- 7/4/2025
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00:00:00So just adapt. You go over there with one mindset, you know, and then you adapt. You
00:00:23adapt to the atrocities of war. You adapt to killing, dying, you know. After a while,
00:00:34it doesn't bother you. Unless you say it doesn't bother you as much. When I first arrived in
00:00:42Vietnam, there were some interesting things that happened and I questioned some of the
00:00:50Marines. I was made to realize that this is war and this is what we do. And I stuck in
00:00:58my head. This is war. This is what we do. And after a while, you embrace that. This is war.
00:01:10This evening, I came here to speak to you about Vietnam. There is progress in the war itself,
00:01:18rather dramatic progress considering the situation that actually prevailed when we sent our troops
00:01:25there in 1965. The grip of the Viet Cong on the people is being broken. If you can just
00:01:33get your mind together, then come on across to me. In the summer of 1967, the men overseeing the war
00:01:42in Vietnam remained outwardly optimistic, whatever private doubts they may have held.
00:01:56In the summer of 1967, the men overseeing the war in Vietnam remained outwardly optimistic,
00:02:04whatever private doubts they may have held.
00:02:07The American military command in Vietnam claimed to have killed 200,000 enemy troops and had told the
00:02:29president that the all-important crossover point, the moment when U.S. and ARVN forces were killing
00:02:36more Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops than the enemy could replace, appeared to have been reached
00:02:42in almost all of South Vietnam. But the United States had suffered nearly 75,000 casualties.
00:02:51By July 4th, 14,624 Americans had died. And off the record, many officers were much less sanguine than their commanders.
00:03:04From Saigon, R.W. Apple of the New York Times summarized their views.
00:03:11Victory is not close at hand, he wrote. In fact, it may be beyond reach.
00:03:17It was true that the enemy rarely won a battle in the traditional military sense that they drove the Americans from the field.
00:03:35But it was also true that no American victory seemed to matter.
00:03:42Battered enemy units were quickly reinforced and rearmed.
00:03:48Pacification, winning the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese people, was not working.
00:03:54Saigon still controlled only a fraction of a country roughly the size of Florida.
00:04:00And its government remained unpopular and riddled with corruption.
00:04:06President Johnson had been forced to raise taxes to meet the war's ever-climbing cost.
00:04:13His ambitious social program, his war on poverty, was in retreat.
00:04:25That summer, racial unrest would grip American cities.
00:04:32The president would have to send the army into Detroit to end five days of rioting
00:04:43that left 43 dead and hundreds of buildings razed.
00:04:4926 more died in Newark, New Jersey, demonstrating yet again how wide a gap remained between black and white Americans.
00:05:00Only a third of the country saw any sign of progress in Vietnam.
00:05:06And half of the country now disapproved of the president's handling of the war.
00:05:14Meanwhile, Lei Zuan and his comrades, who ran things in Hanoi, were secretly planning a new offensive
00:05:22that they believed would destroy what they called the puppet government in Saigon
00:05:28and convinced the United States the war could never be won on the battlefield.
00:05:36There's the old apocryphal story that in 1967 they went to the basement of the Pentagon
00:05:41when the mainframe computers took up the whole basement.
00:05:44And they put on the old punch cards everything you could quantify.
00:05:47You know, numbers of ships, numbers of airplanes, numbers of tanks, numbers of helicopters, artillery,
00:05:51machine gun, ammo, everything you could quantify.
00:05:54Put it in the hopper and said, when will we win in Vietnam?
00:05:57Went away on Friday.
00:05:59The thing ground away all weekend.
00:06:01Came back on Monday and there was one card in the output tray.
00:06:04And it said, you won in 1965.
00:06:06The only problem is the enemy gets a vote and they weren't on the punch cards.
00:06:10There were nearly half a million American soldiers in Vietnam by the middle of 1967,
00:06:25with thousands more on the way.
00:06:28Only 20% would ever be in combat.
00:06:33The rest served in support units.
00:06:36None of them had been taught very much about the people against whom
00:06:41and for whom they had been asked to fight.
00:06:44Troops called the Vietnamese guks,
00:06:48a term first used by U.S. Marines
00:06:51to refer to the people of Haiti and Nicaragua during the American occupation of those countries
00:06:57and then applied to the Asian enemy in Korea.
00:07:01Or slopes, an epithet for the Japanese during the Pacific War.
00:07:06Or dinks, an Australian term for the Chinese.
00:07:11And so in basic training, they taught you that you were going to be fighting guks.
00:07:16It was part of the song that you sang as you jogged down the road.
00:07:22As you went through bayonet training, you were not talking about Vietnamese.
00:07:27You were always talking about guks.
00:07:30Vietnamese might be people, but guks are close to being animals.
00:07:35GI's called Vietnamese homes hooches,
00:07:39a corruption of the Japanese word for dwelling places
00:07:42that they had learned during the battle for Okinawa in the Second World War.
00:07:48Soldiers referred to older Vietnamese women as mamasans,
00:07:53the term they used for women who ran whorehouses in occupied Japan.
00:07:59The Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese called GI's invaders,
00:08:04imperialists, and Zoc Mi, American bandits.
00:08:15South Vietnam had been divided into four tactical zones.
00:08:20By the summer of 1967, American troops were fighting in all four of them.
00:08:28In IV Corps, the brown water navy patrolled the rivers and canals and marshes
00:08:34of the densely populated Mekong Delta, searching for the enemy.
00:08:41In III Corps, the army continued to sweep the thick jungles of the Iron Triangle,
00:08:47the Viet Cong sanctuary near Saigon,
00:08:50that was supposed to have been permanently denied to the enemy
00:08:54by big American operations earlier in the year.
00:08:59In II Corps, a series of bloody battles
00:09:02in the Central Highlands around Dac Tho
00:09:05temporarily drove North Vietnamese troops
00:09:08back into Cambodia and Laos.
00:09:12But some of the most intense combat
00:09:15would take place in I Corps,
00:09:18made up of the five northernmost provinces of South Vietnam,
00:09:22where the marines would bear the brunt of the fighting.
00:09:26More than two and a half million people lived there,
00:09:29all but two percent of them
00:09:31within the narrow, rice-growing river valleys
00:09:34along the South China Sea.
00:09:37The marines wanted to eradicate the Viet Cong there
00:09:40and provide security to the people,
00:09:43village by village, hamlet by hamlet.
00:09:46The vast, largely empty highlands
00:09:49that stretched westward all the way to Laos,
00:09:52the marines argued, could be left to the enemy.
00:09:56The real war is among the people,
00:09:59said Marine Lieutenant General Victor Krulak,
00:10:02and not among the mountains.
00:10:05But General William Westmoreland,
00:10:07the American commander,
00:10:09feared that thousands of North Vietnamese Army regulars,
00:10:12the NVA, were planning to seize
00:10:15the two northernmost provinces.
00:10:18Finding and destroying them remained his first goal.
00:10:25He insisted the 3rd Marine Division
00:10:28move north to meet that challenge,
00:10:31establish a base at Dong Ha,
00:10:33and manned strong points at Zhou Lin,
00:10:36Kantian, Cam Lo, Camp Carroll,
00:10:39the Rock Pile, and Khe Sanh.
00:10:43Khe Sanh overlooked Route 9,
00:10:45the east-west highway that Westmoreland hoped
00:10:48would one day carry American troops
00:10:51across the border into Laos,
00:10:53where North Vietnamese men and supplies
00:10:56were streaming south on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
00:10:59But the thousands of marines monitoring the border
00:11:05would find themselves within range
00:11:07of highly accurate North Vietnamese
00:11:10artillery and rocket launchers
00:11:12hidden within the DMZ.
00:11:23Tell me, you came here at full strength?
00:11:25I had 13 here when I came.
00:11:27And it's four days later now,
00:11:28and how many are still here?
00:11:29Six.
