All language subtitles for the.vietnam.war.2017.part03.480p.bluray.x264

("With God on Our Side"
by Bob Dylan playing)

DYLAN:
♪ Oh, my name,
it is nothin' ♪

JEAN-MARIE CROCKER:
Well, I wanted to
name him after his dad,

Denton Winslow Crocker.

So that was the name
we chose.

He was a colicky little baby.

And, uh, so we were up
night and day with him.

And my husband was
a wonderful dad

and very loving and attentive.

He'd walk the floor with him.

And then he said one day,
"He's a regular little mogul

the way he rules our lives."

So that's where the name
came from.

We called him Mogie.

NARRATOR:
Mogie Crocker was born
June 3, 1947,

the oldest of four children.

His father was
a biology teacher,

and Mogie was raised
in college towns:

Ithaca, Amherst, and finally
Saratoga Springs,

to which the family moved
in 1960, when he was 13.

My mother read books
to all of us.

My brother was
definitely the one

who probably gravitated
towards them more than I did.

He really feasted on books.

NARRATOR:
Mogie was an unusual boy.

Intelligent, independent-minded,
and too nearsighted

to do well at team sports,

he loved books about American
history and American heroes.

At 12, he started a diary

in which he kept track
of Cold War events.

"I hate Reds!" he wrote,

and he admired most those
who had proved willing

to sacrifice themselves
for a cause.

President John F. Kennedy's
call for every American

to ask what he or she could do
for their country

had mirrored ideas he'd held
since he was a small boy.

One evening when
I was reading to Denton

before he went to sleep,
I chose a passage fromHenry V,

which is, "He today that sheds
his blood with me

"shall be my brother.

"And gentlemen in England
now a-bed

"shall think themselves
accurs'd

"they were not here and hold
their manhood cheap

while any speaks that fought
with us upon St. Crispin's Day."

(distant bombs echoing)

DYLAN:
♪ If another war comes...

JEAN-MARIE CROCKER:
I think that it was
that sort of thing

that made Denton want to be

part of something important
and brave.

DYLAN:
♪ With God on their side.

("With God on Our Side"
continues)

LYNDON JOHNSON:
I just stayed awake last night
thinking about this thing.

The more I think of it,
I don't know what in the hell...

it looks like to me we're
getting into another Korea.

It just worries
the hell out of me.

I don't see what we can ever
hope to get out of there with

once we're committed.

I don't think it's worth
fighting for

and I don't think
we can get out.

And it's just the biggest
damn mess I ever saw.

McGEORGE BUNDY:
It is, it's an awful mess.

JOHNSON:
I just thought about ordering
those kids in there,

and what in the hell am I
ordering them out there for?

BUNDY:
One thing that
has occurred to me...

JOHNSON:
What the hell
is Vietnam worth to me?

What is it worth
to this country?

BUNDY:
Yeah, yeah.

JOHNSON:
Now, of course, if you start
running the communists,

they may just chase you right
into your own kitchen.

BUNDY:
Yeah. That's the trouble.

And that is what the rest of
that half of the world

is going to think if this thing
comes apart on us.

LYNDON JOHNSON:
It's damned easy
to get in a war,

but it's going to be awfully
hard to ever extricate yourself

if you get in.

BUNDY:
It's very easy...

JOHNSON:
I'd like to hear Walter and
McNamara to evaluate this thing.

BUNDY:
To debate it?

JOHNSON:
Yeah.

BUNDY:
All right,
what's a possible time...?

NARRATOR:
Tragedy had brought Lyndon
Johnson to the presidency

in November of 1963.

And he would not feel himself
fully in charge

until he had faced the voters
the following year.

But his ambitions for his
country were as great

as those of his hero,
Franklin Roosevelt.

During his years
in the White House,

he would lead the struggle
to win passage

of more than 200 important
pieces of legislation--

the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
the Voting Rights Act of 1965,

federal aid to education,
Head Start, Medicare,

and a whole series of bills
aimed at ending poverty

in America,
all intended to create

what he called
"The Great Society."

In foreign affairs,
Johnson was less self-assured.

"Foreigners are not like
the folks I'm used to,"

he once said.

To deal with them,
he retained in office

all of John Kennedy's
top advisors--

Dean Rusk at State,

Robert McNamara at Defense,

McGeorge Bundy as his
National Security Advisor.

"I need you," he told them,
more than his predecessor had.

Publicly, Johnson pledged

that "This nation will keep its
commitments

from South Vietnam
to West Berlin."

But privately,
Vietnam filled him with dread.

"It's going to be
hell in a handbasket out there,"

his ambassador told him.

"I want the South Vietnamese
to get off their butts

"and get out into those jungles

and whip the hell out of some
communists," the president said.

"And then I want 'em
to leave me alone,

"because I've got some
bigger things to do

right here at home."

Johnson had opposed the military
coup that had overthrown

and murdered South Vietnamese
president Ngo Dinh Diem,

fearing it would make
a bad situation worse.

It had.

(gunfire, shouting)

The National Liberation Front--
the Viet Cong--

was making coordinated attacks
throughout the countryside,

some 400 of them
in just two weeks.

NARRATOR:
An estimated 40% of the South
Vietnamese countryside,

and more than 50%
of the people,

were effectively
in the hands of the Viet Cong.

And the Vietnamese generals who
had overthrown Ngo Dinh Diem

were bickering among themselves.

The assassination of Ngo
Dinh Diem set in motion

a series of coups.

Each government was less
effective than the one before.

NARRATOR:
In January 1964,

with U.S. encouragement,

General Nguyen Khanh
staged yet another coup.

In March, Johnson sent McNamara
to Vietnam with instructions

to show the people that Khanh
was "our boy."

SAM WILSON:
Johnson said, "Let's get him out
and get him speaking to people,

"and let McNamara
go with him as well

"so that people can see
that the United States

is solidly behind this man."

We fully support the people
of South Vietnam.

BUI DIEM (speaking English):

When Khanh gave a tedious, long,
laborious speech ending up with,

"Vietnam (speaking Vietnamese),
Vietnam (speaking Vietnamese),

Vietnam a thousand years."

McNamara leaned over
to the microphone and said...

(attempting to repeat
Vietnamese phrase)

BUI DIEM:

(McNamara attempting to repeat
Vietnamese phrase)

What he was saying
was something like,

"The little duck,
he wants to lie down."

(attempting to repeat
Vietnamese phrase)

WILSON:
He wasn't aware
of the tonal difference.

And McNamara grabbed one fist
and held them up.

And the crowd practically

disintegrated on
the cobblestones.

NARRATOR:
"No more of this coup shit,"

President Johnson
told his advisors.

But Khanh, too, lacked
popular legitimacy,

and other generals
continued to jockey for power.

Washington turned a deaf ear
to Buddhist calls

for the genuinely
representative government

they'd hoped they'd get
when Diem was overthrown.

Between January 1964
and June of 1965,

there would be eight
different governments.

All of their leaders were so
close to the Americans

that they were seen as puppets.

(shouting, whistling)

One weary Johnson aide suggested

that the national symbol
of South Vietnam

should be a turnstile.

MURRAY FROMSON:
These demonstrating students
seem to symbolize

the kind of anarchy that is
descending on Saigon these days.

This kind of political
backbiting is having

serious consequences
in the countryside,

for until a strong government
begins to function

here in Saigon,

the war against the communists
will continue to founder.

DONG SI NGUYEN:

NARRATOR:
Ho Chi Minh was still a beloved
figure in North Vietnam,

still concerned that his country
remained fragile,

still wary that stepping up
the conflict in the South

might force the Americans to
take a still more active role.

But Ho now shared power with
younger, more impatient leaders.

There had been change and
turmoil in North Vietnam, too,

just as there had been
in Saigon and Washington,

though Americans knew
almost nothing about it.

HUY DUC:

NARRATOR:
At the Ninth Party Plenum
that began in Hanoi

on November 22, 1963,

the day President Kennedy
was killed in Dallas,

the Politburo had argued over
how best to proceed in the war.

North Vietnam's
two communist patrons,

the Soviet Union and China, were
giving them conflicting advice.

NGUYEN NGOC:

NARRATOR:
In two weeks of sometimes
bitter debate,

Ho Chi Minh, who favored
the Soviet strategy,

was outmaneuvered by party
First Secretary Le Duan,

who sided with the Chinese.

NGUYEN NGOC:

NARRATOR:
Le Duan believed
that with Diem gone,

and the Saigon government
in disarray,

it was time to move quickly
in 1964.

He proposed a two-phase plan
for victory in South Vietnam.

The first phase would destroy
ARVN forces

through big,
"decisive battles";

the second, an attack on
the cities, Le Duan believed,

would then set off
popular revolts within them.

Party leaders and others

suspected of having opposed
the plan

were denounced
as "revisionists," demoted,

dismissed, imprisoned.

