All language subtitles for the.vietnam.war.2017.part04.480p.bluray.x264-eng

- Original file by zfeet -
- Resynced by Ornlu Wolfjarl -

JEAN-MARIE CROCKER: Sometimes I would
hear a car crunch up in the snow,

and I'd think maybe it
would be somebody coming

to give us bad news.

Which was not good for me to think.

It was an underlying anxiety

that I really think was there all the time.

NARRATOR: All his young
life, Denton Crocker, Jr....

known as "Mogie" to his family...

had dreamed of serving his country,

of putting his own life on the line

in defense of what he called
"individual freedom."

He'd wanted to serve in Vietnam so much

he'd pressured his parents
into granting their permission

for him to join the Army before he was 18.

He was eager for combat and
pleased when he was assigned

to the 1st Brigade of the
celebrated 101st Airborne,

the "Screaming Eagles" who
had led the way on D-Day.

But he was quickly disappointed
to find himself attached

to battalion headquarters,
repairing weapons, making lists,

keeping records.

It was "boring," he wrote home.

MOGIE CROCKER (dramatized): I think perhaps
you will understand my disappointment

when you see that there is
little sense in being over here

unless one faces the main objective,

the destruction of the VC.

Certainly one feels no
sense of accomplishment

when one's friends are
facing all the dangers.

JEAN-MARIE CROCKER: I had a map on
the back of the living room door.

And I put pins in it every
time Denton Jr. moved.

And he moved a lot.

And I knew those names at one time

as well as any area of our own world.

LYNDON JOHNSON: Well, how'd
you have a good weekend?

ROBERT McNAMARA: (laughs)

Yeah, I did, Mr. President.

I hope you did too.

JOHNSON: What's your thinking these days?

I haven't talked to you.

What's happening to our pause?

What are our generals saying?

McNAMARA: See, I think you'll
find some foreign leaders

will criticize you if you resume bombing.

As a matter of fact, no
other intelligence source

that I've seen indicates that
Hanoi is even considering

moving toward negotiation

in order to lead us to extend the pause.

Intelligence information...

NARRATOR: As 1966 began, the
president of the United States

was just learning the name of the man

who was the most powerful member
of the Politburo in Hanoi...

Le Duan.

McNAMARA: ...First Secretary
of the Communist Party,

a man named Le Duan... L-E capital D-U-A-N...

who today is putting considerable pressure

on Ho Chi Minh and others
to ensure continuing a war

that he thinks they either
are winning or can win.

("Masters of War" by The
Staple Singers playing)

♪ They're masters of war

♪ You build all the big guns

♪ You build the big planes. ♪

NARRATOR: As they continued
to escalate the war,

Johnson and McNamara were frustrated

that American commanders in
Vietnam, who had come of age

during World War II and Korea,

were having a hard time making sense

of what was happening on the ground.

In the months and years to come,
as the American presence grew,

Hanoi would escalate too,

sending more and more soldiers south,

strengthening its own air defenses,

and recruiting more fighters

from the alienated South
Vietnamese countryside.

The Johnson administration
was desperately trying

to prop up the government in
Saigon and, at the same time,

help that government to
somehow win the loyalty

of its own people.

Johnson had tried to forge
an international coalition

to defend South Vietnam.

But only five other countries
would ever send combat troops...

Australia and New Zealand,
Thailand, the Philippines,

and South Korea.

America's most important allies,
Britain, France and Canada,

refused to take part and were
calling instead for peace talks.

And more and more Americans,

including some of the
country's most respected

foreign policy experts,

were beginning to question the
way the war was being fought,

whether it could ever be won,

and if the United States
should be in Vietnam at all.

(explosion)

As 1966 began, 2,344 Americans
had died in Vietnam.

Nearly 200,000 were stationed there,

and more were on their way.

Those soldiers would quickly discover

that the war they were being asked to fight

was not their father's war.

SAM WILSON: We tend to fight the next war

in the same way we fought the last one.

We are prisoners of our own experience.

And many of the things that
we learned that worked

in World War II

were not applicable to the war in Vietnam.

We simply thought we'd go
in with a sledgehammer

and knock things down, clean them up,

and it would be all over.

It was a kind of an oversimplification

of the problem

combined with our
overconfidence that caused us,

I think, to be arrogant.

And it's very, very difficult
to dispel ignorance

if you retain arrogance.

STAPLES SINGERS: ♪ I'll stand over your
body and make sure that you're dead. ♪

(gavel pounding)

NARRATOR: In early February of 1966,

President Johnson got more bad news.

His old friend, J. William Fulbright,

the powerful chairman

of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,

planned to hold hearings
on the Vietnam War,

and the television networks
intended to cover the hearings

from gavel to gavel.

Fulbright, who had once supported the war,

now opposed it.

LBJ was alarmed.

His own advisers had been
giving him conflicting advice

about Vietnam for years.

But a public debate about
how he was running the war

in front of millions of Americans
filled him with dread.

As the hearings got underway,

the president tried to deflect attention

by suddenly announcing he was
going to a military conference

in Honolulu, to meet for the
first time the two generals

who now headed the Saigon government.

ED HERLIHY: It is a meeting
without precedent,

and is designed to strengthen
United States determination

to pursue to the end the drive
against communist domination

in South Vietnam.

NARRATOR: General Nguyen Van
Thieu was the chief of state,

but real power lay with
Thieu's bitter rival,

the former head of the South
Vietnamese Air Force,

Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky.

Ky was "an unguided missile,"
according to one U.S. diplomat,

known for his flamboyant uniforms,

his gaudy private life, and
his public pronouncements.

He once told a reporter that
what Vietnam really needed

was "five Hitlers."

PHAN QUANG TUE: How could we
allow and accept that to happen?

He was a charlatan.

The man not only has no training,

has no education, but
doesn't seem to inter...

be interested in being educated,
and proud of his ignorance.

NARRATOR: President Johnson spent
most of his time in Honolulu

urging Ky to focus on pacification...

earning the support of the
South Vietnamese people

by undertaking economic and social reforms

Americans had been calling
for for more than a decade.

Johnson wasn't interested
in "high-sounding words"

about progress, he said.

He wanted genuine achievements...

what they called in Texas,
"coonskins on the wall."

BUI DIEM: Well, nobody understood
what does it mean "coonskin."

And people the Vietnamese at
the delegation they ask me,

"You understand what it is?"

And myself I said, "Well,
I don't understand."

I have to ask some Americans
to explain to me.

And some American friends,
they explain to me later on

and only by then the Vietnamese understood.

I happen to hold the point of view

that it isn't going to be too long

before the American people, as a people,

will repudiate our war in Southeast Asia.

MAXWELL TAYLOR: That,
of course, is good news

to Hanoi, Senator.

MORSE: Oh, I know that

that's the smear artist that you
militarists give to those of us

that have honest differences
of opinion with you.

But I don't intend to get
down in the gutter with you

and engage in that kind of debate, General.

NARRATOR: Johnson's trip to
Honolulu had not distracted

the American public.

They were riveted to the hearings.

And I also think that great countries,

especially this country,

is quite strong enough to
engage in a compromise

without losing its standing in the world,

without losing its prestige
as a great nation.

On the contrary, I think it would be

one of the greatest victories
for us and our prestige

if we could-could be ingenious
enough and magnanimous enough

to bring about some kind of a settlement

of this particular struggle.

NARRATOR: Fulbright invited the
respected diplomat George Kennan

to testify.

For two decades, his
doctrine of containment...

stopping Soviet expansion...

had been the basis of
American foreign policy,

and had in some ways been the justification

for leading the United States
into its proxy war in Vietnam.

KENNAN: The first point
I would like to make

is that if we were not already
involved as we are today

in Vietnam,

I would know of no reason

why we should wish to become so involved,

and I could think of several reasons

why we should wish not to.

You have referred to containment here.

How... how can we contain in Vietnam?

We would do better if we
really would show ourselves

a little more relaxed and less
terrified of what happens

in the...

certainly in the smaller
countries of Asia and Africa,

and not jump around like an
elephant frightened by a mouse

every time these things occur.

NARRATOR: Johnson was relieved
when, at the last moment,

instead of airing Kennan's testimony,

CBS showed reruns ofThe Real McCoys,

The Andy Griffith Show andl Love Lucy.

But NBC kept the cameras running.

This is not only not our business,

but I don't think we can
do it successfully.

And I take it by this you mean that

this is simply not a practicable objective,

as I understand it, in this country.

We can't achieve it even
with the best of will.

This is correct, and I have a fear

that our thinking about this
whole problem is still affected

by some sort of illusions about
invincibility on our part.

NARRATOR: Just before the hearings began,

the president had decided to
resume the bombing of targets

in North Vietnam.

The 37-day pause that had
begun on Christmas Eve 1965

had yielded no hint of Hanoi's willingness

to come to the negotiating table.

In South Vietnam, Viet Cong
guerrillas were now believed

to control nearly
three-quarters of the country.

But General William Westmoreland,

the American commander,
thought his most urgent task

was to destroy the North
Vietnamese regular army units

Hanoi was sending South.

