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Documentary, The Vietnam War -part 05

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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.
00:00:42When I first arrived in Vietnam, there were some interesting things that happened and I
00:00:48questioned some of the Marines. I was made to realize that this is war and this is what
00:00:56we do. And I stuck in my head, this is war, this is what we do. And after a while, you
00:01:05embrace that. This is war, this is what we do.
00:01:18This evening, I came here to speak to you about Vietnam. There is progress in the war itself,
00:01:32rather dramatic progress considering the situation that actually prevailed when we sent our troops
00:01:38there in 1965. The grip of the Viet Cong on the people is being broken.
00:01:57In the summer of 1967, the men overseeing the war in Vietnam remained outwardly optimistic,
00:02:04whatever private doubts they may have held.
00:02:20The American military command in Vietnam, MACV, claimed to have killed 200,000 enemy troops,
00:02:28and had told the president that the all-important crossover point, the moment when U.S. and
00:02:34Arvin forces were killing, more Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops than the enemy could
00:02:40replace appeared to have been reached in almost all of South Vietnam.
00:02:47But the United States had suffered nearly 75,000 casualties. By July 4, 14,624 Americans had died.
00:02:59And off the record, many officers were much less sanguine than their commanders.
00:03:06From Saigon, R. W. Apple of the New York Times summarized their views.
00:03:12Victory is not close at hand, he wrote. In fact, it may be beyond reach.
00:03:18It was true that the enemy rarely won a battle in the traditional military sense that they
00:03:34drove the Americans from the field. But it was also true that no American victory seemed
00:03:41to matter. Battered enemy units were quickly reinforced and rearmed.
00:03:48Pacification, winning the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese people, was not working.
00:03:55Saigon still controlled only a fraction of a country roughly the size of Florida,
00:04:02and its government remained unpopular and riddled with corruption.
00:04:09President Johnson had been forced to raise taxes to meet the war's ever-climbing cost.
00:04:15His ambitious social program, his war on poverty, was in retreat.
00:04:21That summer, racial unrest would grip American cities.
00:04:36Maybe now you can't hear them, but you will.
00:04:38The president would have to send the army into Detroit to end five days of rioting that
00:04:44left 43 dead and hundreds of buildings razed.
00:04:5026 more died in Newark, New Jersey, demonstrating yet again how wide a gap remained between black
00:04:58and white Americans.
00:05:01Only a third of the country saw any sign of progress in Vietnam, and half of the country
00:05:08now disapproved of the president's handling of the war.
00:05:13Meanwhile, 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.
00:05:34There'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, and they put on the old punch cards
00:05:46everything you could quantify.
00:05:47You know, numbers of ships, numbers of airplanes, numbers of tanks, numbers of helicopters,
00:05:50artillery, machine gun, ammo, everything you could quantify.
00:05:54Put it in the hopper and said, when will we win in Vietnam?
00:05:58Went away on Friday. The 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. The only problem is the enemy gets a vote, and they weren't on the punch cards.
00:06:11There were nearly half a million American soldiers in Vietnam by the middle of 1967, with thousands more on the way.
00:06:28Only 20% would ever be in combat. The rest served in support units.
00:06:36None of them had been taught very much about the people against whom and for whom they had been asked to fight.
00:06:45Troops called the Vietnamese guks, a term first used by U.S. Marines to refer to the people of Haiti and Nicaragua
00:06:54during the American occupation of those countries, and 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.
00:07:21As you went through bayonet training, you were not talking about Vietnamese.
00:07:26You were always talking about guks. Vietnamese might be people, but guks are close to being animals.
00:07:35GI's called Vietnamese homes hooches, a corruption of the Japanese word for dwelling places that they had learned during the battle for Okinawa in the Second World War.
00:07:48Soldiers referred to older Vietnamese women as mamasans, the term they used for women who ran whorehouses in occupied Japan.
00:07:59The Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese called GI's, invaders, imperialists, and Zoc Mi, American bandits.
00:08:11South Vietnam had been divided into four tactical zones.
00:08:20By the summer of 1967, American troops were fighting in all four of them.
00:08:26In IV Corps, the Brownwater Navy patrolled the rivers and canals and marshes of the densely populated Mekong Delta, searching for the enemy.
00:08:40In III Corps, the army continued to sweep the thick jungles of the Iron Triangle, the Viet Cong sanctuary near Saigon that was supposed to have been permanently denied to the enemy by big American operations earlier in the year.
00:08:59In II Corps, a series of bloody battles in the Central Highlands around Docto temporarily drove North Vietnamese troops back into Cambodia and Laos.
00:09:12But some of the most intense combat would take place in I Corps, made up of the five northernmost provinces of South Vietnam, where the Marines would bear the brunt of the fighting.
00:09:26More than two and a half million people lived there, all but two percent of them within the narrow, rice-growing river valleys along the South China Sea.
00:09:37The Marines wanted to eradicate the Viet Cong there and provide security to the people village by village, hamlet by hamlet.
00:09:47The vast, largely empty highlands that stretched westward all the way to Laos, the Marines argued, could be left to the enemy.
00:09:56The real war is among the people, said Marine Lieutenant General Victor Krulak, and not among the mountains.
00:10:05But General William Westmoreland, the American commander, feared that thousands of North Vietnamese Army regulars, the NVA, were planning to seize the two northernmost provinces.
00:10:18Finding and destroying them remained his first goal.
00:10:26He insisted the 3rd Marine Division move North to meet that challenge.
00:10:31Establish a base at Dong Ha, and man strong points at Zhou Lin, Kantian, Cam Lo, Camp Carroll, The Rock Pile, and Khaisan.
00:10:43Khaisan overlooked Route 9, the east-west highway that Westmoreland hoped would one day carry American troops across the border into Laos,
00:10:54where North Vietnamese men and supplies were streaming south on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
00:11:00But the thousands of Marines monitoring the border would find themselves within range of highly accurate North Vietnamese artillery and rocket launchers,
00:11:13hidden within the DMZ.
00:11:15Tell me, uh, you came here at full strength?
00:11:26I had 13 here when I came.
00:11:28And it's four days later now, and how many are still here?
00:11:30Six.