Hundreds were sent
to "re-education camps."

"Uncle Ho wavers," Le Duan said,
"but I have only one goal--

final victory."

WOMAN:
Secretary McNamara on line 0.

JOHNSON:
Bob?

McNAMARA:
Yes, Mr. President?

JOHNSON:
I hate to bother you, but...

McNAMARA:
No trouble at all.

JOHNSON:
Tell me, have we got anybody

that's got a military mind that
can give us some military plans

for winning that war?

Let's get some more
of something, my friend,

because I'm going to have
a heart attack

if you don't get me something.

We need somebody over there
that can get us

some better plans than we got,

because what we got is what
we've had since '54.

We're not getting it done.

We're-we're losing.

McNAMARA:
Well, it's one reason
I want to go back.

Kick 'em in the tail
a little bit

will help here at this point.

JOHNSON:
Yeah.

What I want is somebody
to lay up some plans

to trap these guys
and whup hell out of 'em.

Kill some of 'em.

That's what I want to do.

McNAMARA:
I'll try and bring
something back

that will meet
that objective.

JOHNSON:
Okay, Bob.

McNAMARA:
Thank you.

(phone hangs up)

NARRATOR:
When his counselors
urged him to do so,

Johnson increased the number
of American military personnel

from 16,000 to more than 23,000
by the end of the year.

But he wanted his own team
in Saigon.

He replaced Henry Cabot Lodge,

making General Maxwell Taylor
his ambassador,

and selected 49-year-old
General William Westmoreland,

a decorated commander
from WWII and Korea,

to lead the American
military effort.

The president hoped to force
Hanoi to abandon its support

for the guerrilla struggle
in the South

by gradually escalating
military pressure.

He authorized American pilots
to bomb North Vietnamese troops

and installations in the
neighboring country of Laos.

And he directed the military

to oversee South Vietnamese
shelling

of North Vietnamese islands
and raids on coastal bases.

All of it was to be conducted
in secret.

The American people
were not to be told.

It was an election year.

Meanwhile, the Joint Chiefs
of Staff felt strongly

that the United States
was fighting

on the enemy's terms

and urged far more drastic
and dramatic action--

air strikes against "critical
targets" in North Vietnam itself

and the deployment of U.S.
forces in South Vietnam--

boots on the ground.

Johnson refused, fearing
that such aggressive moves

would pull China
into the conflict

just as it had entered
the Korean War in 1950.

JOHNSON:
They say get in or get out.

McGEORGE BUNDY:
Yeah.

JOHNSON:
And I told them,

we haven't got any Congress
that will go with us,

and we haven't got any
mothers that will go with us

in the war, and I got to win
an election

and then you can make
a decision.

(crowd cheering)

NARRATOR:
Polls showed him
with a commanding lead

over his likely
Republican opponent,

Senator Barry F. Goldwater
of Arizona,

a blunt, uncompromising critic
of what he charged

was the administration's
weakness

in the face of
communist aggression.

BARRY GOLDWATER:
Why does he put off
facing the question

of what to do about Vietnam?

Does he hope that he can wait
until after the election

to confront the American public
with the...

BILL EHRHART:
Here were these communists who
were overrunning Southeast Asia

and Johnson's doing nothing
about it.

My opponent has not told you

what he plans to do
about the Cold War.

I rode around the back
of a flatbed truck in Perkasie

with a bunch of my classmates

singing Barry Goldwater
campaign songs

because Lyndon Johnson
was not tough enough

on those communists.

NARRATOR:
Johnson felt he did not
yet have the political capital

to take further action in
Vietnam, but he asked his aide,

William Bundy, to draft
a congressional resolution

authorizing him to use
force if needed

to be sent to Capitol Hill
when the time was right.

On July 30, 1964,
South Vietnamese ships

under the direction
of the U.S. military

shelled two North Vietnamese
islands in the Gulf of Tonkin.

The tiny North Vietnamese Navy
was put on high alert.

What followed was one of the
most controversial

and consequential events
in American history.

On the afternoon of August 2,

the destroyerU.S.S. Maddox
was moving slowly

through international waters
in the gulf

on an intelligence-gathering
mission in support

of further South Vietnamese
action against the North.

The commander of a North
Vietnamese torpedo-boat squadron

moved to attack theMaddox.

The Americans opened fire
and missed.

North Vietnamese
torpedoes also missed.

But carrier-based U.S. planes
damaged

two of the North Vietnamese
boats

and left a third
dead in the water.

Ho Chi Minh was shocked to hear
of his navy's attack

and demanded to know
who had ordered it.

The officer on duty was
officially reprimanded

for impulsiveness.

No one may ever know who gave
the order to attack.

To this day, even the
Vietnamese cannot agree.

But some believe it was Le Duan.

HUY DUC:

NARRATOR:
Back in Washington,

the Joint Chiefs urged
immediate retaliation

against North Vietnam.

The president refused.

Instead, the White House
issued a warning

about the "grave consequences"
that would follow

what it called "any further
unprovoked" attacks--

even though Johnson knew the
attack had been provoked

by the South Vietnamese raids
on North Vietnam's islands.

Both sides were playing
a dangerous game.

On August 4, American radio
operators mistranslated

North Vietnamese radio traffic

and concluded a new military
operation was imminent.

Actually, Hanoi had simply
called upon

torpedo boat commanders
to be ready for a new raid

by the South Vietnamese.

TheMad dox and another
destroyer, theTurner Joy,

braced for a fresh attack.

So did the White House.

LYNDON JOHNSON:
Go ahead, Mac.

McNAMARA:
I-I personally would
recommend to you,

after a second attack
on our ships,

that we do retaliate against
the coast of North Vietnam

some way or other...

JOHNSON:
What I was thinking about
when I was eating breakfast:

when they move on us
and they shoot at us,

I think we not only ought
to shoot at them,

but almost simultaneously
pull one of these things

that you've been doing on one
of their bridges or something.

McNAMARA:
Exactly.

I quite agree with you,
Mr. President.

JOHNSON:
But I wish we could
have something

that we've already picked out,

and just hit about three of them
damn quick, right after.

NARRATOR:
No second attack ever happened,

but at the time,
anxious American sonar operators

aboard theMaddo x andTurner
Joy
convinced themselves one had.

The attack was probable but
not certain, Johnson was told,

and since it had
probably occurred,

the president decided
it should not go unanswered.

JOHNSON:
Aggression by terror
against the peaceful villagers

of South Vietnam has now been
joined by open aggression

on the high seas against
the United States of America.

Yet our response,
for the present,

will be limited and fitting.

We Americans know, although
others appear to forget,

the risk of spreading conflict.

We still seek no wider war.

EVERETT ALVAREZ:
If that came to be where we
would be called upon

to carry out our
responsibilities,

and having been well trained
for this,

I never really gave it much
thought.

It was part of my duty.

NARRATOR:
Lieutenant Everett Alvarez
from Salinas, California,

was aboard the U.S.S. carrier
Constellation.

His squadron of
Skyhawk A-4 planes

was ordered to attack
torpedo boat installations

and oil facilities
near the port of Hon Gai.

For the first time, American
pilots were going to drop bombs

on North Vietnam.

ALVAREZ:
When we approached the target

coming down from altitude,

it was obvious that they could
pick us up on their radar.

I remember my knees shaking.

And I was saying, "Holy smokes,
I'm going into war."

"This is war."

I was a bit scared.

Once we went in
and they started firing at us,

the fear went away.

Everything became smooth,
deathly quiet in the cockpit.

It was sort of like a symphony

in the sense that my plane was
just like a ballet in the sky,

and I was just performing
what I was doing.

And then I got hit.

MAN:
Mayday, Mayday.

(instruments beeping)

NARRATOR:
Coastal militiamen
captured Alvarez

and turned him over to the
North Vietnamese military.

ALVAREZ:
One fella was yelling at me in
Vietnamese and saying something.

I started talking to him
in Spanish.

Don't ask me why.

It seemed like a good idea
at the time.

After when they discovered
U.S.A. on my ID card

and then they started speaking
to me in English.

NARRATOR:
Alvarez assumed he would be
treated as a prisoner of war.

ALVAREZ:
I was sticking
to the code of conduct,

which is giving them name,
rank, service number,

and date of birth.

But they quickly reminded me
that there was no state of war,

no declaration of war.

So I could not be considered
a prisoner of war.

I recall thinking about it,

and I says, "You know what?

They're right."

NARRATOR:
Everett Alvarez was
the first American airman

to be shot out of the sky
over North Vietnam

and the first to be
imprisoned there.

Now, the president sent up
to Capitol Hill

the resolution he had asked
his aide William Bundy to draft

two months earlier.

JAMES WILLBANKS:
Johnson is sort of
prepositioned to move anyway,

and it gives him really
the incident that he needs

to go to Congress
and ask for a resolution

that will allow him to deal
with what he sees

as aggression in Vietnam.