Westmoreland's target
for the next two years

would be reaching what he
called the "crossover point"...

the point at which U.S. and ARVN forces

were killing more enemy troops
than could be replaced.

It would be a war of attrition.

But that would require still
more American soldiers.

They came from every corner of the country.

MATT HARRISON: I was born at West Point
when my dad was on the faculty there.

From my earliest recollection,

West Point was what I wanted to do,

not even particularly
because I had an inkling

or a strong desire for a military career.

It's just...

West Point was kind of the
height of my ambition.

("On, Brave Old Army Team" playing)

NARRATOR: The son of a colonel
who had served in World War II,

Matt Harrison had grown up on
Army bases around the world.

For him and his four siblings,

the military was always at
the center of their lives.

ANNE HARRISON BOWMAN: You addressed
parents "sir" and "ma'am,"

and you said "yes" and not "yeah."

And you answered the phone,
"Colonel Harrison's quarters."

We got up every Saturday morning
and we dusted the house.

My dad would put on the
West Point marching band

and my sister and I would
dust around the living room.

NARRATOR: It seemed to Matt's parents

that he could do no wrong.

He was the embodiment of the
values they had hoped to instill

in all their children:
duty, honor, and country.

HARRISON: The strongest
impression I have from my class

and my classmates was they were
guys who just were idealists.

And I think guys drawn from little towns

all across the United
States had that in common.

It was a time before the questions

about American exceptionalism.

We didn't question.

We believed in what this country stood for,

and we believed that
people who had the ability

to lead soldiers should do that.

("Mustang Sally" by Wilson Pickett playing)

PICKETT: ♪ Mustang Sally

♪ Huh!

ROGER HARRIS: I wanted to
go with the gladiators.

I wanted to go with the tough guys.

I was born in Boston, in the
Roxbury section of Boston.

There were those who would
recruit you for gangs

and try to entice you to do things

that-that weren't in the
best interest of society.

Let's put it like that.

NARRATOR: Roger Harris
dreamed of going to college

on a football scholarship,
but was not big enough

to play for his team in high school.

HARRIS: And so I enlisted
in the Marine Corps.

And I felt that... that it was a win-win

because, one, if I died,
then my mother would be able

to receive the $10,000 insurance policy.

I thought that was a lot of money,

that my mother will be rich if I die.

You know, she'll be rich.

If I live, then I'll be a hero, you know,

and I can come back and get a job.

Naive, dumb, you know?

NARRATOR: John Musgrave was
from the Fairmount neighborhood

of Independence, Missouri.

MUSGRAVE: I was 17 and my best friend and I

went down and enlisted in the Marine Corps.

I had always dreamed of being a Marine.

And...

Well, I knew I wasn't going
to be a man right away

but I was going to be a
Marine, and that was enough.

I'd be doing something mature.

And I'd be doing something
that was important.

And there was a war on and
I wanted a piece of it.

BILL EHRHART: I grew up in
Perkasie, Pennsylvania.

And every Memorial Day

all that generation of World
War II would dress up

in their American Legion
uniforms and parade around.

And I'd put red, white, and
blue crepe paper on my bicycle.

And the kids could ride behind the parade.

NARRATOR: Bill Ehrhart would sign
up in part because his father,

a pastor, had not served.

Ehrhart was a gifted student

and in his senior year in high school

was accepted by four colleges.

Had he attended any one of them,

he would have been deferred from the draft.

It all came down to this notion

of I was going to serve
my country and be a hero

and have that gorgeous
Marine Corps uniform.

And the girls would just
be draped around my neck

and nobody would beat me up again.

But at the same time

I would really be serving my country.

It was my chance to be... (sighs)

one doesn't want to trivialize
it, but it was my chance to be

the star of my own John Wayne movie.

It was my chance to do what that
World War II generation had done

and seemed to be so proud of.

Now I had my turn.

NARRATOR: Wherever they came from,

whatever their reasons for
joining the military,

training transformed them.

(United States Marine Band
playing "Semper Fidelis" march)

For about the first five
weeks at Parris Island,

I was convinced that I
was going to die there.

The drill instructors said
they were going to kill me.

And they certainly sounded serious.

MUSGRAVE: I grew up in segregated
neighborhoods all my life.

So, I'd never met a black person
till I arrived at boot camp.

Never stood next to a black
person or a Hispanic

or anyone who was Jewish.

I just... they didn't mix where I grew up.

So that was just eye opening.

But when I got to talking to
everybody, we were all the same.

We were all working class and poor.

And we all wanted to be Marines real bad.

EHRHART: By the time I graduated,

I felt like I was king of the world.

I was God.

I could do anything.

On that day I became a Marine.

You know, the Marine Corps
trains you to be a fighter.

They train you to fight,
they train you to kill.

They used to say that if
you're a Marine, you can't die

until you kill three Vietnamese.

And I said, "Well, I'm from Roxbury.

If the expectation is three, I'll do ten."

You know, craziness.

(gunshot)

LESLIE GELB: The tendency
for a great power is to use

what it's greatest at...

namely its firepower, destructive power.

Dropping a lot of bombs and
shooting a lot of artillery

at a distance.

You save lives.

You kill a lot of them, you
don't lose a lot of us.

NARRATOR: The central coastal
province of Binh Dinh

was home to more than
half a million people.

For decades, it had been
a guerrilla stronghold,

and in early 1966,

the Viet Cong had been augmented
by North Vietnamese regulars,

some 8,000 men in all.

General Westmoreland sent 20,000 American,

South Vietnamese and South Korean troops

storming across the province
in pursuit of the enemy

and their sources of supply.

They first dropped leaflets and
broadcast from loudspeakers

to warn villagers of the terrible fate

that awaited anyone who
fired on their helicopters,

urged them to leave their homes,

promised safe passage to any Viet Cong

who wished to surrender.

Then they called in
airstrikes and artillery

and blew the hamlets to bits.

It was the first large-scale
search-and-destroy campaign

of the war.

(shouting, gunfire)

The offensive lasted 42 days.

The Army reported 2,389
enemy soldiers killed.

Westmoreland was pleased.

But commanders on the scene were concerned

that despite all the American
firepower brought against them,

most of the North Vietnamese
regulars had still managed

to escape back into the Central Highlands.

The operation would drive
more than 100,000 civilians

from their homes.

Similar search-and-destroy
and bombing campaigns...

17 large-scale U.S.
offensives in 1966 alone...

would produce a total

of more than three million homeless people

all across the country,

roughly one-fifth of South
Vietnam's population.

Since there was no front in Vietnam,

as there had been in the
first and second World Wars,

since no ground was ever
permanently won or lost,

the American military
command in Vietnam... MACV...

fell back more and more on
a single grisly measure

of supposed success:

counting corpses.

Body count.

JAMES WILLBANKS: The problem with the war,

as it often is, are the metrics.

It is a situation where if you
can't count what's important,

you make what you can count important.

So, in this particular
case what you could count

was dead enemy bodies.

JOE GALLOWAY: You don't get
details with a body count.

You get numbers.

And the numbers are lies, most of 'em.

If body count is your success mark,

then you're pushing otherwise
honorable men, warriors,

to become liars.

ROBERT GARD: If body count

is the measure of success,

then there's the tendency
to count every body

as an enemy soldier.

There's a tendency to want
to pile up dead bodies

and perhaps to use less
discriminate firepower

than you otherwise might

in order to achieve the result

that you're charged with trying to obtain.

(man shouting)

MERRILL McPEAK: Just think about the
problem from the North's point of view.

They had to supply the South.

I'm talking about bringing in
people, equipment, supplies,

and so forth.

They started from nothing and
pushed a road through that...

through an area the size of Massachusetts.

So this is not a trivial
amount of real estate

that they took over, built a road on,

and then maintained it.

NARRATOR: For years, Hanoi had
smuggled most of its arms and supplies

to the South aboard an
improvised fleet of junks,

trawlers and freighters.

But when the U.S. Navy
effectively blockaded

the Southern coastline,

the North Vietnamese
would be forced to move

almost all of their supplies overland,

through Laos and Cambodia,

neutral countries Hanoi considered

part of the greater battlefield.

Americans called it the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

The North Vietnamese called it Route 559,

after the men and women
of the 559th Army Corps,

who were turning it from a
braided web of footpaths

into 12,000 tangled miles
of jungle roadways

down which men and materiel streamed south.

When they had fought the French,

the Viet Minh had depended on
tens of thousands of porters,

then on legions of bicycles.

Now, to offset the growing
American presence,

the North Vietnamese used
more mechanized transport...

relays of six-wheeled Russian-built trucks

traveling under cover of darkness.

MACV reasoned that if the Ho Chi Minh Trail

could somehow be sufficiently damaged,

the enemy would be unable
to sustain itself.

Three million tons of explosives
would eventually be dropped

on the Laos portion of the trail alone...

a million more tons than
fell on Germany and Japan

during all of World War II.

Some key choke-points
were hit so many times

the workers gave them names...
"the Gate of Death,"

"Fried Flesh Hill" and
"the Gorge of Lost Souls."