00:11:36The rifles have been jamming.
00:11:37The mud's been, uh,
00:11:39has slowed everything down.
00:11:40And the artillery comes in everywhere.
00:11:42And, uh, it just gets pretty futile
00:11:45and frustrating sometimes.
00:11:46I can't say that I'm scared stiff,
00:11:53but I'm scared.
00:11:54I mean, after a while,
00:11:56you know it's gonna come.
00:11:57You can't do nothing about it.
00:11:58And you just look to God.
00:12:04Private First Class John Musgrave
00:12:06of Fairmount, Missouri,
00:12:08who had volunteered to join
00:12:09the 3rd Marine Division,
00:12:11was sent to the battle-scarred
00:12:12countryside around Contien,
00:12:14a few kilometers south of the DMZ.
00:12:21For the Marines in Northern I Corps
00:12:23and the 3rd Marine Division
00:12:24in the spring and summer of 1967,
00:12:26we called the DMZ
00:12:28the Dead Marine Zone.
00:12:29Musgrave's 1st Battalion
00:12:33had already suffered
00:12:34so many casualties
00:12:36in a series of bloody sweeps
00:12:38that it was believed
00:12:39to be a hard-luck outfit.
00:12:42They were called
00:12:43the Walking Dead.
00:12:48I joined the Marine Corps
00:12:49to be in the varsity.
00:12:51And I felt like I wasn't
00:12:53varsity unless I was
00:12:55up north fighting the NBA.
00:12:57I have never regretted
00:12:59that decision.
00:13:00There were times
00:13:01when we were under artillery fire
00:13:03where I thought,
00:13:05you know,
00:13:06what were you thinking?
00:13:09Here it is in a nutshell.
00:13:11If I lived to be 63 years old,
00:13:13I didn't want to look in a mirror
00:13:15some morning and have a guy
00:13:16looking back at me
00:13:17that hadn't done everything
00:13:18for what he believed.
00:13:20That let somebody else
00:13:21do the harder part.
00:13:29Every major contact
00:13:30I remember with the NBA
00:13:31was initiated
00:13:32by them ambushing us.
00:13:34They wouldn't hit us
00:13:35unless they outnumbered us
00:13:36and we were fighting
00:13:38in their yard.
00:13:41They knew the ground.
00:13:42We didn't.
00:13:47They were just really good.
00:13:48The North Vietnamese
00:14:10carried Soviet-made,
00:14:11seemingly indestructible
00:14:13AK-47s.
00:14:14The Marines had to fight
00:14:17with newly issued
00:14:18M16 rifles
00:14:20that had for a time
00:14:21a potentially fatal
00:14:23design flaw.
00:14:25They needed constant
00:14:26cleaning
00:14:27and often jammed
00:14:28in the middle of firefights.
00:14:31Their rifles worked.
00:14:32Ours didn't.
00:14:34The M16 was a piece of shit.
00:14:37You can't throw your bullets
00:14:38at the enemy
00:14:39and have them be effective.
00:14:40And that rifle malfunctioned
00:14:43on us repeatedly.
00:14:45Once again!
00:14:46my hatred for them was pure here I hated
00:15:16them so much and I was so scared of them boy I was terrified of them and the
00:15:24scarier I got the more I hated them
00:15:31thank you for your feet hung by the thing come by the key to the long come to
00:15:35know go to dance and I'm not going to come to feel that now they can come to
00:15:41I only killed one human being in Vietnam and that was the first man that I ever
00:15:58killed I was sick with guilt about killing that guy and thinking I'm gonna
00:16:05have to do this for the next 13 months I'm gonna go crazy and I saw a marine
00:16:11step on a bouncing Betty mine and that's when I made my deal with the devil in
00:16:16that I said I will never kill another human being as long as I'm in Vietnam
00:16:22however I will waste as many gooks as I can find I'll wax as many dinks as I can
00:16:30find I'll smoke as many zips as I can find but I ain't gonna kill anybody turn a
00:16:38subject into an object it's racism 101 it turns out to be a very necessary tool
00:16:45when you have children fighting your wars for them to stay sane doing their
00:16:50work on one early patrol Musgrave watched an American fighters swooped down to
00:17:02drop napalm on enemy troops hidden behind a hedgerow he could hear their AK-47s
00:17:09firing at the plane until the instant they were engulfed in flames if the enemy is
00:17:16willing to die like that he thought this is going to be one very long war they
00:17:24knew they would pop the ambush close and then get amongst you we couldn't or would
00:17:29hesitate to call an air on ourselves so that firefights like that we called
00:17:37brawls they were very intimate and they were very deadly and they were absolutely
00:17:44terrifying the Marines were spread too thin to hold any of the territory they
00:17:54fought so hard to take again and again they were sent out from one stronghold or
00:18:00another along the DMZ looking for enemy soldiers the disillusionment for me began
00:18:07when I was going back to fight at places we'd already fought before we had
00:18:13fought captured and then left and the envy came right back you don't like getting
00:18:19wounded in places you've already been before war is a real estate business we're
00:18:27supposed to take real estate away from the enemy and then deny the enemy access to
00:18:31that real estate on the morning of July 2nd 1967 the first battalion launched yet
00:18:40another sweep of the area northeast of Kantian when they reached a crossroads called the
00:18:47marketplace barely a mile and a quarter from their base they were ambushed one company
00:18:54was virtually annihilated
00:19:01John Musgrave's company rushed to rescue the survivors only to be pinned down there as well
00:19:06it was one of the worst days the Marine Corps endured in Vietnam 53 dead and 190 wounded were carried off the battlefield
00:19:2134 more dead had to be left behind and when Marines fought their way back two days later to retrieve their bodies they found that a number had died
00:19:33because their M16s had jammed as the enemy closed in many had been executed shot in the
00:19:41face or back of the head at close range some bodies had been booby trapped others mutilated
00:19:51Marine amphibious force headquarters was so desperate to get North Vietnamese prisoners that they offered us three day in country R&R if we bring a prisoner in
00:20:02you know good luck you know don't you know who what we're doing up here do you know who we're fighting I want to make this clear we did not torture prisoners and we did not mutilate them
00:20:23but to be a prisoner you had to make it to the rear you know if he was what fell into our hands
00:20:30he was just one sorry fucker
00:20:32I don't know how to explain it that it would make sense
00:20:53Roxbury where I grew up was the African-American neighborhood and South Boston was the Irish Catholic bastion
00:20:59you know there was a lot of hate
00:21:02you know there was a lot of hate South Boston folks hated us
00:21:04we hated them
00:21:05and ironically
00:21:07you know you end up in a war
00:21:11and
00:21:14the Vietnamese didn't care whether you were from Roxbury or South Boston
00:21:17they saw you as American
00:21:19and they wanted to kill you because you were American
00:21:22Private Roger Harris had joined the Marines in part he said
00:21:27because he wanted to be a gladiator
00:21:30a killer of his country's enemies
00:21:33on July 28th
00:21:35two weeks after John Musgrave's badly mangled 1st Battalion
00:21:39was pulled back to rest and recover
00:21:42Roger Harris and the 2nd Battalion
00:21:45moved out of Kantian
00:21:46and into the southern half of the demilitarized zone itself
00:21:50we wanted the non Vietnamese army to expose themselves
00:21:56so basically put the bait out there
00:21:59and then we could call in and rain hell on them
00:22:03Roger Harris's battalion advanced into the DMZ along a rough cart track that led to the Ben High River
00:22:11but planners had failed to see that a concrete bridge over an impassable stream was too narrow and too weak to carry armored vehicles
00:22:24now the Marines had no choice but to violate a cardinal rule of infantry tactics
00:22:30turn around and try to go back the way they had come
00:22:34the enemy was waiting
00:22:41massive ambushes
00:22:47and a lot of death
00:22:53and uh...