And what he gets is the
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution,

which is, what he says,
like "Grandma's nightshirt"--

it covers everything.

I think what Johnson is looking
for is the opportunity,

the right time to send a message
to North Vietnam

that we're serious about
supporting South Vietnam.

That message is sent,

I think we misread the enemy

because they're just as serious
as we are.

NARRATOR:
On August 7, 1964,

by a vote of 88-2,
the Senate passed

what came to be called
the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.

In the House, not a single
congressman opposed it.

Senator Goldwater could
no longer plausibly claim

Johnson was failing
to fight back

against North Vietnam,
while those voters concerned

that the United States
was in danger

of becoming too deeply involved

admired the president's
measured response.

Support for Johnson's handling
of the war jumped overnight

from 42% to 72%.

The American public believed
their president.

Le Duan and his comrades
in Hanoi did not.

They had little faith
in the president's claim

that he sought no wider war.

They resolved to step up
their efforts

to win the struggle in the South

before the United States
escalated its presence

by sending in combat troops.

For the first time,

Hanoi began sending
North Vietnamese regulars

into the South,
down the network of paths

they had hacked out
of the Laotian jungle--

the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

PETER KALISCHER:
This is Bien Hoa Air Base,

the biggest in South Vietnam,

hours after being hit
by a communist mortar barrage.

NARRATOR:
On November 1,
Viet Cong guerrillas shelled

the American airbase at Bien Hoa
near Saigon.

Five Americans died.

Thirty were wounded.

Five B-57 bombers were destroyed
on the ground

and 15 more were damaged.

PETER KALISCHER:
Mr. Ambassador,

do you think this shows
any new capability

that they've got,
the Viet Cong?

Uh, I would simply say
they've never done this before.

NARRATOR:
The Joint Chiefs advised
the president to mount

an immediate all-out air attack
on 94 targets in the North

and to send in regular
Army and Marine units--

not more advisors--
to South Vietnam as well.

He would not do it.

The election was
just two days away.

Lyndon Baines Johnson won the
presidency in his own right,

and he won it by a landslide.

Within a month, the president
would approve

what was called
a "graduated response"--

limited air attacks on
the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos

and "tit for tat"
retaliatory raids

on North Vietnamese targets.

But he refused to undertake
sustained bombing of the North

until the South Vietnamese
got their own house in order.

In private, Johnson doubted that
airpower alone would ever work

and believed that he would
eventually have to send in

ground troops,

though he was not yet willing
publicly to say so.

JEAN-MARIE CROCKER:
In the fall of '64,
Denton was 17

and he was determined
to go into the service.

NARRATOR:
Mogie Crocker had been restless
since the summer.

After the Gulf of Tonkin
incident, he had confided

to his sister that he wanted
to join the Navy,

but he knew his parents would
not sign the consent form

that would have allowed
a 17-year-old to enlist.

He was talking about
wanting to go into the service

and that his attempts
to go underage had failed.

And that he wanted my parents
to support him in that.

NARRATOR:
His parents tried
to persuade him

that he could be more useful
to his country

with a college education
than as just another private.

Mogie was adamant.

JEAN-MARIE CROCKER:
Monday morning he left
for school.

And I watched him leave.

But that night he didn't
come in for supper

and he hadn't called.

The day that my brother
ran away has to be

one of the most bizarre
experiences in my life.

I eventually happened
to look in my piggy bank

and he had taken the money I had
and left a note for me.

He had promised
he would pay me back.

JEAN-MARIE CROCKER:
He was gone about four months

and said that he would not
come home

unless we agreed
to sign for him.

And he wouldn't be 18
until June.

But we did agree
and he did come home.

My husband felt it was
an honor-bound agreement.

I was hoping that
I could change his mind.

("The Marines' Hymn" plays)

PHILIP BRADY:
To my mind, the Marine Corps
represented the very best.

And it does.

They are the best.

And I wanted to be
part of the best.

I was competitive.

I was pugnacious.

But I wanted to get
in the Marine Corps

and go to the first war
I could find.

NARRATOR:
Lieutenant Philip Brady, from
Port Washington, New York,

arrived in Saigon
just a few days

after Lyndon Johnson's election,

one of the new advisors sent
to help shore up

the South Vietnamese military.

We must ensure that women and
children are not injured.

NARRATOR:
General Westmoreland himself
greeted the newcomers.

He was an impressive-looking man
with an impressive record.

Many of the men he'd led in
Tunisia, Sicily, and Normandy

during World War II
called him Superman.

He'd fought with distinction
in Korea,

commanded the 101st Airborne,

served as superintendent
of West Point.

TIME magazine called him

"the sinewy personification
of the American fighting man."

But at the same time,

win the hearts and the minds
of the people.

BRADY:
General Westmoreland told us
that we were down

on the five-yard line and
we just needed a few more

to go get the touchdown.

Then I went out
and then I got on the ground.

And then I found out,
"Don't you realize?

We're losing this war."

NARRATOR:
Lieutenant Brady was assigned
to assist Captain Frank Eller,

senior advisor
to the 4th Battalion

of the Vietnamese Marine Corps,
an elite unit

whose members called themselves
the "Killer Sharks."

You were told that you were
going over there to guide,

educate, and elevate essentially
these "little fellas"

on how to fight a war

when, in fact, they knew exactly
how to fight the war.

You were just an appendage.

You were there simply to guide
assets that they didn't have:

American artillery,
American air strikes.

NARRATOR:
Brady did his best
to get to know

the South Vietnamese
marines in his unit.

TRAN NGOC TOAN
(speaking English):

NARRATOR:
Lieutenant Tran Ngoc Toan,
the son of a trucker,

had escaped life with
a hostile stepmother

by entering the South Vietnamese
Military Academy at Dalat.

He'd been fighting the Viet
Cong for more than two years.

Toan was one of
the junior officers.

I think he was a...

I think he was
a company commander.

I knew him, I liked him.

He was a Dalat graduate,
which is like their West Point.

Very dedicated.

NARRATOR:
Brady, Toan, and the 4th South
Vietnamese Marine Battalion

were stationed near the Bien Hoa
Airbase in reserve,

waiting to be called
into action.

There were new rumors now,

of larger enemy units moving
through the countryside.

Le Duan's plan to win a
quick and decisive victory

was underway.

NGUYEN VAN TONG:

NARRATOR:
Nguyen Van Tong was
a political officer

in the newly created
Viet Cong 9th Division,

one of perhaps 2,000 Viet Cong
and North Vietnamese troops

who had for weeks been quietly
filtering into Phuoc Tuy,

a supposedly "pacified" province

less than 40 miles southeast
of Saigon.

NGUYEN VAN TONG:

NARRATOR:
The target for Tong
and his comrades

was the strategic hamlet
of Binh Gia,

home to some 6,000 Catholic
anticommunist refugees.

Their plan was to seize
the hamlet

and then annihilate the forces
Saigon was sure to send

to retake it.

To ensure success,

tons of heavy weapons
were smuggled onto the coast

under cover of darkness--

mortars, machine guns,
recoilless rifles

capable of blasting tanks.

The communists
had never attempted

anything on this scale before.

Before dawn on December 28,

Viet Cong advance units easily
overwhelmed the village militia

and occupied Binh Gia.

(shouting, gunfire)

When two crack South Vietnamese
Ranger companies

were helicoptered in
the next day,

they were ambushed
and shot to pieces.

On the morning of the 30th,

Philip Brady,
his friend Tran Ngoc Toan,

and the 4th Marine Battalion
were flown in to relieve

and reinforce the Rangers.

The enemy withdrew
east of the village.

NGUYEN VAN TONG:

All of a sudden you could see
the tracers come out

of the plantation,
hit the helicopter, it crashed.

We were ordered to go down
and retrieve the remains

the following morning.

NGUYEN VAN TONG:

BRADY:
The lead company
got to the remains

and then was pounced on
and mauled badly.

(gunfire)

NARRATOR:
Twelve South Vietnamese Marines
from Toan's unit were killed

getting to the downed
helicopter.

Their comrades wrapped them
in ponchos

and laid them out
next to the dead Americans.

An American chopper
dropped into the clearing.

The American crew jumped out
under fire,

picked up the four Americans,

climbed back into their chopper,
and took off again.

TRAN NGOC TOAN:

NARRATOR:
For three hours, Toan and his
men stayed with their own dead

waiting for a helicopter to
carry them off the battlefield.

BRADY:
Meanwhile, I am getting
a little bit antsy

because, first of all,
we're losing light.

Second of all, we are now
outside of artillery range.

We've got to get out of there.

TRAN NGOC TOAN:

BRADY:
I went to the Major Nho,
his name was, and I said,

"Major, we have to get
out of here now."