To expose enemy traffic,

other aircraft dropped chemical defoliants,

including Agent Orange,

that destroyed thousands of acres of jungle

and turned the earth into what
one American pilot called

"bony, lunar dust."

McPEAK: We'd punch a hole
in the road and say,

"Ha ha, they'll never get around that one."

And the next day you'd come up,
and the hole wouldn't be there;

and there'd be dust on the trees
back, you know, 50 meters

in both directions, saying,
heavy traffic all night.

NARRATOR: As many as 230,000
teenagers, many of them volunteers,

worked to keep the roads
open and the traffic moving.

More than half of them were women.

Le Minh Khue, who had left
her home in the North

with a novel by Ernest
Hemingway in her backpack,

observed her 17th birthday on the trail.

NARRATOR: Thousands died on the trail
from starvation and accidents,

fevers and snakebite and sheer exhaustion,

as well as from the relentless bombing.

(Doug Wamble's "A Hard Rain's
A-Gonna Fall" playing)

HOWARD K. SMITH (on television): But
in this kind of war you never know.

You have to be constantly alert

because you can't tell
friends from enemies.

Relax for a moment and your
reward may be a grenade

or a hail of bullets.

CAROL CROCKER: I couldn't watch the news.

My parents would be sitting
in front of the television

and I would hide in the kitchen.

Of course you don't tell
anybody, but it was too much.

I really didn't want to know.

("Smokestack Lightnin'"
by Howlin' Wolf playing)

HOWLIN' WOLF: ♪ Oh-oh,
smokestack lightnin'.

NARRATOR: Mogie Crocker had
spent most of his boyhood

reading about war.

But nothing had prepared him
for what he would experience

in Quang Duc Province on
the Cambodian border.

He had deliberately fouled up his work

at battalion headquarters so badly

that he had finally been reassigned

to what he wanted most... a combat unit.

HOWLIN' WOLF: ♪ Whoa-oh, tell me, baby

♪ What's the matter with you?

♪ Why don't you hear me cryin'?

♪ Oooh

JEAN-MARIE CROCKER: Not hearing
in those days was so difficult.

There'd be at least eight to ten
days usually between letters.

So knowing he was in action,
you just didn't know what,

you know, might be going on.

NARRATOR: Mogie's battalion commander,

Lieutenant Colonel Henry Emerson,

known as "The Gunfighter,"

was courageous, implacable, relentless.

A few months before Mogie got there,

he had offered a case of whiskey
to the first of his men

to bring him the hacked-off
head of an enemy soldier.

They did.

For nine days in early May of 1966,

Mogie and his outfit battled
nothing but the terrain.

They struggled through a
labyrinth of elephant grass

and thorn bushes,

bamboo taller than three men

and triple-canopied jungle so thick

it sometimes took an hour to move 100 feet.

(thunder rumbles)

The monsoon had begun.

Sunlight rarely reached the forest floor.

Finger-long black leeches

caused wounds that quickly became infected.

When Colonel Emerson learned
that four companies

of North Vietnamese were
preparing an ambush,

he decided to ambush the ambushers.

On May 11, he ordered his men to attack,

backed by massive air
and artillery strikes.

Before the fighting ended,

some 2,000 shells had slammed
into the enemy positions.

Blood was everywhere, pooled on the ground,

smeared on leaves and grass and bamboo.

There were scores of corpses,

torn to pieces or blown into
the earth, hidden in thickets,

half-buried in scooped-out graves.

The earth-shaking concussions

had blown the eyeballs of some
of them from their heads.

In the midst of the fighting,

Mogie's squad was moving
along a narrow path

when two enemy machine
guns opened up on them.

(gunfire)

His closest friend was fatally wounded.

Mogie crouched in front of him,
radioed for suppressive fire,

and then, as both machine
guns continued shooting,

he carried his dying friend
off the battlefield.

For his courage,

he would be awarded the
Army Commendation Medal.

In his letters home, Mogie told his family

nothing of what he'd seen or done.

(David Cieri playing "Sound of Silence")

JEAN-MARIE CROCKER: One day when I was
at the post office mailing something,

I asked the clerk, "How
do they let you know

if your son is wounded?"

It was very hard for me
to form those words.

But I just felt I've got to know.

I just felt so suspended
in space, in anxiety.

And the man said, "Now, don't ask that.

Don't think about that."

I said, "Well, I have to know."

And he said, "Don't
worry, they'll tell you."

(Pete Seeger playing
"The Willing Conscript")

SEEGER: ♪ Oh sergeant, I'm a draftee

♪ And I've just arrived in camp ♪

♪ I've come to wear the uniform
and join the martial tramp ♪

♪ And I want to do my duty,
but one thing I do implore ♪

♪ You must give me lessons, sergeant ♪

♪ For I've never killed before. ♪

PHILIP CAPUTO: I didn't like
the war protesters whatever.

I kind of felt that they were
privileged, spoiled kids

who may have been protesting
because they didn't want to go.

So they leave it to some guy

that maybe got through
two years of high school

to go do it for 'em.

BILL ZIMMERMAN: The war by 1966

began to impact the middle class

because the draft calls had to be enlarged.

They couldn't get enough
people to volunteer

or draft people out of the working class.

They started drafting
people out of college.

And that's when the
antiwar movement shifted

from a moral movement to
a self-interest movement

driven by people who
didn't want to go to war

and their loved ones who
didn't want them to go to war.

SEEGER: ♪ And I know
that it won't matter ♪

♪ That I've never killed before. ♪

(school bell rings)

NARRATOR: Bill Zimmerman
was a graduate student

at the University of
Chicago in May of 1966.

The son of Eastern European refugees,

he'd worked for civil rights in Mississippi

and had been opposed to
American involvement in Vietnam

since 1963.

The draft was a consuming issue

for young men of Zimmerman's generation.

Since 1942, every male
citizen of the United States

had been required to register at age 18.

But of the nearly 27 million American men

who came of age during the Vietnam War,

more than half avoided military service

through exemptions and deferments.

Nearly 500,000 Americans applied

for conscientious objector status

on religious or moral grounds,

six times as many as in World War II.

In all, 170,000 were allowed
to perform alternative service

in hospitals, homeless
shelters, and schools.

Some were trained as medics
and sent to Vietnam.

At least two were killed;

both received the
Congressional Medal of Honor.

A million young men served in
the Reserves or National Guard

with the expectation they would
never be sent into combat.

Reservists and Guardsmen
were almost always white,

generally better educated,
better connected,

and better paid than draftees.

Interrupting their lives,
President Johnson felt,

would have increased opposition to the war.

"If you've got the dough," Gis
said, "you don't have to go."

("Backlash Blues" by Nina Simone playing)

The result was an Army heavily skewed

toward minorities and the underprivileged.

SIMONE: ♪ Mr. Backlash, Mr. Backlash

♪ Just who do you think I am?

♪ You raise my taxes, freeze my wages ♪

♪ And send my son to Vietnam.

NARRATOR: For a time, African Americans,

though they represented
only 12% of the population,

suffered a disproportionate
number of casualties.

Resentment began to grow.

STOKELY CARMICHAEL: We've got
to build so much strength

in building our community,

that if they come to get one person,

they going to have to mess with us all.

That's what we got to do!

That's what we go to do.

(applause)

We've got to build so much
strength inside our community,

so that when LBJ says, "Come
here, boy, to my war,"

we say, "Hell no, we ain't going."

(applause)

SIMONE: ♪ But the world is big.

MUHAMMAD ALI: I'm not going to help nobody

get something my Negroes don't have.

If I'm going to die, I'll die now,

right here fighting you,
if I'm going to die.

You my enemy, my enemy is the
white people, not Viet Congs,

or Chinese, or Japanese.

You my opposer when I want freedom.

You my opposer when I want justice.

You my opposer when I want equality.

And you want me to go somewhere and fight,

but you won't even stand
up for me here at home.

NARRATOR: At first, 10,000 draftees
were called up each month,

but in 1966, the growing demand
for fresh troops in Vietnam

raised that number to 30,000.

Now, thousands of college students

could no longer expect a deferment.

ZIMMERMAN: And if your rank
fell below a certain threshold,

you were yanked out of college.

And the worst that could happen
to you is you would be killed

in Vietnam.

So we protested at the
University of Chicago

that the university was
complicit with this war

by agreeing to supply those
rankings to the draft board.

We thought for the first time, you know,

we're really having an impact.

NARRATOR: But a majority of Americans,
old and young, supported the war.

The Young Americans for Freedom,

created by the conservative
writer William F. Buckley,

held counter-demonstrations on
campuses across the country.

CROWD: ♪ His truth is marching on.

DUONG VAN MAI ELLIOTT: I was brought up to
believe that the communists were people

who destroy the family, destroy religion,

and people who had no
allegiance to our country

but to international communism.

My mother would describe them
as (speaking Vietnamese),

which means that these are people

with the head of a water buffalo
and the face of a horse,

meaning that they were
subhumans, and they were brutal.

