Original subtitles

This film documents the Vietnam War

in the words of Americans who served there.

it features home movies and rare archival footage

collected during a worldwide search and now presented in high definition

Many scenes are graphic in nature and your discretion is advised.

What do we want Equiality?

I was in Word War II, fella,

and I served for years. I know it's about.

I have a son that's gonna go into the army.

Over Ten Years

Over 2.5 million americans served in vietnam.

It's not the war you know. It's the war they fought.

Search & Destroy 1966 - 1967

.

VC right across the river.

Roger, okay.

JANUARY 1966

The US victory over

the north Vietnamese in the Ia Drang Valley,

measured by a kill ratio of 12 to 1,

convinces US commanders to implement a new strategy,

Search ans Destroy.

The plan is brutaly simple.

Search out the enemy in South Vietnam,

and then destroy them in numbers so high,

they will no longer be able to continue fighting.

For the firt time in modern US military history,

victory in war wil be measured not by territory taken,

but by body count.

But as US and South Vietnamese forces

battle through the vast countryside and winding rivers,

they quickly discover that the enemy has a plan of their own.

The VC have meticulously planted

tens of thounsas of mines and booby traps.

They have dug hundreds of miles of tunnels to move soldiers and weapons,

and launch suprise attacks.

And perhaps worst of all, they hide in plain sight,

indistinguishable from the 17 million civilians.

If they are to win the war, US leaders realize

they need an enormous number of boots on the ground

1966 becomes the year of escalation.

JANUARY 1966 180.000 US TROOPS ARE IN VIETNAM.

MAY 1966 280.000 TROPS.

Go faster! Run faster!

JULY 1966 300.000 TROOPS.

SEPTEMBER 1966 325.000 TROPS.

JANUARY 1976 389.000 US TROOPS ARE IN VIETNAM.

ONE THIRD ARE VOLUNTEERS.

When we graduated,

one of the commencement speakers quote President Kennedy,

saying we should: "Ask not what our country can do for us,

but ask what we can do for our country".

Well, the more I hear about Vietnam,

the more I think I'm finally starting to understand

what those words mean.

In san Bernadino, California,

Barry Romo is feeling the effects of the growing war.

And this sorts of led me to tinking about,

well, if I believe in the war then I have to

actully join the military and go and fight.

Really put my principles into action.

When I told my father I was going to enlist,

he said: "I dont't want you to go".

And I said: "Well, you served".

He said:"But your brother and I went to war to fight

people who were putting other human beings in ovens.

All you're gonna do is go fight some poor farmer

that doesn't want to be bothered with you,

and I don't want you to die".

But he doesn't know what he's talking abut.

We're in Vietnam to save those farmers from the communist.

That's what this war is about.

Everybody knows that, and everybody's behind it.

So I tell him,

"Sorry, Pops, regarless of what you think,

I'm enlisting in the army,

and I'm volunteering to go to Vietnam".

As Romo undergoes his 12 months of training,

he has no idea what Vietnam will really be like.

No more than 28 year old Chales Brown has,

even after serving 8 years in the peacetime army.

A few months ago, I didn't even know any of these men existed.

Now we're headed into combat together,

and we're gonna have to depend on each other to survive.

TAY NINH PROVINCE May 1967.

Well, back when I was at fort benning,

training up young men that was going to Vietnam,

one of my favorites slogans was:

"I'm gonna go to Vietnam.

I'm gonna kil some Viet Cong. Ha!".

Well, this take effect on you.

Remember now, I'd been drilled

for a good 8 years whit nothing but talking about combat.

No that I wanted to experience,

but it had became a way of life,

there're certain things you do and how you do it,

and actually combat is the only way this is gonna be tested.

Brown is now second in command to a platoon of 30 men

with the 173rd airbone brigade

sweeping through Tay Ninh Province, a know Viet Cong stronghold.

A lot of my guys are from places like New York and Chicago.

Boys that barely been out of the city, let alone

been out in the middles of a jungle like this.

No matter how much training they got,

Vietnam is a whole different world to them.