And Nho said, "Don't you forget
I am a major,

and you are a lieutenant,"

turned on his heel
and walked away.

Ten minutes later
all hell broke loose.

TRAN NGOC TOAN:

(man shouts in Vietnamese)

NARRATOR:
The shelling eventually
died down.

But then bugles blew,

and wave after wave
of enemy troops

advanced toward
the badly outnumbered men.

BRADY:
It was as if you turned
a soundtrack of shooting...

And just went
(imitates rapid gunfire).

Just like that.

All of a sudden it
came out of nowhere.

We used what little air strikes
we had left with helicopters,

calling in the strikes on our
position to slow it down.

There was no way.

TRAN NGOC TOAN:

(explosions)

BRADY:
What we did was
we tried to get out.

Twenty-six of us broke through.

Eleven ultimately made it.

(gunfire)

NARRATOR:
All that night,

the Viet Cong moved among
the trees,

carrying away their wounded

and shooting any South
Vietnamese troops

they found alive.

TRAN NGOC TOAN:

NARRATOR:
Cradling his rifle in his arms,

Toan began trying to
crawl toward Binh Gia.

He was not found for three days.

TRAN NGOC TOAN:

NARRATOR:
When it was all over, five
Americans had died at Binh Gia.

Thirty-two Viet Cong bodies had
been left on the battlefield.

200 South Vietnamese
were killed;

200 more were wounded.

NGUYEN VAN TONG:

BRADY:
What it really said was

they were capable of
marshaling this kind of force.

The Vietnamese officers
I talked to in the Marine Corps

figured they had six months
before the end.

NARRATOR:
The big question after Binh Gia,

an American officer
at headquarters said,

is how a thousand or more
enemy troops

"could wander around the
countryside so close to Saigon

"without being discovered.

That tells you something
about this war."

Hanoi was exultant.

Ho Chi Minh called it
"a little Dien Bien Phu."

Le Duan was convinced
his strategy was working.

"The liberation war
of South Vietnam has progressed

by leaps and bounds,"
he said.

"After the battle of Ap Bac
two years ago,

"the enemy knew it would be
difficult to defeat us.

"After Binh Gia,
the enemy realizes

that he is in the process
of being defeated by us."

NGUYEN VAN TONG:

JOHNSON:
I, Lyndon Baines Johnson,

do solemnly swear...

NARRATOR:
Twenty-six days after
the Binh Gia battle ended

and just a week after President
Johnson's inauguration,

McGeorge Bundy handed the
president a memorandum.

I will to the best
of my ability.

NARRATOR:
The current strategy was clearly
not working, it said.

The Viet Cong were on the move
and on the rise,

supplied and now steadily
reinforced

with soldiers
from North Vietnam.

If an independent South Vietnam
was to survive,

the United States needed
to act fast.

The administration faced
two choices, Bundy said.

It could go along
as it had been going

and try to negotiate some kind
of face-saving settlement.

Or they could use still more
American military power

to force the North to abandon
its goal of uniting the country.

Bundy and McNamara favored
that option.

Unless the president chose it,
they said,

South Vietnam would fall.

"I don't think anything,"
Johnson told McNamara,

"is going to be as bad
as losing."

Then, a little over
a week later,

guerrillas struck an American
helicopter base at Pleiku

in the Central Highlands,

killing eight American advisors
and wounding over 100 more.

McNAMARA:
Approximately 24 hours ago,

the first attack in
the Pleiku area...

NARRATOR:
Johnson immediately approved
an air strike

on a North Vietnamese
army barracks.

On February 10, 1965,

the Viet Cong blew up a hotel
in Qui Nhon,

killing 23 Americans and pinning
21 more beneath the rubble.

Johnson ordered
another airstrike.

Anxiety about what
seemed to be happening

spread around the world.

France, which had spent nearly
a century in Vietnam,

now called for an end to all
foreign involvement there.

The British prime minister
urged restraint.

Many leaders of the president's
own party agreed,

though not in public.

In a private memorandum,

Johnson's own vice president,
Hubert Humphrey,

warned him that widening
the war would undercut

the Great Society,
damage America's image overseas,

and end any hope of improving
relations with the Soviet Union.

Johnson never responded.

Instead, on March 2, 1965,

the United States began
a systematic bombardment

of targets in North Vietnam,

code-named
Operation Rolling Thunder.

It was meant to be a "mounting
crescendo" of air raids,

Ambassador Taylor wrote,

intended to bolster morale
in the South

and destroy morale in the North.

WILSON:
The thesis behind
Rolling Thunder,

as I understood it, was that as
we ratcheted up the tempo

and the volume of this effort
against the North Vietnamese,

sooner or later
they would cry uncle.

And there'd be a pause,

and we would begin to negotiate
our way out of this situation.

This became an article of faith.

And this article of faith
was a fallacious assumption.

They weren't going to give up.

They read us better
than we read them.

NARRATOR:
The president insisted
on strict secrecy--

the American people were not
to be told

that the administration had
changed its policy

from retaliatory airstrikes
to systematic bombing;

that he had, in fact,
widened the war.

They jointly agreed that
joint retaliatory action

was required.

NARRATOR:
General Westmoreland,
who had initially been hesitant

about committing ground troops
to Vietnam,

now asked for two battalions
of Marines-- 3,500 men--

to protect the Danang airbase

from which fighter-bombers
were hitting the North.

Ambassador Taylor, who had once
called for ground troops,

now objected to the whole idea.

"Once you put that first soldier
ashore," he wrote,

"you never know how many others
are going to follow him."

But the president felt he had no
choice but to give Westmoreland

what he asked for.

He knew he would be blamed
if more American advisors died.

"I feel like a jackass caught
in a Texas hailstorm,"

he complained.

"I can't run, I can't hide,
and I can't make it stop."

("Hello Vietnam"
by Johnnie Wright playing)

In March of 1965,

Johnson finally took the action
he had managed to avoid

for so long.

WRIGHT:
♪ Kiss me goodbye...

NARRATOR:
He was putting American
ground troops in Vietnam.

WRIGHT:
♪ Goodbye, my sweetheart;
hello, Vietnam ♪

NARRATOR:
The government of South Vietnam
was not even consulted;

the United States of America
had larger considerations.

GARD:
Clearly, we saw it in terms
of the Cold War.

Assistant Secretary of Defense
John McNaughton said...

He said our interests there

were 70% to avoid humiliation,

20% to contain China,

and ten percent to help
the Vietnamese.

NARRATOR:
Johnson quietly told
his good friend,

Senator Richard Russell
of Georgia,

what was about to happen.

JOHNSON:
I guess we got no choice, but it
scares the death out of me.

I think everybody's going
to think,

"We're landing the Marines.

We're off to battle."

Of course,
if they come up there,

they're going to get them
in a fight.

And if they ruin
those airplanes,

everybody is going to give me
hell for not securing them,

just like they did last
time they made a raid.

RUSSELL:
Yeah.

JOHNSON:
What do you...
what do you think?

RUSSELL:
Well, Mr. President,

it scares the life out of me.

But I don't know how
to back up now.

It looks to me like we just got
in this thing,

and there's no way out.

JOHNSON:
I don't know.

Dick, the great trouble
I'm under...

A man can fight
if he can see daylight

down the road somewhere.

But there ain't no daylight
in Vietnam.

There's not a bit.

NARRATOR:
On March 8, 1965,
Dr. Phan Huy Quat,

yet another prime minister
of South Vietnam,

called his chief of staff,
Bui Diem.

BUI DIEM:

NARRATOR:
The Marines were landing
at Danang

on the east coast of South
Vietnam, some 100 miles south

of the demilitarized zone

that divided the North
from the South.

They were prepared to fight
their way ashore.

They did not need to.

PHILIP CAPUTO:
What struck me

was how beautiful
Vietnam was to look at.

There were just
these endless acres

of these jade-green
rice paddies.

And these lovely villages
inside these groves

of bamboo and palm trees.

And way off in the distance
these bluish jungled mountains,

and they looked like Shangri-La.

And I remember seeing this line
of Vietnamese women,

or schoolgirls I think
they were.

They actually looked
like angels come to earth

or something like that.

So it was really quite striking
but a little unsettling

because...

so how can a place like this--

so beautiful and so enchanting--
be at war?

DUONG VAN MAI:
My father was very happy.

We're such a small
and poor country

and the Americans have decided
to come in to save us

not only with their money,
their resources,

but even with their own lives.

We were very grateful.

We thought the...

sure enough with this power,
the Americans are going to win.

NARRATOR:
Seeing foreign troops marching
past his village,

an old man emerged from his home
shouting, "Vivent les Français!"

He thought the French
had returned.

"The problem around here,"

a Marine captain leading
a patrol told a reporter,

"is who the hell is who?"