But on the other hand I thought
they also include people

like my sister Thang and
a lot of my cousins.

I couldn't quite reconcile the two images.

But of the two, I think the
other image was much stronger

because I was so scared of them.

I thought these people must be
really, really horrible people.

That was the frame of mind I had

when I started doing research
into the communist movement.

NARRATOR: Duong Van Mai was
the daughter of an official

in the South Vietnamese
government and was now married

to an American, David Elliott.

Back in 1964, she had gone to work

for the RAND Corporation in Saigon.

The think tank had been commissioned

by Robert McNamara to do a
study of enemy prisoners

to find out "Who are the Viet Cong?

And what makes them tick?"

DUONG VAN MAI ELLIOTT: I
remember my first interview.

I was by myself.

I was very young and I was going
to this pretty grim prison

to interview this high-ranking
cadre who had been captured.

I went in thinking I'm going
to meet this beast, you know,

this guy with the head of a water buffalo

and the face of a horse.

He walked in and he was
very surprised to see me.

(chuckles)

Just as surprised as I was to see him.

Here was a man who had devoted
all his life to fight

for what he called a just cause

to free his country of foreign domination,

to reunify the country
under just government.

So he really totally believed in it

to the point that he sacrificed
his whole life to this cause.

So I left, I was very... I
was very impressed with him.

NARRATOR: When the RAND
report was presented

to McNamara's top deputies at the Pentagon,

describing the Viet Cong
as a dedicated enemy

that "could only be
defeated at enormous cost,"

one senior official said,
"If what you say is true,

"we're fighting on the wrong side,

the side that's going to lose this war."

(Donovan's "Sunshine Superman" playing)

DONOVAN: ♪ Sunshine came softly
through my a-window today ♪

♪ Could've tripped out easy
a-but I've a-changed my ways. ♪

STUART HERRINGTON: The overall myth
of an American army running roughshod

by policy, by strategy, by
tactics to terrorize and murder

and victimize the innocent
population of South Vietnam,

that image is the...

it-it doesn't do justice
to the young men and women

who served over there.

It's certainly not an accurate depiction

of what our army was about.

NARRATOR: From the first, the
Johnson administration understood

that the war could not be won

without convincing poor farmers
living in the countryside

that the government in
Saigon, not the Viet Cong,

had their best interests at heart.

In addition to the military,

many American aid
organizations were at work

in Vietnamese villages.

They dug wells and built windmills,

started schools, introduced improved rice,

provided medical care,

and electrified much of the countryside.

Under pressure from Robert McNamara,

MACV struggled to find ways
to measure the progress

of pacification in South
Vietnam's 44 provinces,

220 districts and 13,000 hamlets,

and finally came up with the
Hamlet Evaluation System.

Soon some 220 U.S. district advisers

were required to produce some 90,000 pages

of data every month... a mountain
of information so daunting

no one could make sense of it.

PHILIP BRADY: Everything can be quantified.

So you can literally say, "How
pacified is this village?"

"It's 37.5% pacified."

Well, what does that mean?

An American would tell you,

"You know, we haven't had
an incident in this village

or this province," whatever.

"The incident rate's going down,
and therefore we're winning."

But we would point out that
certain troubled areas

in the provinces that we were working in,

we would say simply that it's not pacified

unless you want to consider it
pacified by the other side.

HERRINGTON: To the extent that
pacification was succeeding,

schools were being built,
wells were being cleaned.

And then one fine night

here comes 400 North Vietnamese
soldiers into the village,

executes the village chief,
kidnaps 12 of the young people

for, you know, service in the
revolutionary armed forces,

and the people look at
the government and say,

"You promised us you'd protect
us, but you didn't stay."

MIKE HEANEY: I was over there early.

I was with a really good unit,
who believed in Army traditions,

they believed in honor,

they believed even in
treating your enemy humanely

once he was a POW.

NARRATOR: Lieutenant Mike Heaney
from Basking Ridge, New Jersey,

was a platoon leader in
the 1st Cavalry Division.

He'd arrived late in 1965

and was assigned to a
densely populated section

of central Vietnam,

where he found himself surrounded

by North Vietnamese infiltrators

and villagers whose loyalties were unclear.

HEANEY: We never really figured out

how to determine who the enemy was.

Being normal, decent American boys,

you don't just put your rifle
up and take a shot at a guy

and try to kill him

unless you're pretty sure this is an enemy.

And if he wasn't armed,

or wasn't menacing you in any
way, we wouldn't shoot him.

We'd go through a village

in which there would be no
people we could identify

as enemy soldiers, and we'd
find a big cache of rice.

So the standing instructions
were blow that up, burn it,

destroy it, poison it, whatever.

We really didn't want to
do that because it...

You didn't have to be a rocket
scientist to look around

and see these people are depending on this.

This is their food.

We were told sometimes to
burn thatched dwellings.

And guys would unenthusiastically

try to light a roof.

And as soon as the flame burned out,

they weren't going to try again.

Our hearts really weren't
in trying to destroy

civilian food, civilian homes.

It gave us an uneasy feeling about,

"What is this war is about?"

(gunfire)

NARRATOR: Most of the fighting in Vietnam

was the kind Mike Heaney was about to see...

small-scale, close-up, and
initiated by the elusive enemy.

The military called it "contact."

"War is hell," grunts liked to
say, "but contact is a mother."

HEANEY: The job of an infantry platoon
usually is to try to scare up

enemy infantry and take it down.

Really, the tactic was
we were acting as bait.

And at some level we knew that.

You know, go walk in the
woods and draw fire.

NARRATOR: Six months into his tour,

Heaney undertook what
he and his men thought

would be an easy assignment:

climb a slope not far
from their base at An Khe

and drive a small enemy
mortar unit off a ridge line.

HEANEY: As soon as we started out,
we started to get some bad vibes.

We found some boot prints in the mud

at the edge of this landing zone,

and a nice trail, a well-used
trail going up the ridge.

I remember talking to one of
my squad leaders about this.

And we were both sitting there,
"Well, shit, this sucks."

And all of a sudden the very point man,

the first guy in the column, Sergeant Mays,

without saying anything just
put his M16 up to his shoulder

and fired off a round.

And he turned around and
he said, "VC on the trail.

VC on the trail."

Before I had a chance to
digest this, he went down,

shot right through the chest.

(bullet hitting) Boom!

And all of a sudden

what was a very well-laid ambush erupted.

And it was so loud and so unexpected

I was stunned for... for
a little bit, you know.

"What the fuck is going on?"

NARRATOR: Heaney's radio operator,
Private Terry Carpenter,

got the company commander on the line.

"We've run into something
bad," Heaney said.

At that moment, a bullet
hit Carpenter in the head.

HEANEY: I knew Terry was down.

I knew Sergeant Mays was down.

I had asked the first
machine gun crew to come up

and start laying down machine gun fire.

They got blown away pretty quickly.

They never really had a
chance to lay down much fire.

At that point there wasn't anybody left

in my forward unit.

Every one of them had been
taken down except me.

Every one.

(voice breaking): Every one had been killed

or mortally wounded at that point.

NARRATOR: Night fell.

What was left of Heaney's company braced

for the assault they assumed
would come at dawn.

I was lying there on the perimeter.

I was right next to a dead enemy soldier.

It was kind of my face and his feet

and I kept looking back at him,

because I couldn't see any wounds on him.

And, you know, the strange
things you think,

"This guy's going to kill me.

"He's faking it.

"He's waiting until the assault,

then he's going to jump up and kill me."

And I almost shot him again.

Just to make sure he was dead.

NARRATOR: Then the enemy
began to lob mortar shells

among Heaney's men.

HEANEY: I felt like
somebody had taken a bat

and hit me on my calf, my right
calf, as hard as he could.

I was so stunned by the shock of being hit,

and I just drew in a deep
breath of air in terrible pain.

I couldn't speak.

Right after the ambush happened,

and I knew I'd lost a bunch of guys,

I said a prayer to God saying, basically,

"If you need any more guys
from my platoon, take me.

Don't take any more of my men."

As soon as I said it, I
freaked myself out and said,

"Holy shit, can I take that prayer back?"

But it was too late.

I'd-I'd said it.

And as it turns out,

not one more man in my platoon
died after that prayer.

NARRATOR: American artillery
finally zeroed in on the enemy.

The survivors of Heaney's
company stumbled down the hill

to safety.

He was carried to a hospital.

HEANEY: I was lying on my bed sobbing.

And this nurse came over.

She bent over and said, "Lieutenant...

"You... the-the your men
are all over the place.

You've gotta stop crying."

And at that point my platoon sergeant,

huge black guy from Detroit
whom I loved dearly,

Sergeant Sam Hunt, he came over
and he sat down next to me

(voice breaking): and he took my hand

and he said to this nurse,

"Ma'am, this here lieutenant

don't have to stop doing anything."

(crowd shouting angrily)

JOHN LAURENCE: The students are angry now.

And the word is passed

to gather at Saigon's main
Buddhist pagoda after dark.