00:11:31The rifles have been jamming, the mud's been, uh, it's slowed everything down, and the artillery comes in everywhere.
00:11:43And, uh, it just gets pretty futile and frustrating.
00:11:48I can't say that I'm scared stiff, but I'm scared.
00:11:54I mean, after a while, you know it's gonna come.
00:11:57You can't do nothing about it.
00:11:58And you just look to God.
00:12:00Private First Class John Musgrave of Fairmount, Missouri, who had volunteered to join the 3rd Marine Division,
00:12:11was sent to the battle-scarred countryside around Cantien, a few kilometers south of the DMZ.
00:12:22For the Marines in Northern I Corps and the 3rd Marine Division, in the spring and summer of 1967, we called the DMZ the Dead Marine Zone.
00:12:30Musgrave's 1st Battalion had already suffered so many casualties in a series of bloody sweeps that it was believed to be a hard-luck outfit.
00:12:41They were called the Walking Dead.
00:12:45I joined the Marine Corps to be in the varsity, and I felt like I wasn't varsity unless I was up north fighting the NBA.
00:12:58I have never regretted that decision.
00:13:01There were times when we were under artillery fire, where I thought, you know, what were you thinking?
00:13:10Here it is in a nutshell.
00:13:12If I lived to be 63 years old, I didn't want to look in the mirror some morning and have a guy looking back at me that hadn't done everything for what he believed.
00:13:21To let somebody else do the harder part.
00:13:25Every major contact I remember with the NBA was initiated by them ambushing us.
00:13:35They wouldn't hit us unless they outnumbered us, and we were fighting in their yard.
00:13:42They knew the ground, we didn't.
00:13:47They were just really good.
00:13:55The North Vietnamese carried Soviet-made, seemingly indestructible AK-47s.
00:14:17The Marines had to fight with newly issued M16 rifles that had for a time a potentially fatal design flaw.
00:14:25They needed constant cleaning and often jammed in the middle of firefights.
00:14:32Their rifles worked, ours didn't.
00:14:35The M16 was a piece of shit.
00:14:38You can't throw your bullets at the enemy and have them be effective.
00:14:42And that rifle malfunctioned on us repeatedly.
00:14:55It was my voice.
00:14:56This was a victim.
00:14:58You were kötü, a man came up.
00:14:59And a man came out.
00:15:01They were injured.
00:15:02It was a victim.
00:15:03They were injured.
00:15:05The man came down in the middle of firefights.
00:15:06But the man came out of firefights.
00:15:07So it was a lot of pressure and a man baptized in the middle.
00:15:08my hatred for them was pure here i hated them so much
00:15:19and i was so scared of them boy i was terrified of them
00:15:24and the scarier i got the more i hated them
00:15:38i only killed one human being in vietnam and that was the first man that i ever killed
00:16:00i was sick with guilt about killing that guy and thinking i'm gonna have to
00:16:06do this for the next 13 months i'm gonna go crazy and i saw a marine step on a bouncing betty mine
00:16:14and that's when i made my deal with the devil in that i said i will never kill another human
00:16:20being as long as i'm in vietnam however i will waste as many gooks as i can find i'll wax as many
00:16:29dinks as i can find i'll smoke as many zips as i can find but i ain't gonna kill anybody
00:16:36you know turn a subject into an object it's racism 101 it turns out to be a very necessary tool
00:16:46when you have children fighting your wars for them to stay sane doing their work
00:16:50on one early patrol musgrave watched an american fighter swoop down to drop napalm on enemy troops
00:17:04hidden behind a hedgerow he could hear their ak-47s firing at the plane until the instant they were
00:17:12engulfed in flames if the enemy is willing to die like that he thought this is going to be one very long war
00:17:23they knew if they would pop the ambush close and then get amongst you
00:17:27we couldn't or would hesitate to call an air on ourselves
00:17:34so that firefights like that we called brawls
00:17:38they were very intimate and they were very deadly and they were absolutely terrifying
00:17:50the marines were spread too thin to hold any of the territory they fought so hard to take
00:17:55again and again they were sent out from one stronghold or another along the dmz looking for enemy soldiers
00:18:05the disillusionment for me began when i was going back to fight at places we'd already fought before
00:18:11we had fought captured and then left and the envy came right back you don't like getting wounded in places you've already been before
00:18:23war is a real estate business
00:18:26we're supposed to take real estate away from the enemy and then deny the enemy access to that real estate
00:18:32on the morning of july 2nd 1967 the first battalion launched yet another sweep of the area northeast of contien
00:18:44when they reached a crossroads called the marketplace barely a mile and a quarter from their base they were ambushed
00:18:53one company was virtually annihilated
00:18:55one of the worst days the marine corps endured in vietnam 53 dead and 190 wounded were carried off the battlefield
00:19:2034 more dead had to be left behind and when marines fought their way back two days later to retrieve their
00:19:30bodies they found that a number had died because their m16s had jammed as the enemy closed in many had been
00:19:39executed shot in the face or back of the head at close range some bodies had been booby trapped others mutilated
00:19:50so that the marine amphibious force headquarters was so desperate to get north vietnamese prisoners
00:19:58that they offered us three day in country rnr if we bring a prisoner in
00:20:03yeah good luck you know don't you know who what we're doing up here do you know who we're fighting
00:20:12i want to make this clear we did not torture prisoners and we did not mutilate them
00:20:20but to be a prisoner you had to make it to the rear you know if he was with fell into our hands
00:20:30he was just one sorry
00:20:43i don't know how to explain it that it would make sense
00:20:45roxbury where i grew up was the african-american neighborhood and south boston was the irish catholic
00:20:59bastion you know there's a lot of hate south boston folks hated us we hated them and ironically um
00:21:07you know you end up in war and the vietnamese didn't care whether you're from roxbury or south boston
00:21:18they saw you as american and they want to kill you because you're american
00:21:24private roger harris had joined the marines in part he said because he wanted to be a gladiator
00:21:30a killer of his country's enemies on july 28th two weeks after john musgrave's badly mangled