00:22:57craziness
00:22:59the Marines were forced to run a bloody gauntlet of mortars, machine gun fire, and rocket propelled grenades
00:23:07I have the utmost respect for the non Vietnamese army soldiers
00:23:12when you see someone jump out
00:23:15and confront a tank
00:23:18you know, with a big 50 caliber machine gun on it and a 90 millimeter cannon on it
00:23:23and an individual takes on a tank
00:23:26uh...
00:23:28I think that says something
00:23:30Roger Harris's company held up the rear
00:23:34hounded by enemy soldiers on all sides
00:23:38the Marines staggered back out of the DMZ
00:23:44alongside the battered armored vehicles
00:23:47heaped with dead and wounded Americans
00:23:50the battalion suffered 214 casualties
00:23:55it wasn't a good day for Marines at all
00:23:59a lot of people died
00:24:01people got their legs shot off
00:24:03people got run over by tanks
00:24:04I don't want to talk about it because it's
00:24:09it's not a good day
00:24:14it wasn't a good day
00:24:15it wasn't a good day
00:24:16when the Taliban used to fight
00:24:26россий術軍's territory
00:24:28United States
00:24:29military military materia
00:24:30they started hunting the Marines
00:24:32and the military territory
00:24:33so much of our軍iva
00:24:35we started hunting the Marines
00:24:37once thatす ANTBERG
00:24:40the missiles 미-NAR
00:24:42the Vietnam War
00:24:43we started saving the command
00:24:45I was on the way.
00:24:46I was on the way.
00:24:47I was on the way that I was on the way.
00:24:50I was on the way 90.
00:24:53It was only about 60-70 people.
00:24:55They were on the way and were on the way.
00:24:59So the entire group was on the way.
00:25:03It was like a day that went on to the hour.
00:25:09I was on the way and I couldn't sleep.
00:25:12I cried.
00:25:14But I also can understand the United States.
00:25:19But I have to change the color of the United States.
00:25:25This is Bao Ku, the day of voting in Vietnam.
00:25:29And it's a solemn day in the village of Hung Thao Phu
00:25:32and in other villages throughout the country.
00:25:34And these people have dressed up in their Sunday best for it.
00:25:37South Vietnamese Prime Minister, Win Cao Khi,
00:25:43had crushed his Buddhist opponents in 1966.
00:25:47But he had been forced by the Americans and his political rivals
00:25:51to make at least tentative moves toward democracy,
00:25:54election of a national assembly, a new constitution,
00:25:58and a promise of elections for president and vice president.
00:26:02But when Khi's old adversary, Win Von Thieu,
00:26:07declared he wanted to challenge Khi for the top spot,
00:26:11things in Saigon had threatened to come apart again.
00:26:14We were watching the rivalry between Thieu and Khi.
00:26:19And that was a game.
00:26:21In Vietnam, the country was watching like we were watching a movie.
00:26:26And Thieu and Khi was watching as to not whoever had the support
00:26:31of the people, but who had the support of the Americans
00:26:35and the White House.
00:26:38Ellsworth Bunker, the American ambassador,
00:26:40called both men to his residence
00:26:43and warned that the United States would not tolerate
00:26:46another power struggle.
00:26:48Thieu and Khi needed to meet with their fellow generals
00:26:51and decide who would run for president
00:26:54and who would be his running mate.
00:26:57Thieu emerged on top.
00:26:59He was unassuming and unflappable,
00:27:02interested largely in accumulating power and personal wealth,
00:27:07and was thought unlikely ever to embarrass Washington.
00:27:12Khi would be his vice president.
00:27:15Together, they won with only 35% of the vote.
00:27:20No one who had called for an end to the war had been allowed to run.
00:27:25Many Buddhists had boycotted the election.
00:27:28And Viet Cong intimidation had kept many more from the polls.
00:27:33But the State Department immediately declared the election
00:27:37an important step forward.
00:27:39Some South Vietnamese did believe that a measure of stability had finally been achieved.
00:27:49Others were not so sure.
00:27:52In terms of corruption, yes, they were corrupted.
00:27:57Both Thieu and Khi, they abused their position.
00:28:02We pay a very high price for having leaders like Khi and Thieu.
00:28:07And we continue to pay the price.
00:28:14My father was in the United States Army,
00:28:19and then when the Air Force came about,
00:28:21he switched over to the Air Force.
00:28:24I grew up out of the country in desegregated settings.
00:28:29I was usually the only little black girl in the class.
00:28:32If you look at my class pictures,
00:28:34I look like the little chocolate chip in the vanilla ice cream.
00:28:38I was always a good student.
00:28:41I remember people saying,
00:28:42Oh, you speak so well.
00:28:44And the unstated part is for a black girl,
00:28:46probably a Negro girl or colored girl at that point.
00:28:49Eva Jefferson's father had served a year on air bases in Vietnam
00:28:54and returned home convinced the United States
00:28:57had no business being there.
00:29:00But when his daughter entered Northwestern University
00:29:03in the Chicago suburb of Evanston in September 1967,
00:29:08the war was not uppermost in students' minds.
00:29:13The war was not really an issue.
00:29:16It's like, well, no, the president has our best interest at heart.
00:29:20He, of course, would only prosecute a war that made sense.
00:29:23And I think most of America felt that way.
00:29:26At the University of Nebraska, Jack Todd also supported the war.
00:29:33He had felt so strongly about it in 1966
00:29:37that he had signed up for Marine officer training.
00:29:41I went into the Marine Corps thinking this was all I wanted to do.
00:29:46I mean, my goal was to be commander,
00:29:48a platoon commander in Vietnam.
00:29:51But as time went by and the war went on,
00:29:55Todd and many of his fellow students began to change their minds.
00:30:00All young people go through changes,
00:30:03but we were going through astronomical changes at such a rapid rate.
00:30:08All the music, the culture, everything that we'd listened to,
00:30:13everything that we thought was transforming.
00:30:15And the core of it all was Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam.
00:30:19It just kept going in the background.
00:30:21First, it was kind of like a background noise,
00:30:23and then it got to be the elephant in the room,
00:30:25and then it was the elephant sitting on your head.
00:30:27And we couldn't escape this.
00:30:30Todd attended officer training school at Camp Upshur in Quantico, Virginia.
00:30:36But doubts about the war followed him there, too.
00:30:41I guess the emotional things that were happening on the ground,
00:30:44the photographs that we saw, the news images,
00:30:47and the fact that there was no discernible progress
00:30:49that really started to eat away at what we thought.
00:30:52In the summer of 67, I was at Camp Upshur,
00:30:56you know, wanting to go kill Vietnamese people.
00:30:59And in October, I was completely against the war.
00:31:06Westmoreland came in last night to me,
00:31:09and he says that he has concentrated more firepower in bombing
00:31:14in the last week on the DMZ,
00:31:17and they've concentrated more on us
00:31:19than has ever been concentrated in any equivalent period
00:31:23in the history of warfare,
00:31:24much more than was ever poured on Berlin or Tokyo.
00:31:28And that his only defense of the DMZ
00:31:32to stop this aggression up there,
00:31:34where the North Vietnamese trying to come in,
00:31:36is bombing their gun positions.
00:31:39And it would just be suicide if we stopped the bombing,
00:31:43as these idiots talking about.
00:31:45When you say stop the bombing,
00:31:47you say kill more American Marines.
00:31:50That's all it means.
00:31:51Yeah.
00:31:52Now, if we stop bombing without their talking
00:31:56and without any reciprocity on their part,
00:31:58it just means we kill more Americans.
00:32:00That's all.
00:32:01Yeah.
00:32:02Neither the ongoing bombing of the North,
00:32:12nor the concentrated bombing around the DMZ,
00:32:16nor the behind-the-scenes offers
00:32:18made by President Johnson to stop it,
00:32:21had any discernible effect on Lays One
00:32:24and the other men who ran North Vietnam.