JOHN QUINN: After all these years,

the Vietnamese have learned
to live with crises and war.

But they haven't learned
yet to live as a nation.

JOHNSON: Now, Dean, what
are we going to do?

Are we moving to the point where
it would be difficult for us

to ask people to continue to die out there,

this kind of stuff going on
every two or three months?

DEAN RUSK: I think not
yet, sir, by any means.

I think that this is still
a minority problem.

But political talk is not going
to be able to get anywhere

if they don't maintain
the elements of order.

NARRATOR: On May 15, 1966,

the government of South
Vietnam, the country for which

so many Americans were risking their lives,

again seemed on the brink of collapse.

The ascendancy of Prime Minister
Ky had dealt a severe blow

to activist Buddhists,
who had been demanding

representative government and
a negotiated end to the war

since 1963.

When Ky suddenly fired a rival general,

a popular Buddhist commander,

demonstrators poured into the
streets of Hue and Danang.

They shut down the port

through which U.S.
supplies had been flowing.

Some South Vietnamese soldiers,
loyal to the dismissed general,

abandoned the struggle
against the communists

and headed for the city.

Angry crowds burned American jeeps.

Signs reading "Peace!"
and "Americans Go Home!"

appeared everywhere.

President Johnson was so concerned,

he asked his advisors to
ready a fallback position

if the Ky government fell.

If necessary, he said, the U.S.
should be prepared

to get out of Vietnam and perhaps

make a stand against communism
in Thailand instead.

Ky ordered South Vietnamese soldiers

to surround and subdue Danang,

where they exchanged fire
with their former comrades.

As Ky's forces stormed
Buddhist pagodas in Danang,

his warplanes strafed dissident troops

occupying the central market.

The rebellion was crushed.

Washington was relieved.

Ky seemed to be back in control.

But from his command post on
a hilltop outside the city,

an American Marine lieutenant
had watched in disbelief

as two battles unfolded simultaneously:

in the west, his fellow Marines
were fighting the Viet Cong;

in the east, the South Vietnamese army

seemed to be at war with itself.

(Simon and Garfunkel's "The
Sound of Silence" playing)

♪ Hello darkness, my old friend. ♪

MOGIE CROCKER (dramatized): May 16, 1966.

Dear Mom and Dad...

Our operation here on the Cambodian border

has been quite a success.

No doubt you will hear
about it on the news.

We keep getting more and
more operations thrown at us

so that nothing is very sure.

SIMON AND GARFUNKEL: ♪ ...that was
planted in my brain still remains. ♪

CROCKER: Whether I will go
out again soon I don't know,

but don't plan on steady mail.

Tell Randy I'm looking forward
to seeing his new dog.

I may take a 15-day leave to Tokyo

to keep from cracking up.

SIMON AND GARFUNKEL: ♪ 'Neath
the halo of a street lamp. ♪

JEAN-MARIE CROCKER: It
was a lovely spring day,

and I opened the letter that said that.

And I was just really devastated

because by that time Vietnam
was in total chaos.

There was a continuing changeover

of people in authority at the
government in South Vietnam.

And there were protests of the
Buddhist monks and others

that...

there were anti-American demonstrations.

I just thought, "Why? Why are we there?"

CAROL CROCKER: I think that
letter when my brother

showed a kind of despair

is probably the first time
he'd expressed that openly

to the whole family.

It echoed back to the day he'd said to me,

"I don't want to go back."

NARRATOR: To an old high school friend,

Mogie was even more forthcoming.

MOGIE CROCKER (dramatized): Dear Duff,

Since I last wrote, which
is several months,

a number of exciting but
terribly unpleasant events

have occurred, the worst of
which was being pinned down

by two Chinese light machine guns

firing 900 rounds per minute

and having my best friend
killed more or less beside me.

Someday I may tell you the whole story

if my nerves aren't
completely gone by then.

Actually the latter is
just wishful thinking,

in false hope they will
take me off the line.

I was fantastically religious for a while,

sending up various and sundry
prayers mainly concerned

with trying to stay alive,

but I am once again an atheist
until the shooting starts.

(gunfire)

(drums playing up-tempo march cadence)

HARRISON: I really believed

that we had to stop the
communist expansion.

I also believed that we were
on the side of the angels.

Just as France had provided us with support

during our revolution, we were
providing the South Vietnamese

with support during their revolution.

NARRATOR: Matthew Harrison
was among the 300 graduates

of the class of 1966 who
volunteered to go to Vietnam.

MAN: Rangers!

MEN: Rangers!

MAN: All the way! MEN: All the way!

NARRATOR: But first, he went
to Florida to become a Ranger

and endured nine weeks of
the most demanding training

the Army had to offer.

MAN: Airborne daddy gonna
take a little trip!

MEN: Airborne daddy gonna
take a little trip!

NARRATOR: The man in charge was
Major Charles A. Beckwith...

Chargin' Charlie...

hero of the siege of
Plei Me the year before.

"If a man is bloody stupid," he
told each group of newcomers,

"his mother will receive a
telegram and it will say,

"'Your son is dead because he's stupid.'

"Let's hope your telegram only
reads, 'Your son is dead.'

"With the training we're
going to give you here,

"maybe your mother won't
receive any telegram at all.

So pay attention."

To make it through,

Harrison and his fellow
trainees had to survive

days without sleep; were
deprived of food and water,

forced to march up mountains
until their feet bled

and patrol through swamps
that harbored copperheads

and cottonmouths;

had to learn how to detect booby traps

and outmaneuver veterans
masquerading as Viet Cong.

"Expect the unexpected,"
Beckwith told his trainees

again and again.

"Life is unfair."

Once he'd become a Ranger,
Harrison was eager

to get to Vietnam and put into action

the survival and leadership
skills he'd been absorbing

for five years.

HARRISON: I remember
discussing with my classmates

how horrible it would
be to serve in the Army

if everybody just a year ahead
of us had served in combat

and we didn't have the
opportunity to do that.

I was afraid we were going
to win the war too quickly

and I wouldn't have a
chance to experience it.

("L'Assassinat De Carala"
by Miles Davis playing)

NARRATOR: June 3, 1966, was
Mogie Crocker's 19th birthday.

His company was involved
in yet another campaign,

aimed at finding and killing
North Vietnamese troops

filtering into the Central
Highlands from Laos.

As night fell, Mogie and
his squad were ordered

to move up toward the crest of a hill

overlooking a besieged ARVN outpost

so that artillery could be brought up

and positioned to shell
the enemy in the morning.

They moved slowly, warily up the slope.

Mogie was the point man.

Out of the darkness, a
machine gun opened up.

(gunfire)

Denton Crocker, Jr. never made
it to the top of the hill.

("One Too Many Mornings"
by Bob Dylan playing)

DYLAN: ♪ Down the street
the dogs are barkin' ♪

♪ And the day is a-gettin' dark. ♪

JEAN-MARIE CROCKER: It was just a
lovely day to be out in our garden.

Candy, our little girl,
went to a birthday party.

And the other children were
just around the house, I guess.

But shortly after lunchtime,
I stepped out on the porch.

I saw two men in uniform
coming to the house.

And I knew something terrible had happened.

And I ran down the steps.

And I just grabbed hold
of one of them and said,

"Don't tell me. Don't say it.

Not my beautiful boy."

And he just said, "Yes."

DYLAN: ♪ From the
crossroads of my doorstep ♪

♪ My eyes start to fade.

CAROL CROCKER: I was sitting on
the couch in the living room.

I suddenly heard my mother
screaming for my father.

Like in a movie, here came
the priest up the stairs

with a soldier, and she's going, "Oh no."

And she's calling my dad.

My reaction was to leap up off the couch,

race out the back door

and I grabbed my little brother's hand

and I just started walking.

I said, "You have to come with me."

I said, "I have something to show you."

I have no idea where I was going.

I just said to myself, "No.

This isn't going to happen."

And something made me turn around

and I walked up to the back
of the house from the alley.

And my dad was standing there.

And I fell into his arms and I said,

"Don't let it be true, Dad.

Is it true?"

And he said, "Yes."

I somehow knew that things
had changed forever.

That my mom as my mom and my dad as my dad,

it was never going to be
quite the same again.

I just, I remember sitting on the couch

and I put my arms around them and I said,

"We'll love each other
and we'll be all right."

But I don't know how far it carried.

You know?

We all tried.

DYLAN: ♪ We're both just
one too many mornings ♪

♪ And a thousand miles behind.

JEAN-MARIE CROCKER: Carol
said to me one day

very shortly after Denton was killed,

probably that very day, "How
can you believe in God?"

And I said, "Because we had Mogie."

And I think that his life was a real gift.

It was a privilege to have him.

A friend wrote to me,

"Our children are really
only on loan to us,"

which I guess is true.

NARRATOR: Ten days later, an Army
captain escorted Mogie's body

to Dick Stone's funeral home.

The family priest had suggested

that Mogie be buried in Saratoga Springs

so that his parents could
easily visit his grave.

But they chose Arlington
National Cemetery instead.