WILSON:
As a voting member
of Saigon Mission Council,

I was opposed to the entry of
American ground combat forces.

I felt if the Vietnamese
had to beat them off

with a bloody stump,
they had to do it themselves.

We had to do everything
we humanly could to help them,

but we could not
win it for them.

So, I think we crossed
the River Styx at that point.

TRAN NGOC TOAN:

BILL ZIMMERMAN:
The first protest I went to
against the war in Vietnam

was a protest
at a Dow Chemical facility.

Dow was manufacturing napalm.

They were dropping napalm
on villages in Vietnam.

It was a very disappointing
experience

because only 40 people came.

And we seemed very out of place

and very ineffectual, impotent,

standing outside
with 40 people.

NARRATOR:
Most Americans understood
little about Indochina,

rarely knew anyone actually
involved in the fighting,

saw no reason to question
the government's assertion

that the United States had
vital interests

8,000 miles from home.

("I Ain't Marching Anymore"
by Phil Ochs playing)

Still, there was a small
but growing number of people

who had begun to oppose the war
for any number of reasons--

because they thought it
unjust or immoral,

believed it was unconstitutional

or simply not
in the national interest.

OCHS:
♪ Oh I marched to the battle
of New Orleans ♪

NARRATOR:
Two weeks after
the Marines landed at Danang,

members of the University
of Michigan faculty organized

a night-long discussion
between professors

and some 3,000 students about
the escalation of the war.

The demonstration was called
a teach-in

because the idea originated

with a group of university
professors.

What do you hope to accomplish?

DR. ERIC WOLF:
I'd like to open up
communication between people

and the government because
I believe

that they are not telling us
what is going on,

and the people have the right
to know, and we have the right

to tell the government
what we think.

NARRATOR:
Soon, there were teach-ins on
most major university campuses.

There is no morally
wonderful way out.

NARRATOR:
NYU in Manhattan, the University
of Wisconsin in Madison,

the University of
California in Berkeley.

The teach-ins were really
raucous affairs.

A lot of contention.

STUDENT:
We want to discuss

is what's wrong
with the Vietnam War, and...

OCHS:
♪ And so many others

♪ But I ain't marchin' anymore

REPORTER:
Do you endorse

the administration's policy
in South Vietnam?

Whole-heartedly.

ZIMMERMAN:
There were plenty of times

when people who were supportive
of the war

came to these teach-ins

to try to give an alternative
anticommunist point of view.

They were often shouted down.

(crowd booing)

NARRATOR:
The bombing of the North
and the Marines' arrival

also drew protestors
to Washington that spring.

The demonstration was organized

by the Students for a Democratic
Society-- the SDS.

I saw SDS calling for a
demonstration at the White House

in the spring of 1965.

I didn't want to go because
I didn't want to be disappointed

in the same way again
and, you know,

go all the way to Washington

and stand outside the White
House with 40 people.

(crowd cheering)

25,000 people attended
that rally.

And that suddenly told me

and others I was working
with at the time

that it might be possible
to build an antiwar movement.

JEAN-MARIE CROCKER:
It was quite astounding to think

that he had that degree
of commitment.

And it made sense

in what we knew of him,
as drastic as it was.

("It's My Life"
by the Animals playing)

NARRATOR:
Nothing Mogie Crocker's parents
could say or do

since Mogie had come home

shook his determination
to serve,

and recent developments
in Vietnam

had only strengthened
his resolve.

He wanted to become a
paratrooper and get into combat.

His parents finally,
reluctantly,

agreed to let him go,
and on March 15,

a week after the first
Marines landed at Danang,

Denton Crocker, Jr.
entered the United States Army.

JEAN-MARIE CROCKER:
So Denton bounced down the steps
one morning

and was off to Fort Dix.

It was in a way a sort of
relief, actually,

that the conflict
and the anxiety

over whether he would
or would not go was done.

And he was happy.

And we just tried to believe
that this was the right thing

for him to do.

LE MINH KHUE:

NARRATOR:
Le Minh Khue was orphaned
as a small girl,

her parents victims
of the brutal land reforms

the communists had imposed.

She was raised by her aunt
and uncle,

who encouraged her to read
American literature.

She was 16 when
Operation Rolling Thunder began.

LE MINH KHUE:

NARRATOR:
Khue was assigned to
an organization called

the "Youth Shock Brigades
Against the Americans

for National Salvation,"

and along with thousands
of other young people

was sent south to work keeping
open the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

LE MINH KHUE:

NARRATOR:
As Johnson had feared,

it quickly became clear
that the bombing campaign alone

was not working.

Troops and supplies continued
steadily to filter down

the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

General Westmoreland
and the Joint Chiefs

called for more men,
tens of thousands of them.

The president was cautious.

He wanted to do "enough,
but not too much," he said.

But he quietly agreed to send
two more Marine battalions

and changed their mission from
base security to active combat.

For the first time,

American troops were being asked

to fight on their own
in Vietnam.

Johnson did not want
that fact revealed

to the American public either.

But the bombing of the North

and rumors of harsher measures
to come

had heightened concern around
the world.

UN Secretary-General U Thant
had proposed

a three-month ceasefire.

Great Britain,
America's closest ally,

publicly offered to reconvene
the Geneva Talks

that had divided Vietnam
in 1954,

with the goal of reuniting it.

JOHNSON:
The people of South Vietnam
be allowed to guide

their own country...

NARRATOR:
On April 7,
at Johns Hopkins University,

Johnson sought to persuade
the world

of America's good intentions

and again to calm American
fears of a wider war.

In recent months, attacks on
South Vietnam were stepped up.

Thus, it became necessary for
us to increase our response

and to make attacks by air.

This is not a change of purpose.

It is a change in what we
believe that purpose requires.

NARRATOR:
Nothing was said about the
new orders sending Marines

directly into combat.

Instead, the president called
for "unconditional discussions"

with Hanoi,
and as an old New Dealer,

proposed a massive
development program

for all of Southeast Asia.

JOHNSON:
The vast Mekong River can
provide

food and water and power

on a scale to dwarf
even our own TVA.

(gunfire)

BRADY:
I was outside of the village.

We're getting some fire
from the village.

I had the little
transistor radio.

And I'm sitting there
listening to LBJ.

JOHNSON:
...will use our power
with restraint

and with all the wisdom...

At the same time we got to lay
some nape on the village.

So I'm calling in the nape

and listening to the president
talk peace.

JOHNSON:
We will try to keep conflict
from spreading.

BRADY:
It was surreal.

JOHNSON:
We have no desire to devastate

that which the people
of North Vietnam have built

with toil and sacrifice.

This war, like most wars,
is filled with terrible irony.

What do the people
of North Vietnam want?

(sirens wailing)

NARRATOR:
Hanoi denounced the president's
offer as a trick.

Johnson's advisors and
the Joint Chiefs of Staff

continued to debate how many men
would actually be needed

and how rapidly
they should be deployed.

Meanwhile, the president sent
the first Army combat troops

to the country.

It was increasingly clear

that the United States was in it
for the long haul.

You can't just be a neutral
witness to something like war.

It crawls down your throat.

It eats you alive from
the inside and the out.

It's not something that you can
stand back and be neutral

and objective and all of those
things we try to be

as reporters, journalists,
photographers.

It doesn't work that way.

MAN (on radio):
...defense and they're real
quick... and check it out...

NARRATOR:
The growing presence of American
combat troops in Vietnam

attracted flocks of journalists.

There was no press censorship,

as there had been
in World War II.

Reporters just had to agree
to follow military guidelines

so as not to compromise
the security

of ongoing operations.

It was dangerous work.

More than 200 journalists
and photographers would die

covering the fighting
in Southeast Asia.

Joseph Lee Galloway
was a young UPI reporter

from Refugio, Texas.

He stopped in Saigon just long
enough to get his credentials.

Then he headed for Danang.

GALLOWAY:
The Marines originally
came ashore there

to guard the airbase.

And they quickly figured out
you can't just guard an airbase.

You've got to spread out

because they're going
to mortar it,

they're going to shoot rockets.

So you've got to reach out
15 or 20 miles.

That means you've got to run
operations that far out.

And once you're doing that,

you're no longer guarding
an airbase...

(gunfire)

...you're operating
in hostile territory.

(soldiers cheering)

NGUYEN THANH SON:

CAPUTO:
It wasn't so much the Viet Cong
that were intimidating

at that point
as it was the terrain.

Going from Point A to Point B
in the jungle

was so difficult.

As it happened to me once,
it took four hours

to move a half a mile,

cutting through this bush
with machetes.

GALLOWAY:
The Viet Cong knew the terrain
far better than the Marines did,

and ran circles around them.

(gunfire)

MOGIE CROCKER (dramatized):
Fort Dix, June 10, 1965.

Dear Mum,

Basic is now all over and I am
presently waiting for orders.