00:32:27But Lays One, like Lyndon Johnson,
00:32:30was in trouble that summer.
00:32:32The war with the Americans
00:32:34had produced little more than a bloody stalemate.
00:32:37Some Viet Cong commanders in the south
00:32:40resented Hanoi's insistence
00:32:42on directing their tactics.
00:32:44Many North Vietnamese civilians
00:32:47were weary of the war
00:32:49and of the bombing that had disrupted their lives
00:32:52and destroyed so much of their infrastructure.
00:32:55The country's most revered figures,
00:32:59Ho Chi Minh and Vo Wenzap,
00:33:01were urging patience,
00:33:03continuing to wage a war of attrition
00:33:06they still believed would pay off in the end.
00:33:10Hanoi's Soviet and Chinese patrons
00:33:14offered conflicting advice as well.
00:33:17To silence his critics and break the stalemate,
00:33:21Lays One began to devise and promote
00:33:24a new and riskier version
00:33:26of the plan for victory he had tried in 1964.
00:33:30He called it the General Offensive, General Uprising.
00:33:37North Vietnamese and Viet Cong units
00:33:40would launch scores of coordinated attacks
00:33:43on South Vietnamese cities and towns and military bases.
00:33:47That offensive, Lays One believed,
00:33:50would ignite a mass civilian uprising.
00:33:53These simultaneous blows would destroy the Saigon regime
00:33:58and leave Washington with no choice but to withdraw.
00:34:03He said he had to believe that we could win.
00:34:07If takin Hà Nội was finished,
00:34:08was organized by the State Party.
00:34:11The cost was already released.
00:34:13If The State Party had created a new andgrove
00:34:16since they were in the region
00:34:17to deliver US dollars.
00:34:18If North Vietnamese states
00:34:19have printed ink,
00:34:20the State Party will put a final manual
00:34:22to secure the State Party.
00:34:23Whatever we have found in eastern cities.
00:34:25We talk about our own human rights.
00:34:54We talk about our own hubris. There's some hubris on their side as well.
00:34:58And once they had convinced themselves that this was going to be a great success,
00:35:02it is what some wags have called drinking your own bathwater.
00:35:06They decided it's going to be a victory, even though there are people in the South saying,
00:35:10hey, this is not a great idea.
00:35:12But these people are charged with subjectivism and basically are told to shut up and keep rolling.
00:35:19Les Juan neutralized those who opposed his plan.
00:35:23Members of General Zap's staff were arrested.
00:35:26So was Ho Chi Minh's secretary.
00:35:29His health was weak.
00:35:32So he was sent to Hungary to cure disease in the mid-7th of 1967.
00:35:37Hồ Chí Minh, in the mid-9th of 1967, was sent to China to cure disease.
00:35:45Hundreds of less prominent figures, journalists, students, even highly decorated heroes of the French war were also rounded up.
00:35:55Many were locked up in the old French prison that the American POWs also confined there called the Hanoi Hilton.
00:36:03The date eventually chosen for the attack would be January 31st, 1968, the first day of the Vietnamese Lunar New Year celebration, known as Tet.
00:36:18Hundreds, then thousands of North Vietnamese regulars in civilian clothes began slipping southward to join tens of thousands of Viet Cong already in place.
00:36:33So when I went to the U.S.
00:36:35The U.S.
00:36:37The U.S.
00:36:50and the most important thing is to go to the beach.
00:36:56The dealings that we saw
00:36:59were organized by the people of the United States,
00:37:02and the people of the United States were very successful.
00:37:04And the people of the United States were almost like
00:37:06the fire to go to the Nam to fight.
00:37:09When I got the results of my health,
00:37:14when I got into the military,
00:37:16he got to go to the military.
00:37:18In preparation for the coming offensive the North Vietnamese hope to lure American and
00:37:48South Vietnamese forces away from cities and big military bases.
00:37:54To do that they would mount a series of assaults on remote outposts near Cambodia, Laos and
00:38:01the DMZ.
00:38:03These preliminary attacks became known as the border battles.
00:38:08Khan Tien would be the first.
00:38:15In September and October John Musgraves and Roger Harris's outfits took turns defending
00:38:21Khan Tien as the North Vietnamese tightened the noose around them.
00:38:26The only way in or out was by helicopter.
00:38:32Khan Tien in Vietnamese means Hill of Angels.
00:38:36The time at Khan Tien was time in the barrel.
00:38:46We were the fish, they had the shotguns, they stuck in the barrel and blasted away and they
00:38:51were going to hit something every shot.
00:38:54Because Khan Tien was such a small area and they pounded it with that artillery from North
00:38:59Vietnam they couldn't miss.
00:39:06I've never been as afraid.
00:39:12In fact that's why I'm not afraid of anything now.
00:39:16There's nothing you can do.
00:39:19It's just listen to the sounds of the rockets coming over and you just pray that they don't
00:39:25land on you.
00:39:26The big question really seems to be whether or not the North Vietnamese intend to overrun
00:39:31Khan Tien.
00:39:32The Marines have tripled the number of troops guarding the outpost and they've moved up more
00:39:37battalions to be ready to reinforce.
00:39:39I sat in water, I slept in water, I ate in water because our holes were full.
00:39:47I mean a flooded foxhole can drown a wounded man.
00:39:50Spending your day filling up sandbags, trying to create barriers and you just put another layer
00:39:56on, put another layer on.
00:39:58A lot of mud, blood and artillery.
00:40:04It's red clay up there and it's real sticky and it could just grab onto you and pull your
00:40:10boots off.
00:40:11It's hard to run in that stuff and running when you're at a place where they're firing
00:40:15heavy artillery at you, running is pretty important.
00:40:19During the siege of the fall of 1967 we were getting newspaper articles in the mail from
00:40:24our families and we were being called the Alamo.
00:40:27You know, hey we knew what the Alamo was.
00:40:30We knew what happened there.
00:40:32Like almost like every hour there'd be a barrage.
00:40:45People get blown to bits.
00:40:47Literally blown to bits.
00:40:49You find a boot with a leg in it, right?
00:40:53And so is the leg white or black?
00:40:55So who was the white Marine that was here?
00:40:57Who was the black?
00:40:58So then you try to remember and you tag it and put that in the green bag and that's
00:41:03what goes back.
00:41:04You know, as Marine Lance Corporal so and so and so.
00:41:08But sometimes you're not even sure because the body has literally been blown to bits and
00:41:12the only thing that's left is a foot or a piece of an arm.
00:41:15I carried a wallet calendar from Clifford Farlow Insurance.
00:41:20He was my dad's insurance agent.
00:41:22And I marked off each of the days religiously.
00:41:25And then in October, we went up to Contean again.
00:41:30I just stopped.
00:41:32Because I thought, this is pointless.
00:41:35I'm not getting, I'm not going to go home.
00:41:37I'm not going to make it home.
00:41:39What, you know, what's the point?
00:41:41So I just quit marking them off.
00:41:43I had the opportunity to call my mother, you know, and I was telling my mother what was
00:41:48happening over there and I was telling her, she shouldn't believe what she sees in the
00:41:52newspaper and, and sees on television because we're losing the war.
00:41:57And I said, you'll probably never see me again because we're the most northern outposts
00:42:03that the Marines have.
00:42:04You know, we could literally could look right into Vietnam.
00:42:07We could see the sparks when the guns fired on us.
00:42:10And I said, and everybody in my unit's dying.
00:42:12You know, and I probably won't be coming back.
00:42:15And my mother said, no, you're coming back.
00:42:17She said, I talk to God every day.
00:42:19And you're special.
00:42:21You know, you're coming back.
00:42:23And I said, Ma, everybody's mother thinks that they're special.
00:42:26You know, I'm putting pieces of special people in bags.
00:42:31And I was feeling that my mother's in denial.
00:42:33She just doesn't want to face the fact that her only son's going to die in Vietnam.