00:21:39first battalion was pulled back to rest and recover roger harris and the second battalion
00:21:45moved out of contien and into the southern half of the demilitarized zone itself
00:21:52we wanted the non-vietnamese army to expose themselves
00:21:56so basically he put the bait out there and then we could call in and rain hell on him
00:22:05roger harris's battalion advanced into the dmz along a rough cart track that led to the ben high river
00:22:14but planners had failed to see that a concrete bridge over an impassable stream was too narrow
00:22:21and too weak to carry armored vehicles now the marines had no choice but to violate a cardinal rule
00:22:29of infantry tactics turn around and try to go back the way they had come the enemy was waiting
00:22:38the marines were forced to run a bloody gauntlet of mortars machine gun fire and rocket propelled grenades
00:23:08i have the utmost respect for the nazi and these army soldiers when you see someone jump out
00:23:16and confront a tank you know with a big 50 caliber machine gun on it and a 90 millimeter cannon on it
00:23:24and the individual takes on the tank
00:23:26roger harris's company held up the rear hounded by enemy soldiers on all sides
00:23:41the marines staggered back out of the dmz alongside the battered armored vehicles heaped with dead and
00:23:49wounded americans the battalion suffered 214 casualties
00:23:58wasn't a good day for marines at all a lot of people died people got their legs shot off people
00:24:03got run over by tanks
00:24:08i don't want to talk about it because it's
00:24:09it's it's it's not a good day it wasn't a good day
00:24:24chung doi theo cái đại đội này đại đội này hai đại đội mỹ là mất ba ngày
00:24:29thế thì họ đi tìm chúng tôi nhưng tôi lại quay đa đi hình sau để bám vết họ thế nào mà đại đội tôi thì
00:24:39lại thọc sâu được vào giữa cái trận địa của mỹ chúng tôi tiêu diệt hai đại đội của mỹ
00:24:46thì bị thương tới sâu bảy chục người trong đó bị thương và hy sinh cho nên là đơn vị về cả đơn vị
00:25:03không như là một cái ngày để mấy ngày để tăng về hậu cứu mà tôi thì không ăn không ngủ được mà
00:25:11tôi thương anh em tôi khóc mà tôi cũng bản thân cũng được cái huy hiệu dũng trị diện mỹ nhưng mà phải đổi bằng sương màu của đồng đội
00:25:25this is bao khu the day of voting in vietnam and it's a solemn day in the village of hung tao phu
00:25:32and in other villages throughout the country and these people have dressed up in their sunday best for it
00:25:37south vietnamese prime minister huyn cao ki had crushed his buddhist opponents in 1966 but he had been
00:25:48forced by the americans and his political rivals to make at least tentative moves toward democracy election
00:25:55of a national assembly a new constitution and a promise of elections for president and vice president
00:26:02but when key's old adversary win von tiu declared he wanted to challenge key for the top spot things in saigon
00:26:13had threatened to come apart again we were watching the rivalry between tiu and key and that was a game
00:26:22in vietnam the country was watching like we were watching a movie and tiu and key was watching as to
00:26:30not whoever had the support of the people but who had the support of the americans and the white house
00:26:38ellsworth bunker the american ambassador called both men to his residence and warned that the united
00:26:45states would not tolerate another power struggle q and key needed to meet with their fellow generals
00:26:52and decide who would run for president and who would be his running mate
00:26:56q emerged on top he was unassuming and unflappable interested largely in accumulating power and personal
00:27:06wealth and was thought unlikely ever to embarrass washington key would be his vice president
00:27:15together they won with only 35 of the vote no one who had called for an end to the war
00:27:23had been allowed to run many buddhists had boycotted the election and vietcong intimidation had kept many
00:27:31more from the polls but the state department immediately declared the election an important step forward
00:27:42some south vietnamese did believe that a measure of stability had finally been achieved
00:27:47others were not so sure in terms of corruption yes they were corrupted both teal and key they abused their
00:28:00position we pay a very high price for having leaders like a key and teal and we continue to pay the price
00:28:10to pay the price to pay the price to pay the price to pay the price to pay the price to pay the price
00:28:16my father was in the united states army and then when the air force came about he switched over to
00:28:22the air force i grew up out of the country in desegregated settings i was usually the only little black
00:28:31girl in the class if you look at my class pictures i look like the little chocolate chip in the vanilla ice cream
00:28:37i was always a good student i remember people saying oh you speak so well and the unstated part is for
00:28:45a black girl probably a negro girl or colored girl at that point eva jefferson's father had served a year
00:28:52on air bases in vietnam and returned home convinced the united states had no business being there
00:29:00but when his daughter entered northwestern university in the chicago suburb of evanston
00:29:06in september 1967 the war was not uppermost in students minds the war was not really an issue
00:29:16it's like well no the president has our best interest at heart he of course would only prosecute a war
00:29:22that made sense and i think most of america felt that way at the university of nebraska jack todd
00:29:32also supported the war he had felt so strongly about it in 1966 that he had signed up for marine officer
00:29:40training i went into the marine corps thinking this was all i wanted to do i mean my my goal was to
00:29:48be commander a platoon commander in vietnam but as time went by and the war went on todd and many of
00:29:56his fellow students began to change their minds all young people go through changes but we were going
00:30:04through astronomical changes at such a rapid rate all the music the culture everything that we listened
00:30:13to everything that we thought was transforming and the the core of it all was vietnam vietnam vietnam it
00:30:20just kept going in the background first it was kind of like a background noise and then it got to be
00:30:24the elephant in the room and then it was the elephant sitting on your head and we we couldn't escape
00:30:29this todd attended officer training school at camp upshire in quantico virginia but doubts about the
