:49,900 thinking, "How am I doing this?"
1224
01:04:52,700 --> 01:04:54,533 BAO NINH: NORTH VIETNAMESE ARMY. The Americans thought we were followers of Marx. No, you were wrong. We fought for this country so that there would be no more bombing, no more war. There would be no more death, no more destruction.[34]
1225
01:05:22,266 --> 01:05:24,600 NARRATOR: Bao Ninh was 17
1226
01:05:24,600 --> 01:05:27,566 when he was drafted into the North Vietnamese Army
1227
01:05:27,566 --> 01:05:28,766 to fight the Americans,
1228
01:05:28,766 --> 01:05:32,166 just as his father had fought the French.
1229
01:05:32,166 --> 01:05:35,500 His war would take place in the Central Highlands
1230
01:05:35,500 --> 01:05:37,733 of South Vietnam.
1231
01:05:37,733 --> 01:05:39,933 It was American firepower
1232
01:05:39,933 --> 01:05:44,566 that Bao Ninh and his fellow soldiers feared the most.
1233
01:05:44,566 --> 01:05:45,566 (explosion)
1234
01:05:45,566 --> 01:05:47,266 BAO NINH: While the bombs were falling, only a stone wouldn't be terrified. If the Americans noticed movement in the forest, they would eliminate the forest. Who knows how much money was spent? American taxpayers' money. If a cluster of napalm bombs were dropped, the jungle would turn into a sea of fire. Can you imagine a sea of fire? Of course, a soldier's life is miserable. Even American soldiers were miserable. A young man like Tim O'Brien, he was really miserable. But they weren't starving, they couldn't starve. We had to forage for food. Our army gave us only a bit of rice and salt. We were always searching for American food. They called them C-rations. A regular American soldier carried enough food for a picnic, everything you'd want. It wasn't like the wars I read about in western literature, such as World War I, where deserters were shot. Vietnamese couldn't do that because they would've had to kill everyone. In Vietnam a deserter would run home to visit his mother for a few days, and then return. And they let him rejoin. Most weren't afraid of dying. Soldiers know they're alive today but could die tomorrow. But if a soldier was homesick, if he missed his mother, he'd walk a thousand kilometers back to the North.[35]
1235
01:07:12,766 --> 01:07:14,133 (explosion)
1236
01:08:03,966 --> 01:08:06,366 (birds chirping, squawking)
1237
01:08:10,000 --> 01:08:12,166 NARRATOR: Back in the spring,
1238
01:08:12,166 --> 01:08:15,700 Tim O'Brien's outfit had been sent into an area of operations
1239
01:08:15,700 --> 01:08:18,600 the Americans called "Pinkville,"
1240
01:08:18,600 --> 01:08:20,533 clusters of villages
1241
01:08:20,533 --> 01:08:23,899 that included a hamlet they called My Lai.
1242
01:08:25,833 --> 01:08:28,066 O'BRIEN: We hated going there.
1243
01:08:28,066 --> 01:08:30,933 When we'd get the word, "You're headed for Pinkville,"
1244
01:08:30,933 --> 01:08:32,966 one guy would say to another, "Somebody's gonna die,"
1245
01:08:32,966 --> 01:08:34,399 or, "Somebody's gonna lose a leg."
1246
01:08:34,399 --> 01:08:36,500 We were terrified of the place.
1247
01:08:36,500 --> 01:08:40,033 It was littered with land mines.
1248
01:08:40,033 --> 01:08:41,966 The villagers were...
1249
01:08:41,966 --> 01:08:43,866 The expressions on their faces,
1250
01:08:43,866 --> 01:08:48,266 including the children of, say, six or five years old,
1251
01:08:48,266 --> 01:08:53,366 had a mixture of hostility and terror.
1252
01:08:55,700 --> 01:08:57,266 I can't say many of the villagers
1253
01:08:57,266 --> 01:08:59,399 came with open arms to us,
1254
01:08:59,399 --> 01:09:01,600 but this place was special.
1255
01:09:01,600 --> 01:09:03,700 And I remember talking to fellow soldiers,
1256
01:09:03,700 --> 01:09:05,966 thinking, "What is it with this place?"
1257
01:09:07,333 --> 01:09:09,466 And then about three-quarters of the way
1258
01:09:09,466 --> 01:09:11,200 through my tour in Vietnam,
1259
01:09:11,200 --> 01:09:14,399 the story of the My Lai Massacre broke in the States.
1260
01:09:15,700 --> 01:09:18,800 NARRATOR: On November 12, 1969,
1261
01:09:18,800 --> 01:09:21,433 the Dispatch News Service in Washington
1262
01:09:21,433 --> 01:09:25,500 moved a story by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.
1263
01:09:26,866 --> 01:09:29,200 It was soon followed by the publication
1264
01:09:29,200 --> 01:09:34,166 of graphic photos taken by Army photographer Ronald Haeberle.
1265
01:09:35,633 --> 01:09:39,566 The story and the pictures stunned the country.
1266
01:09:39,566 --> 01:09:41,233 HUNTLEY: Charges have been made
1267
01:09:41,233 --> 01:09:44,066 that troops of the Americal Division
1268
01:09:44,066 --> 01:09:47,600 killed as many as 567 South Vietnamese civilians
1269
01:09:47,600 --> 01:09:50,766 during a sweep in March 1968.
MINUTES 70-80
1270
01:09:52,033 --> 01:09:54,100 NARRATOR: 20 months earlier,
1271
01:09:54,100 --> 01:09:57,666 on the morning of March 16, 1968,
1272
01:09:57,666 --> 01:10:00,400 105 men from a rifle company
1273
01:10:00,400 --> 01:10:02,666 belonging to the Americal Division,
1274
01:10:02,666 --> 01:10:04,866 and led by Captain Ernest Medina
1275
01:10:04,866 --> 01:10:07,100 and Lieutenant William Calley,
1276
01:10:07,100 --> 01:10:11,200 had been ordered to helicopter into the village of My Lai 4.
1277
01:10:12,533 --> 01:10:15,866 Since arriving in Vietnam, they had lost 28 men
1278
01:10:15,866 --> 01:10:20,833 to mines and booby traps and unseen snipers.
1279
01:10:20,833 --> 01:10:25,800 Two days earlier, a popular squad leader had been killed.
1280
01:10:25,800 --> 01:10:29,566 They had been told a unit of main-force Viet Cong
1281
01:10:29,566 --> 01:10:31,333 was waiting for them,
1282
01:10:31,333 --> 01:10:34,100 and they were eager for revenge.
1283
01:10:35,400 --> 01:10:38,000 But they received no hostile fire,
1284
01:10:38,000 --> 01:10:42,800 encountered no enemy soldiers.
1285
01:10:44,266 --> 01:10:47,666 Instead, over the next four hours,
1286
01:10:47,666 --> 01:10:50,600 Medina, Calley, and their men murdered
1287
01:10:50,600 --> 01:10:58,266 407 defenseless old men, women, children, and infants.
1288
01:11:08,333 --> 01:11:11,100 Many of the women and girls were raped
1289
01:11:11,100 --> 01:11:13,400 before they were shot.
1290
01:11:16,466 --> 01:11:18,866 There would have been still more slaughter
1291
01:11:18,866 --> 01:11:23,133 had a helicopter pilot named Hugh Thompson, Jr., not landed
1292
01:11:23,133 --> 01:11:26,633 between the men and some of their intended targets
1293
01:11:26,633 --> 01:11:30,366 and ordered his crew to open fire on their fellow Americans
1294
01:11:30,366 --> 01:11:33,633 if they did not stop shooting civilians.[36]
1295
01:11:36,866 --> 01:11:40,533 At the same time, just a mile or so away,
1296
01:11:40,533 --> 01:11:45,233 another company murdered 97 more villagers.
1297
01:11:47,233 --> 01:11:50,366 O'BRIEN: And suddenly it was like a window shade going up,
1298
01:11:50,366 --> 01:11:51,900 and then there's light,
1299
01:11:51,900 --> 01:11:54,000 and we understood what had engendered
1300
01:11:54,000 --> 01:11:57,433 this horror in these kids' faces
1301
01:11:57,433 --> 01:12:00,266 and fear and the... and the hatred.
1302
01:12:00,266 --> 01:12:03,966 Hundred and some American soldiers in four hours or so
1303
01:12:03,966 --> 01:12:06,733 butchering innocent people,
1304
01:12:06,733 --> 01:12:08,900 in all kinds of ways-- machine-gunning them
1305
01:12:08,900 --> 01:12:11,300 and throwing them in wells and scalping them
1306
01:12:11,300 --> 01:12:13,300 and killing them in ditches
1307
01:12:13,300 --> 01:12:15,900 and taking a lunch break and then doing it some more.
1308
01:12:17,033 --> 01:12:19,266 Systematic homicide.
1309
01:12:19,266 --> 01:12:20,900 MIKE WALLACE: What kind of people?
1310
01:12:20,900 --> 01:12:22,000 Men, women, children?
1311
01:12:22,000 --> 01:12:23,533 PAUL MEADLO: Men, women, children.
1312
01:12:23,533 --> 01:12:25,333 WALLACE: Babies? MEADLO: Babies.
1313
01:12:25,333 --> 01:12:27,333 Uh, Lieutenant Calley came over and said,
1314
01:12:27,333 --> 01:12:29,333 "You know what to do with them, don't you?"