Waiting for orders could be
very dull

but I have found there are
excellent chances

to do some reading.

Recently I have read
Wuthering Heights,

Animal Farm, Seven Pillars of
Wisdom , andLord Jim.

I hope you are all well.

Love, Mogie.

NARRATOR:
Mogie Crocker was allowed
two weeks at home

before shipping out to Vietnam.

JEAN-MARIE CROCKER:
We were at dinner one evening

just talking, I guess,
in generalities about the war

and the general situation.

And Mogie said, "Of course
if I were a Vietnamese,

I would be on the
side of the Viet Cong."

That... I puzzled over that.

I suppose relating like
to our American Revolution

that he saw their need
for their own freedom.

But as an American citizen,

he saw the larger picture
of trying to prevent communism.

CAROL CROCKER:
I remember one night
in particular

he and I were up late.

And he suddenly leaned his head
in his hands.

And he said,
"I don't want to go back."

I was dumbstruck.

And said to him, "But this
is what you want to do."

It had never occurred to me
that he was torn about this,

that he was afraid
and yet was determined to go.

("Play With Fire"
by the Rolling Stones playing)

NARRATOR:
In South Vietnam, things
were steadily growing worse.

JAGGER:
♪ Well, you've got
your diamond. ♪

NARRATOR:
In May, the Viet Cong,

supported now by four regiments
of North Vietnamese regulars--

approximately 5,000 men--

were destroying the equivalent
of a South Vietnamese battalion

every week.

JAGGER:
♪ But don't play with me

♪ Because you're playing
with fire. ♪

NARRATOR:
South Vietnam now seemed only
weeks from complete collapse.

Desperate, General Westmoreland
requested

tens of thousands of more
American troops right away.

But neither the
continuing bombing

nor the growing likelihood of
full-scale American intervention

seemed to intimidate Hanoi.

Le Duan, having failed
to win the war

before the United States sent in
ground troops,

was now persuaded
the American public,

like the French public before
them, would eventually weary

of a costly, bloody war being
waged so far from home.

By contrast, he said, "The North
will not count the cost."

Le Duan's confidence
was bolstered

by the help American
intervention had forced

the Soviet Union and China
to offer him.

Moscow agreed to supply vast
amounts of modern weaponry

and materiel.

Hanoi would eventually become
the most heavily defended city

on Earth.

And China agreed to send
support troops,

freeing North Vietnamese
soldiers for combat

in the South.

320,000 Chinese would eventually
serve behind the lines

in the North.

"We will fight,"
Le Duan promised,

"whatever way the
United States wants."

JOHN NEGROPONTE:
In June of 1965,

Secretary McNamara,
the Secretary of Defense,

came out to Saigon.

There were a lot of captains
and majors and lieutenants.

And every person said
to Mr. McNamara,

"The situation is so dire

we must bring in
United States forces."

So, whatever doubts
we may have had,

whatever people may say
after the fact,

I recall distinctly at the time

telling the Secretary of
Defense that I thought we needed

to bring troops in there.

NARRATOR:
For three weeks,

the president and his advisors
argued over how to respond

to Westmoreland's urgent
request for more troops,

differing mostly over how many
should be sent how fast.

Undersecretary of State
George Ball made the argument

against further escalation.

He told the president
the war could not be won.

The American people
will grow weary of it.

Our troops will get bogged down

"in the jungles and rice
paddies," he warned,

"while we slowly
blow the country to pieces."

No one else agreed.

JAGGER:
♪ But don't play with me...

NARRATOR:
In the end, Johnson sent
Westmoreland 50,000 men.

But he pledged another 50,000
by the end of 1965,

and still more
if they were needed.

JAGGER:
♪ Because you're playing
with fire. ♪

SOLDIERS:
♪ Gory, gory, what a hell
of a way to die ♪

TRAN NGOC TOAN:

MAN:
Hold your fire!

Hold your fire.

JOHN SCALI:
Does the fact

that you are sending additional
forces to Vietnam

imply any change in
the existing policy

of using American forces to
guard American installations

and to act as an
emergency backup?

It does not imply any change
in policy whatever.

It does not imply any change
of objective.

Uh...

LOU CIOFFI:
The month of June
saw soldiers here

taking what appears to be...

NARRATOR:
Most television reports
from Vietnam

echoed the newsreels Americans
had flocked to see

during the Second World War--
enthusiastic, unquestioning,

good guys fighting
and defeating bad guys.

But at dinnertime
on August 5, 1965,

Americans saw another side
of the war.

MORLEY SAFER:
We're on the outskirts
of the village of Cam Ne

with elements of the
1st Battalion...

NARRATOR:
CBS correspondent Morley Safer
and his crew

went on patrol with Marines
near Danang.

Their orders were first
to search a cluster

of four villages for caches
of arms and rice

meant for the enemy and then
to destroy them all.

This is what the war
in Vietnam is all about.

(speaking Vietnamese)

The old and the very young.

The Marines have burned

this old couple's cottage

because fire was coming
from here.

And now when you walk
into the village

you see no young people at all.

(woman speaking Vietnamese)

The day's operation burned
down 150 houses,

wounded three women,
killed one baby,

wounded one Marine,
and netted these four prisoners.

Today's operation
is the frustration of Vietnam

in miniature.

There is little doubt
that American firepower

can win a military victory here.

But to a Vietnamese peasant
whose home is a...

means a lifetime
of backbreaking labor,

it will take more than
presidential promises

to convince him that
we are on his side.

NARRATOR:
The next morning,
the president called

his friend Frank Stanton,
the head of CBS.

"Hello, Frank,
this is your president.

Are you trying to fuck me?"

Safer had defaced the
American flag, Johnson said.

He was probably an agent of
the Kremlin, had to be fired.

The Marines claimed Safer had
provided a zippo lighter

and asked the Marines
to burn the hut for the camera.

A major at the Danang Marine
press office

called CBS the "Communist
Broadcasting System."

But after the operation,

Safer interviewed some of the
Marines who'd burned Cam Ne.

Do you ever have any
private thoughts,

any private regrets about
some of these people

you are leaving homeless?

I feel no remorse.

I don't imagine
anybody else does.

You can't expect to do your job

and feel pity
for these people.

NARRATOR:
When some viewers registered
their shock,

Westmoreland admitted,
"We have a genuine problem

"which will be with us as long
as we are in Vietnam.

"Commanders must exercise
restraint unnatural to war

and judgment not often required
of young men."

CAPUTO:
You kind of thought at first

that it was going to be
like the GIs, you know,

rolling through Paris
after the liberation.

Well, you know, it sure didn't
work out that way.

I can remember once going
in this one ville.

And I remember finding this
entire Vietnamese family

cowering in a bunker.

And they were terrified of us.

And I remember thinking
to myself, I said,

"Well, I wonder if back
in the colonial days,

"when the Redcoats barged
into Ipswich, Massachusetts,

"or wherever,

"if this is how Americans
must have felt

looking at these foreign
soldiers coming in here."

FREDERICK ACKERSON:
The Viet Cong

have terrorized you,
and have burned your homes.

We are here to help you.

To show how much
we are able to protect you,

we are going to have
the Air Force

hit some Viet Cong on the other
side of the valley.

That will be at 10:30.

(playing "Colonel Bogey" march)

(distant explosion)

MOGIE CROCKER (dramatized):
Dear Mum and Dad,

I am now with the 1st Brigade,
101st Airborne Division

in Vietnam.

("The War Drags On"
by Donovan playing)

What is taking place in America?

We who are in Vietnam find
these protests

very hard to comprehend,

and many people here
are quite bitter about them.

DONOVAN:
♪ Let me tell you the story
in South Vietnam. ♪

MOGIE CROCKER (dramatized):
The belief I have
in our present policy

has been completely confirmed
by what I have seen here.

My chief worry is that these
pacifist bleatings

might effect even a small change
in government policy

at a time when we appear
close to success.

DONOVAN:
♪ And the war drags on.

JEAN-MARIE CROCKER:
As Vietnam began to be
more and more chaotic,

I certainly wondered very much
whether we should be there.

But I never expressed that
to him.

That's one of those conflicts
that's just too difficult

to bring up, or at least
it was for me.

("Big River" by Johnny Cash
playing)

CASH:
♪ Now I taught the weeping
willow how to cry ♪

♪ And I showed the clouds how
to cover up a clear blue sky. ♪

GALLOWAY:
We were all excited
about the arrival

of the 1st Cavalry Division,
an experimental unit.

They've been trained in
air-mobile warfare

using these helicopters to
the absolute maximum benefit.

They're moving their artillery
by helicopter, jumping it,

leapfrogging troops, chasing
the enemy, driving him crazy.

This is something new,

and it's going to change
the way we do war.