00:30:37war followed him there too i guess the emotional things that were happening on the ground the photographs
00:30:45that we saw the news images and the fact that there was no discernible progress that really started to
00:30:50eat away at what we thought in the summer of 67 i was at camp upshire you know wanting to go kill
00:30:57vietnamese people and in october i was completely against the war
00:31:06westmoreland came in last night to me and he says that he has concentrated more firepower in bombing
00:31:14in the last week on the dmz and they've concentrated more on us than has ever been concentrated in any
00:31:22equivalent period in the history of warfare much more than was ever poured on berlin or tokyo and that
00:31:29here's only defense of the dmz to stop this aggression up there where the north vietnamese trying to come
00:31:36in is bombing their their gun positions and it would just be suicide if we stopped the bombing as these
00:31:43idiots talking about when you say stop the bombing you say kill more american marines that's all it means
00:31:52now if we stop bombing without their talking and without any reciprocity on their part it just means
00:31:59we kill more americans that's all neither the ongoing bombing of the north nor the concentrated bombing
00:32:14around the dmz nor the behind the scenes offers made by president johnson to stop it had any discernible
00:32:22effect on lays one and the other men who ran north vietnam but lays one like lyndon johnson was in
00:32:30trouble that summer the war with the americans had produced little more than a bloody stalemate
00:32:38some vietcong commanders in the south resented hanoi's insistence on directing their tactics
00:32:45many north vietnamese civilians were weary of the war
00:32:49and of the bombing that had disrupted their lives and destroyed so much of their infrastructure
00:32:56the country's most revered figures ho chi minh and va win zap were urging patience
00:33:03continuing to wage a war of attrition they still believed would pay off in the end
00:33:11hanoi's soviet and chinese patrons offered conflicting advice as well
00:33:16to silence his critics and break the stalemate les one began to devise and promote a new and riskier
00:33:25version of the plan for victory he had tried in 1964. he called it the general offensive general uprising
00:33:37north vietnamese and vietcong units would launch scores of coordinated attacks
00:33:42attacks on south vietnamese cities and towns and military bases that offensive lace one believed would
00:33:51ignite a mass civilian uprising these simultaneous blows would destroy the saigon regime and leave washington
00:34:00with no choice but with no choice but to withdraw
00:34:04on the tin một cách chắc chắn rằng là có thể giành chiến thắng hà nội chuẩn bị vào tiếp quản chính quyền
00:34:11tiền đã được in sẵn hà nội đã may cảnh phục thì những cái người lực lượng công an sẽ mặc một cái bộ
00:34:20cảnh phục riêng để về tiếp quản các cái chính quyền các thành phố ở miền Nam trong tôi tưởng là trong
00:34:28thành phố thì mọi người tức là có một cái đàn ngáp mà của Mỹ và của chính quyền miền Nam cho nên họ sẵn sàng
00:34:37tức là họ chống Mỹ vào nối dậy ông phụ trách công tác ở thành phố các ông bảo nhân dân thành phố bây giờ nó như con
00:34:44cá tức trứng cái là con cá nó đầy trứng ở trong vụn nó rồi bây giờ chỉ cần nó có một kích thích trẻ là nó sẽ đẻ ra nó sẽ đẻ cái trứng nó ra
00:34:54we talk about our own hubris there's some hubris on their side as well
00:34:57and once they had convinced themselves that that this was going to be a great success
00:35:02it is what some wags have called drinking their own bath water
00:35:06they decided it's going to be a victory even though there are people in the south saying hey this is not a
00:35:10great idea but these people are charged with subjectivism and basically are told to shut up
00:35:17and keep rolling lays one neutralized those who opposed his plan members of general zap's staff
00:35:25were arrested so was ho chi minh secretary sức khỏe yếu cho nên ông giáp được đưa đi hungary trị bệnh
00:35:35vào giữa tháng 7 năm 1967 hồ chí minh thì vào đầu tháng 9 năm 1967 cũng được đưa sang
00:35:43trung quốc để trị bệnh hundreds of less prominent figures journalists students even highly decorated heroes
00:35:52of the french war were also rounded up many were locked up in the old french prison that the american
00:36:00pow's also confined they are called the hanoi hilton
00:36:06the date eventually chosen for the attack would be january 31 1968 the first day of the vietnamese
00:36:14lunar new year celebration known as tet
00:36:20hundreds then thousands of north vietnamese regulars in civilian clothes began slipping southward to join
00:36:27tens of thousands of vietcong already in place
00:36:33he đang đi tinh sản như vậy thì được lệnh là thu quân
00:36:37thu quân về trang bị thêm là là là vũ khí đoàn dược rồi lương thực thực phẩm
00:36:45gạo muối bóng kép đầy đủ kể cả đường sữa
00:36:51và được phổ biến là đi bê giải
00:36:54những cái cuộc chia ly mà chúng tôi chứng kiến thì lại được tổ chức được những người cộng
00:37:01sản ở quê tôi tổ chức nó rất là hoành trạng và những người ra đi thì gần như là hừng hực cái
00:37:06lửa mà để đi vào nam để đi chiến đấu
00:37:08ông anh đầu của tôi khi mà nhận được cái kết quả khám sức khỏe rằng là ông trúng tuyển vào bộ đội
00:37:16thì ông đã reo lên để ông đi bộ đội và có nhiều người ở quê tôi đã từng họ họ vì không đủ cân
00:37:23để mà được tuyển vào bộ đội cho nên họ đã bỏ thêm một cục gạch vào trong người để họ khi họ tuyển quân họ đi
00:37:30không ai bi lụy không ai nghĩ đến cái chuyện rằng là mình đi như vậy thì không trở về thì sẽ là một cái bi kịch đối với họ
00:37:37sự tổ chức một cách hoặc như n pratique
00:37:42Để công việc của hành thắng
00:37:45gia đình thường chẳng cho hành thủy quật
00:37:46mẹ đã luyện ngựa chân và thủy quân người đến bộ đội
00:37:50đối tế bế giới rồi
00:37:53của chúng tôi tôi vàng thử dụng các vận tập trung cấp
00:38:06battles.
00:38:08Khan Tien would be the first.
00:38:15In September and October, John Musgraves and Roger Harris's
00:38:19outfits took turns defending Khan Tien
00:38:22as 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.
00:38:38Time at Khan Tien was time in the barrel.
00:38:46We were the fish.
00:38:48They had the shotguns.
00:38:49They stuck in the barrel and blasted away.
00:38:52And they were going to hit something every shot.
00:38:54Because Khan Tien was such a small area,
00:38:57and they pounded it with that artillery from North Vietnam
00:39:01that I couldn't miss.
00:39:09I've never been as afraid.
00:39:13In fact, that's why I'm not afraid of anything now.