"A corner of my heart knew,"
his mother remembered,

"that if he were buried near us,

I would want to claw the ground
to retrieve the warmth of him."

(applause)

LYNDON JOHNSON: I hear my friends say,

"I am troubled," and "I am confused,"

and "I am frustrated,"

and all of us can understand those people.

Sometimes I almost develop
a stomach ulcer myself,

just listening to them.

And we all wish the war would end.

We all wish the troops would come home.

There is no human being in all this world

who wishes these things to happen,

for peace to come to the world,

more than your president
of the United States.

("The Beginning of the End"
by Nine Inch Nails playing)

NARRATOR: The military
claimed to have killed

some 57,000 enemy soldiers in
the first six months of 1966.

But privately the administration worried

that General Westmoreland's
"crossover point"...

the moment when more enemy
soldiers had been killed

than could be replaced... seemed no nearer.

From the first, the Joint
Chiefs had urged the president

to be more aggressive...

to permit troops to pursue the
enemy into Laos and Cambodia

and to expand the target list
for bombing in North Vietnam.

Johnson still would not
allow borders to be crossed

by regular ground troops
for fear of bringing China

or even the Soviet Union into the war.

And he was wary of heavier bombing,

fearful of hitting more civilians.

But despite his concern,

the president now agreed to
intensify the bombing campaign

called Operation Rolling Thunder.

He approved attacks on oil facilities

all over North Vietnam,

including some sites adjacent to the cities

of Haiphong and Hanoi.

His commanders assured him

that this would be a
mortal blow to the enemy,

sure to force the North Vietnamese

to the bargaining table.

Tens of thousands of sorties were flown.

Many bombs hit their intended targets.

But many missed

and fell on residential
neighborhoods instead,

just as the president had feared.

JOHNSON: Things are going reasonably
well in the South, aren't they?

McNAMARA: Yes, I think so.

Because we think we're
taking a heavy toll of them,

but it just scares me to
see what we're doing there

with God knows how many
airplanes and helicopters

and firepower and going after a
bunch of half-starved beggars.

This is what's going on in the South.

And the great danger is that,

that they can keep that
up almost indefinitely.

The only thing that'll prevent it, Mr.
President,

is their morale breaking.

There's no question but what
the troops in the South,

the VC and North Vietnamese,

they know that we're bombing in the North.

And we just have a free rein.

And when they see they're getting killed

in such high rates in the South,

and they see that the supplies
are less likely to come down

from the North, I think it
will just hurt their morale

a little bit more.

And to me that's the only way to win

because we're not killing enough of them

to make it impossible for the
North to continue to fight.

But we are killing enough
to destroy the morale

of those people down there

if they think this is going
to have to go on forever.

JOHNSON: All right.

Go ahead, Bob.

McPEAK: People talk about collateral
damage, but it means something.

You don't want to do collateral damage.

You want to do the damage you want to do.

That's the winning way to do this.

(distant, echoing shouting)

EVERETT ALVAREZ: Even though
I was in a cell by myself

and others were in by
themselves, we weren't alone.

We were together in this old French prison

halfway around the world
from the United States.

Gradually I began to realize
this could go on a long time.

A long time to me was
like maybe a year or two.

I never dreamed it would
be eight-and-a-half years.

NARRATOR: By the summer of 1966,
Lieutenant Everett Alvarez,

the first American pilot
to have been shot down

over North Vietnam, had been a
captive for nearly two years

and had been joined in and around Hanoi

by more than 100 other downed airmen.

Even though the North
Vietnamese considered them all

"aggressors," "criminals,"
and "air pirates"

rather than prisoners of war
deserving of humane treatment,

Alvarez and the others had
been treated relatively well

at first.

But that hadn't lasted long.

The men were soon forbidden to
communicate with one another,

forced to bow to their jailers,

and told that their country
had forgotten them.

They were subjected to isolation, beatings,

and hour upon hour of torture,

all aimed at forcing them
to admit their guilt

and record statements denouncing the war.

(door slams)

ALVAREZ: When that cell door
would open, when they would say,

"You, your turn," you know, the
bottom just fell out of you,

and you knew that you may not come back.

The manacles, the ropes, the
beatings, they broke bones.

They... they did everything.

My arms turned black

from the cuffs that cut
off all circulation.

And they didn't let me die.

They just kept the pain.

That's when I realized that
I was not a superhuman.

The first time I broke and gave
them something, I felt so low.

I felt so little.

NARRATOR: Some of the men who
were forced to record statements

did their best to make their
true feelings known back home.

Commander Jeremiah Denton
blinked his eyes to spell out

"torture" in Morse code.

On July 6, just one week
after American bombs

had first fallen on Hanoi and Haiphong,

jailers rounded up Alvarez
and 51 other prisoners,

and, while cameras rolled,

marched them through downtown Hanoi,

past the angry citizens of the city.

ALVAREZ: I could hear the
crowd being whipped up.

And as I passed this one
fellow with the megaphone,

he looked at me and he yelled to the crowd.

"Alvarez, Alvarez, son of
a bitch, son of a bitch!"

People started pressing
in, throwing things...

bottles, shoes.

But the guards by this time
were having a hard time

keeping the people away.

NARRATOR: The North
Vietnamese had hoped to rally

international support for trying
the prisoners as war criminals.

It backfired.

People everywhere, even many
of those who opposed the war,

sympathized with the
stumbling, helpless men.

Plans for public trials were canceled.

The bombing continued, and more
American planes were shot down.

The North Vietnamese took pride
in capturing American airmen.

Even children were
expected to do their part.

(call and response with
teacher and children)

TEACHER: Hands up! Hand up!

Hands up!

Hands up!

Hands up!

McPEAK: The bombing
around Hanoi and Haiphong

that resulted in so many
of our people being POWs

for a long period of time

was fought out of the White House basement,

with the president himself picking targets,

and deciding that we're
going to attack now,

and then we're going to pause for awhile.

Airpower was being misused, big time.

NARRATOR: Operation Rolling
Thunder did destroy

most of North Vietnam's
oil storage facilities.

But the North Vietnamese shifted

most of their oil to underground tanks,

and more arrived every day from
China and the Soviet Union.

The bombing was stepped up anyway.

Throughout the North,

enough crude air shelters were fashioned

from concrete pipe buried
five feet beneath the ground

to accommodate some 18 million people...

virtually the entire population.

(workers singing in Vietnamese)

Over a million people were said
to be working around the clock

to undo what American bombs had done.

When key bridges were destroyed,

they fashioned pontoon bridges overnight

to keep traffic moving.

Crews waited along the roads
with heaps of gravel and stone

and stacks of wood to fill bomb craters.

They worked under the slogan
"The enemy destroys, we repair.

The enemy destroys, we repair again."

(workers continue singing)

WILLBANKS: Rolling Thunder
was the dumbest campaign

ever devised by a human being.

The normal human thing to do

is to think that your
enemy thinks like you.

There's the old story, apocryphal,

that when McNamara wants to know

what Ho Chi Minh is thinking,
he interviews himself.

What the problem then becomes is

that you keep trying to send
messages that are rational

based upon your judgment of rationality,

but have nothing to do with
the definition of rationality

on the other side.

So what's irrational to us

is totally rational to the other side

if you've decided that you are
going to reunify the Vietnams

no matter what it takes, no
matter how many casualties.

NARRATOR: Hanoi did all it
could to publicize the damage

American bombs were doing to civilians.

Most Americans dismissed the
reports as communist propaganda.

But when Harrison Salisbury
of theNew York Times

traveled to North Vietnam and
reported on Christmas Day, 1966,

what he had seen,

public doubts about the
morality of the war grew.

GELB: A lot of the military we talked to

shared our concerns about how
the war was being fought,

and whether or not it could be won.

But when it came to an official position,

it was what we know well,

namely, "We can win this war
and we're doing it right.

We just need more... more
troops, more bombing."

WILSON: I recall on one instance
after I had returned from Vietnam,

I went by to see McNamara.

He was saying, "Well, how is
our strategic bombing program

affecting the course of the war?"

I said, "It is not gaining us anything.

Indeed, it is counterproductive."

He said, "What do you mean?"

"Mr. Secretary, the sledgehammer
approach is not working.

"These people know that at some point

"we're going to get tired of killing them.

And they think they can outlast us."

And he said, "Why don't
people tell me these things?"

I said, "Mr. Secretary, you don't ask."

("I Am a Rock" by Simon
and Garfunkel playing)

CRAIG McNAMARA: I think
every father and son

struggles in the course
of their lives together.

SIMON AND GARFUNKEL: ♪ In
a deep and dark December

CRAIG McNAMARA: And I don't think
my dad and I were exempt from that.

The interesting thing for me is

the space to talk about
Vietnam was never created.

And that was clearly a
decision on my father's part.

SIMON AND GARFUNKEL: ♪ I am a rock.

NARRATOR: Craig McNamara, the son
of the Secretary of Defense,

was a student at St. Paul's School

in Concord, New Hampshire,

where a teach-in about
the war was to be held.