1315
01:12:29,333 --> 01:12:30,933 And, uh, I said, "Yes."
1316
01:12:30,933 --> 01:12:35,033 So l took it for granted that he just wanted us to watch them.
1317
01:12:35,033 --> 01:12:36,900 And he left and came back
1318
01:12:36,900 --> 01:12:39,566 about ten or... ten or 15 minutes later,
1319
01:12:39,566 --> 01:12:43,833 and said, "How come you ain't, uh, killed them yet?"
1320
01:12:43,833 --> 01:12:45,500 MIKE WALLACE: You killed how many at that time?
1321
01:12:45,500 --> 01:12:48,133 PAUL MEADLO: Well, I fired my automatic, so, uh...
1322
01:12:48,133 --> 01:12:50,866 you can't, uh... you just spray the area on them,
1323
01:12:50,866 --> 01:12:53,333 so you really can't know how many you killed
1324
01:12:53,333 --> 01:12:56,166 because it comes out so doggone fast.
1325
01:12:56,166 --> 01:13:00,466 So I, I might've killed about, uh, ten or 15 of them.
1326
01:13:01,600 --> 01:13:03,200 WALLACE: Men, women, and children?
1327
01:13:03,200 --> 01:13:04,866 MEADLO: Men, women, and children.
1328
01:13:04,866 --> 01:13:06,933 BOTH: And babies? And babies.
1329
01:13:08,400 --> 01:13:10,400 MEADLO: Why did I do it?
1330
01:13:10,400 --> 01:13:13,300 Because I felt like I was ordered to do it.
1331
01:13:13,300 --> 01:13:15,866 And it seemed like, uh...
1332
01:13:18,566 --> 01:13:22,633 Well, at the time, I felt like I was doing the right thing.
1333
01:13:22,633 --> 01:13:24,633 I really did.
1334
01:13:24,633 --> 01:13:27,866 Because, uh, like I said, I lost buddies,
1335
01:13:27,866 --> 01:13:29,866 I lost... I lost a good...
1336
01:13:29,866 --> 01:13:34,333 damn good buddy-- Bobby Wilson--
1337
01:13:34,333 --> 01:13:38,100 and it was on my conscience, and it was on...
1338
01:13:38,100 --> 01:13:40,166 So after I done it, I felt good.
1339
01:13:40,166 --> 01:13:44,433 But later on that day, it was getting to me.
1340
01:13:44,433 --> 01:13:47,600 MIKE WALLACE: It's so hard, I think, for a good many Americans
1341
01:13:47,600 --> 01:13:50,733 to understand that young, capable,
1342
01:13:50,733 --> 01:13:54,066 brave American boys
1343
01:13:54,066 --> 01:13:57,100 could line up
1344
01:13:57,100 --> 01:14:01,866 old men, women, children, and babies
1345
01:14:01,866 --> 01:14:04,600 and shoot them down in cold blood.
1346
01:14:09,333 --> 01:14:11,666 How do you explain that?
1347
01:14:11,666 --> 01:14:13,600 PAUL MEADLO: I wouldn't know.
1348
01:14:19,533 --> 01:14:21,433 (low, distant chatter)
1349
01:14:23,700 --> 01:14:27,966 NARRATOR: The killing of civilians has happened in every war.
1350
01:14:27,966 --> 01:14:32,366 In Vietnam, it was not policy or routine,
1351
01:14:32,366 --> 01:14:35,000 but it was not an aberration, either.
1352
01:14:36,566 --> 01:14:41,500 Still, the scale and deliberateness and intimacy
1353
01:14:41,500 --> 01:14:43,733 of what happened at My Lai
1354
01:14:43,733 --> 01:14:45,133 was different.
1355
01:14:45,133 --> 01:14:46,866 SHEEHAN: It was different
1356
01:14:46,866 --> 01:14:49,700 because they were killing Vietnamese point-blank
1357
01:14:49,700 --> 01:14:51,166 with rifles and grenades.
1358
01:14:51,166 --> 01:14:53,600 They were murdering them directly.
1359
01:14:53,600 --> 01:14:55,900 They weren't doing it with bombs and artillery.
1360
01:14:55,900 --> 01:14:57,433 If they'd been doing it with bombs and artillery,
1361
01:14:57,433 --> 01:14:58,600 nobody would have said a word,
1362
01:14:58,600 --> 01:14:59,600 because it was going on all the time.
1363
01:15:01,133 --> 01:15:02,533 NARRATOR: Not every soldier
1364
01:15:02,533 --> 01:15:04,366 participated in the killings that day.
1365
01:15:04,366 --> 01:15:08,000 Some led villagers away to safety.
1366
01:15:08,000 --> 01:15:10,866 But a failure of military leadership
1367
01:15:10,866 --> 01:15:14,066 at nearly every level had created the conditions
1368
01:15:14,066 --> 01:15:17,566 that made the massacre possible.[37]
1369
01:15:17,566 --> 01:15:21,900 The My Lai story might have shocked the American public,
1370
01:15:21,900 --> 01:15:24,200 but it was not news to the Army.
1371
01:15:24,200 --> 01:15:27,466 It had occurred almost two years before,
1372
01:15:27,466 --> 01:15:30,633 just after the Tet Offensive.
1373
01:15:30,633 --> 01:15:33,133 Hugh Thompson, the helicopter pilot
1374
01:15:33,133 --> 01:15:35,300 who had tried to stop the massacre,
1375
01:15:35,300 --> 01:15:38,233 reported what he had seen,
1376
01:15:38,233 --> 01:15:40,233 but no one in the chain of command
1377
01:15:40,233 --> 01:15:41,500 was willing to act.
1378
01:15:41,500 --> 01:15:45,233 The slaughter was covered up.
1379
01:15:45,233 --> 01:15:49,100 Later, an ex-corporal named Ronald Ridenhour,
1380
01:15:49,100 --> 01:15:50,866 who had heard about what had happened
1381
01:15:50,866 --> 01:15:52,900 from several men who had been there,
1382
01:15:52,900 --> 01:15:56,400 wrote letters to the President of the United States,
1383
01:15:56,400 --> 01:15:58,300 the Secretary of Defense,
1384
01:15:58,300 --> 01:16:02,366 and more than two dozen other high-ranking officials.
1385
01:16:02,366 --> 01:16:05,633 STAN ATKINSON: Personally, what decision-making process
1386
01:16:05,633 --> 01:16:08,566 did you go through before you decided to take your action?
1387
01:16:08,566 --> 01:16:12,333 RONALD RIDENHOUR: I guess I just wrestled with my own conscience
1388
01:16:12,333 --> 01:16:14,700 to try to decide what action to take.
1389
01:16:14,700 --> 01:16:16,833 I felt that I had to take some action.
1390
01:16:16,833 --> 01:16:18,300 I had to do something.
1391
01:16:18,300 --> 01:16:19,666 I couldn't just...
1392
01:16:19,666 --> 01:16:22,266 just rest with this knowledge for the rest of my life
1393
01:16:22,266 --> 01:16:25,200 that I couldn't... I couldn't live with myself if I did.
1394
01:16:25,200 --> 01:16:28,266 NARRATOR: President Nixon's first reaction
1395
01:16:28,266 --> 01:16:32,500 was to investigate those who reported the slaughter.
1396
01:16:32,500 --> 01:16:35,300 "It's those dirty rotten Jews from New York
1397
01:16:35,300 --> 01:16:36,666 who are behind it,"
1398
01:16:36,666 --> 01:16:38,200 he told an aide.
1399
01:16:38,200 --> 01:16:42,600 Eventually, Lieutenant General William R. Peers,
1400
01:16:42,600 --> 01:16:46,533 a veteran of 30 months as a troop commander in Vietnam,
1401
01:16:46,533 --> 01:16:48,333 was assigned to head a panel
1402
01:16:48,333 --> 01:16:51,233 to look into what had really happened.
1403
01:16:51,233 --> 01:16:54,400 Peers found that 30 persons,
1404
01:16:54,400 --> 01:16:56,833 including the division commander,
1405
01:16:56,833 --> 01:16:59,166 General Samuel W. Koster,
1406
01:16:59,166 --> 01:17:01,633 had either committed atrocities
1407
01:17:01,633 --> 01:17:05,600 or had conspired to cover them up.
1408
01:17:09,600 --> 01:17:13,466 Peers had wanted to call My Lai a "massacre."
1409
01:17:13,466 --> 01:17:16,833 His superiors made him use the phrase,
1410
01:17:16,833 --> 01:17:20,966 "a tragedy of major proportions."
1411
01:17:20,966 --> 01:17:26,566 In the end, the Army indicted 25 officers and men,
1412
01:17:26,566 --> 01:17:31,733 including the platoon leader, Lieutenant William Calley.
1413
01:17:34,300 --> 01:17:36,400 VALLELY: MARINES Calley's a killer.
1414
01:17:36,400 --> 01:17:38,433 Calley's a murderer
1415
01:17:38,433 --> 01:17:40,633 and a... a sick person.
1416
01:17:42,733 --> 01:17:45,866 I'm not gonna be in any, you know, uh,
1417
01:17:45,866 --> 01:17:48,433 propaganda movie for the United States Marine Corps,
1418
01:17:48,433 --> 01:17:50,366 but we didn't have that guy.
1419
01:17:52,633 --> 01:17:55,166 We had individuals who, who...