00:42:36I said, Ma, this isn't a joke.
00:42:38I said, everybody's dying over here.
00:42:40You know, everybody's dying.
00:42:41And she said, you know, I'm going to die.
00:42:43You know, I'm going to die.
00:42:45And the last thing she said to me was, God has a plan for you.
00:42:49And I said, yeah, right.
00:42:51And I hung up.
00:42:56Mr. Stout, during what period of time were you in Vietnam?
00:42:59I was in Vietnam from September of 1966 to September of 1967.
00:43:04And with what unit?
00:43:06With the 1st Brigade of the 101st Airborne.
00:43:09During the time that you were in Vietnam, did you personally witness any atrocities on the part of American troops?
00:43:14Yes, I did.
00:43:16Dennis Stout from Phoenix, Arizona, had enlisted in the Army at 20 and served nine months in combat.
00:43:26Wounded three times, he became an Army reporter covering the 327th Regiment of the 101st Airborne.
00:43:35He would spend most of his time with a unique commando platoon called Tiger Force.
00:43:42Small, hand-picked teams capable of remaining in the jungle for weeks at a time.
00:43:48Fast-moving and deadly.
00:43:50Intended to out-gorilla the gorillas.
00:43:54Tiger Force fought in six different provinces, repeatedly suffering heavy losses.
00:44:04If you've lost your best friend and you want revenge, it's the officers who say, no, you can't do that.
00:44:11And if you do it, then there's consequences.
00:44:14But when the officers, and it includes the platoon leader and the battalion commander, are telling you that this is what you're supposed to do, then it gets completely out of hand.
00:44:26And some at Mach-V worried that such a freewheeling outfit, operating on its own, would be difficult to control.
00:44:36But General Westmoreland and commanders in the field admired Tiger Force for its reliable ferocity.
00:44:43In the summer of 1967, Tiger Force was sent to the fertile Songvay Valley.
00:44:51The entire population had already been herded from their homes and crowded into a refugee camp.
00:44:58But some had come back to resume the farming they had always done.
00:45:04The valley had officially been declared a free fire zone.
00:45:08And Tiger Force's officers took that literally.
00:45:12There are no friendlies, one lieutenant told his men.
00:45:16Shoot anything that moves.
00:45:19Over a seven-month period, they killed scores of unarmed civilians.
00:45:29Among their victims were two blind brothers, an elderly Buddhist monk, women, children, and old people hiding in underground shelters, and three farmers trying to plant rice.
00:45:42All were reported as enemy, killed in action.
00:45:49These atrocities were committed by soldiers of units I was assigned to as a reporter for the army newspapers.
00:45:57Tiger Force was not the only platoon Dennis Stout covered that crossed the line.
00:46:04One such incident was the rape and killing of a Vietnamese girl.
00:46:10She was captured, kept for interrogation.
00:46:14Over a two-day period, she was raped.
00:46:17Then, on the morning of the third day, she was killed.
00:46:19Was she raped by more than one person?
00:46:21Yes, all but the medic and myself and possibly one other man from a platoon.
00:46:28Did you protest?
00:46:29Did you try in any way to have them stopped?
00:46:31Yes.
00:46:32After the rape incident, I complained to the battalion sergeant major.
00:46:36And his response was that this type of thing happens in all wars and that I was not to mention it.
00:46:43It was a common occurrence.
00:46:45Then, later, I went to the chaplain, told him about it.
00:46:50He made an investigation himself, found that this was true, went with me to the sergeant major.
00:46:56The sergeant major then said that we told the chaplain that to stick to religion, sent him away,
00:47:04and then he told me to keep quiet, that I did not have to return from the next operation.
00:47:11Years later, another soldier came forward with more allegations of war crimes,
00:47:17and an army investigation would find probable cause to try 18 members of Tiger Force for murder or assault.
00:47:26But no charges were ever brought.
00:47:29The official records were buried in the archives.
00:47:33They should have all gone to jail.
00:47:36They were guilty of murder.
00:47:38Period.
00:47:39At the same time, I felt like that incident, which I think was an aberration, not the norm,
00:47:46tarred all veterans, and there are hundreds of thousands of veterans who went and did their duty,
00:47:51as honorable as they possibly could, and they're tarred with the same brush.
00:47:56One of the things that I learned in the war is that we're not the top species on the planet because we're nice.
00:48:06We are a very aggressive species.
00:48:09It is in us.
00:48:11People talk a lot about how well the military turns, you know, kids into, you know, killing machines and stuff.
00:48:18And I'll always argue that it's just finishing school.
00:48:21What we do with civilization is that we learn to inhibit and rope in these aggressive tendencies, and we have to recognize them.
00:48:31I worry about a whole country that doesn't recognize it.
00:48:35Because you think of how many times we get ourselves in scrapes as a nation because we're always the good guys.
00:48:41Sometimes I think if we thought that we weren't always the good guys, we might actually get in less wars.
00:48:46Mr. Ruben, how do you realistically expect to shut down the Pentagon?
00:48:55The Pentagon represents the murder of people throughout the world.
00:48:59And the American people have no control of what their government's doing.
00:49:03And so we're going to go there in the scores of thousands and block doors and fill hallways so the work of the Pentagon stops.
00:49:12Because the work of the Pentagon should stop. The only thing to do with the Pentagon is to shut it down.
00:49:19It was back in 1942, I was a member of a good platoon.
00:49:25We were on maneuvers in Louisiana one night by the light of the moon.
00:49:30The captain told us to fall a river, that's how it all begun.
00:49:35We were knee-deep in the big muddy, the big fool says to push on.
00:49:41There was a major demonstration either in New York or in Washington every fall and every spring.
00:49:50We decided that we would go to the demonstration in Washington at the Lincoln Memorial in the fall of 67,
00:49:57but we would take as many people out of that demonstration as we could and lead them to the Pentagon.
00:50:03And at the Pentagon try to do something more militant than simply stand around and make speeches opposing the war,
00:50:12which is what these demonstrations had become.
00:50:16And when the time came to lead people away from the Lincoln Memorial toward the Pentagon, 50,000 people marched.
00:50:25We were neck-deep in the big muddy, the big fool says to push on.
00:50:34Bill Zimmerman, now an assistant professor of psychology at Brooklyn College, had been against the war since the beginning.
00:50:42And we found, when we got there, concentric defense perimeters that had been set up around the Pentagon to keep us at a distance from the building.
00:50:52We pushed against them. We tore down their fences.
00:50:59I was working that weekend day. The secretaries who were working in my area were frightened to hell what these Vietnam protesters would do.
00:51:11They thought they were going to come into the building and rape them. Some of them actually came over the walls.
00:51:17The big fool said to push on. It was a sense of revolution.
00:51:23Waist deep in the big muddy, the big fool says to push on. Waist deep in the big muddy, the big fool says to push on.
00:51:33God knows what we were going to do when we got in the building.
00:51:37Some people, the hippies, said they were going to levitate the building.
00:51:41Other people wanted to commit vandalism in the building.
00:51:44Other people wanted to distribute anti-war literature in the building, talk to people.
00:51:49Just the idea of getting into the headquarters of the United States military.
00:51:56It was the first time that anti-war demonstrators had confronted active duty military personnel.
00:52:05We didn't consider them the enemy. We considered them victims of the war.
00:52:10But we began to see our own government as the enemy.
00:52:15President Johnson believed that international communism was somehow behind the demonstration.
00:52:22He had directed the CIA to come up with the evidence and was furious when it found none.
00:52:28Mr. President?
00:52:33Yes.
00:52:34Mr. Eisenhower.
00:52:35How have you been, Mr. President?
00:52:36I'm doing fine under the circumstances.
00:52:39But we just had hell, and these college students, I've had Hoover in after them, and they came, marched here, and we arrested 600 of them, and we gave 29 of them.
