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00:02New York City, May 7th, 1985.
00:06Ticker tape streamed from the windows of lower Manhattan
00:09as 25,000 Vietnam veterans marched through what has been called the Canyon of Heroes.
00:15But this was 1985, ten years after the war.
00:20Why had it taken so long to honor the men who fought for their country in Vietnam?
00:25At least the people are starting to show me that they're not blaming the warrior for the war.
00:33The war had been lost, and that was part of the difference.
00:36These troops had returned from Vietnam, not as conquering heroes,
00:40but as symbols of a national frustration.
00:43This day, their day, had arrived.
00:46Arrived ten years too late.
00:49This day, one million persons lined the parade route to deliver a message of thanks.
00:54We love you!
00:56The Vietnam War had wounded not only the warriors, but it wounded the nation.
01:01Ten years later, the wounds were healing, but the scars remained.
01:06The Vietnam War is history.
01:08The legacies endure.
01:13The Vietnam War is history.
01:14The Vietnam War is history.
01:21The Vietnam War is history.
01:24The Vietnam War is history.
01:27The Vietnam War is history.
01:27The Vietnam War is history.
01:28The Vietnam War is history.
01:29The Vietnam War is history.
01:30The Vietnam War is history.
01:30The Vietnam War is history.
01:31The Vietnam War is history.
01:32The Vietnam War is history.
01:33The Vietnam War is history.
01:35The Vietnam War is history.
01:54The Vietnam War officially ended on April 30th, 1975, and yet in a way it has not ended yet.
02:02It has left its mark on too many people, those who shared the memories and the pain.
02:07We could not complete this series of videocassettes without looking at some of the aftermaths of the war in Vietnam.
02:14One of the legacies was desperation, the desperation of those we left behind.
02:20Many in South Vietnam had expected the United States to protect them, but in the end, we did not.
02:26One result after the war was an exodus from South Vietnam, a dangerous and sometimes deadly ordeal.
02:33In 1979, Ed Bradley told us about those refugees, the boat people.
02:39He filmed his report in Malaysia, 300 miles from Vietnam, 300 miles across the South China Sea.
02:49At first, it's hard to make out. A speck on the horizon. You take a closer look. A boat. A
03:00flag. An arm waving. A crowd gathers along the beach.
03:05This is the east coast of Malaysia, the final destination. Thousands of refugees fleeing Vietnam.
03:14Many don't make it this far. They're attacked by pirates, drowned, or starved to death.
03:22These have made it. But will the Malaysian police turn them away? Or will they be stoned by local villagers?
03:31The crowd waits to see how many will survive this time.
03:43Only a few fishermen helped the boat people ashore. We joined in.
04:09The 31st century theoretically here to be flying into the east coast of Indonesia.
04:10They're walking. Ohfraid. Yeah!
04:25Never saw that river.
04:29He's left hoping for a big 62 years.
05:04For more information visit www.fema.gov
05:08As far as we could tell, no one drowned coming ashore, and just for that, some were grateful.
05:17Thank you. How many people started on your trip? 160. How many made it? How many people made it ashore?
05:37How many now?
05:38I don't know. The police are getting ambulance. The ambulance is coming.
05:59The police counted 153 survivors. They stood them up, set them down, counted them again, and then recounted.
06:09An hour passed. Nothing happened. The police just stood guard. No food came. No water.
06:18No one had much to say now. No one asked anymore for help. And that ambulance never came.
06:27For that old man, it had been his last voyage.
06:35Malaysia was one of many landing points for the boat people. Others arrived in Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, the
06:43Philippines.
06:43Many of the boat people stayed in refugee camps for a year or more, waiting to be processed, waiting for
06:50some country to grant them asylum.
06:52Most wanted to live in the United States, but many could not. Our country gave priority to those with relatives
06:59here,
06:59those who had worked with Americans during the war, and those considered high risk, former army officers, for example.
07:06Eventually, some 645,000 boat people were resettled. That total does not include the unknown number who died at sea.
07:18For those who remained in Vietnam, the end of the war did not bring peace or prosperity.
07:24In late 1978, after a series of border conflicts, Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia.
07:30They took control of most of that country, now renamed Campuchia.