00:39:15I mean, there's nothing you can do.
00:39:19It's just listen to the sounds of the rockets coming over,
00:39:23and you just pray that they don't land on you.
00:39:27The big question really seems to be whether or not the North
00:39:30Vietnamese intend to overrun Khan Tien.
00:39:33The Marines have tripled the number of troops guarding the outpost,
00:39:37and they've moved up more battalions to be ready to reinforce.
00:39:41I sat in water.
00:39:43I slept in water.
00:39:44I ate in water because our holes were full.
00:39:48I mean, a flood of foxhole can drown a wounded man.
00:39:51Spend your day filling up sandbags, trying to create barriers,
00:39:55and you just put another layer on, put another layer on.
00:39:59A lot of mud, blood, and artillery.
00:40:05It's just red clay up there, and it's real sticky,
00:40:08and it could just grab onto you and pull your boots off.
00:40:11It's hard to run on that stuff, and running,
00:40:14when you're at a place where they're firing
00:40:15a heavy artillery at you, running's pretty important.
00:40:19During the siege of the fall of 1967,
00:40:21we were getting newspaper articles in the mail
00:40:24from our families, and we were being called the Alamo.
00:40:28You 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, literally 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,
00:41:00and put that in the green bag.
00:41:02And that's what goes back, you know,
00:41:05as Marine Lands Corporal so-and-so and so.
00:41:08But sometimes you're not even sure,
00:41:09because the body has literally been blown to bits,
00:41:12and the only thing that's left is a foot
00:41:14or a piece of an arm.
00:41:16I carried a wallet calendar
00:41:18from Clifford Farlow Insurance.
00:41:20He was my dad's insurance agent.
00:41:22And I marked off each of the days religiously.
00:41:26And then in October, we went up to Contean again.
00:41:31I just stopped, because I thought, well, this is pointless.
00:41:35I'm not getting, I'm not going to go home.
00:41:38I'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?
00:41:46And I was telling my mother what was happening over there,
00:41:49and I was telling her, you know,
00:41:50she shouldn't believe what she sees in the newspaper
00:41:53and sees on television, because we're losing the war.
00:41:57And I said, you'll probably never see me again,
00:42:00because we're the most northern outposts
00:42:03that the Marines have, you know?
00:42:05We could literally could look right into Vietnam.
00:42:07We could see the sparks when the guns fired on us.
00:42:09And I said, and everybody in my unit's dying, you know?
00:42:13And 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, and you're special.
00:42:21You're coming back.
00:42:23And I said, Ma, everybody's mother
00:42:25thinks that they're special.
00:42:27You know, I'm putting pieces of special people in bags.
00:42:31And I was feeling that.
00:42:32My mother's in denial.
00:42:33She just doesn't want to face the fact
00:42:34that her only son's going to die in Vietnam.
00:42:37I said, Ma, this isn't a joke.
00:42:39I said, everybody's dying over here, you know?
00:42:41Everybody's dying.
00:42:42And she said, you're not going to die.
00:42:43You're not going to die.
00:42:45And the last thing she said to me was, God has a plan for you.
00:42:50And I said, yeah, right.
00:42:51And I hung up.
00:42:57Mr. Stout, during what period of time
00:42:58were you in Vietnam?
00:43:00I was in Vietnam from September of 1966
00:43:03to September of 1967.
00:43:05And with what unit?
00:43:06With the 1st Brigade of the 101st Airborne.
00:43:09During the time that you were in Vietnam,
00:43:11did you personally witness any atrocities on the part
00:43:14of American troops?
00:43:16Yes, I did.
00:43:18Dennis Stout from Phoenix, Arizona,
00:43:20had enlisted in the army at 20 and served nine months in combat.
00:43:26Wounded three times, he became an army reporter covering
00:43:30the 327th Regiment of the 101st Airborne.
00:43:36He would spend most of his time with a unique commando platoon
00:43:40called Tiger Force, small, hand-picked teams capable of remaining
00:43:45in the jungle for weeks at a time, fast-moving and deadly,
00:43:50intended to out-guerrilla the gorillas.
00:43:55Tiger Force fought in six different provinces, repeatedly
00:44:00suffering heavy losses.
00:44:04If you've lost your best friend and you want revenge,
00:44:08it's the officers who say, no, you can't do that.
00:44:11And if you do it, then there's consequences.
00:44:15But when the officers, and it includes the platoon leader
00:44:18and the battalion commander, are telling you that this is what
00:44:21you're supposed to do, then it gets completely out of hand.
00:44:26Some at Mach-V worried that such a freewheeling outfit,
00:44:30operating on its own, would be difficult to control.
00:44:36But General Westmoreland and commanders in the field
00:44:39admired Tiger Force for its reliable ferocity.
00:44:44In the summer of 1967, Tiger Force was sent to the fertile Songvei Valley.
00:44:51The entire population had already been herded from their homes
00:44:54and 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,
00:45:09and Tiger Force's officers took that literally.
00:45:13There are no friendlies, one lieutenant told his men.
00:45:17Shoot anything that moves.
00:45:21Over a seven-month period, they killed scores of unarmed civilians.
00:45:27Among their victims were two blind brothers,
00:45:32an elderly Buddhist monk, women, children,
00:45:35and old people hiding in underground shelters,
00:45:38and 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.
00:45:58Tiger 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.
00:46:15Over a two-day period, she was raped.
00:46:17Then, on the morning of the third day, she was killed.
00:46:20Was she raped by more than one person?
00:46:22Yes, all but the medic and myself and possibly one other man from a platoon.
00:46:28Did you protest? Did you try in any way to have them stopped?
00:46:31Yes. After 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,
00:46:40and that I was not to mention it, it 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,
00:46:54went with me to the sergeant major.
00:46:56The sergeant major then said that we told the chaplain that to stick to religion,
00:47:03sent him away, and then he told me to keep quiet,
00:47:06that I did not have to return from the next operation.
00:47:09Years later, another soldier came forward with more allegations of war crimes,
00:47:17and an army investigation would find probable cause
00:47:21to try 18 members of Tiger Force for murder or assault.
00:47:27But no charges were ever brought.