CASH:
♪ I found her trail
in Memphis... ♪

NARRATOR:
In September of 1965,

the newly created
1st Cavalry Division--

16,000 men, 1,600 vehicles,
435 helicopters--

had begun arriving at An Khe,
a massive base carved out

of the grasslands at the edge
of the Central Highlands.

Its heliport would come to be
called the "Golf Course."

As the 1st Cavalry got used
to its new surroundings,

thousands of North Vietnamese
regulars were slipping south

into the Highlands
along the Ho Chi Minh Trail,

joining Viet Cong units
already in place.

They established their own
base on and around

a jumble of thickly
forested mountains and ravines

south of the Ia Drang River.

On the evening of October 19,

communist commandos slipped
to within 40 yards

of the perimeter wire of
the U.S. Special Forces outpost

at Plei Me,

which was defended by a 12-man
team of U.S. Green Berets,

14 ARVN, and some 400
mountain tribesmen.

Nine of the 12 Green Berets
were hit.

They managed to hold out
for two days

before 15 more Green Berets and
160 South Vietnamese Rangers

were helicoptered in, commanded
by Major Charles Beckwith,

known to his fellow soldiers
as Chargin' Charlie.

(explosion)

The next day,

Joe Galloway managed to talk
a helicopter pilot

into flying him
into the besieged camp.

GALLOWAY:
That's where I met
Major Charles Beckwith.

He said, "I need everything
in the world.

"And what has the Army
in its wisdom sent me

but a godforsaken reporter?"

He drug me over and showed me

a 30-caliber air-cooled
machine gun.

He showed me how to load it,
how to clear a jam.

NARRATOR:
"You can shoot the little brown
men outside the wire,"

Beckwith told Galloway.

"You may not shoot
the little brown men

inside the wire; they are mine."

GALLOWAY:
And I'm sitting there thinking,

"Ah, I'm a
civilian noncombatant."

I tried that line on Beckwith
and he said,

"Ain't no such thing in these
mountains, son."

NARRATOR:
For nearly a week, the North
Vietnamese launched assault

after assault on Plei Me.

It was only after American bombs
and napalm

turned the surrounding terrain
into a moonscape

that the enemy withdrew.

JOHN LAURENCE:
What kind of fighters are the
Viet Cong that you met here?

I would give anything to have
200 of them under my command.

They're the finest soldiers
I've ever seen.

The Viet Cong.

That's right.

They're dedicated,
and they're good soldiers.

They're the best
I've ever seen.

NARRATOR:
Despite the losses his men
had suffered at Plei Me,

the North Vietnamese commander,
General Chu Huy Man,

was eager for another
confrontation

with the Americans.

He was determined to
learn how to fight them.

Reinforcements streaming down
the Ho Chi Minh Trail

to the Ia Drang Valley included

a newly minted second
lieutenant, Lo Khac Tam,

who had volunteered to fight
in the South.

NARRATOR:
On the morning
of November 14, 1965,

1st Cavalry helicopters
belonging to the 1st Battalion

of the 7th Regiment--

George Armstrong Custer's
old outfit--

flew west along the Ia Drang
toward the Chu Pong Massif,

looking for the enemy.

Their commander, Kentucky-born
Korean-War veteran

Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore,

had been told there was
a large enemy base camp

somewhere on its slopes.

His orders were to take his
understrength outfit--

29 officers and just 411 men--
find the enemy and kill him.

There were two clearings large
enough for Moore to bring in

eight choppers at once.

He chose the one closest to the
mountain-- Landing Zone X-Ray.

Moore made a point of leading
from the front.

He was the first man
off the first chopper.

He sent four six-man squads
100 yards in every direction.

The Ia Drang Valley
was so beautiful,

one soldier remembered,

it reminded him of
a national park back home.

Within minutes, Moore's men
captured a deserter.

Terrified and trembling,

he said there were three
battalions of soldiers

on the mountain-- 1,600 men.

They wanted very much
to kill Americans, he said,

but so far had been
unable to find any.

Moore quickly set up
a command post

behind one of the huge termite
mounds that dotted the clearing.

It would take until
mid-afternoon

for all of his
men to be ferried in.

He had no time to waste.

"We needed to get off
the landing zone

and get at them before they
could hit us," Moore remembered.

He sent two companies up the
slope toward the hidden enemy.

Most of the North Vietnamese,
like the Americans,

were new to combat.

They were ordered
to fix bayonets.

LO KHAC TAM:

NARRATOR:
Colonel Moore had no way
of knowing

that instead of 1,600
enemy soldiers on the mountain,

there were 3,000--
seven times his strength.

(gunfire)

Within minutes,
the Americans found themselves

under attack from hundreds
of North Vietnamese soldiers.

In the fighting, an overeager
second lieutenant

led his platoon of 28 men
too far away

from the rest of his company
and was surrounded.

(gunfire, shouting)

The lieutenant was killed.

The sergeant who took his place
was shot through the head.

By late afternoon, only seven
of the trapped platoon's men

were still capable
of firing back.

(gunfire, shouting)

Moore was now engaged in
three simultaneous struggles--

to defend the landing zone,
attack the North Vietnamese,

and find a way to rescue
his trapped patrol.

That night, Joe Galloway again
managed to talk his way

onto a chopper taking ammunition
and water

to the besieged Americans.

As the helicopter approached
the battlefield,

Galloway was sitting
on a crate of grenades,

peering out into the darkness.

GALLOWAY:
And I could see these little
pin pricks of light

coming down the mountain.

This was the enemy approaching
for the next day's attacks.

We flew in there.

As they pulled on out,
it was dead dark.

And we're lying there waiting
for someone to come tell us

what to do.

And the next morning, all of
a sudden the bottom fell out.

(gunfire)

There was an explosion of fire.

The noise is horrendous,
unimaginable.

(rapid gunfire,
followed by short bursts)

(gunfire, shouting)

And in the middle
of all of this, you know,

I-I just flattened out
on the ground

because all that was being fired
seemed to be about two,

two-and-a-half feet
off the ground.

(gunfire, whistling)

NARRATOR:
Hundreds of enemy soldiers
hurled themselves

at the Americans.

They wore webbed helmets
camouflaged with grass,

and as they came,
blowing whistles, screaming,

they looked like "little trees,"
one American remembered.

They were trying to overrun us.

And they came close.

They came close.

(gunfire, shouting)

But we had two things
going for us.

We had a great commander
and great soldiers.

And we had air and artillery
support out the yin-yang.

We had it, and they didn't.

NARRATOR:
But using that air and artillery
support could be dangerous.

Each of Moore's units carefully
marked its position with smoke

to keep from being mistaken
for the enemy

by American airmen overhead.

LO KHAC TAM:

NARRATOR:
Some 18,000 artillery shells
would be called in

over the course of the battle,

some of them landing just
25 yards from Moore's own men.

Helicopter gunships fired 3,000
rockets into the enemy.

The forward air controller

called for every available
aircraft in South Vietnam

to come and help.

Warplanes, including B-52
long-range strategic bombers,

were stacked at 1,000-foot
intervals above the battlefield,

from 7,000 to 35,000 feet,

impatiently awaiting targets
to strafe or bomb or burn.

"By God," Moore said, "they sent
us over here to kill communists

and that's what we're doing."

I looked up...

and there were two jets aiming
directly at our command post.

He's dropped two cans of napalm
and it's coming toward us,

loblolly, end over end.

And these kids, two or three
of 'em, plus a sergeant,

had dug a hole or two
over on the edge.

And I looked as the thing
exploded...

And two of them
were dancing in that fire.

And there's a rush, a roar,

from the air that's
being consumed

and drawn in as this-this
hell come to earth

is burning there.

And as that dies back a little,
then you can hear the screams.

And someone yells,
"Get this man's feet."

And I reach down
and the boots crumble,

and the flesh is cooked off
of his ankles.

And I feel those bones
in the palms of my hands.

I can feel it now.

He died two days later.

A kid named Jim Nakayama
out of Rigby, Idaho.

NARRATOR:
By 10:00 that morning,

American airpower had beaten
back the enemy assault.

The survivors
from the trapped platoon

were rescued that afternoon.

They had been pinned to the
ground and under fire

for so long
that they had to be coaxed

into getting to their feet
again.

On the morning of the next day,

enemy soldiers hurled themselves
against the same sector

of Moore's line four more times

and were obliterated by
artillery and machine gun fire.

The surviving North Vietnamese
and Viet Cong

withdrew into the forest,

leaving behind a ghastly ring
of their dead

surrounding the landing zone--

634 corpses, shot, blasted,
blackened by fire.

LO KHAC TAM:

NARRATOR:
After three days
and two nights of combat,

helicopters began lifting out
the American survivors

and gathering up the dead.

SOLDIER:
When you look at them,

it doesn't even resemble
a human body.

It just, it looks just like
a mannequin.

You look at them and say,
"That couldn't happen to me."