07:35One result was a Western boycott of trade with Vietnam, a country desperately in need of economic assistance.
07:42In 1985, we visited Vietnam's capital city, Hanoi. The problems facing Vietnam were visible everywhere.
07:50This may be one of the world's most depressing capitals, certainly one of the world's most destitute.
07:57Ten years after they defeated the South Vietnamese and unified the country, 31 years after they chased the French out,
08:05the communist regime has failed miserably to put the nation's economy on anything like a viable basis.
08:12It is a bicycle economy in a computer world. It lacks tools and skills and raw materials to lift itself
08:21out of the mire,
08:22to widen its third-class, two-lane, principal highway along the 110 kilometers between Hanoi and its port of Haiphong.
08:31Ten thousand laborers cutting mud bricks from one side of a bank and passing them hand by hand to build
08:38the road's foundation on the other side.
08:41The foreman tells me with pride that it will take them just two months to cover two kilometers, a mile
08:47and a quarter this way.
08:49A bulldozer or two could do the job in a week, but Vietnam has few bulldozers and not enough gasoline
08:55for them.
08:59Public transport in Hanoi is unbelievably decrepit. Agricultural practices are primitive, again no tools, and the cattle are four-hoof
09:10cadavers.
09:11Poverty is overwhelming. Average income is barely a dollar a month at the black market rate.
09:18Basic items of food and clothing are available on a sporadic ration at state stores.
09:23In the free market, pork costs a week and a half's wages per pound.
09:29Two weeks' wages for a live chicken or duck. One week for an orange.
09:34Almost a year's wages for the almost essential bicycle.
09:39There are some surprises here. There's very little visible bomb damage from the American attacks,
09:45and the people are particularly friendly to Americans.
09:48We brought John McCain back to Hanoi. He's Arizona's Republican congressman now.
09:54He was shot down in a raid on the power plant in the center of the city.
09:58He was captured and spent six years in captivity here.
10:02Yet old residents who remembered well that raid greeted him with kind words and a warm handshake.
10:08And a surprise, too, is that the people, for all of this grinding poverty, do not seem unhappy.
10:15On the street, they are animated, smile frequently, and laugh heartily.
10:20These people of Hanoi have the trappings of civilization, but virtually none of the amenities.
10:25And there's not much likelihood of change as long as their communist government spends 55% of its pitiful income
10:33supporting the world's fourth largest army and fights a costly war in neighboring Campuchia.
10:40There goes most of the billion dollars a year Vietnam is said to get from its patron, the Soviet Union.
10:47To the outsider, the situation here seems so hopeless.
10:51It is said that China is a sleeping giant. Vietnam seems comatose.
10:58This is Walter Cronkite, CBS News, Hanoi.
11:02The same year, 1985, another view of Vietnam was provided by CBS News correspondent Bob Simon.
11:09It had been ten years since he reported the closing days of the war.
11:13Now he returned to Vietnam to discover that much had changed, and much had not.
11:21The Vietnam War ended ten years ago for the United States, not for the Vietnamese.
11:26They're still at war. In Cambodia, with China off and on, the Vietnamese are always at war.
11:31And they're very good at it, much better than they are at running a country.
11:35Vietnam is more isolated today than it was ten or fifteen years ago.
11:40Internationally, the Vietnamese were a lot more popular as victims of American aggression
11:44than as the aggressive regional power they've become.
11:49They've got the world's fourth largest army, a worthless currency,
11:52an infrastructure where nothing works except the people,
11:55and a fleet of 1950 Citroëns running roads today which used to be treacherous for tanks.
12:01But what's really striking to someone after ten years is what's not here.
12:05A tree line with no helicopters.
12:09A day in Hue with no artillery.
12:12A street with no tanks.
12:14A road with no danger.
12:16It's another country.
12:17Some things haven't changed.
12:19There are still troops in Da Nang which a million Americans once called home.
12:23It takes a while getting used to these soldiers here, and they're so friendly.
12:29On Da Nang's China Beach where G.I.s came for rest and recreation,
12:33Vietnamese kids still stare at strange foreigners.
12:36These curiosities come from Prague.
12:39Da Nang is becoming quite the rage in the Soviet circuit.
12:42Entertainment?