00:47:29The official records were buried in the archives.
00:47:34They should have all gone to jail.
00:47:36They were guilty of murder, period.
00:47:40At the same time, I felt like that incident,
00:47:43which I think was an aberration, not the norm,
00:47:46tarred all veterans, and there are hundreds of thousands of veterans,
00:47:50who went and did their duty, and as honorable as they possibly could,
00:47:53and they're tarred with the same brush.
00:47:57One of the things that I learned in the war
00:48:00is that we're not the top species on the planet because we're nice.
00:48:06We are a very aggressive species.
00:48:08It is in us.
00:48:10And people talk a lot about how well the military turns, you know,
00:48:15kids into, you know, killing machines and stuff.
00:48:18And I'll always argue that it's just finishing school.
00:48:22What we do with civilization is that we learn to inhibit and rope in
00:48:27these aggressive tendencies, and we have to recognize them.
00:48:32I worry about a whole country that doesn't recognize it
00:48:36because you think of how many times we get ourselves in scrapes as a nation
00:48:39because we're always the good guys.
00:48:42Sometimes I think if we thought that we weren't always the good guys,
00:48:45we might actually get in less wars.
00:48:51Mr. Ruben, how do you realistically expect to shut down the Pentagon?
00:48:55The Pentagon represents the murder of people throughout the world,
00:49:00and 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
00:49:07and block doors and fill hallways so the work of the Pentagon stops,
00:49:12because the work of the Pentagon should stop.
00:49:14The only thing to do with the Pentagon is to shut it down.
00:49:20It 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.
00:49:31The captain told us to ford a river, that's how it all begun.
00:49:36We were knee deep in the big muddy, the big fool says to push on.
00:49:42There was a major demonstration either in New York or in Washington,
00:49:47every fall and every spring.
00:49:50We decided that we would go to the demonstration in Washington
00:49:54at the Lincoln Memorial in the fall of 67,
00:49:57but we would take as many people out of that demonstration as we could
00:50:01and lead them to the Pentagon.
00:50:04And at the Pentagon, try to do something more militant
00:50:08than 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,
00:50:21toward the Pentagon, 50,000 people marched.
00:50:25Bill Zimmerman, now an assistant professor of psychology at Brooklyn College,
00:50:39had been against the war since the beginning.
00:50:42And we found when we got there, concentric defense perimeters
00:50:46that had been set up around the Pentagon to keep us at a distance from the building.
00:50:51We pushed against them. We tore down their fences.
00:51:00I was working that weekend day.
00:51:03The secretaries who were working in my area were frightened to hell
00:51:08what these Vietnam protesters would do.
00:51:11They thought they were going to come into the building and rape them.
00:51:15Some of them actually came over the walls.
00:51:16The big fool said to push on.
00:51:18It was a sense of revolution.
00:51:23Waste deep in the big muddy, the big fool says to push on.
00:51:28Waste 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.
00:51:40Other people wanted to commit vandalism in the building.
00:51:44Other people wanted to distribute anti-war literature in the building.
00:51:48Talked 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.
00:52:03We 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.
00:52:16President Johnson believed that international communism was somehow behind the demonstration.
00:52:23He had directed the CIA to come up with the evidence and was furious when it found none.
00:52:28Mr. President?
00:52:33Yes.
00:52:33Mr. John Eisenhower, how 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.
00:52:44They came, marched here and we arrested 600 of them and we gave 29 of them, pretty tough times.
00:52:51We 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 early.
00:53:01I think that we've talked too damn much about civil liberties and constitutional rights of the
00:53:06individual and not enough about the rights of the masses.
00:53:09And that's what we have.
00:53:10We were freely elected people and we've got to stand behind them.
00:53:14I think your government's in trouble, General.
00:53:16I think it's in, I don't love to say this, but I think we're in more danger from these left-wing
00:53:21influences now than we've ever been in 37 years I've been here.
00:53:24Well.
00:53:25And they're working in my party from within.
00:53:27And Bobby thinks he's going to get the nomination.
00:53:30Allard Lowenstein, a 38-year-old attorney from New York, shared the anti-war fervor of the protesters.
00:53:38But he believed the most effective way to end the fighting was to work within the political system,
00:53:44not outside it.
00:53:46The answer, he said, was to stop Lyndon Johnson from getting a second full term as president.
00:53:53He had traveled the country all year in search of someone willing to challenge the president
00:53:58in the upcoming Democratic primaries.
00:54:02He asked Senator Robert Kennedy of New York, who had begun to criticize the Johnson administration
00:54:08over the war.
00:54:08He asked Lieutenant General James Gavin.
00:54:13He asked Senator George McGovern of South Dakota.
00:54:17They all turned him down.
00:54:19Lowenstein kept looking.
00:54:27At Fort Sill, Oklahoma, on November 17, 1967, friends and family of a fallen soldier
00:54:36gathered for a funeral, one of five military funerals held there that month.
00:54:43First Sergeant Pascal Cletus Pulau had been killed as he tried to drag one of his wounded
00:54:49men 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
00:55:05posthumously for his gallantry in Vietnam.
00:55:10He was a Kiowa Indian.
00:55:13He and three of his sons were among the 42,000 Native Americans who would serve in Vietnam,
00:55:21the highest per capita service rate of any ethnic group in the United States.
00:55:28Pascal Pulau's widow spoke at the ceremony.
00:55:31He has followed the trail of the great chiefs, she said.
00:55:36His people hold him in honor and highest esteem.
00:55:42He has given his life for the people and the country he loved so much.
00:55:47When the truth is found to be lies, we know the joy within you dies.
00:56:06I didn't hear the word hippie until I was at Contean and we got a playboy.
00:56:31Somebody got a playboy in the mail, which was obviously very important to us.
00:56:35And there was an article on Haight Ashbury and pictures of the girls running around without
00:56:40their tops, you know, free love.
00:56:41And they were hippies.
00:56:42And we thought it was hippie because they had two peas.
00:56:45You know, hey, I'm going to go and be one of these hippies because
00:56:49the girls don't wear no clothes, you know, and they'll go to bed with anybody.
00:56:52And, you know, even I could score.
00:56:54But the only information I had on the peace movement came 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.