Summer daytime temperature overage over 100 degrees Fahrenheit,

while a 100% humidity is like bein in a stema bath 24/7.

Then men must cut their way

thoungh 8 foot tall razor sharp elephan grass

and bamboo covered in thick, thorny vines.

But this is only part of the problem.

THe countryside is also infested with thounsand

of poisonius insectes and snakes,

including one of the deadliest in the world,

known as the "two step snake"

for the number of step a bite victim can take before dropping dead.

Brown and his men must navigate this treacheruous terrain

under the constant threat of ambushes and booby traps,

looking for any signs of the elusive Viet Cong.

Couple of hooches up ahead.

I tell my radio man to call back to camp and tell:

"em we're gonna search it fast" fore nighfall.

Couple of my guys start bitching,

waiting to know why the hell we can't just skip it,

but I tell "This is a job," so they better bucke down and get it done.

As Brown and his men enter the area, they quickly realize

it's an abandoned Viet Cong encampment.

The VC have a sophisticated network of scouts

and sympathizers who alert them the American's presence

allowing them to choose when and where they want fight.

The best the americans can do now

is destroy any hidden enemy weapons or supplies they can find.

I always tell these guys you got to go slow,

you got to take your time going through these things,

but none of them listen to me.

All they want to do is get done and get back to camp.

This one guy,

he thinks he's been out here so long, he knows everything there is to know.

So what does he do?

Instead of him going down into the rice slowly

to see if anything was in it,

he tilt the rice, immediately seeing

what we could call a pressure realese booby trap.

The booby trap blast Brown and two of his men with shrapnel.

Within minutes, a medevac chopper is on route

to take them to one of the 18 military hospitals in Vietnam.

The emergeny call indicated

that there are three injured, wounded G.I.'s.

We're on our way flying above

what has to be considered insecure, hostile territory.

Nearly one million patients are airlifted in medivac choppers during the vietnam war.

The average time from battlefield to hospital is one hour.

Okay, we've go our three wounded G.I.'s on board.

At least one of them is hit pretty bad.

We took a little fire on the way out of this.. pickup area.

Romo: We had hear about search and destroy missions

and ambushes and even practices them in officer candidate school and other places.

But the reality of actually going out...

is a totally different thing.

It's not like the movies where you go out in the field,

and that evening you're back in a base camp,

drinking beer or smoking dope.

We would go out 30, 35, 40 days at a time.

24/7.

In july of 1967,

19 years old second lieutenant Barry Romo arrives in Vietnam.

He replaces a platoon leader who was critically wounded

by a landmine during a search and destroy operation.

Now Romo is in Quang Nam province,

300 miles north of where Charles Brown was wounded,

leading his platoon of approximately 30 men

on a similiar mission, whit similar dangers.

Get Down! Take cover!

Get Down!

It's the not knowing that gets to you.

The feeling that you're never safe

anywhere, at any time.

All clear! Let's move it!

Suddenly mortars and gunfire are flying in from everywhere.

No one knows what the hell's going on or where the enemy's even at.

I start screaming at my men to get down

and form adefensive perimeter...

but everyone's yelling and shooting.

And then I realize one of my squads got stuck between us and the enemy.

They're caught in the crossfire,

getting hit from both directions.

I gotta do something.

So I yell for cover,

and I run forward as fast as I can to my squad.

They are all injured.

And every man was badly wounded.

And two of my men were dead.

And one of my men had been thrown 100 feet,

maybe by a concussion,

and his insides were jellified,

and I saw that I had to get them out there...

out of there or more people are gonna die.

Medevac doesn't want to land be cause we're taking too much fire.

But I scream into the radio and I tell them

"�I 'm gonna stand up in the middle of this damn field

and you better get in here and get my men out!".

When it's finally over and we get back to the platoon,

my company commander said,

"I'm going to put you in for a bronce star".

In my mind I could only picture a bronce star for my dead men,

and it didn't seem worth it.

it didn't seem fair

that people should die for me to get a medal.

During the first nine months of 1967

6.990 americans are killed in Vietnam.

More than the total killed in the previous five years combined.

As U.S. losses begin to mount,

president johnson reminds the american people

that the war is not only about stopping the spread of communism.