SHEEHAN:
I saw them fight at Ia Drang.

It always galls me
when I read or hear

about the World War II
generation

as the greatest generation.

These kids were just as gallant
and as courageous

as anybody who fought
in World War II.

NARRATOR:
Seventy-nine of Hal Moore's men
lost their lives

at Landing Zone X-Ray
in the Ia Drang Valley

and another 121 were wounded.

Please convey
to the American people

what a tremendous fighting man
we have here.

He's courageous,
he's aggressive, and he's kind.

And he'll go where
you tell him to go.

And he's got self-discipline.

And he's got good unit
discipline.

He's just
an outstanding man.

And...

Having commanded this battalion
for 18 months...

You must excuse my emotion here,

but when I see some of these men
go out the way they have...

I haven't...

I can't tell you how highly
I feel for them.

They're tremendous.

NARRATOR:
Hal Moore refused to leave

until every single man in his
command had been accounted for.

He had been the first of his men
to step onto Landing Zone X-Ray,

and he made sure he was
the last to leave it.

LO KHAC TAM:

NARRATOR:
The North Vietnamese suffered
terrible losses

in the Ia Drang Valley

and many of the survivors
were traumatized.

"The units were enveloped
in an atmosphere of gloom,"

a North Vietnamese colonel
remembered.

Some men would not leave
their rope hammocks.

Some refused to wash.

One soldier wrote a poem
expressive of their plight:

"The crab lies still
on the chopping block

Never knowing when the knife
will fall."

GALLOWAY:
In the Ia Drang we killed ten
of them for every one of us.

That's a ten-to-one kill ratio
is how the military puts that.

But the enemy, he was fully
prepared to pay that price

and more for the value
of the lessons he learned.

LO KHAC TAM:

JOE GALLOWAY:
Grab 'em by the belt buckle.

That means you've got to get
so close,

they can't use the artillery and
the aerial bombardments on you

for fear of killing their own.

Get in so close
that it's man-on-man.

And then everything is even.

The Vietnamese suffered hundreds
of dead

attacking Hal Moore's battalion
at LZ X-Ray.

But then they ambushed another
battalion a couple of days later

and wiped it out.

NARRATOR:
In the fighting near
Landing Zone Albany,

the enemy had gotten too close
for artillery to be called in.

Out of some 425 Americans
involved, 155 were killed.

124 more were wounded.

Both sides claimed victory
in the Ia Drang Valley.

The Americans talked up
the number of enemy dead

at Landing Zone X-Ray.

The ratio of losses
to your kill...

NARRATOR:
The North Vietnamese
took their lessons

from Landing Zone Albany.

WILLIAM WESTMORELAND:
I don't anticipate

that this conflict will end
any time soon,

and we could find that we have
more difficult days ahead.

Certainly we must be
prepared for this.

EHRHART:
In the fall of my senior year,
November 1965,

was that huge battle
at the Ia Drang Valley,

which was the first time
there was actually confirmed

North Vietnamese regular
soldiers as opposed

to Viet Cong.

And of course my way of
interpreting that was,

"There it is, that's the proof.

The North Vietnamese
are the aggressors here."

And that's when I began thinking
in terms of

maybe I don't want to go
to college right away.

Maybe I'll join the Marines.

And it was always the Marines.

I never...
there was no question.

The Marine Corps is full
of little guys like me

with chips on our shoulder.

("Eve of Destruction
by Barry McGuire plays)

McGUIRE:
♪ The eastern world,
it is explodin'. ♪

NARRATOR:
The battles in the Ia Drang
Valley may have been declared

American victories, but
privately, General Westmoreland

and the Johnson administration
were worried.

In spite of the Americans'
new airborne mobility,

the enemy had been able
to choose

the place and time of battle.

The intelligence on which
basic decisions had been made

in Washington
had been uniformly bad.

There were now believed to be
12 Viet Cong regiments

in South Vietnam, not just five;

nine North Vietnamese regiments,
not three.

Despite months of bombing,

three times as many North
Vietnamese regulars

were now slipping south
of the demilitarized zone

as originally believed.

Hanoi seemed to be
escalating, too.

And American casualties
were climbing.

When Senator Fritz Hollings
visited Saigon

shortly after
the Ia Drang battles,

General Westmoreland told him,
"We're killing these people

at a rate of ten to one."

Hollings warned him,

"Westy, the American people
don't care about the ten.

They care about the one."

Westmoreland, who had said
he could win the war

in three years, now sent an
urgent cable to Washington

asking for 200,000 more troops.

McGUIRE:
♪ Yeah, my blood's so mad...

NARRATOR:
"The message came
as a shattering blow,"

Robert McNamara remembered.

Once again, he offered Johnson
two options:

try to negotiate a compromise
with Hanoi,

or accede to Westmoreland's
request for more men,

though the chances of victory,
the secretary of defense said,

might be no better
than one in three.

GALLOWAY:
And then they all sat down

and voted for option two.

McGUIRE:
♪ Over and over and over...

KARL MARLANTES:
My bitterness about the
political powers at the time

was, first of all, the lying.

I mean, I can understand
a policy error

that is incredibly,
incredibly painful

and kills a lot of people
out of a mistake

if they made that
with noble hearts.

That was, you know, when
Eisenhower and Kennedy

were trying to figure
things out.

And you read that, you know,
McNamara knew by '65--

it was just three years
before I was there--

that the war was unwinnable.

That's what makes me mad.

Making a mistake,
people can do that.

But covering up mistakes,

then you're killing people
for your own ego.

And that makes me mad.

NARRATOR:
Tens of thousands
of American troops

continued to prepare
to deploy to Vietnam

from all over the country,

and General Westmoreland
and his commanders

drew up plans
for major offensives

in the new year of 1966.

Meanwhile, hoping the Soviets
might help bring Hanoi

to the bargaining table,
McNamara urged the president

to declare a halt to the bombing
of North Vietnam.

Over the objections
of the military,

who worried it would give
the enemy time to rebuild

its defenses, Johnson agreed
to stop the bombing

on Christmas Eve.

If it achieved nothing else,
he said,

it would show the American
people

that before he committed more
of their sons to battle,

"We have gone
the last mile."

("Little Drummer Boy"
by Burl Ives playing)

JEAN-MARIE CROCKER:
Well, Christmas always meant
a great deal in our family.

We sent packages to Denton,
of course.

Then a neighbor mentioned to me

that she heard a local
television station was offering

free tapes to be made to send
to a soldier overseas.

We dressed up for the cameras.

The idea was that we would each
just say something

about what we were doing
and wish him well.

It was a horrible day for me.

It made it so real that he was
far away.

Well, Mogie, here we are.

It's... let's see
what day is today.

Here it is, Saturday...

November 13.

November 13,

and station WTEN has given
us a chance to talk to you.

We all wish you
a Merry Christmas

to start out with.

Rand, what do you
got to say to Mogie?

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas, darling.

We sent your packages

and there's one that's waiting
for you at home.

It's a record of fife
and drum music

that we got for you
at Williamsburg.

Candy?

My teacher isn't very nice,
and she always is crabby,

and I don't like school at all.

Now I'm a brownie.

Merry Christmas.

Happy Christmas, Mogie.

I think I'm getting
new skis for Christmas.

So when you get home,
we can get together sometime.

We do all wish you
a very Merry Christmas,

and we'll be thinking
of you on Christmas Day.

JEAN-MARIE CROCKER:
We miss you, sweetheart.

IVES:
♪ Me and my drum.

("Turn! Turn! Turn!"
by the Byrds playing)

♪ To everything,
turn, turn, turn ♪

♪ There is a season,
turn, turn, turn ♪

♪ And a time to every purpose
under heaven ♪

♪ A time to be born,
a time to die ♪

♪ A time to plant,
a time to reap ♪

♪ A time to kill,
a time to heal ♪

♪ A time to laugh,
a time to weep ♪

♪ To everything,
turn, turn, turn ♪

♪ There is a season,
turn, turn, turn ♪

♪ And a time to every purpose
under heaven ♪

♪ A time to build up,
a time to break down ♪

♪ A time to dance,
a time to mourn ♪

♪ A time to cast away stones

♪ A time to gather
stones together ♪

♪ To everything,
turn, turn, turn ♪

♪ There is a season,
turn, turn, turn ♪

♪ And a time to every purpose
under heaven ♪

♪ A time of love,
a time of hate ♪

♪ A time of war,
a time of peace ♪

♪ A time you may embrace

♪ A time to refrain
from embracing ♪

♪ To everything,
turn, turn, turn ♪

♪ There is a season,
turn, turn, turn ♪

♪ And a time to every purpose
under heaven ♪

♪ A time to gain,
a time to lose ♪

♪ A time to rend,
a time to sew ♪

♪ A time for love,
a time for hate ♪

♪ A time for peace,
I swear it's not too late. ♪