12:43The bars and brothels are long gone.
12:45Instead, it's showtime socialist style.
12:50A troupe from Hanoi celebrates the productive peasant.
12:54The choreography of country life.
12:59The North Vietnamese tried to collectivize all agriculture in the South.
13:02They've abandoned that now.
13:04It was a disaster.
13:06They tried to lure people away from the Catholic Church.
13:09That worked about as well as it has in Poland.
13:15This was Da Nang the night before Easter.
13:18Mass had to be held outdoors, there were so many people.
13:24Saigon moves a lot slower now.
13:25There's less hustle, less money, less noise.
13:29And this is Hanoi.
13:34The glorious decadence of the South is percolating up north.
13:39You can hear it steaming from the speakers.
13:41It was in cafes like this that Ho Chi Minh once plotted to overthrow the French,
13:46where now a new generation is beginning to whisper,
13:49enough already with the struggle and the sacrifice.
13:52Let's have some fun.
13:54Money?
13:54Just watch the commissars of Hanoi at a lottery.
13:57These are the numbers that count.
14:00There is still a siren at noon.
14:02The metaphors are still military.
14:04Everyone is still vigilant and mobilized and drilling all the time.
14:09But they don't seem to mean it anymore.
14:11After all, they've already beaten the world's greatest power.
14:14There are no more epic wars to be won.
14:18At the end of the war in 1975, large quantities of American weapons were abandoned by South Vietnamese troops fleeing
14:26for their lives.
14:28The North Vietnamese took over.
14:30The victors belong the spoils.
14:32What happened to all this hardware of war?
14:35Well, Bob Simon discovered that much of it was recycled.
14:39The American legacy in metal.
14:42Rusty memories.
14:43Shell casings stacked as neatly as they ever were.
14:46And the main industry along Route 1.
14:49They're pampered and polished the way a jeweler cares for rare stones.
14:53They're worth a penny a piece and are melted down to be used in construction and farm equipment.
14:58Our swords, their plowshares.
15:02We always had the weapons.
15:04They always had the time.
15:05And time turned out to be the weapon.
15:08They outlasted us.
15:09What did we leave behind?
15:11Well, a lot of vehicles for a start.
15:13And not one of them is going to waste.
15:16Here's a marine jeep becoming a bus.
15:18One door at a time.
15:22The Vietnamese discovered that napalm canisters make good paddle boats.
15:27That artillery shells make good fences.
15:29That's what we left behind.
15:30But the Vietnamese want more.
15:33They want us back.
15:34They want our investment, our expertise.
15:37But with 2,477 Americans still unaccounted for, and with Vietnam's continued occupation of Cappuccia,
15:44the United States does not recognize Vietnam.
15:47Vietnamese officials believe that will change.
15:50And you think the American people are ready to deal with Vietnam?
15:54Oh, just give them a chance.
15:57And our legacy?
15:58What did we leave behind?
16:00Beyond the missing in action, very little really.
16:03The most amazing thing about coming back after 10 years is that aside from some scrap metal,
16:09it's almost as if we'd never been here at all.
16:13Bob Simon, CBS News, Route 1.
16:17Vietnam had many problems after the end of the war, but they pale compared to what happened to Cambodia.
16:24What happened to Cambodia is this.
16:26The country was taken over by communist insurgents known as the Khmer Rouge, led by a fanatic named Pol Pot.
16:33He ruled the country almost four years until his government was overthrown by the Vietnamese invasion.
16:39What happened during those four years almost defies description.
16:44Phnom Penh, 1975.
16:47The Khmer Rouge occupied the Cambodian capital, but they did more than occupy.
16:52They evacuated this city.
16:54Phnom Penh became a ghost town along with every other Cambodian city.
16:59It was part of a master plan to build a new society, totally free of Western influence.
17:05Everyone was moved to the countryside.
17:07The young, the old, the sick, the dying. Everyone.
17:11The new society was built on forced labor.
17:14Eighteen hours a day, seven days a week.
17:17But the new society also was built on death.
17:21CBS News correspondent Ed Bradley covered the last days of the war in Cambodia.
17:26Ten years later, he returned.
17:30I had heard about the killings, I had read about them, but I still was not prepared for the sight
17:35of a mass grave found just outside Phnom Penh.