There is an even greater cause worth fighting for in Vietnam.

Johnson: Every American must know exactly

what it is that we are trying to do in Vietnam.

Our greatest resource, really, in this conflict,

is your understanding.

Hall: By the summer of 1967,

the united states is sending more than $500 million in aid to SV.

More than 1.5 million children are attending hundreds of new schools.

And for the first time

hundreds of thousands of poverty stricken civilians

are receiving modern medical care.

Johnson: It is a goal that's worthy

of the deeds of our brave men.

The people of Asia do matter...

and I pledge to all those that are counting on us,

you can depend upon us...

because all americans will do our part.

BOONVILLE, MISSOURI Summer 1967.

PURCELL HOME MOVIES

Purcell: As long as ben and I have been married,

our lives have been run by the army...

but I guess that's the price you pay for falling in love with a military man.

Hall: Anne Purcell married Ben,

a carrer military officer, in 1951.

After 16 years of marriage, five children, and mnay moves,

thery are living in Boonville, Missouri, where he is stationed as a colonel.

Ben and I both know he'll be going to Vietnam sooner or later,

so we figure if he volunteeted to go to Vietnam,

the family had a choice as to where they stayed, and we would stay in Boonville,

because it was already like home, having lived there four years.

I dreaded seeing him go, but I knew that was his duty,

and so I just accepted it that way.

Right Before we leave to see Ben off,

he surprises me with a pair of audio recorders.

He's going to take one to Vienam with him,

and I'll keep the other so we can record tapes

and mail them back and forth.

When we get to the airport, I give Ben last kiss,

and tell him he better try out that recorder as soon as he gets there,

and let me know that everything's okay.

But the war colonel Purcell is about to join is not going as planned.

Although U.S. forces conduct

hundreds of search and destroy operations,

including massive sweeps involving up to 30.000 soldiers at a time,

the NV and VC are elusive,

refusing to engage in locked down, drawn out combat.

Finally, near the end of October 1967,

U.S. forces locate 6.000 NV soldiers

massing near the american base at Dak To in Kon Tum province.

More than 6.500 u.s and south vietnamese soldiers,

along with attack helicopters, fighter bombers,

and the mightiest aircraft in the u.s arsenal,

the B-25 bomber, are deployed to the region.

On november 3, 1967, shortly adter midmorning,

The first group of three B-25's

prepares to unleash nearly six tons of high explosives,

before the ground troops move in...

the largest clash with the NVA since the Ia Drang Valley begins.

All morning long, bombers have been coming in overhead.

You can feel the ground shaking like Jell-o.

Sergeant Charles Brown has recovered from his wounds

and is back with the 173rd Airbone Brigade

on his way to relieve American units

engaged in heavy combat outsie of Dak To.

We can hear the gunfire as we get closer.

The sound of M-16's and AK-47's rip through the jungle.

The sound of trees splintering.

Men screaming.

A few paces ahead, the recon team radios back.

They've walked right into an ambush.

And now they're stuck out there only a few meters ahead of us,

screaming for help.

We got to do something fast before they al get killed.

C.O jumps on the radio and tells:

'em to hit the ground and stay down.

Then he turns to me and instructs me to take the rest of the platoon in

to see what was going on.

knowing that my men in there was down,

we went in firing from the waist up.

just spraying the whole area.

Brown, Charles, J., staff sergeant E-6,

awarded Bronze star medal

with first oak leaf cluster with V device.

"Reason: for heroism in connection with military operation

against a hostile force...

near Dak To, Republic of vietnam".

OUTSIDE DAK TO November 15, 1967.

After three weeks of fighting,

u.s and south vietnamese forces have stopped the NVA

from destroying the american base at Dak To.

But of the 6000 enemy soldiers spotted in the area,

only an estimated 600 were killed.

The remaining 5400 are making a strategic retreat

towards Laos an cambodia.

Diplomatoc policy prohibits u.s ground troops

from crossing the border.

Hoping to stop the NVA before they escape...

the americans give chase.