00:57:15The monsoon rains continued to make life miserable for John Musgrave and the other marines at Contean.
00:57:22But by early November, the worst of the shelling had ended.
00:57:26American airstrikes, artillery and Navy fire had taken a fearful toll on the besieging enemy.
00:57:35Before dawn on November 7th, two companies of Musgrave's outfit were sent half a mile into the countryside
00:57:43northwest of the base to sweep the area again.
00:57:46And we got into an area that was old hedgerows that's grown over with jungle.
00:57:54Very difficult to see very far.
00:57:56In the clear area, we had three NVA show themselves and start just spraying 30 rounds
00:58:02out of their AKs and then booking.
00:58:06The company commander himself said, I want their bodies.
00:58:10Bring me their bodies.
00:58:11Everything's about body count, right?
00:58:14We said, man, this is as old as Custer.
00:58:18These guys are showing themselves to draw us into an ambush.
00:58:21Lieutenant, don't do this.
00:58:23You know, please, this, these guys are bait.
00:58:28Well, the skipper says, we gotta go, we gotta go.
00:58:30And we went.
00:58:38And I can't tell you a whole lot about the ambush.
00:58:41That 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 the Marines, from the first day in boot camp, you learn that Marines don't leave their dead.
00:58:57And they never, never leave their wounded.
00:59:02And that's why I'm alive today.
00:59:03The first guy that came for me, I was lying on my face.
00:59:10He reached down and stuck his arms under my shoulders and lifted me up.
00:59:15And the machine gun wasn't any far.
00:59:17It was maybe
00:59:189 feet, 10 feet at the most away from me.
00:59:23This is a very intimate ambush.
00:59:25It's a brawl.
00:59:27And he fired a burst into my chest that blew me out of this, the Marines arms that was holding me.
00:59:34And then he was shot.
00:59:38Another very brave young Marine is 18 year old from Louisiana.
00:59:44His first firefight had seen what happened and still came for me.
00:59:50And he reached for me and he was shot, I think, in the forearm.
00:59:55And he was laying beside me and I've got a hole through my chest big enough to stick your fist through.
01:00:02And I'm dying and I know it.
01:00:05And I heard this horrible screaming going on and I was trying to figure out
01:00:09who was screaming like that because it sounded so...
01:00:19And then I realized it was me.
01:00:23When they began to drag us out, they were being pursued by the North Vietnamese
01:00:27and they would drop us and lay on top of us.
01:00:31They knew we were both dying.
01:00:33The Grenadier had been shot in the right side of his chest.
01:00:36They knew we were both dead.
01:00:39But we were still alive.
01:00:41So they weren't going to leave us.
01:00:43They would die before they would leave us.
01:00:45And they covered us with their bodies and fired back at the NVA.
01:00:48And then they'd jump up and drag us a little farther and then drop us and lay back on top of us.
01:00:53And I kept telling them to leave me.
01:00:54And I meant it. I meant it.
01:00:58But all of a sudden, I got scared that they might really leave me.
01:01:04I was triaged three times.
01:01:07And the senior corpsman said,
01:01:10he's either shot through the heart or the lungs, there's nothing I can do for him.
01:01:13And he just turned away.
01:01:14I went, oh, okay.
01:01:16And then a helicopter come in and they threw me into the bird.
01:01:25And the corpsman on the bird straddled me, stood over me and looked down at me.
01:01:31And then looked up at the door gunner and went,
01:01:34get me out of the way.
01:01:36Because he couldn't work on me.
01:01:37I was a dead man.
01:01:40And they flew me to Delta Met at Dongha.
01:01:43And I thought, okay, I made it this far.
01:01:47And this doctor comes over and looks at me.
01:01:48And I'm conscious.
01:01:50I'm lucid.
01:01:52And he checks a couple of things.
01:01:54And I've got this huge hole in him.
01:01:55And he looks at me right in the eye and he says,
01:01:57what's your religion, Maureen?
01:01:58And I said, well, I'm a Protestant.
01:02:01He says, get a chaplain over here.
01:02:02I can't help this man.
01:02:04And then he walked away.
01:02:06Another surgeon walks by.
01:02:10And he looked at me.
01:02:11And I was raised to be, to always be nice to people.
01:02:15And when he looked at me, I smiled at him and nodded.
01:02:19And he said, why isn't somebody helping this man?
01:02:24And inside I'm going, yeah, why isn't somebody helping this man?
01:02:29When they put me to sleep, I thought, boy, this is really it.
01:02:32You know, and it was kind of, okay, God, into your hands I'd deliver my spirit.
01:02:41And I thought that was it.
01:02:42And when I woke up in the surgical intensive care ward, which was a Quonset hut, I thought, holy mackerel.
01:02:52I just couldn't, I couldn't believe it.
01:02:54And I thought, boy, I didn't want to go there.
01:03:00Yesterday, over Hanoi, three American planes were shot down and at least two of their pilots captured.
01:03:06One of them was Lieutenant Commander John McCain III, the son of the U.S. Naval Commander in Europe.
01:03:12The U.S. Naval Company was shot down and was shot down and was shot down.
01:03:42Hanoi was so pleased to have captured the son of an American admiral, that they allowed
01:03:57a French journalist to interview McCain in the hospital.
01:04:00He had just had his broken bones set without even an aspirin for the pain.
01:04:05What is your name?
01:04:07Lieutenant Commander John McCain.
01:04:11How 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, and the plane continued straight down.
01:04:40And I ejected and broke my leg and both arms and went into a lake, parachuted into a lake.
01:04:55And I was picked up by some North Vietnamese and taken to the hospital where I almost died.
01:05:07I would just like to tell my wife that I don't get well.
01:05:23I love her.
01:05:24I hope to see her soon.
01:05:31After the interview, McCain was beaten for not expressing sufficient gratitude to his captors.
01:05:47All through the fall of 1967, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong continued their series of border 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 and then fought for five days to hold onto the ground they'd gained, something they had never done before.
01:06:29American commanders were puzzled.
01:06:31Then, in early November, reports reached Mach V that five North Vietnamese regiments and the Viet Cong battalion, some 7,000 men in all, had begun massing in the Central Highlands around the U.S. Special Forces camp at Docto again.