1420
01:17:55,166 --> 01:17:57,233 who committed war crimes, of course.
1421
01:17:57,233 --> 01:18:01,366 And, um, you know, I wanted to kill them.
1422
01:18:01,366 --> 01:18:03,866 I sometimes wish I did kill 'em.
1423
01:18:06,700 --> 01:18:10,466 But... I was afraid to kill 'em.
1424
01:18:12,866 --> 01:18:14,900 ♪ Two, one, two, three, four
1425
01:18:14,900 --> 01:18:17,700 ("Give Peace a Chance" by The Plastic Ono Band plays)
1426
01:18:17,700 --> 01:18:20,333 (loud crowd chatter)
1427
01:18:20,333 --> 01:18:21,966 ♪ Everybody's talking about...
1428
01:18:21,966 --> 01:18:25,200 ZIMMERMAN: I never considered the Vietnamese our enemy.
1429
01:18:25,200 --> 01:18:26,966 They had never done anything
1430
01:18:26,966 --> 01:18:29,633 to threaten the security of the United States.
1431
01:18:29,633 --> 01:18:32,466 They were off 10,000 miles away,
1432
01:18:32,466 --> 01:18:34,300 minding their own business,
1433
01:18:34,300 --> 01:18:36,766 and we went there to their country,
1434
01:18:36,766 --> 01:18:38,333 told them what kind of government
1435
01:18:38,333 --> 01:18:40,700 we wanted them to have.
1436
01:18:40,700 --> 01:18:44,933 JAMES WILLBANKS: Well, when I see the war protesters,
1437
01:18:44,933 --> 01:18:46,800 I react on a couple of levels.
1438
01:18:46,800 --> 01:18:49,433 Intellectually, I certainly understand their right
1439
01:18:49,433 --> 01:18:51,233 to the freedom of speech.
1440
01:18:51,233 --> 01:18:52,733 But I will tell you
1441
01:18:52,733 --> 01:18:55,766 that when I see them waving NLF flags,
1442
01:18:55,766 --> 01:18:59,100 the enemy that I and my friends had to fight,
1443
01:18:59,100 --> 01:19:02,466 and some of my friends had to die fighting,
1444
01:19:02,466 --> 01:19:04,200 that doesn't sit very well with me.
1445
01:19:04,200 --> 01:19:07,433 ♪ All we are saying...
1446
01:19:07,433 --> 01:19:10,466 NARRATOR: On November 15, 1969,
1447
01:19:10,466 --> 01:19:12,800 half a million citizens turned out
1448
01:19:12,800 --> 01:19:15,433 against the war in Washington, again.
1449
01:19:15,433 --> 01:19:17,833 ♪ Everybody's talking about revolution... ♪
1450
01:19:17,833 --> 01:19:21,166 NARRATOR: This time, buses provided an impenetrable wall
1451
01:19:21,166 --> 01:19:23,466 around the White House.
1452
01:19:23,466 --> 01:19:25,933 President Nixon claimed he was too busy
1453
01:19:25,933 --> 01:19:28,200 watching football on television
1454
01:19:28,200 --> 01:19:29,566 to pay attention,
1455
01:19:29,566 --> 01:19:34,066 but he did suggest that Army helicopters might be used
1456
01:19:34,066 --> 01:19:36,066 to blow out the marchers' candles.
1457
01:19:36,066 --> 01:19:38,166 ♪ All we are saying...
1458
01:19:38,166 --> 01:19:39,700 (car horns honking)
1459
01:19:39,700 --> 01:19:41,766 NARRATOR: Hundreds of thousands of others demonstrated
1460
01:19:41,766 --> 01:19:45,366 in San Francisco and New York.
1461
01:19:45,366 --> 01:19:47,100 (indistinct shouting)
1462
01:19:47,100 --> 01:19:50,000 (cheering and whistling, indistinct shouting)
1463
01:19:52,533 --> 01:19:55,000 The most striking antiwar protest
1464
01:19:55,000 --> 01:19:56,333 of this Thanksgiving Day
1465
01:19:56,333 --> 01:19:58,900 occurred not in this country, but in Vietnam,
1466
01:19:58,900 --> 01:20:01,433 though its form was uniquely American.
1467
01:20:01,433 --> 01:20:03,633 About 100 American soldiers
1468
01:20:03,633 --> 01:20:06,133 stationed at a hospital in Pleiku
1469
01:20:06,133 --> 01:20:08,800 refused to eat their traditional turkey dinner.
1470
01:20:08,800 --> 01:20:12,766 They described their fast as a passive protest against the war.
MINUTES 80-90
1471
01:20:14,566 --> 01:20:17,000 ("Born Under a Bad Sign" by Booker T. and the M.G.'s plays)
1472
01:20:21,533 --> 01:20:23,300 JOAN FUREY: ARMY NURSE The Army did what the Army does.
1473
01:20:23,300 --> 01:20:24,866 Every year, you know, for Thanksgiving,
1474
01:20:24,866 --> 01:20:26,133 they make a big deal.
1475
01:20:26,133 --> 01:20:27,400 They're gonna bring in turkey,
1476
01:20:27,400 --> 01:20:28,866 they're gonna bring in mashed potatoes,
1477
01:20:28,866 --> 01:20:31,300 and apple pie and whatever.
1478
01:20:31,300 --> 01:20:33,300 And by this point, I think,
1479
01:20:33,300 --> 01:20:36,366 a lot of us were very, very cynical about the war
1480
01:20:36,366 --> 01:20:38,300 and what was going on.
1481
01:20:38,300 --> 01:20:41,800 But we weren't gonna make a big deal about it.
1482
01:20:41,800 --> 01:20:44,466 We knew there were gonna be TV people there.
1483
01:20:44,466 --> 01:20:47,700 And a couple of the organizers were looking for people to talk.
1484
01:20:47,700 --> 01:20:49,433 They came to me, I said, "No."
1485
01:20:49,433 --> 01:20:51,866 I said, "Look, I'm gonna fast and do my thing."
1486
01:20:51,866 --> 01:20:53,833 I said, "But I, I really don't want
1487
01:20:53,833 --> 01:20:56,266 to be involved with any media thing."
1488
01:20:56,266 --> 01:21:00,766 NARRATOR: That Thanksgiving Day, Lieutenant Furey was on duty
1489
01:21:00,766 --> 01:21:05,000 when one of her patients took a sudden turn for the worse.
1490
01:21:05,000 --> 01:21:08,133 FUREY: Some patients, they just get into your heart.
1491
01:21:08,133 --> 01:21:09,833 And this kid, I think he was 18.
1492
01:21:09,833 --> 01:21:11,366 His name was Timmy.
1493
01:21:11,366 --> 01:21:15,900 It was unlikely he was gonna survive.
1494
01:21:15,900 --> 01:21:19,466 And I just got so angry.
1495
01:21:19,466 --> 01:21:23,000 I just lost it.
1496
01:21:23,000 --> 01:21:25,200 I remember walking out of the O.R.,
1497
01:21:25,200 --> 01:21:27,100 I ripped off the gown, and I ripped off the mask,
1498
01:21:27,100 --> 01:21:30,366 I walked outside, I said, "Where are those reporters?" JOAN FUREY ON TV: I'm just fasting against any type of war, or hostility that brings needless injury to innocent people all over the world, not just Vietnam but everywhere, including the United States of America.
1499
01:21:43,533 --> 01:21:45,700 I mean, you know, you don't demonstrate against the war
1500
01:21:45,700 --> 01:21:46,933 in a war zone.
1501
01:21:46,933 --> 01:21:49,933 By that time, of course, you, you had the attitude,
1502
01:21:49,933 --> 01:21:51,866 "What are they gonna do?
1503
01:21:51,866 --> 01:21:53,766 Send me to Vietnam?"
1504
01:21:56,233 --> 01:21:59,866 (loud, overlapping chatter and shouting)
1505
01:21:59,866 --> 01:22:02,766 (indistinct chanting)
1506
01:22:02,766 --> 01:22:05,800 JOHN MUSGRAVE: MARINES Let's just say that being a Marine combat veteran
1507
01:22:05,800 --> 01:22:09,866 on a college campus in 1969 and 1970--
1508
01:22:09,866 --> 01:22:11,733 it wasn't a real good thing to be
1509
01:22:11,733 --> 01:22:13,800 if you wanted to get dates and be popular.
1510
01:22:16,600 --> 01:22:20,166 When I came home, it seemed like
1511
01:22:20,166 --> 01:22:23,500 I didn't have anything to give to anybody else.
1512
01:22:26,933 --> 01:22:31,066 NARRATOR: Marine Corporal John Musgrave had very nearly died
1513
01:22:31,066 --> 01:22:35,800 in combat below the DMZ in the autumn of 1967.
1514
01:22:35,800 --> 01:22:38,700 Wounded in the jaw and shoulder,
1515
01:22:38,700 --> 01:22:42,500 his ribs shattered, lung pierced, nerves cut,
1516
01:22:42,500 --> 01:22:46,933 he had spent 17 months in Navy hospitals.
1517
01:22:46,933 --> 01:22:50,100 He was now studying at Baker University
1518
01:22:50,100 --> 01:22:52,966 in Baldwin City, Kansas.
1519
01:22:52,966 --> 01:22:55,300 (indistinct chanting and shouting)
1520
01:22:55,300 --> 01:22:59,700 But wherever he went, the war was never far away.