On november 19, 1967,

u.s soldiers pin down 2000 NVA on an 875 meter high hill,

know as Hill 875...

just six kilometers from Cambodia.

Do you have any idea what kind of fire we have on this?

They are immediately ordered to take the hill.

EN ROUTE TO HILL 875

Ain't no such thing as rest for the weary.

2000 NVA are on Hill 875

and command want us to go hunt 'em all down.

During WWII an infantryman averaged 10 days of combat in one year.

In Vietnam an infantryman averaged 240 days of combat in one year.

Hours into the assault,

sargeant charles brown and his battalion

are helicoptered to hill 875 to join the fight.

They are dropped in a safe zone just out of range of enemy fire.

The entire place already looks like hell from all the fighting.

Trees are splintered and broken.

Smoke billows in the distance.

You can see this is a completely destroyed area.

Trees gone, nothing to hide on, just a whole...

Unbelievable how it had been destroyed.

As brown and his men make their way towards the american units,

they have no idea of horros that lay ahead.

The NVA have transformed Hill 875

into a heavily fortified stronghold, brimming with prebuilt bunkers

and carefully carved put escape routes.

It's a cunning trap that the americans are waking right into.

As we head into the twilight,

we can hear the mortar and artillery shells

exploding a few miles out in front of us.

Up ahead, men start whispering back

whenever they come across a dead body.

Pretty soons, seems like all you hear is:

"�Body! �Body! �Body!".

OUTSIDE TAM KY 300 miles to the north.

Five hours ago, we were out there in the middle of the bush.

Now I'm cracking open a warm beer while ckick shakes her butt.

300 miles to the north,

second lieutenant Barry Romo and his platoon

are on a 2 day breack after being in the field

for 30 straight days of search and destroy.

I guess this is one of the crazy things about Vietnam.

One minute you're out there,

freaking out about tripe wires and booby traps...

and the next thing you know, they fly you into a rear area,

where they take away our weapons and our hand grenades,

and they would plop us on a beach

like in apocalypse now and have a big barbecue,

and you would drink and they would bring in tons of alcohol.

And then after two days,

they would pour you back into the helicopters

and give you your weapons back

and fly you to an area for another operation,

for another 30 days.

It's so bizarre.

All anyone knows is that no one has any idea what will happen next.

I had an officer in training that once said:

"The viet cong guerrillas are the fish in the sea of the people,

and our jobs is to dry up that sea".

I thought he was crazy for saying that...

but now that I've been out here for a few months,

I'm starting to see what he meant.

Second lieutenant Barry romo is back in the field

seraching a south vietnamese village.

Civilians sympathetic to the viet cong hide weapons and supllies,

while those who side with the americans

stay silent for fear of brutal communist reprisals.

As result, the americans cannot tell friend from foe...

leaving the villagers caught in the middle.

We're told the VC threaten these people with their lives

unless they help them.

So you got to figure it's not really their fault.

But at the same time, when you find a bunch of AK-47s

hidden in some villager's chicken pen,

you can't help but feel like they'r the reason your buddies are dead.

I mean, these are supposed to be the people we're here to help.

Only it seems like don't give a shit about helping us.

I've never once had a Vietnamese say:

"Don't go down this trail, because there's a mine" ...

or, "Don't go over to this area

because the north Vietnamese are gonna ambush you".

You morality wears down.

Your patience wears down.

After a while,

people started blaming the Vietnamese for our casualties.

All of the Vietnamese, and there's a genuine

dehumanization of the people we were supposedly there to help.

This isn't like my dad's war.

We aren't fighting uniformed nazis on our way to Berlin.

Out here,

we've got to figure things out every days as it's gappening.

So given a choice between your buddy living,

and one of those villagers living,

you know who you're gonna pick.

'Cause that's just the way it is, and all any of us want to do

is get out of here and get back home alive.

HILL 875 Day three of Battle.

Every time one of these birds tries to come in with supplies,

NVA shoots 'em up.

We already got two birds shot down.

Sargeant Charles Brown and the 173rd airbone brigade

are pinned down on the side of hill 875.

Over the past 48 hours,

u.s and south vietnameses forces

have made several attempts to take the hill.