00:52:49Pretty tough times. We found most of them, really, were mentally diseased.
00:52:54Hoover's taken 256 that turned in, supposedly, their draft cards.
00:52:58So you're dealing with mental problems.
00:53:00I think it, we've talked too damn much about civil liberties, constitutional rights of the individual, and not enough about the rights of the masses.
00:53:08And that's what we have. We were freely elected people, and we've got to stand behind them.
00:53:13I think your government's in trouble, General. I think it's in, I don't want to say this, but I think we're in more danger from these left-wing influences now than we've ever been in 37 years I've been here.
00:53:24And they're working in my party from within.
00:53:27Allard Lowenstein, a 38-year-old attorney from New York, shared the anti-war fervor of the protesters, but he believed the most effective way to end the fighting was to work within the political system, not outside it.
00:53:45The answer, he said, was to stop Lyndon Johnson from getting a second full term as president.
00:53:52He had traveled the country all year in search of someone willing to challenge the president in the upcoming Democratic primaries.
00:54:01He asked Senator Robert Kennedy of New York, who had begun to criticize the Johnson administration over the war.
00:54:09He asked Lieutenant General James Gavin.
00:54:12He asked Senator George McGovern of South Dakota.
00:54:16They all turned him down.
00:54:19Lowenstein kept looking.
00:54:21At Fort Sill, Oklahoma, on November 17, 1967, friends and family of a fallen soldier gathered for a funeral, one of five military funerals held there that month.
00:54:40First Sergeant Pascal Cletus Pula had been killed as he tried to drag one of his wounded men off the battlefield near the village of Loch Ninh.
00:54:55He was a remarkable soldier.
00:54:57He had been awarded one silver star in World War II, two more in Korea, and was awarded a fourth posthumously for his gallantry in Vietnam.
00:55:10He was a Kiowa Indian.
00:55:12He and three of his sons were among the 42,000 Native Americans who would serve in Vietnam, the highest per capita service rate of any ethnic group in the United States.
00:55:27Pascal Pula's widow spoke at the ceremony.
00:55:31He has followed the trail of the great chiefs, she said.
00:55:35His people hold him in honor and highest esteem.
00:55:40He has given his life for the people and the country he loved so much.
00:55:47He has given his life for the people and the recognized people in the United States.
00:55:52Good to see you.
00:55:57That's good to be.
00:56:00When the truth is found, to be lies.
00:56:02And all the joy within you dies.
00:56:06Don't you want somebody to love?
00:56:09Don't you need somebody to love?
00:56:13Wouldn't you love somebody to love
00:56:17You better find somebody to love
00:56:21Love
00:56:23I didn't hear the word hippie until I was at Contien
00:56:30And we got a playboy, somebody got a playboy in the mail
00:56:33Which was obviously very important to us
00:56:34And there was an article on Hate Ashbery
00:56:38And pictures of the girls running around without their tops
00:56:40You know, free love
00:56:41And they were hippies
00:56:42And we thought it was hippie
00:56:44Because they had two peas
00:56:45You know, hey, I'm going to go home and be one of these hippies
00:56:48Because the girls don't wear no clothes
00:56:50You know, and they'll go to bed with anybody
00:56:52You know, even I can score
00:56:54But the only information I had on the peace movement
00:56:58Came from Stars and Stripes
00:57:00And that wasn't a real objective newspaper
00:57:03And so I hated them before I ever even knew anything about them
00:57:12The monsoon rains continued to make life miserable for John Musgrave and the other Marines at Contien
00:57:21But by early November, the worst of the shelling had ended
00:57:25American air strikes, artillery, and Navy fire had taken a fearful toll on the besieging enemy
00:57:33Before dawn on November 7th, two companies of Musgrave's outfit were sent half a mile into the countryside northwest of the base to sweep the area again
00:57:46And we got into an area that was old hedgerows
00:57:52That's grown over with jungle
00:57:53Very difficult to see very far
00:57:56In the clear area, we had three NVA show themselves and start just spraying
00:58:0130 rounds out of their AKs and then booking
00:58:04The company commander himself said, I want their bodies
00:58:09Bring me their bodies
00:58:11Everything's about body count, right?
00:58:14We said, man, this is as old as Custer
00:58:17These guys are showing themselves to draw us into an ambush
00:58:21Lieutenant, don't do this
00:58:22You know, please
00:58:25These guys are bait
00:58:27Skipper says, we gotta go, we gotta go
00:58:31And we went
00:58:35And I can't tell you a whole lot about the ambush
00:58:40I was one of the first people to be shot
00:58:43One round put me down
00:58:45And my grenadier was down and we were trying to get him back
00:58:50And Marines, from the first day in boot camp
00:58:54You learn that Marines don't leave their dead
00:58:57And they never, never leave their wounded
00:59:00And that's why I'm alive today
00:59:03First guy that came for me
00:59:07I was lying on my face
00:59:09He reached down and stuck his arms under my shoulders
00:59:13And lifted me up
00:59:14And the machine gun wasn't any far
00:59:17It was maybe
00:59:18Nine feet, ten feet at the most
00:59:22Away from me
00:59:23This is a very intimate ambush
00:59:25It's a brawl
00:59:26And he fired a burst into my chest
00:59:31That blew me out of this
00:59:32The Marines arms that was holding me
00:59:34And then he was shot
00:59:35Another very brave young Marine
00:59:40Is 18 year old
00:59:42From Louisiana
00:59:44His first firefight
00:59:45Had seen what happened
00:59:47And still came for me
00:59:49And he reached for me
00:59:52And he was shot
00:59:52I think in the forearm
00:59:54And he was
00:59:56Laying beside me
00:59:58And I've got a hole through my chest
01:00:00Big enough to stick your fist through
01:00:01And I'm dying
01:00:03And I know it
01:00:04And I heard this horrible screaming
01:00:07Going on
01:00:08And I was trying to figure out
01:00:09Who was screaming like that
01:00:12Because it sounded so
01:00:13And then I realized it was me
01:00:20When they began to drag us out
01:00:25They were being pursued by the North Vietnamese
01:00:27And they would drop us
01:00:29And lay on top of us
01:00:31They knew we were both dying
01:00:33The Grenadier had been shot
01:00:34In the right side of his chest
01:00:36They knew we were both dead
01:00:38But we were still alive
01:00:40So they weren't going to leave us
01:00:43They would die
01:00:44Before they would leave us
01:00:45And they covered us with their bodies
01:00:47And fired back at the NVA
01:00:48And then they'd jump up
01:00:49And drag us a little farther
01:00:51And then drop us
01:00:51And lay back on top of us
01:00:53And I kept telling them to leave me
01:00:55And I meant it
01:00:57I meant it
01:00:58But
01:00:58All of a sudden
01:01:00I got scared
01:01:01That they might really leave me
01:01:02I was triaged three times
01:01:06And the senior corpsman said
01:01:09He's either shot through the heart
01:01:11Or the lungs
01:01:12There's nothing I can do for him
01:01:13And he just turned away
01:01:14I went
01:01:15Oh, okay
01:01:16And then a helicopter come in
01:01:21And they threw me into the bird
01:01:23And the corpsman on the bird
01:01:27Straddled me
01:01:28Stood over me
01:01:29And looked down at me
01:01:30And then looked up at the door gunner
01:01:32And went
01:01:32Get me out of the way
01:01:35Because he couldn't work on me
01:01:37I was a dead man
01:01:38And they flew me to Delta Med at Dongho
01:01:42And I thought
01:01:43Okay
01:01:44I made it this far
01:01:45And this doctor comes over
01:01:48And looks at me
01:01:48And I'm conscious
01:01:50I'm lucid
01:01:51And he checks a couple of things
01:01:54And I've got this huge hole in him
01:01:55And he looks at me
01:01:56And right in the eye
01:01:57And he says
01:01:57What's your religion, Marine?