1521
01:23:02,000 --> 01:23:06,433 MUSGRAVE: And the peace movement, for a while, got real nasty,
1522
01:23:06,433 --> 01:23:08,433 calling veterans baby killers.
1523
01:23:10,500 --> 01:23:12,433 It did more than piss us off.
1524
01:23:12,433 --> 01:23:14,366 It broke our hearts.
1525
01:23:14,366 --> 01:23:16,733 What were they thinking?
1526
01:23:16,733 --> 01:23:22,133 You don't turn your backs on your warriors.
1527
01:23:22,133 --> 01:23:24,666 I didn't trust anybody anymore.
1528
01:23:26,133 --> 01:23:28,533 Just my family.
1529
01:23:28,533 --> 01:23:31,100 NARRATOR: Musgrave was so hurt
1530
01:23:31,100 --> 01:23:33,200 by the way some people treated him
1531
01:23:33,200 --> 01:23:36,633 that he volunteered to return to Vietnam.
1532
01:23:36,633 --> 01:23:40,366 Because of his injuries, the Marines turned him down,
1533
01:23:40,366 --> 01:23:44,333 and asked him to help recruit men instead.
1534
01:23:44,333 --> 01:23:46,366 He did for a time,
1535
01:23:46,366 --> 01:23:49,466 but when students asked him questions about the war
1536
01:23:49,466 --> 01:23:51,333 he couldn't answer,
1537
01:23:51,333 --> 01:23:52,533 he also began to read
1538
01:23:52,533 --> 01:23:56,933 about how and why it was being fought.
1539
01:23:56,933 --> 01:24:00,700 MUSGRAVE: I had friends in country on a second tour,
1540
01:24:00,700 --> 01:24:03,966 and, you know, I, I was still... considered myself a Marine.
1541
01:24:03,966 --> 01:24:06,866 and... and the more I read,
1542
01:24:06,866 --> 01:24:12,200 the less I found to be able to defend our presence there.
1543
01:24:12,200 --> 01:24:16,333 So then, I, I just stopped talking to everybody.
1544
01:24:16,333 --> 01:24:18,466 (dog barking)
1545
01:24:18,466 --> 01:24:22,533 NARRATOR: Musgrave gradually felt as if he were being torn in two.
1546
01:24:22,533 --> 01:24:26,533 And he was still haunted by the memory of those Marines
1547
01:24:26,533 --> 01:24:31,233 who had died while he had lived.
1548
01:24:31,233 --> 01:24:34,466 MUSGRAVE: I was dating my .45 in those years, you know.
1549
01:24:34,466 --> 01:24:37,266 Coming home at night after drinking,
1550
01:24:37,266 --> 01:24:39,400 and pressing it up against my temple,
1551
01:24:39,400 --> 01:24:42,333 or putting it under my chin,
1552
01:24:42,333 --> 01:24:44,733 wondering if this was gonna be the night
1553
01:24:44,733 --> 01:24:46,733 I was gonna have the guts to do it.
1554
01:24:48,466 --> 01:24:50,633 I'd had a round chambered, and I'd taken the safety off.
1555
01:24:50,633 --> 01:24:52,866 Same kind of pistol I carried in Vietnam.
1556
01:24:55,466 --> 01:24:58,900 And I thought, "I'm really gonna do it tonight."
1557
01:24:58,900 --> 01:25:02,900 You know, like, "Whew, I'm really gonna do it," you know.
1558
01:25:02,900 --> 01:25:04,933 And my dogs... I'd let my dogs out.
1559
01:25:04,933 --> 01:25:06,566 I had two dogs.
1560
01:25:06,566 --> 01:25:08,200 And they jumped on the front door
1561
01:25:08,200 --> 01:25:09,600 and scratched on the front door.
1562
01:25:09,600 --> 01:25:11,466 They wanted in.
1563
01:25:11,466 --> 01:25:12,666 And I put the safety back on the pistol
1564
01:25:12,666 --> 01:25:14,433 and set it down and went and let 'em in.
1565
01:25:16,266 --> 01:25:19,033 And they were so open in their love for me
1566
01:25:19,033 --> 01:25:20,800 that I literally said out loud,
1567
01:25:20,800 --> 01:25:26,066 "Whoa, if I really want to do this, I can do this tomorrow."
1568
01:25:26,066 --> 01:25:27,533 And I went back in the room,
1569
01:25:27,533 --> 01:25:29,500 and I put the pistol in the drawer, and...
1570
01:25:29,500 --> 01:25:32,533 and I... I think that was the closest I came.
1571
01:25:32,533 --> 01:25:34,266 I think maybe I would have killed...
1572
01:25:34,266 --> 01:25:36,633 k-k-killed myself that night.
1573
01:25:36,633 --> 01:25:38,100 But something as simple
1574
01:25:38,100 --> 01:25:40,633 as my dogs wanting back in...
1575
01:25:40,633 --> 01:25:43,900 stopped that thought, you know.
1576
01:25:46,633 --> 01:25:49,733 I'm really glad that it didn't happen.
1577
01:25:49,733 --> 01:25:52,900 But at the time, it just made so much sense.
1578
01:25:57,766 --> 01:25:59,800 NARRATOR: Richard Nixon's troop withdrawals
1579
01:25:59,800 --> 01:26:03,166 finally turned Musgrave against the war.[38]
1580
01:26:03,166 --> 01:26:06,000 "If it ain't worth winning," he said,
1581
01:26:06,000 --> 01:26:08,433 "it ain't worth dying for."
1582
01:26:08,433 --> 01:26:11,133 His loyalty to the Marines
1583
01:26:11,133 --> 01:26:14,100 would not yet let him openly say that,
1584
01:26:14,100 --> 01:26:16,666 but he told a campus antiwar meeting
1585
01:26:16,666 --> 01:26:19,600 that they should stop acting as if they didn't give a damn
1586
01:26:19,600 --> 01:26:22,500 about the men who had been asked to fight,
1587
01:26:22,500 --> 01:26:24,833 and received a standing ovation.
1588
01:26:29,133 --> 01:26:31,566 JACK TODD: The turning point for me, I think,
1589
01:26:31,566 --> 01:26:34,666 was one evening I spent with my friend Sonny Walter,
1590
01:26:34,666 --> 01:26:37,300 who had been, uh... just been discharged from the Army,
1591
01:26:37,300 --> 01:26:39,966 and had come home and spent an evening
1592
01:26:39,966 --> 01:26:42,633 before I went in pleading with me not to go.
1593
01:26:42,633 --> 01:26:45,300 He even offered to drive me to Canada.
1594
01:26:45,300 --> 01:26:47,966 He was showing me some horrible pictures of Vietnam
1595
01:26:47,966 --> 01:26:49,700 from his own service there.
1596
01:26:51,600 --> 01:26:53,633 I think everything that happened after it
1597
01:26:53,633 --> 01:26:55,266 had its seeds in that evening.
1598
01:26:55,266 --> 01:26:57,366 ("The Thrill is Gone" by B.B. King playing)
1599
01:26:57,366 --> 01:27:00,766 NARRATOR: While attending the University of Nebraska,
1600
01:27:00,766 --> 01:27:04,733 Jack Todd had undergone Marine officer training,
1601
01:27:04,733 --> 01:27:08,233 but bad knees had forced him to drop out
1602
01:27:08,233 --> 01:27:10,400 and he believed that exempted him
1603
01:27:10,400 --> 01:27:13,066 from having to take part in a war
1604
01:27:13,066 --> 01:27:15,766 he had come to see as immoral.
1605
01:27:15,766 --> 01:27:19,933 He began work as a reporter onThe Miami Herald.
1606
01:27:19,933 --> 01:27:24,666 But in the autumn of 1969 he received a draft notice[39]
1607
01:27:24,666 --> 01:27:27,100 from the Army anyway.
1608
01:27:27,100 --> 01:27:28,566 KING: ♪ The thrill is gone
1609
01:27:28,566 --> 01:27:30,033 TODD: So I went into my physical
1610
01:27:30,033 --> 01:27:32,166 and I showed them my discharge from the Marine Corps
1611
01:27:32,166 --> 01:27:33,966 and I actually remember a sergeant,
1612
01:27:33,966 --> 01:27:35,400 or whoever I was talking to, saying,
1613
01:27:35,400 --> 01:27:37,666 "But, uh, you were discharged from an officer program.
1614
01:27:37,666 --> 01:27:39,233 We're drafting you as a private."
1615
01:27:39,233 --> 01:27:41,333 (electric buzzing)
1616
01:27:41,333 --> 01:27:43,866 NARRATOR: In late November 1969,
1617
01:27:43,866 --> 01:27:48,300 Todd reported for basic training at Fort Lewis, Washington.
1618
01:27:48,300 --> 01:27:50,366 KING: ♪ You know you done me wrong
1619
01:27:50,366 --> 01:27:52,433 TODD: Morale just could not have been worse.
1620
01:27:52,433 --> 01:27:54,333 And-and it seemed to include
1621
01:27:54,333 --> 01:27:57,266 even the sergeants and the officers.
1622
01:27:57,266 --> 01:28:01,333 Nobody wanted to go. Nobody wanted to go.
1623
01:28:01,333 --> 01:28:04,766 America just seemed to have shifted from the Woodstock high
1624
01:28:04,766 --> 01:28:05,966 of the summer to this...