So far, all they have to show for their efforts

are mounting numbers of dead and wounded.

The north Veitnamese are dug in, and dug in deep.

We were gonna have to burn them out.

Each platoon was ordered to send a man forward

to our little rear camp to learn

or be familiar with the operations of a flamethower.

And I ordered one of my replacements,

Billy Cupid, he was kind of stocky black kid from Chicago,

and I told him: "Get familiar whith the flamethower".

With flamethowers in hand,

u.s forces prepare for their final push up hill 875.

I order my men to get into position.

All of a sudden,

mortars and rocket fire start coming downs on us.

105's are screaming overhead, and men are shouting and firing.

Smoke start clogging my lungs and the sounds of small arms

and machine gun fire rips through the air.

As we charged the hill with the flamethower on his back,

that pressure tank was hit with a piece of shrapnel...

and the concussion of hit killed billy.

For a moment,

I am frozen with the unbelievable sight of a man dying

right in front of me.

Soldier: Take the first two lines!

But then the incoming fire snap me out of it.

Soldier: Go! Go! Go!

It's constant and coming from everywhere.

There seems little strategy left other than move forward

and kil anything in front of you.

HILL 875 Day Five of Battle.

Only a couple choppers have landed since we took the hill.

And all they've brought is the bare necessities...

ammo, water, rations, and body bags.

Lots of 'em.

On november 23, 1967,

after five days of harrowing, close-quarters combat,

u.s forces, including sergeant charles brown an his company,

finally take hill 875.

115 americans have been killed, and another 253 wounded.

Combined with the casulities from the previous three weeks,

Brown's 173rd brigade

has lost nearly one-fifth of its total fighting strength.

Medics are making their way to wounded troopers,

giving 'em sips of water or shots of morphine.

You got to admire them.

Lot of these boys ain't no more than 18, 19 years old,

but they fought better and harder

than anything I could have ever hoped for.

They fought like the well disciplined,

professional soldiers they were trained to be.

Just like the soldiers I had trained them to be.

Despit their succes in courageously taking the hill,

the American soldieres are unable to achieve the primary goal,

killing all of the enemy soldiers in Kon Tum Povince.

Of the 6000 north vietnamese originally spotted,

only some 1400 were killed.

The rest escaped into Laos and Cambodia

the night before the final assault.

Six days after spilling so much blood to take it,

u.s forces leave hill 875.

In the strategy of search and destroy,

victory is mesured by enemy bodies, not territory.

Hill 875 is now considered worthless.

It didn't take us long to realize there ain't no iwo jimas in Vietnam.

We don't get to plant our flag and claim victory.

But we know we've done what we was assigned to do.

We knew we were superior.

We knew we has killed all that was up there.

We didn't know at that time that some of them had left.

That was one of the myths of vietnam.

Each time you take a piece of ground, we left it,

and they returned to that same piece of ground.

But we left the hill as heroes.

We finally captured Hil 875.

That's the way we left it.

We were heroes.

Lost some buddies, lost some men, yes,

but we defeated the enemy on hill 875.

DECEMBER 1967

16.250 americans have been killed in vietnam.

An estimated 186.000 enemy troops have been killed.

Faced with only the cold hard numbers of body count,

the american public has a difficult time seeing measurable progress in vietnam.

In two years, public support for the war has dropped

from 80% in 1965 t only 46%.

But with nearly half a million soldiers overseas,

president Johnson and his generals are convinced

that they have turned the corner.

They launch a massive campaign

designed to reinvigorate public support for the war

and demostrate that victory is on the horizon,

so long as the american public doesn't give up

so close to the finish line.

I could quote a number of meaningful statistics

such as the roads that are being opened.

The numbered of weapons being captured...

and other statidtical information

that suggests we are making progress and we are winning.

Today, I can tell you that military progress

in the past 12 months has exceeded our expectations.

And so I report to you

that we are going to continue to press forward.

We will provide all that our brave men require

to do the job that must be done.

Let the world know that the keepers of peace

will endure through every trial

and that with the full backing of their countrymen...

they are going to prevail.