01:01:59And I said
01:01:59Well, I'm a Protestant
01:02:00And he says
01:02:01Get a chaplain over here
01:02:02I can't help this man
01:02:03And then he walked away
01:02:05Another surgeon walks by
01:02:08And he looked at me
01:02:11And I was raised to be
01:02:13To always be nice to people
01:02:15And when he looked at me
01:02:16I smiled at him and nodded
01:02:18And he said
01:02:20Why isn't somebody helping this man?
01:02:24And inside I'm going
01:02:25Yeah, why isn't somebody helping this man?
01:02:29When they put me to sleep
01:02:30I thought
01:02:31Boy, this is really it
01:02:32You know
01:02:34And it was kind of
01:02:35Okay, God
01:02:36Into your hands
01:02:38I'd deliver my spirit
01:02:39And I thought that was it
01:02:42And when I woke up
01:02:45In the surgical intensive care ward
01:02:47Which was a Quonset hut
01:02:48I thought
01:02:50Holy mackerel
01:02:51I just couldn't
01:02:53I couldn't believe it
01:02:54Yesterday over Hanoi
01:03:01Three American planes
01:03:03Were shot down
01:03:03And at least
01:03:04Two of their pilots
01:03:05Captured
01:03:06One of them
01:03:07Was Lieutenant Commander
01:03:08John McCain III
01:03:09The son of the
01:03:10U.S. Naval Commander
01:03:12In Europe
01:03:13The
01:03:22Tent of the
01:03:23U.S. Naval
01:03:24Hanoi was so pleased to have captured the
01:03:54son of an American admiral that they allowed a French journalist to interview McCain in
01:03:59the hospital.
01:04:00He had just had his broken bones set without even an aspirin for the pain.
01:04:06What is your name?
01:04:08Lieutenant Commander John McCain.
01:04:10How many raids have you done until the last one?
01:04:14About 23.
01:04:17In which circumstances have you been shot down?
01:04:20I was on a flight over the city of Hanoi and I was bombing and was hit by either missile
01:04:33or anti-aircraft fire, I'm not sure which.
01:04:37Then the plane continued straight down and I ejected and broke my leg and both arms and
01:04:51went into a lake, parachuted into a lake.
01:04:56And I was picked up by some North Vietnamese and taken to the hospital where I almost died.
01:05:08I would just like to tell my wife that I will go get well.
01:05:23I love her.
01:05:27To see her.
01:05:31After the interview, McCain was beaten for not expressing sufficient gratitude to his captors.
01:05:46All through the fall of 1967, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong continued their series of
01:05:53border battles in preparation for their surprise offensive, still months away.
01:05:59Khan Tien, where John Musgrave was wounded, had been the first.
01:06:05Then came the Arvin base at Song Bay.
01:06:08The South Vietnamese outpost adjacent to the provincial capital of Loch Ninh was next.
01:06:14There, large units of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong regulars mounted a coordinated attack
01:06:21and then fought for five days to hold onto the ground they gained, something they had never
01:06:27done before.
01:06:30American commanders were puzzled.
01:06:32Then, in early November, reports reached Mach V that five North Vietnamese regiments
01:06:39and the Viet Cong battalion, some 7,000 men in all, had begun massing in the Central Highlands
01:06:46around the U.S. Special Forces camp at Docto again.
01:06:51Among the North Vietnamese regulars was Nguyen Thanh Sun, who had been so eager to fight that
01:06:57he too had filled his pockets with rocks to pass his physical.
01:07:04As the NVA deployed their troops, Westmoreland sent his to Docto, exactly what the enemy wanted
01:07:12him to do.
01:07:28Among the Americans were the men of the elite 173rd Airborne, Westmoreland's fire brigade.
01:07:41We all knew, in a general sense, that we wouldn't be brought back if there wasn't something
01:07:46big going on.
01:07:48You just knew that the area was crawling with North Vietnamese and that they were there
01:07:56not to avoid contact with us, but they were there to have contact with us.
01:08:02First Lieutenant Matthew Harrison was now with Alpha Company of the 2nd Battalion, the same
01:08:08rifle company that had been ambushed and so badly shattered back in June, on the slopes
01:08:13of Hill 1338, just 14 miles to the east.
01:08:18This wasn't like the Viet Cong, where if you could find them, you could kill them.
01:08:23Our problem wasn't finding them, our problem was what to do with them once you found them.
01:08:27The 174th NVA Regiment was waiting.
01:08:33When Tan Sun and his men were already dug in on the high ground, they knew the Americans
01:08:39would want to command, Hill 875.
01:08:43Well done?
01:08:44How did this work?
01:08:46The 6th NVA Regiment was prepared for a month.
01:08:48And we came back from the LVN
01:09:05On Sunday morning, November 19th, 1967, Alpha, Charlie, and Delta companies were ordered to take Hill 875.
01:09:18Matt Harrison had been wounded in an earlier fight and was not permitted to accompany his men.
01:09:25He anxiously followed their progress over the radio.
01:09:29Heavy artillery and flights of F-100s blasted the hillside ahead of them.
01:09:35Meant to knock out enemy positions before the paratroopers ever got within range.
01:09:58The three companies moved up the slope.
01:10:01Charlie and Delta in the lead, Alpha bringing up the rear.
01:10:06The paratroopers stepped warily into a clearing filled with fallen trees from the morning's bombardment and only a little over 300 yards from the summit.
01:10:17We just threw up and threw up and threw up and we didn't shoot.
01:10:22We were very close.
01:10:23We were about five feet and we saw each other's face.
01:10:27We were very close.
01:10:30We didn't shoot.
01:10:30Thousands of automatic weapon rounds ripped through the air.
01:10:36Chinese-made grenades came rolling and bumping down the slopes.
01:10:41The Americans sought cover where they could, behind fallen trees,
01:10:46scrabbled at the earth with their helmets, trying to dig fighting holes.
01:10:50Charlie and Delta companies were pinned down and being torn to pieces.
01:11:04Meanwhile, near the foot of the hill, other North Vietnamese troops surprised Alpha Company from behind.
01:11:10They were first spotted moving up through the trees by a private from the Bronx named Carlos Lozada.
01:11:18As the men of his company scrambled up the slope, dragging their wounded with them,
01:11:23Lozada provided what cover he could, firing his M60 machine gun from his hip before a bullet hit him in the head.
01:11:31He would be awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor.
01:11:38Back home, the battle led the nightly news.
01:11:43The Battle of Docto is now on its 19th day.
01:11:46It already ranks among the bloodiest campaigns of the Vietnam War.
01:11:50There's no sign yet of any letter.
01:11:52Over the weekend, the three companies of the 173rd Airborne Brigade moved down this river valley,
01:11:58up which North Vietnamese normally infiltrate, until they got down here by Hill 875.
01:12:04Then they came under heavy fire from the hill.
01:12:06Two of the three companies charged the hill.
01:12:08The other stayed back as a rear guard.
01:12:10They found a tough fight.
01:12:12By early afternoon, the three companies had basically been decapitated.
01:12:17The company commanders were dead.
01:12:19Most of the officers and most of the NCOs were dead.
01:12:24The survivors from all three companies clustered in the clearing
01:12:28and did their best to set up a defensive circle.
01:12:33American bombs and napalm pounded enemy positions until it grew almost too dark to see.
01:12:39American bombs and napalm pounded enemy positions until it grew up.
01:13:09Another American plane roared in and dropped two bombs.
01:13:13One landed among the hidden enemy troops.
01:13:17The other fell directly on the Americans.
01:13:22In a fraction of a second, 42 were killed.
01:13:27A badly hit lieutenant managed to find a working radio.
01:13:31No more fucking planes, he shouted into it.
01:13:34You're killing us up here.
01:13:36The men ran out of water, began to run out of ammunition.
01:13:46Helicopters that tried to ferry in supplies were shot down.