1625
01:28:05,966 --> 01:28:09,233 this sort of bitter Nixonian low.
1626
01:28:09,233 --> 01:28:12,700 NARRATOR: Jack Todd and another member of his unit
1627
01:28:12,700 --> 01:28:15,766 began to talk at night about what it meant
1628
01:28:15,766 --> 01:28:17,433 to be true to one's conscience.
1629
01:28:17,433 --> 01:28:19,333 ("Farewell, Angelina" by Bob Dylan playing)
1630
01:28:21,566 --> 01:28:24,100 Some 170,000 men
1631
01:28:24,100 --> 01:28:26,533 were granted conscientious objector status
1632
01:28:26,533 --> 01:28:29,200 during the Vietnam era.
1633
01:28:29,200 --> 01:28:31,000 But because Jack Todd
1634
01:28:31,000 --> 01:28:33,300 questioned the existence of God,
1635
01:28:33,300 --> 01:28:37,066 that avenue was closed to him.
1636
01:28:37,066 --> 01:28:38,433 There were really two choices.
1637
01:28:38,433 --> 01:28:40,300 It was go to jail or go to Canada.
1638
01:28:40,300 --> 01:28:42,866 And, for me, going to jail was just...
1639
01:28:42,866 --> 01:28:44,866 That one, I couldn't face.
1640
01:28:44,866 --> 01:28:46,866 So I went to Canada.
1641
01:28:46,866 --> 01:28:50,666 DYLAN: ♪ Farewell, Angelina
1642
01:28:50,666 --> 01:28:54,633 ♪ The bells of the crown
1643
01:28:54,633 --> 01:28:56,933 TODD: I remember that last beautiful drive,
1644
01:28:56,933 --> 01:28:59,566 from Seattle to Vancouver,
1645
01:28:59,566 --> 01:29:04,266 all the towering Douglas firs along the road.
1646
01:29:04,266 --> 01:29:06,566 And I remember, after we crossed the border--
1647
01:29:06,566 --> 01:29:09,166 it was a breeze, they just sort of waved us through--
1648
01:29:09,166 --> 01:29:11,400 and just looking in the rearview mirror, thinking,
1649
01:29:11,400 --> 01:29:12,766 "Man, there goes my country.
1650
01:29:12,766 --> 01:29:15,900 I'll never see it again."
1651
01:29:15,900 --> 01:29:19,100 DYLAN: ♪ But farewell, Angelina
1652
01:29:19,100 --> 01:29:22,433 ♪ The night is on fire
1653
01:29:22,433 --> 01:29:24,333 ♪ And I must go
1654
01:29:26,766 --> 01:29:29,566 I get called a coward all the time.
1655
01:29:29,566 --> 01:29:32,766 It took me a long time
1656
01:29:32,766 --> 01:29:35,333 not to feel that what I had done
1657
01:29:35,333 --> 01:29:38,033 was-was cowardly, because I still had
1658
01:29:38,033 --> 01:29:41,433 that military ingrained feeling inside.
1659
01:29:43,033 --> 01:29:46,233 That was the bravest thing I ever did.
1660
01:29:46,233 --> 01:29:48,233 It was the bravest thing I ever did.
1661
01:29:51,000 --> 01:29:54,700 NARRATOR: Jack Todd eventually found work as a reporter,
1662
01:29:54,700 --> 01:29:57,800 which allowed him to gain "landed immigrant status,"
1663
01:29:57,800 --> 01:30:01,233 a step toward Canadian citizenship.
1664
01:30:01,233 --> 01:30:05,866 Only a quarter of the estimated 30,000 Americans
1665
01:30:05,866 --> 01:30:08,800 who crossed into Canada managed to do so.
MINUTES 90-100
1666
01:30:08,800 --> 01:30:11,133 DYLAN: ♪ The sky is erupting
1667
01:30:11,133 --> 01:30:14,933 ♪ And I must go where it is quiet. ♪
1668
01:30:14,933 --> 01:30:18,233 NARRATOR: At the same time, some 30,000 Canadians
1669
01:30:18,233 --> 01:30:21,700 would volunteer to fight in Vietnam.
1670
01:30:35,266 --> 01:30:36,833 (birds chirping in distance)
1671
01:30:40,566 --> 01:30:43,966 KUSHNER: PRISONER OF WAR I thought about...
1672
01:30:43,966 --> 01:30:46,033 my parents and my siblings
1673
01:30:46,033 --> 01:30:49,766 and my wife and my little girl.
1674
01:30:49,766 --> 01:30:53,300 And one of the things that bothered me, is that I...
1675
01:30:53,300 --> 01:30:58,033 I couldn't really remember what they looked like after a while.
1676
01:30:58,033 --> 01:31:00,500 I remembered what their pictures looked like.
1677
01:31:00,500 --> 01:31:05,066 And when I imaged them in my mind's eye
1678
01:31:05,066 --> 01:31:08,533 I would image a picture, a photograph.
1679
01:31:11,233 --> 01:31:12,633 REPORTER: Valerie Kushner arrived on the...
1680
01:31:12,633 --> 01:31:14,833 NARRATOR: Hal Kushner's wife, Valerie,
1681
01:31:14,833 --> 01:31:17,033 had heard virtually nothing of her husband
1682
01:31:17,033 --> 01:31:20,833 since his capture by the Viet Cong in 1967,
1683
01:31:20,833 --> 01:31:23,566 and she had traveled to the Far East
1684
01:31:23,566 --> 01:31:26,033 to try to improve conditions for him.
1685
01:31:26,033 --> 01:31:29,433 VALERIE KUSHER: I think my period of greatest frustration
1686
01:31:29,433 --> 01:31:32,433 was just before and just after the birth of our son.
1687
01:31:32,433 --> 01:31:35,100 He was born in April of 1968
1688
01:31:35,100 --> 01:31:39,066 and my husband was captured in November of 1967.
1689
01:31:39,066 --> 01:31:43,033 So my husband does not yet know of his birth.
1690
01:31:43,033 --> 01:31:45,300 DON FARMER: With their father gone, the Kushner children
1691
01:31:45,300 --> 01:31:48,500 rely heavily on their mother and their grandparents.
1692
01:31:48,500 --> 01:31:50,066 Young Mike has never seen his father,
1693
01:31:50,066 --> 01:31:52,500 but six-year-old Toni-Jean remembers.
1694
01:31:52,500 --> 01:31:54,066 And the remembrances of Major Kushner
1695
01:31:54,066 --> 01:31:55,833 are everywhere in their house.
1696
01:31:55,833 --> 01:31:58,033 Toni, however, knows only that he's away,
1697
01:31:58,033 --> 01:31:59,766 that he's been captured, that grandfather fills in
1698
01:31:59,766 --> 01:32:01,200 until Dad comes home.
1699
01:32:01,200 --> 01:32:05,166 The Kushners worry, but they do not grieve.
1700
01:32:05,166 --> 01:32:07,133 Don Farmer, ABC News, reporting.
1701
01:32:10,000 --> 01:32:11,900 (siren wailing in distance)
1702
01:32:14,033 --> 01:32:16,233 NARRATOR: In February 1970,
1703
01:32:16,233 --> 01:32:19,500 in a house in an industrial suburb of Paris,
1704
01:32:19,500 --> 01:32:22,100 Henry Kissinger began a new series
1705
01:32:22,100 --> 01:32:25,666 of secret negotiations -- talks so secret
1706
01:32:25,666 --> 01:32:30,000 even the Secretary of State was not told about them.
1707
01:32:30,000 --> 01:32:32,133 His negotiating partner
1708
01:32:32,133 --> 01:32:35,966 would be Le Duan's close political ally, Le Duc Tho,
1709
01:32:35,966 --> 01:32:39,600 a veteran of 40 years of revolutionary warfare
1710
01:32:39,600 --> 01:32:43,466 and party intrigue-- shrewd, implacable,
1711
01:32:43,466 --> 01:32:47,266 and openly scornful of Vietnamization.
1712
01:32:47,266 --> 01:32:50,066 If the United States could not win
1713
01:32:50,066 --> 01:32:53,366 with half a million of its own troops, he asked Kissinger,
1714
01:32:53,366 --> 01:32:56,066 "How can you succeed when you let your puppet troops
1715
01:32:56,066 --> 01:32:58,466 do the fighting?"
1716
01:32:58,466 --> 01:33:01,733 The American admitted he had no answer.
1717
01:33:07,500 --> 01:33:09,800 Despite the impasse in Paris,
1718
01:33:09,800 --> 01:33:13,500 Nixon's first year had been a triumph.
1719
01:33:13,500 --> 01:33:19,566 He had withdrawn 115,000 troops from Vietnam.
1720
01:33:20,900 --> 01:33:24,233 American casualty figures were down.
1721
01:33:24,233 --> 01:33:26,900 Reduced draft calls
1722
01:33:26,900 --> 01:33:29,200 and the president's new lottery system
1723
01:33:29,200 --> 01:33:32,266 had blunted some opposition to the war.
1724
01:33:35,133 --> 01:33:37,700 And the violent actions of some revolutionaries
1725
01:33:37,700 --> 01:33:41,333 were tarnishing the antiwar cause itself.
1726
01:33:41,333 --> 01:33:45,300 Between September 1969 and May 1970,
1727
01:33:45,300 --> 01:33:48,000 there would be hundreds of bombings--
1728
01:33:48,000 --> 01:33:49,933 banks and courthouses,
1729
01:33:49,933 --> 01:33:53,200 induction centers and ROTC buildings.