01:06:50Among the North Vietnamese regulars was Ninh Tuan Son, who had been so eager to fight that he, too, had filled his pockets with rocks to pass his physical.
01:07:02As the NVA deployed their troops, Westmoreland sent his to Docto, exactly what the enemy wanted him to do.
01:07:27Among 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 big going on.
01:07:47You just knew that the area was crawling with North Vietnamese and that they were there not 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 rifle company that had been ambushed and so badly shattered back in June, on the slopes of Hill 1338, just 14 miles to the east.
01:08:19This wasn't like the Viet Cong, where if you could find them, you could kill them.
01:08:24Our 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.
01:08:34When Tan Sun and his men were already dug in on the high ground, they knew the Americans would want to command, Hill 875.
01:08:45We went back to the Army for a month.
01:08:47We were able to drive the transport station around the area.
01:08:52We were very surprised.
01:08:54We were very surprised.
01:08:55They were very, very beautiful, green, and we just came up, and they couldn't do anything.
01:09:00We were told that the members were prepared, and they would come here.
01:09:07On Sunday morning, November 19th, 1967, Alpha, Charlie and Delta companies were ordered to take Hill 875.
01:09:175. Matt 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. Heavy artillery and flights of F-100s
01:09:33blasted the hillside ahead of them, meant to knock out enemy positions before the paratroopers
01:09:39ever got within range.
01:09:47The three companies moved up the slope, Charlie 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
01:10:12bombardment, and only a little over 300 yards from the summit.
01:10:32Thousands of automatic weapon rounds ripped through the air.
01:10:36Chinese-made grenades came rolling and bumping down the slopes.
01:10:40The Americans sought cover where they could, behind fallen trees, scrabbled at the earth
01:10:47with their helmets, trying to dig fighting holes.
01:10:57Charlie and Delta companies were pinned down and being torn to pieces.
01:11:01Meanwhile, near the foot of the hill, other North Vietnamese troops surprised Alpha Company from
01:11:10behind. They were first spotted moving up through the trees by a private from the Bronx named Carlos
01:11:17Lozada. As the men of his company scrambled up the slope, dragging their wounded with them,
01:11:23Lozada provided what cover he could, firing his M-60 machine gun from his hip before a bullet
01:11:29hit him in the head. He would be awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor.
01:11:38Back home, the battle led the nightly news.
01:11:41The battle of Docto is now on its 19th day. It 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.
01:12:03Then they came under heavy fire from the hill. Two of the three companies charged the hill. The other stayed back as a rear guard.
01:12:10They found a tough fight on the hill.
01:12:12By early afternoon, the three companies had basically been decapitated. The company commanders were dead. Most of the officers and most of the NCOs were dead.
01:12:22The survivors from all three companies clustered in the clearing and 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. One 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.
01:13:32No more fucking planes, he shouted into it. You're killing us up here.
01:13:36The fighting on the hillside continued.
01:13:41The 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.
01:13:58It was chaos.
01:13:59It was a collection of guys who had tunneled and dug down behind trees.
01:14:05These 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.
01:14:18Guys 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
01:14:34for which so many had died.
01:14:37But the night before, the surviving North Vietnamese troops had slipped down the other side
01:14:43and 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.
01:15:01And all 26 had been wounded.
01:15:04Then Harrison and his exhausted men were helicoptered to the top of yet another hill.
01:15:10It was Thanksgiving.
01:15:18Chinook helicopters clattered down out of the sky,
01:15:21carrying huge containers of hot turkey and mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce
01:15:26so that the 173rd could have their Thanksgiving dinner.
01:15:32If 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.
01:15:38There 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,
01:15:47Today is November 23rd, Thanksgiving Day,
01:15:50and I was really angry.
01:15:54It's as though we were entertainers.
01:16:00107 Americans had died taking Hill 875.
01:16:05Another 282 were wounded.
01:16:0810 more were missing.
01:16:10The number of North Vietnamese casualties is unknown,
01:16:14but their losses are thought to have been staggering.
01:16:19Back in June,
01:16:21Matt Harrison had lost two West Point classmates on Hill 1338.
01:16:26He lost two more on Hill 875.
01:16:29Of the eight with whom he had served in the 2nd Battalion,
01:16:33four were now dead,
01:16:35and two had been wounded.
01:16:40To take tops of mountains in a triple canopy jungle along the Cambodian-Laotian border
01:16:46accomplished nothing of any importance.
01:16:48The battle for Hill 875 was in my thinking today a microcosm of what we were doing and what went wrong in Vietnam.
01:17:01There was no reason to take that hill.
01:17:03We 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 and 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?
01:19:17I don't think that you can put it into any particular time frame,
01:19:24a 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
01:19:52that 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,
01:21:00a 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.
01:21:33Yeah!
01:21:33By the end of 1967,
01:21:4020,057 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
01:21:59an all-out offensive
01:22:01of its own.
01:22:03I see a vector
01:22:19and I want it
01:22:21into black
01:22:22No colors anymore
01:22:26I want them
01:22:27to turn black
01:22:28I see the girls
01:22:31up I 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 are painted black
01:22:47With flowers
01:22:49and my love
01:22:50won't never
01:22:51come back
01:22:53I see people
01:22:55turn their heads
01:22:56and quickly
01:22:57look away
01:22:58Like a newborn baby
01:23:02it just happens
01:23:03every day
01:23:05I look inside myself
01:23:08and see my heart
01:23:10is black
01:23:11I see my red door
01:23:14and I'm just
01:23:14padded into black
01:23:17Maybe then I'll fade away
01:23:20and not have 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
01:23:54I see a red door
01:23:57and I want it
01:23:58painted black
01:23:59No colors anymore
01:24:03I want them
01:24:04to turn black
01:24:05I see the girls
01:24:08walk by
01:24:09dressed in their
01:24:10summer clothes
01:24:11I have to turn my head
01:24:15until my darkness goes
01:24:18I want to see a painted
01:24:25painted
01:24:26painted
01:24:27painted black
01:24:28Yeah
01:24:29I want it
01:24:59You
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