01:13:52The following day, Matt Harrison was able to chop her in.
01:13:57It was chaos.
01:13:59It was a collection of guys who had tunneled and dug down behind trees.
01:14:04These were guys who had gone without water in that heat for two days.
01:14:10And almost every one of them was wounded.
01:14:13And then all around were bodies, guys who had been shot and blown up.
01:14:22It was the third circle of hell.
01:14:24On November 23rd, two fresh battalions of the 173rd finally made it to the top of the hill for which so many had died.
01:14:36But the night before, the surviving North Vietnamese troops had slipped down the other side and disappeared into Cambodia and Laos.
01:14:47The powers that be decided it would be important to our morale for us to be in on the taking the top of the hill.
01:14:57I had 26 guys left out of a company that started out of 140, and all 26 had been wounded.
01:15:03Then, Harrison and his exhausted men were helicoptered to the top of yet another hill.
01:15:15It was Thanksgiving.
01:15:18Chinook helicopters clattered down out of the sky, carrying huge containers of hot turkey and mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce,
01:15:27so that the 173rd could have their Thanksgiving dinner.
01:15:31If there are any more remote or dangerous spots to spend Thanksgiving Day in Vietnam than this one,
01:15:37then most of these men have never seen them.
01:15:39There was a TV cameraman and a reporter off to the side using us as a backdrop,
01:15:44and I remember hearing the reporter in tone,
01:15:46Today is November 23rd, Thanksgiving Day, and I was really angry.
01:15:54It's as though we were entertainers.
01:15:58One hundred and seven Americans had died, taking Hill 875.
01:16:05Another 282 were wounded.
01:16:08Ten more were missing.
01:16:10The number of North Vietnamese casualties is unknown,
01:16:14but their losses are thought to have been staggering.
01:16:17Back in June, Matt Harrison had lost two West Point classmates on Hill 1338.
01:16:26He lost two more on Hill 875.
01:16:30Of the eight with whom he had served in the 2nd Battalion,
01:16:34four were now dead, and two had been wounded.
01:16:37To take tops of mountains in a triple canopy jungle along the Cambodian-Laotian border
01:16:46accomplished nothing of any importance.
01:16:51The battle for Hill 875 was, in my thinking today,
01:16:56a microcosm of what we were doing and what went wrong in Vietnam.
01:17:00There was no reason to take that hill.
01:17:05We literally got to the top of the hill about midday on November 23rd
01:17:11and sat there for, I don't know, half an hour, an hour,
01:17:17just kind of gathering ourselves and everything together.
01:17:21Chinooks came in, took us off the hill,
01:17:24and I doubt that there's been an American on Hill 875 since November 23rd.
01:17:31We accomplished nothing.
01:17:34A new phase is now starting.
01:17:37We have reached an important point when the end begins to come into view.
01:17:44As Matt Harrison and his men fought for Hill 875,
01:17:48the Johnson administration was in the midst of a success offensive,
01:17:52a PR campaign aimed at shoring up support for the war
01:17:57and the way it was being waged.
01:18:01McVee released a new and surprisingly low estimate of enemy forces
01:18:05to show how much damage the United States had done to them.
01:18:10It was only two-thirds of the total suggested by the CIA
01:18:14because after a bitter and prolonged debate behind the scenes,
01:18:18Westmoreland had chosen to exclude from it the part-time guerrillas,
01:18:23farmers, old men, women, even children
01:18:27who helped place the mines, grenades, and booby traps
01:18:31that accounted for more than a third of all American casualties.
01:18:36General Westmoreland also told the press
01:18:38that the impressive body counts his commanders reported
01:18:42were very, very conservative.
01:18:45It probably represented, he said,
01:18:4850% or even less of the enemy that has been killed.
01:18:53Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker joined the chorus
01:18:56using a metaphor first used 13 years earlier
01:19:00by the French commander in Vietnam,
01:19:03not long before their great defeat at the NBN Phu.
01:19:06I think we're now beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel.
01:19:12Mr. Ambassador, you talk about light at the end of the tunnel.
01:19:15How long is this tunnel?
01:19:17Well, I don't think that you can put it into
01:19:20any particular time frame, a situation like this.
01:19:27LBJ's success offensive succeeded.
01:19:30The number of Americans who believed the United States
01:19:35was making real progress in the war grew.
01:19:40Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara
01:19:43did not take part in the public relations campaign.
01:19:47He had become so disillusioned with the war
01:19:50he'd done so much to plan and prosecute
01:19:53that he wrote another secret memo to the president,
01:19:56advising Johnson to freeze American troop levels.
01:20:00Turn over ground operations to the South Vietnamese
01:20:03and halt the bombing of North Vietnam
01:20:06in order to bring about negotiations.
01:20:10There was no reason to believe, McNamara wrote,
01:20:13that the prolonged infliction of grievous casualties
01:20:16or the heavy punishment of air bombardment
01:20:19will suffice to break the will of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong.
01:20:25The continuation of our present course of action
01:20:27in Southeast Asia would be dangerous,
01:20:31costly in lives,
01:20:32and unsatisfactory to the American people.
01:20:37Johnson never responded.
01:20:39Instead, he arranged for McNamara
01:20:42to become the president of the World Bank.
01:20:45McNamara would keep silent
01:20:47about the doubts he had harbored
01:20:49since the beginning of the ground war
01:20:51for the next 28 years.
01:20:55His successor as defense secretary
01:20:58would be Clark Clifford,
01:20:59a prominent Washington lawyer
01:21:01and trusted counselor to Democratic presidents
01:21:04whom Johnson was sure
01:21:06would be supportive of the war.
01:21:10Meanwhile,
01:21:12Allard Lowenstein's year-long search
01:21:14for a Democratic challenger to the president
01:21:16had finally succeeded.
01:21:19On November 30, 1967,
01:21:22Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy
01:21:24announced that he would run.
01:21:27This is an issue
01:21:28which has to be taken to the people of the country
01:21:31in the campaign of 1960.
01:21:36By the end of 1967,
01:21:3920,057 Americans
01:21:42had died in Vietnam.
01:21:45The time had come,
01:21:47General Westmoreland said,
01:21:49for an all-out offensive
01:21:50on all fronts.
01:21:55But the enemy
01:21:56was just a month away
01:21:58from launching
01:22:00an all-out offensive
01:22:01of its own.
01:22:12I see the girls
01:22:31were by dressed
01:22:32in their summer clothes
01:22:34I have to turn my head
01:22:38until my darkness goes
01:22:41I see a line of cars
01:22:44and they're all painted black
01:22:46With flowers and my love
01:22:50for never to come back
01:22:53I see people turn their heads
01:22:56and quickly look away
01:22:58Like a newborn baby
01:23:02It just happens every day
01:23:05I look inside myself
01:23:08And see my heart is black
01:23:11I see my red door
01:23:14I must have it
01:23:15into black
01:23:17Maybe then I'll fade away
01:23:20It's not having to face the facts
01:23:23It's not easy facing up
01:23:26When your whole world is black
01:23:29No more will my green seagull
01:23:33Turn a deeper blue
01:23:35I could not foresee
01:23:38This thing happening to you
01:23:41If I look hard enough
01:23:45Into the setting sun
01:23:47My love will laugh with me
01:23:51Before the morning comes
01:23:53I see a red door
01:23:55I see a red door
01:23:57And I want it painted black
01:23:59No colors anymore
01:24:03I want them to turn black
01:24:05I see the girls
01:24:08were by dressed
01:24:09in their summer clothes
01:24:11I have to turn my head
01:24:15Until my darkness goes
01:24:18I want to see a painted
01:24:25Fainted, painted, painted
01:24:27Fainted black
01:24:28Yeah
01:24:45Without acurrent
01:24:59Afraid
01:25:00I see a red door
01:25:06Shitty
01:25:06You
01:25:10You
01:25:11You
01:25:12You
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