1730
01:33:53,200 --> 01:33:55,100 ("Psychedelic Shack" by The Temptations starts playing)
1731
01:33:55,100 --> 01:33:57,000 One police officer was killed.
1732
01:33:58,266 --> 01:33:59,766 Three would-be bombers
1733
01:33:59,766 --> 01:34:03,633 accidentally blew themselves up in Greenwich Village.
1734
01:34:03,633 --> 01:34:05,900 TEMPTATIONS: ♪ Well, well
1735
01:34:05,900 --> 01:34:09,933 NANCY BIBERMAN: ANTIWAR ACTIVIST The antiwar movement split apart.
1736
01:34:09,933 --> 01:34:12,800 And there were people who felt that the only way
1737
01:34:12,800 --> 01:34:16,633 we were ever gonna end the war was by becoming more violent.
1738
01:34:16,633 --> 01:34:19,566 You know, that we had to match violence with violence.
1739
01:34:19,566 --> 01:34:24,400 How that was gonna happen wasn't spoken about openly.
1740
01:34:24,400 --> 01:34:27,200 But there was just this undercurrent.
1741
01:34:27,200 --> 01:34:29,566 REPORTER: This is a plumbing pipe
1742
01:34:29,566 --> 01:34:33,133 completely full of gunpowder.
1743
01:34:33,133 --> 01:34:35,366 TEMPTATIONS: ♪ Music so high you can't get over it ♪
1744
01:34:35,366 --> 01:34:37,866 NIXON: My fellow Americans,
1745
01:34:37,866 --> 01:34:40,466 we live in an age of anarchy,
1746
01:34:40,466 --> 01:34:43,000 both abroad and at home.
1747
01:34:44,500 --> 01:34:49,566 We see mindless attacks on all the great institutions,
1748
01:34:49,566 --> 01:34:52,033 which have been created by free civilizations
1749
01:34:52,033 --> 01:34:54,633 in the last 500 years.
1750
01:34:56,000 --> 01:34:58,233 Even here in the United States,
1751
01:34:58,233 --> 01:35:01,900 great universities are being systematically destroyed.
1752
01:35:04,966 --> 01:35:07,800 If, when the chips are down,
1753
01:35:07,800 --> 01:35:10,400 the world's most powerful nation,
1754
01:35:10,400 --> 01:35:12,200 the United States of America,
1755
01:35:12,200 --> 01:35:17,166 acts like a pitiful, helpless giant,
1756
01:35:17,166 --> 01:35:20,966 the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy
1757
01:35:20,966 --> 01:35:23,733 will threaten free nations and free institutions
1758
01:35:23,733 --> 01:35:25,400 throughout the world.
1759
01:35:25,400 --> 01:35:29,533 NARRATOR: On April 30, 1970,
1760
01:35:29,533 --> 01:35:31,400 President Nixon shocked the world
1761
01:35:31,400 --> 01:35:34,566 by announcing that he had sent 30,000 American troops
1762
01:35:34,566 --> 01:35:38,333 storming into Cambodia.
1763
01:35:38,333 --> 01:35:41,433 The previous month, Prince Norodom Sihanouk
1764
01:35:41,433 --> 01:35:43,733 had been overthrown in a coup.
1765
01:35:43,733 --> 01:35:46,166 For years, he had allowed the North Vietnamese
1766
01:35:46,166 --> 01:35:48,833 to keep sanctuaries in his country,
1767
01:35:48,833 --> 01:35:50,866 but he had not protested
1768
01:35:50,866 --> 01:35:54,400 when American planes bombed them.
1769
01:35:54,400 --> 01:35:57,100 The new president, Lon Nol,
1770
01:35:57,100 --> 01:36:01,133 was an anticommunist, backed by the United States.
1771
01:36:01,133 --> 01:36:03,533 Nixon now felt he could do
1772
01:36:03,533 --> 01:36:07,266 what American generals had been wanting to do for years--
1773
01:36:07,266 --> 01:36:11,033 pursue the enemy beyond the borders of South Vietnam.
1774
01:36:12,566 --> 01:36:15,500 The 30,000 American troops
1775
01:36:15,500 --> 01:36:20,766 were joined by 50,000 ARVN soldiers.
1776
01:36:20,766 --> 01:36:22,800 The objective was to attack
1777
01:36:22,800 --> 01:36:25,566 North Vietnamese base camps and supply lines
1778
01:36:25,566 --> 01:36:28,933 and to buy time for the South Vietnamese Army
1779
01:36:28,933 --> 01:36:31,333 as it got ready to fight on its own.
1780
01:36:33,333 --> 01:36:35,700 Nixon told the public
1781
01:36:35,700 --> 01:36:39,366 he had ordered an "incursion," not an "invasion,"
1782
01:36:39,366 --> 01:36:43,966 intended only to protect American boys in South Vietnam
1783
01:36:43,966 --> 01:36:48,133 and in response to North Vietnamese "aggression."
1784
01:36:51,033 --> 01:36:54,933 GILLAM: I wasn't worried about political conflict.
1785
01:36:54,933 --> 01:36:57,666 I was worried about, "Am I gonna be alive
1786
01:36:57,666 --> 01:36:59,133 in the next ten minutes?"
1787
01:37:00,733 --> 01:37:04,233 We were on the western edge of the invasion.
1788
01:37:04,233 --> 01:37:07,600 We went as far as anybody went in Cambodia.
1789
01:37:07,600 --> 01:37:08,866 (gunfire)
1790
01:37:08,866 --> 01:37:10,366 And it was a hot LZ.
1791
01:37:10,366 --> 01:37:15,166 I got holes shot in my backpack.
1792
01:37:15,166 --> 01:37:16,666 I was laying on my face
1793
01:37:16,666 --> 01:37:18,933 and they were shooting holes in my backpack,
1794
01:37:18,933 --> 01:37:21,900 which means they missed my head by maybe four inches.
1795
01:37:23,800 --> 01:37:27,266 I really didn't think I would see the end of that week.
1796
01:37:27,266 --> 01:37:29,566 (gunfire)
1797
01:37:29,566 --> 01:37:31,466 (indistinct chatter on radio)
1798
01:37:33,600 --> 01:37:37,233 NARRATOR: The sight of American troops crossing the border
1799
01:37:37,233 --> 01:37:41,200 into Cambodia reignited the antiwar movement.
1800
01:37:41,200 --> 01:37:42,500 Come on, let's go!
1801
01:37:42,500 --> 01:37:44,700 NARRATOR: If the troops were coming home,
1802
01:37:44,700 --> 01:37:46,833 if the war was winding down,
1803
01:37:46,833 --> 01:37:50,866 why had Nixon decided to widen it?
1804
01:37:50,866 --> 01:37:53,700 How could invading another country 1805
01:37:53,700 --> 01:37:57,666 help bring peace to Southeast Asia? 1806
01:37:57,666 --> 01:37:59,466 HUNTLEY: The reaction on the campuses
1807
01:37:59,466 --> 01:38:01,133 was swift and predictable.
1808
01:38:01,133 --> 01:38:02,833 The students and many of their teachers
1809
01:38:02,833 --> 01:38:04,433 were against the President.
1810
01:38:04,433 --> 01:38:07,700 Princeton students called for a nationwide student strike.
1811
01:38:07,700 --> 01:38:11,500 Antiwar rallies were planned at Harvard, MIT, Indiana,
1812
01:38:11,500 --> 01:38:13,633 Purdue Universities and other colleges.
1813
01:38:18,900 --> 01:38:22,233 NARRATOR: On Monday morning, May 4, 1970,
1814
01:38:22,233 --> 01:38:24,866 some 2,000 students gathered on the commons
1815
01:38:24,866 --> 01:38:28,800 at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio.
1816
01:38:28,800 --> 01:38:32,633 Some were simply moving from class to class.
1817
01:38:32,633 --> 01:38:36,133 Others planned to attend a rally called to protest
1818
01:38:36,133 --> 01:38:38,833 Nixon's widening of the war
1819
01:38:38,833 --> 01:38:44,633 and the presence of the Ohio National Guard on campus.
1820
01:38:44,633 --> 01:38:47,766 Governor James Rhodes had called in the guardsmen
1821
01:38:47,766 --> 01:38:49,233 two days earlier
1822
01:38:49,233 --> 01:38:54,733 after a mob set the old wooden ROTC building on fire
1823
01:38:54,733 --> 01:38:56,733 and then prevented the fire department
1824
01:38:56,733 --> 01:38:59,100 from putting out the flames.
1825
01:39:02,166 --> 01:39:06,300 Rhodes had compared protestors to Nazi brownshirts
1826
01:39:06,300 --> 01:39:09,833 and promised to use "every weapon to eradicate
1827
01:39:09,833 --> 01:39:14,166 the worst sort of people we harbor in America."
1828
01:39:14,166 --> 01:39:16,066 (bell clanging)
1829
01:39:18,700 --> 01:39:24,033 The guardsmen's weapons were loaded with live ammunition,
1830
01:39:24,033 --> 01:39:25,866 though no one in the crowd knew it.
1831
01:39:25,866 --> 01:39:29,200 MAN: Why do you have to have a gun?! I don't understand!
1832
01:39:29,200 --> 01:39:32,200 MAN (on megaphone): Leave this area immediately!