I remember calling my father
from a phone booth and saying,

"Dad, we're going to have this experience

"and if there's any support materials

that you think I should
present, please let me know."

The support materials didn't come.

I think my father really
wanted lovingly to protect me

from the Vietnam experience
to the best of his ability.

Well, we know you can't do that.

Things bleed through and it
just doesn't happen that way.

Probably, he realized at that time

that the support materials...
weren't there.

ROBERT McNAMARA: Today I can
tell you that military progress

in the past 12 months has
exceeded our expectations.

The Viet Cong have been unable to mount

the offensive that they had planned

designed to cut the country
in half at its narrow waist.

The military pressure,

which forces have brought against them,

have prevented them from
mounting that offensive

and have inflicted very
heavy casualties on them.

No matter how you measure it,

we're better off than we thought
we would be at this time.

("Ain't Too Proud To Beg"
by the Temptations playing)

♪ I know you want to leave me... ♪

EHRHART: Certainly when
I arrived, I'm thinking

I'm involved in a winning enterprise.

I mean, America doesn't lose.

We never lose.

I had sort of not really known
much about the War of 1812,

which was... pretty much of a draw,

or the Civil War in which
half of America lost,

and the Korean War where
we won the first half

and lost the second half.

But I'd been taught America never loses.

NARRATOR: The Marines had been
the first American combat troops

to fight in Vietnam.

And they were expected to fight longer

than their Army counterparts...
13 months instead of 12.

Marine privates Bill Ehrhart,

John Musgrave, and Roger
Harris all arrived at Danang

in early 1967.

MUSGRAVE: The first thing that assaulted
my nose was the foreign smells.

And watching people relieve themselves

by the side of the road

and seeing animals I'd never seen before...

the big water buffaloes.

You know, it was like being on Mars,

because it was totally foreign to me.

But I honestly, in my dumb
Missouri kid kind of way,

I thought, "Look at all those foreigners."

And it didn't dawn on me for a little while

that the only foreigner
in that area was me.

HARRIS: The feeling was that we
were going over to rescue folks.

And that the communists were
taking over this country

and they needed help.

But then when we got there
we realized that...

that it wasn't exactly like that, you know.

Many of the Vietnamese, they
would spit at our trucks

and they'd tell us to go back to America.

And then, you know, we began
questioning ourselves,

you know, why are we here?

These people don't want us here.

NARRATOR: Roger Harris was assigned
to G Company, 2nd Battalion,

9th Regiment of the 3rd
Marine Division at Phu Bai,

outside of Hue.

John Musgrave was first stationed

with the 1st Marine Division
at the Danang Airbase.

And Bill Ehrhart joined the 1st Regiment

of the 1st Marine Division
near the city of Hoi An.

Private Ehrhart was given a desk job,

collating snippets of information

for the daily intelligence summary.

Three days after he got to Hoi An,

a group of civilian detainees
was brought into the compound.

EHRHART: These two amtracs
come in the back gate.

The Marines up top start pushing them off.

Their hands are tied, their feet are tied,

they have no way to break their fall.

You literally can hear bones
snapping, shoulders dislocate.

And I grab Corporal Sal,

and he says in the absolute
flattest, hollowest voice

I've ever heard,

"Ehrhart, you better keep your
mouth shut and your eyes open

"till you understand what's
going on around here.

"Those trackers, they're
hitting mines out there

"on the sand flats every day.

"They're getting killed;
they're getting maimed.

"And these people know
where those mines are.

"You treat these people nice
in front of the trackers

"and those trackers

"will rearrange your head and ass for you

and walk away laughing."

Well, at that point,
three days into Vietnam,

I'm thinking, "Whoa.

What the hell is going on here?"

I think it is destroying the good name

and the leadership of the United States.

Furthermore, I believe that the
war is militarily unwinnable.

I believe that thousands
of American young men

are being asked to die to
save Lyndon Johnson's face.

He must know by now that
this war is unwinnable,

but he does not know how to give up.

Therefore, I believe that young
men are not only justified

but to be thanked if they point this out

by refusing to take part in such
an outrageous war any longer.

("Footprints" by Wayne Shorter playing)

NARRATOR: Dr. Benjamin Spock was
the best-loved pediatrician

of his time;

millions of American parents
had consulted his bestseller,

Baby and Child Care.

In early 1967, he wrote
the preface to an article

in the leftist magazine Ramparts

on the impact of American napalm
on South Vietnamese children.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was
among those who had read it.

He had been agonizing
about the war for months.

But he had been reluctant to break openly

with Lyndon Johnson, who had
done so much for civil rights.

Now he could no longer stay silent.

MARTIN LUTHER KING: I come to this
magnificent house of worship tonight

because my conscience
leaves me no other choice.

A time comes when silence is betrayal.

That time has come for us
in relation to Vietnam.

("Talking World War III
Blues" by Bob Dylan playing)

NARRATOR: Eleven days later,
King joined Dr. Spock

and perhaps half a million other protestors

at a massive demonstration in Central Park

organized by a new coalition,

the National Mobilization
to End the War in Vietnam.

♪ Some time ago a crazy
dream came to me ♪

♪ I dreamt I was walkin'
into World War III. ♪

ZIMMERMAN: That was the biggest
crowd any of us had ever been in

in our lives.

And when the front of the march
got down to the United Nations,

the back of the march had
not yet left Central Park.

That's how many people we were.

Not all of the people on
that march were students.

And as a result, we all
felt we have a chance now.

You know, there's a path that
we could see to ending the war.

MARTIN LUTHER KING: Stop the bombing.

Let us save our national honor.

Stop the bombing, and stop the war.

Let us save American lives
and Vietnamese lives.

Let us take a single instantaneous step

to the peace table.

Stop the bombing.

NARRATOR: The antiwar movement was growing

in numbers and militancy.

"We are no longer interested
in merely protesting the war,"

one organizer said, "we
are out to stop it."

Meanwhile, some in the Johnson
administration became convinced

the antiwar movement was
a communist conspiracy

directed by Moscow.

The FBI and the CIA, which
was barred by statute

from operating within the United States,

began infiltrating the movement,
wiretapping its leaders,

even inciting violence in order
to undercut their appeal.

ZIMMERMAN: At that time,
people who supported the war

were fond of saying "My
country right or wrong";

"America, love it or leave it."

Or "Better dead than Red."

Those sentiments seemed insane to us.

We don't want to live in a country

that we're going to support
whether it's right or wrong.

We want to live in a country

that acts rightly and doesn't act wrongly.

And if our country isn't doing
that, it needs to be corrected.

So we had a very different
idea of patriotism.

So we began an era in which
two groups of Americans,

both thinking that they
were acting patriotically,

went to war with each other.

Over 200,000 communist sympathizers

in that park this morning
tried to burn this flag,

but they didn't succeed.

RICHARD NIXON: I would put it this way...

there's a monstrous myth abroad,

a myth which Hanoi creates
and which it believes,

and that is that the United
States is so divided

that if they just hang on that
they will win in Washington,

and in the United States the
victory that our fighting men

are denying them in field.

WESTMORELAND: As I have said before,

in evaluating the enemy
strategy it is evident to me

that he believes our Achilles'
heel is our resolve.

NARRATOR: Two weeks after
the Manhattan protest,

General Westmoreland addressed
a joint session of Congress,

the first general ever to be
called home from a battlefield

by his president to do so.

Backed at home by resolve,
confidence, patience,

determination, and continued support,

we will prevail in Vietnam
over the communist aggressor.

(applause)

NARRATOR: Behind the scenes,

neither Westmoreland nor the
administration he served

was confident the United
States would prevail.

Westmoreland reported to the president

that according to the latest statistics,

the crossover point had finally
been reached that spring,

except in the military sector
just south of the DMZ.

But, he warned, the United
States was doing little better

than holding its own.

If he were given 200,000 additional troops

and allowed to go into Laos and Cambodia,

he could cut off the Ho Chi Minh Trail

and end the war in two years.

But "When we add divisions," Johnson asked,

"can't the enemy add divisions?

Where does it all end?"

Westmoreland had no answer.

Instead, he and the Joint
Chiefs asked the president

to permit them to bomb sites
just below the Chinese border,

and to mine the harbors of North Vietnam

to keep Hanoi's Soviet ally
from resupplying her by sea.

Meanwhile, Robert McNamara,
the chief architect

of American strategy in Vietnam,

had grown less and less confident

in its ultimate success

and in the repeated calls for
more men and more bombing

made by the military he oversaw.

GELB: Robert McNamara was the
giant of Washington, D.C.

He was the embodiment of
intellect and self-confidence.

If there was a problem,
there had to be an answer.

And that was his fatal flaw.

The startling thing is

that this man who never seemed
to doubt anything he said,

actually began to doubt
profoundly what he was doing

in Vietnam.

But we didn't know about it.

NARRATOR: In a private
memorandum to the president,

McNamara told Johnson that

"the picture of the world's
greatest superpower

"killing or seriously injuring
1,000 non-combatants a week,

"while trying to pound a tiny,
backward nation into submission

"on an issue whose merits
are hotly disputed

is not a pretty one."