1833
01:39:32,200 --> 01:39:36,066 NARRATOR: The students were ordered to disperse.
1834
01:39:36,066 --> 01:39:37,800 They stood their ground.
1835
01:39:37,800 --> 01:39:39,700 (shouting)
1836
01:39:43,733 --> 01:39:47,000 Tear gas scattered some of them.
1837
01:39:47,000 --> 01:39:48,900 (shouting)
1838
01:40:06,200 --> 01:40:10,166 The guardsmen seemed to fall back.
1839
01:40:10,166 --> 01:40:14,366 But then members of Troop G wheeled around and opened fire
1840
01:40:14,366 --> 01:40:18,400 on students gathered in and around a parking lot.
1841
01:40:20,400 --> 01:40:23,200 (distorted gunshots echoing)
1842
01:40:49,900 --> 01:40:52,166 PROTESTOR: Somebody call for an ambulance!
1843
01:40:52,166 --> 01:40:53,833 (others shouting)
1844
01:40:53,833 --> 01:40:56,833 There's people dying down here! Get an ambulance up here!
1845
01:40:56,833 --> 01:40:58,733 (indistinct shouting)
1846
01:41:03,466 --> 01:41:06,933 NARRATOR: 67 rounds in 13 seconds
1847
01:41:06,933 --> 01:41:11,333 killed two young women and two young men... [40]
1848
01:41:14,266 --> 01:41:17,533 Including an ROTC scholarship student
1849
01:41:17,533 --> 01:41:20,000 who had simply been an onlooker.
MINUTES 100-110
1850
01:41:25,700 --> 01:41:30,500 SAM HYNES: NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY That dead child on the ground
1851
01:41:30,500 --> 01:41:33,900 was one of ours.
1852
01:41:33,900 --> 01:41:37,300 If we could kill our own students,
1853
01:41:37,300 --> 01:41:42,400 uh, what had happened to our country?
1854
01:41:44,500 --> 01:41:47,500 NARRATOR: Nine more students were wounded,
1855
01:41:47,500 --> 01:41:51,466 one of whom was permanently paralyzed.
1856
01:42:02,833 --> 01:42:07,300 Several hundred angry, grieving students sat down
1857
01:42:07,300 --> 01:42:09,433 and demanded to know why the guardsmen
1858
01:42:09,433 --> 01:42:11,333 had fired on their friends.
1859
01:42:14,833 --> 01:42:17,766 MAN: Sir, you've got a couple hundred students...
1860
01:42:17,766 --> 01:42:19,266 NARRATOR: An officer ordered them
1861
01:42:19,266 --> 01:42:21,133 to "disperse or we will shoot again."
1862
01:42:21,133 --> 01:42:24,133 How long will you give us? You've got five minutes.
1863
01:42:24,133 --> 01:42:27,133 GLENN FRANK: Please listen to me right now!
1864
01:42:27,133 --> 01:42:29,800 NARRATOR: Only the anguished pleas
1865
01:42:29,800 --> 01:42:34,466 of geology professor Glenn Frank averted further tragedy.
1866
01:42:34,466 --> 01:42:36,166 STUDENT: Talk, Dr. Frank. Talk.
1867
01:42:53,600 --> 01:42:56,733 (indistinct voices) PROF. GLENN FRANK: I am begging you right now. If you don't disperse right now, they're going to move in and it can only be a slaughter. Would you please listen to me? Jesus Christ! I don't want to be a part of this!
1868
01:43:01,533 --> 01:43:04,466 MIKE HEANEY: ARMY That just symbolized for me
1869
01:43:04,466 --> 01:43:08,433 what this war was doing to our culture.
1870
01:43:08,433 --> 01:43:10,300 These were kids on both sides,
1871
01:43:10,300 --> 01:43:13,166 young National Guard boys
1872
01:43:13,166 --> 01:43:16,533 who had very little training and probably scared,
1873
01:43:16,533 --> 01:43:18,766 and not well led
1874
01:43:18,766 --> 01:43:20,633 and-and young men and women on the other side
1875
01:43:20,633 --> 01:43:22,233 protesting the war out there
1876
01:43:22,233 --> 01:43:24,566 for, you know, idealistic reasons.
1877
01:43:24,566 --> 01:43:27,233 And look at what happens
1878
01:43:27,233 --> 01:43:33,433 when we let things get as bad as they got.
1879
01:43:33,433 --> 01:43:35,166 ("Woodstock" by Joni Mitchell playing)
1880
01:43:35,166 --> 01:43:37,833 NARRATOR: According to one national poll,
1881
01:43:37,833 --> 01:43:40,633 58% of the American people
1882
01:43:40,633 --> 01:43:43,466 thought the killings justified.
1883
01:43:46,433 --> 01:43:49,766 The parents of the dead ROTC student
1884
01:43:49,766 --> 01:43:52,500 received a flood of hate mail,
1885
01:43:52,500 --> 01:43:55,900 suggesting that they should be grateful their boy was dead
1886
01:43:55,900 --> 01:44:00,533 since he'd been "just another communist."
1887
01:44:01,700 --> 01:44:05,766 (man speaking indistinctly over megaphone)
1888
01:44:05,766 --> 01:44:09,366 During the days that followed, all across the country,
1889
01:44:09,366 --> 01:44:12,033 more than four million college students
1890
01:44:12,033 --> 01:44:14,033 demonstrated against the war
1891
01:44:14,033 --> 01:44:16,966 and what had happened at Kent State.
1892
01:44:19,500 --> 01:44:23,566 MITCHELL: ♪ I came upon a child of God
1893
01:44:23,566 --> 01:44:28,233 ♪ He was walking along the road ♪
1894
01:44:28,233 --> 01:44:30,200 ♪ And I asked him
1895
01:44:30,200 --> 01:44:32,533 ♪ Where are you going?
1896
01:44:32,533 --> 01:44:36,500 ♪ And this he told me
1897
01:44:36,500 --> 01:44:41,200 NARRATOR: 448 campuses closed down,
1898
01:44:41,200 --> 01:44:46,866 and the National Guard was called out in 16 states.
1899
01:44:46,866 --> 01:44:48,200 MITCHELL: ♪ Band
1900
01:44:48,200 --> 01:44:50,333 ♪ I'm gonna camp out
1901
01:44:50,333 --> 01:44:53,933 NARRATOR: At Jackson State University in Mississippi,
1902
01:44:53,933 --> 01:44:58,200 state police opened fire on a dormitory.
1903
01:44:58,200 --> 01:45:00,133 Two students died.
1904
01:45:00,133 --> 01:45:03,100 12 more were wounded.
1905
01:45:05,100 --> 01:45:07,266 Jackson State, those were my people.
1906
01:45:07,266 --> 01:45:09,200 Those were black kids.
1907
01:45:09,200 --> 01:45:11,533 And they died.
1908
01:45:11,533 --> 01:45:15,033 MITCHELL: ♪ Back to the garden
1909
01:45:15,033 --> 01:45:17,433 NARRATOR: Army private Tim O'Brien
1910
01:45:17,433 --> 01:45:21,233 was now back home in Minnesota.
1911
01:45:21,233 --> 01:45:24,800 O'BRIEN: There was a huge march
1912
01:45:24,800 --> 01:45:26,700 after the Kent State shootings in St. Paul,
1913
01:45:26,700 --> 01:45:29,133 and I joined the march.
1914
01:45:29,133 --> 01:45:34,400 I just wanted to put my body amidst these 100,000 people,
1915
01:45:34,400 --> 01:45:37,666 that word "no" being uttered by my body, if not by my mouth,
1916
01:45:37,666 --> 01:45:39,200 by just making that march.
1917
01:45:39,200 --> 01:45:42,733 That same march I was doing in Vietnam
1918
01:45:42,733 --> 01:45:45,100 that seemed senseless and purposeless
1919
01:45:45,100 --> 01:45:46,333 and without direction,
1920
01:45:46,333 --> 01:45:49,266 here it felt sensible and purposeful
1921
01:45:49,266 --> 01:45:52,633 and with direction, heading for that state capital
1922
01:45:52,633 --> 01:45:56,033 to say no.
1923
01:45:56,033 --> 01:45:59,333 And, boy, did it feel good.
1924
01:45:59,333 --> 01:46:01,300 (chanting "Peace now")
1925
01:46:04,233 --> 01:46:06,166 NARRATOR: Marine Corporal Bill Ehrhart
1926
01:46:06,166 --> 01:46:08,700 was a student at Swarthmore College
1927
01:46:08,700 --> 01:46:12,900 near his hometown in eastern Pennsylvania.
1928
01:46:12,900 --> 01:46:17,433 EHRHART: And here's this very famous photograph.
1929
01:46:17,433 --> 01:46:20,266 And I just looked at this thing.
1930
01:46:24,533 --> 01:46:26,033 And I came unglued.
1931
01:46:28,366 --> 01:46:31,833 I don't know how long I sat down on the curb,
1932
01:46:31,833 --> 01:46:35,366 and I don't know if I was there for 15 minutes
1933
01:46:35,366 --> 01:46:36,900 or an hour and a half.
1934
01:46:36,900 --> 01:46:39,233 Just had a breakdown.
1935
01:46:39,233 --> 01:46:42,933 Just crying, sobbing uncontrollably.
1936
01:46:42,933 --> 01:46:44,800 All I could think was, "It's not enough to send us
1937
01:46:44,800 --> 01:46:47,266 "halfway around the world to die.
1938
01:46:47,266 --> 01:46:50,133 "Now they're killing us in the streets of our own country.
1939
01:46:50,133 --> 01:46:51,500 I have to do something."
1940
01:46:53,466 --> 01:46:54,700 And I finally...
1941
01:46:54,700 --> 01:46:56,600 whenever I finally cried myself out,
1942
01:46:56,600 --> 01:46:59,066 I got up and I joined the antiwar movement.
1943
01:47:02,400 --> 01:47:06,866 MUSGRAVE: I remember when the kids were killed at Kent State,
1944
01:47:06,866 --> 01:47:09,666 and I thought,
1945
01:47:09,666 --> 01:47:12,933 "My God, we're killing our own children now.
1946
01:47:12,933 --> 01:47:14,766 We've really gone mad."
1947
01:47:14,766 --> 01:47:16,166 And I wasn't...
1948
01:47:16,166 --> 01:47:19,166 That's when I was hiding from things.
1949
01:47:19,166 --> 01:47:21,233 I wasn't in anybody's movement then.
1950
01:47:21,233 --> 01:47:22,900 I was just drinking.
1951
01:47:25,000 --> 01:47:30,500 But that was one of the things that told me
1952
01:47:30,500 --> 01:47:32,800 America needed a wake-up call.
1953
01:47:39,833 --> 01:47:42,900 ("Ohio" by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young playing)
1954
01:48:06,000 --> 01:48:08,933 ♪ Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming ♪
1955
01:48:08,933 --> 01:48:11,900 ♪ We're finally on our own
1956
01:48:11,900 --> 01:48:15,333 ♪ This summer I hear the drumming ♪
1957
01:48:15,333 --> 01:48:19,100 ♪ Four dead in Ohio
1958
01:48:19,100 --> 01:48:21,900 ♪ Got to get down to it
1959
01:48:21,900 --> 01:48:25,300 ♪ Soldiers are cutting us down
1960
01:48:25,300 --> 01:48:29,000 ♪ Should have been done long ago ♪
1961
01:48:31,566 --> 01:48:33,233 ♪ What if you knew her
1962
01:48:33,233 --> 01:48:36,966 ♪ And found her dead on the ground? ♪
1963
01:48:36,966 --> 01:48:41,100 ♪ How can you run when you know? ♪
1964
01:48:41,100 --> 01:48:43,000 ♪
1965
01:49:02,066 --> 01:49:04,566 ♪ La la-la-la, la la la la ♪
1966
01:49:04,566 --> 01:49:08,433 ♪ La la-la-la, la la la ♪
1967
01:49:08,433 --> 01:49:11,533 ♪ La la-la-la, la la la la ♪
1968
01:49:11,533 --> 01:49:14,933 ♪ La la-la-la, la la la ♪
1969
01:49:14,933 --> 01:49:17,433 ♪ Got to get down to it
1970
01:49:17,433 --> 01:49:21,066 ♪ Soldiers are cutting us down
1971
01:49:21,066 --> 01:49:24,833 ♪ Should have been done long ago ♪
1972
01:49:27,233 --> 01:49:29,400 ♪ What if you knew her
1973
01:49:29,400 --> 01:49:33,500 ♪ And found her dead on the ground? ♪
1974
01:49:33,500 --> 01:49:37,233 ♪ How can you run when you know? ♪
1975
01:49:37,233 --> 01:49:39,133 ♪
1976
01:49:57,300 --> 01:50:00,266 ♪ Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming ♪
1977
01:50:00,266 --> 01:50:03,466 ♪ We're finally on our own
1978
01:50:03,466 --> 01:50:06,500 ♪ This summer I hear the drumming ♪
1979
01:50:06,500 --> 01:50:08,966 ♪ Four dead in Ohio
1980
01:50:08,966 --> 01:50:12,133 ♪ Four dead in Ohio ♪ Four
1981
01:50:12,133 --> 01:50:14,400 ♪ Four dead in Ohio
1982
01:50:14,400 --> 01:50:17,333 ♪ Four ♪ Four dead in Ohio
1983
01:50:17,333 --> 01:50:20,000 ♪ How could they? ♪ Four dead in Ohio
1984
01:50:20,000 --> 01:50:23,200 ♪ How many more? ♪ Four dead in Ohio
1985
01:50:23,200 --> 01:50:25,333 Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH, access.wgbh.org
1986
01:50:30,666 --> 01:50:31,866 ANNOUNCER: LEARN MORE ABOUT THE FILM
1987
01:50:31,866 --> 01:50:34,733 AND FIND ADDITIONAL RESOURCES AT PBS.ORG/VIETNAMWAR
1988
01:50:34,733 --> 01:50:38,666 AND JOIN THE CONVERSATION USING HASHTAG VIETNAMWARPBS.
1989
01:50:38,666 --> 01:50:40,133 "THE VIETNAM WAR" IS AVAILABLE
1990
01:50:40,133 --> 01:50:41,800 ON BLU-RAY AND DVD.
1991
01:50:41,800 --> 01:50:43,466 THE COMPANION BOOK, SOUNDTRACK,
1992
01:50:43,466 --> 01:50:44,866 AND ORIGINAL SCORE FROM THE FILM
1993
01:50:44,866 --> 01:50:46,000 ARE ALSO AVAILABLE.
1994
01:50:46,000 --> 01:50:48,100 TO ORDER, VISIT SHOPPBS.ORG
1995
01:50:48,100 --> 01:50:50,566 OR CALL 1-800-PLAY-PBS.
1996
01:50:50,566 --> 01:50:52,000 EPISODES OF THIS SERIES ALSO
1997
01:50:52,000 --> 01:50:53,100 AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD
1998
01:50:53,100 --> 01:50:54,200 FROM iTUNES.
MINUTES 110-END
1999
01:50:57,466 --> 01:50:59,600 ANNOUNCER: BANK OF AMERICA PROUDLY SUPPORTS
2000
01:50:59,600 --> 01:51:04,566 KEN BURNS' AND LYNN NOVICK'S FILM "THE VIETNAM WAR"
2001
01:51:04,566 --> 01:51:06,966 BECAUSE FOSTERING DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES
2002
01:51:06,966 --> 01:51:09,566 AND CIVIL DISCOURSE AROUND IMPORTANT ISSUES
2003
01:51:09,566 --> 01:51:11,866 FURTHERS PROGRESS, EQUALITY,
2004
01:51:11,866 --> 01:51:13,866 AND A MORE CONNECTED SOCIETY.
2005
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2006
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2007
01:51:27,266 --> 01:51:30,766 WAS PROVIDED BY MEMBERS OF THE BETTER ANGELS SOCIETY,
2008
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2009
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2010
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2011
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2012
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2013
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2014
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2015
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2016
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2017
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2018
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2019
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2020
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2021
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2022
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2023
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2024
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2025
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2026
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2027
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2028
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2029
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2030
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2031
01:52:29,900 --> 01:52:31,866 AND BY VIEWERS LIKE YOU.
2032
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References
- ↑ See Negotiations
- ↑ Without polarization, maybe.
- ↑ Up to this point, all demands had come from the Communists, such as their requirement for the U.S. to remove the South Vietnamese government from office.
- ↑ The South permitted such inspections
- ↑ The video here ostensibly shows "tiger cages"
- ↑ See POW's in SVN
- ↑ Where is the comparable testimony from U.S. prisoners in NVN? Kushner's experiences were not given this treatment.
- ↑ ARVN?
- ↑ Does the reporter need training?
- ↑ Ted Kennedy has a lot to answer for.
- ↑ See Negotiations
- ↑ As measured by. . .?
- ↑ Why now?
- ↑ Exactly what did the poll indicate?
- ↑ By this time the VC were pretty negligible.
- ↑ By 1972, they were proved wrong.
- ↑ He preferred it to the term "de-Americanized."
- ↑ And given the weaponry to do so. Up to now, ARVN had been facing AK's with carbines.
- ↑ Which he did well, see Sorley's A Better War.
- ↑ See Merrill McPeak
- ↑ See Tom Vallely
- ↑ More importantly giving each ARVN soldier and automatic rifle down to village defenders. An earlier comment suggested American weapons were going over to the Viet Cong. At this point, it would be appropriate to note that the Saigon government had sufficient faith in its citizens that it could arm them without fear of the weapons being turned on the government.
- ↑ Another indicator of Journalistic insight into Military matters.
- ↑ Disproven in the 1972 Easter Offensive.
- ↑ a dyslexic radio operator?
- ↑ He didn't have his own?
- ↑ See Race Relations
- ↑ see below 799)
- ↑ I believe the party even changed the date of his death to separate it from the Independence Day holiday.
- ↑ see Treatment of Prisoners
- ↑ It worked.
- ↑ Bill Ayers, major Obama supporter
- ↑ 1969
- ↑ Just as in the anti-war movement in the U.S. the leaders were the Marxists, not the foot-soldiers.
- ↑ I find it hard to believe that a deserter would be treated so leniently. A Chieu Hoi certainly did not get the same treatment after the war.
- ↑ This is what Americans do.
- ↑ e.g. if Tom Hayden and/or Bill Clinton hadn't avoided service, would a Calley have been in command?
- ↑ Huh?
- ↑ = draft dodger
- ↑ 1 round in 17 at point blank range was lethal.
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