He urged the president to limit
troop levels, not raise them,

and to declare an unconditional
end to all bombing

north of the 20th parallel.

"The war in Vietnam is acquiring
a momentum of its own

that must be stopped," McNamara wrote.

"Dramatic increases in U.S.
troop deployments

"and attacks on the North are not necessary

"and are not the answer.

"The enemy can absorb them or counter them,

"bogging us down further

and risking even more serious
escalation of the war."

In the end, Johnson tried
to find a middle ground.

He expanded the list of bombing targets,

but he refused to mine the harbors

and he agreed to send Westmoreland

only 47,000 more troops,

which would bring the total of U.S.
forces in the country

to more than half a million men.

On June 17, 1967, Robert
McNamara placed a call

to his military assistant,
Lieutenant Colonel Robert Gard.

GARD: My phone rang and
the little light showed

it was the secretary on the line.

And I picked it up and said, "Yes, Mr.
Secretary?"

And Mr. McNamara said,

"Bob, I want a thorough study
done of the background

of our involvement in Vietnam,"
and hung up the phone.

NARRATOR: Leslie Gelb, a 30-year-old member

of the International
Security Affairs staff,

was named to oversee the
top-secret analysis

of how key decisions had been
made, going all the way back

to the Truman administration.

GELB: McNamara gave us
full access to his closet,

in his office, which was like a room.

But all his private papers were there.

And I was picking out the memos,

a lot of which I helped to write.

But there were others in
there that I had never seen.

In these memos you began to see
Robert McNamara communicating

with the president, alone, his doubts.

It stunned me.

HARRISON: I had thought that we were
mostly fighting a guerrilla war.

I didn't know that we were going
to be fighting guys like us,

that I had a doppelganger out there

who was leading a rifle platoon,
who knew what he was doing,

who was as fully prepared to
kill me as I was to kill him.

(band playing a march)

NARRATOR: That June, First
Lieutenant Matthew Harrison

finally got his orders to
join the 173rd Airborne,

an elite unit ready to rush
anywhere they were needed.

They called themselves General
Westmoreland's Fire Brigade.

Harrison's arrival at Bien
Hoa was a reunion of sorts.

He and seven others from the
West Point class of 1966

all found themselves serving
in the 2nd Battalion,

including two especially close friends:

Donald Judd and Richard Hood.

HARRISON: As young
lieutenants, as 22-year-olds,

we really were idealists and
we really were Boy Scouts.

I really felt as though I
was uniquely qualified

to lead American soldiers

and that there was nothing more important

than what I was going to be doing.

But when I joined the 173rd,

I think the first day I was
there some guy showed me

what looked like a bunch of
apricots on a leather thong.

Turns out they were ears,
dried, desiccated.

I understood theoretically
what it meant to be in a war.

But, of course, no one
can really understand it

until they've done it.

("Wild Child" by the Ventures playing)

NARRATOR: Harrison was a platoon
leader in Charlie Company.

His West Point classmates
served with Alpha Company.

Within a few days,

they were helicoptered into the
heart of the Central Highlands

near Dak To, where North
Vietnamese regulars

were said to be threatening
a Special Forces camp.

They were all airlifted into landing zones

hacked out of the steep,
jungle-blanketed slope

of a mountain the Americans
called Hill 1338

for its height in meters, with
orders to hunt down the enemy.

They walked for two days,

following a well-worn enemy trail,

constantly on the lookout for
booby traps or ambushes.

On the evening of June 21,

Harrison's Charlie Company
settled in for the night

while his friends in Alpha
Company set up camp

a little less than two miles to the south,

along the same slippery jungle path.

No one knew that an entire
North Vietnamese battalion...

perhaps 500 men...

was encamped on the other
side of a ridgeline,

just a few hundred yards away.

At 6:58 the next morning,

a patrol from Alpha Company
stumbled into a squad

of North Vietnamese.

The Americans withdrew

and struggled to establish a perimeter.

Within minutes, they were under attack

from relentless AK-47 automatic fire.

The enemy mounted attack after attack,

drawing closer each time.

Alpha Company radioed for
air and artillery support,

but the triple-canopy jungle
blocked the spotter's view.

NARRATOR: At around noon, Harrison's
unit was ordered to rescue

the trapped men of Alpha Company.

HARRISON: It was mountainous terrain.

We were carrying two bodies

along with a bunch of engineer equipment.

And we could not push down
the couple of hundred meters

to where the most of the
fighting had taken place.

(explosion)

NARRATOR: The going was steep and slippery.

North Vietnamese troops,

now entrenched along
both sides of the trail,

prevented Matt Harrison and his
men from reaching Alpha Company.

At dusk, the shooting died down,

and they dug in at the top of a ridge

and did their best to sleep.

HARRISON: So we lay there
on the night of June 22

and we could hear the screams
of the wounded down the hill

as the North Vietnamese
went around and shot them.

NARRATOR: By dawn, the
enemy had melted away.

Harrison and his platoon
crept down the hillside

and reached what was left of Alpha Company.

Out of 137 men, 76 lay dead along the path.

Forty-three had been shot
in the head at close range.

Ears had been cut from
some; eyes gouged out;

ring fingers missing.

Twenty-three more men were wounded.

Harrison found his classmates,
Donald Judd and Richard Hood,

among the dead.

HARRISON: This was my introduction to war.

This was my welcome to Vietnam.

We spent the rest of the
day putting those bodies

into body bags and getting
them out of there.

Getting-getting killed is forever.

And, um, that was something
that I had known theoretically

but I now understood particularly

when I put my two classmates in body bags,

guys that I had gone to
school with for four years

and were good friends and
who just the week before

we had been drinking beer
and ribbing each other

and these guys were now gone.

NARRATOR: Charlie Company found

just nine or ten North Vietnamese bodies.

Harrison and his men were ordered to search

the nearby hillsides for more enemy dead,

who commanders assumed had
been killed by U.S. artillery.

MACV needed its body count.

HARRISON: We never located
them and I believe today

that we didn't locate them
because they weren't there.

I think we just took a
terrible loss on June 22.

To admit that a rifle company
in the 173rd had been wiped out

by the North Vietnamese was not something

our leaders were prepared to do.

So we had to sell ourselves
and we had to sell the public

on the idea that we had
inflicted casualties

on the North Vietnamese as severe

as they had inflicted on us.

NARRATOR: An officer told a reporter
that the shattered rifle company

had killed 475 enemy soldiers.

When another officer suggested
to General Westmoreland

that the figure seemed too
high to be believable,

he replied, "Too late.

It's already gone out."

HARRISON: Within a few
days after the battle,

Westmoreland came up to speak

to what we thought of
ourselves as his brigade.

And he hopped up on a hood of
a jeep in very crisp fatigues

looking every inch the battle commander

and gave us a pep talk and
told us how proud he was

and what a magnificent job we had done.

But by then I had more
than just a suspicion

that this was a fairy tale,
that Westmoreland was wrong

and I didn't know whether
he knew he was wrong

or whether he believed
what he was being told

and wanted to believe.

But this was the first time
that I had to come to grips

with the fact that the leadership

was either out of touch or was lying.

("One Too Many Mornings"
by Bob Dylan playing)

DYLAN: ♪ Down the street
the dogs are barkin' ♪

♪ And the day is a-gettin' dark. ♪

CAROL CROCKER: I remember a very
difficult conversation I had

with a girl who had really
been a best friend of mine.

And the talk turned to Vietnam.

And I remember her looking
at me and saying,

"My father says that you
can't listen to people

"who've lost someone in the war

"because they're going to support it

to justify that person's death."

I felt like she'd hit me in the stomach.

But I knew at that moment there
were some factions developing

and this wasn't going to
be an easy path to walk;

that people were going to have opinions

about my brother's death

that in some ways had nothing
to do with his death for me.

("The Sound of Silence" by
Simon and Garfunkel playing)

♪ Hello darkness, my old friend ♪

♪ I've come to talk with you again ♪

♪ Because a vision softly creeping ♪

♪ Left its seeds while I was sleeping ♪

♪ And the vision that was
planted in my brain ♪

♪ Still remains

♪ Within the sound of silence

♪ In restless dreams I walked alone ♪

♪ Narrow streets of cobblestone ♪

♪ 'Neath the halo of a street lamp ♪

♪ I turned my collar
to the cold and damp ♪

♪ When my eyes were stabbed by
the flash of a neon light ♪

♪ That split the night

♪ And touched the sound of silence ♪

♪ And in the naked light I saw

♪ Ten thousand people, maybe more ♪

♪ People talking without speaking ♪

♪ People hearing without listening ♪

♪ People writing songs
that voices never share ♪

♪ And no one dared

♪ Disturb the sound of silence

♪ And the people bowed and prayed ♪

♪ To the neon god they made

♪ And the sign flashed
out its warning ♪

♪ In the words that it was forming ♪

♪ And the signs said

♪ The words of the prophets are
written on the subway walls ♪

♪ And tenement halls

♪ And whisper'd in the
sounds of silence. ♪