17:39Who was killed?
17:40Former government soldiers, monks, professionals, doctors, teachers, civil servants, anyone with a smattering of an education, those who had contact
17:50with foreigners.
17:51With me at the sight was Chae Song Heng, who is with the office of the foreign minister.
17:57Do you have any idea how many people were killed here?
18:00Yes, there were 8,985 victims which were killed here.
18:088,985?
18:10Victims.
18:11Victims.
18:11Yeah.
18:12But before killing, you know, all the prisoners were blindfolded.
18:17Blindfolded?
18:18Yeah, were blindfolded.
18:19Yeah.
18:21Now, were they shot?
18:22No, they did not shoot.
18:24They just stuck the neck of the victim with iron bar, with part of iron bar of the hole or
18:34bamboo stick.
18:36So they would use a hole that you used for digging in the ground, they would hit them with the
18:40hole?
18:41Yeah, hit them with the hole, and then the victim dropped down.
18:46They want to sell ammunition.
18:49No need to use ammunition?
18:50Yeah.
18:51Just hacked them to death?
18:52Yeah, hit them to death, bit to death.
18:56How many of these mass graves have you found?
19:00There are too many.
19:03We can say in each village we found a mass grave.
19:10In each village?
19:11In each village.
19:13It's hard to say at first time when I saw this, I mean, it was horrible.
19:19It was terrible.
19:21The current government says Pol Pot was responsible for the deaths of 3 million people.
19:26Most experts think that's an exaggeration.
19:29But cut it in half and still the killings in such a small country, just 7 million people, stagger the
19:36imagination.
19:37In one province alone they found over 800 of these mass graves.
19:43Mass murder in Cambodia.
19:45Another legacy of the Vietnam War.
19:47So much was reported during that war.
19:50So much was shown on television.
19:52So many faces, Americans and Vietnamese alike.
19:55We saw them for a moment.
19:57We rarely had a chance to find out what happened to them afterwards.
20:00But once in a while we did.
20:03Whatever happened to the girl in this photograph?
20:06In 1985, Bob Simon found out.
20:10There were very few classic battlefields in Vietnam.
20:13The whole country was a battlefield.
20:15Thirteen years ago, the war came to this country road in the middle of nowhere and to a little girl
20:21who lived here.
20:22Here's how we reported it then.
20:25Ten-year-old Fan Kim Phuc will never forget the day it rained fire on her village.
20:30The day bombers mistakenly dropped napalm on a road where she was playing.
20:35Fan Kim Phuc will never forget the flames which would not go out even after her clothing was burned away.
20:42The amazing thing is that she may live to remember it.
20:45Kim Phuc, whose picture seared the minds of Americans, has lived to remember it.
20:51She is 22 years old and single and living in Saigon.
20:55We wish we could tell you the Kim Phuc story has a happy ending, but Vietnam is not Hollywood and
21:00Kim Phuc is in constant pain.
21:06I still suffer from the burns.
21:09I am sad.
21:10I don't have enough strength to study like the others.
21:13After 12 operations, she has glandular problems, headaches, and loss of memory.
21:19She wanted to study medicine, but had to give it up because of her health.
21:25She's learning English instead, wants to be a teacher.
21:28She's afraid she'll never marry because of the deep scars on her back.
21:32But Kim Phuc has a smile that lights up a schoolroom.
21:35A smile that seems to betray some distant and secret knowledge.
21:39Her courage is contagious.
21:41She often drops by the hospital, where she spent 14 months 12 years ago, where the doctors did not think
21:48she would survive.
21:49Her father was always with her then, a rice farmer, still living in Tainan province, where his house was destroyed
21:56by the bombs which burned his daughter.
22:00Her mother runs a restaurant now with Kim Phuc's brothers and sisters, uncles, nephews, cousins, and aunts.
22:06You could call it a family enterprise, like so many Vietnamese restaurants in the United States.
22:11But theirs has been taken over by the state recently. Life is not easy.
22:17Kim Phuc sees a connection between what she's been through and the life of her country.
22:21Wounded by war, trying a decade later, under tough conditions, to rebuild and look to the future.
22:28I'm proud of my picture. I'm glad the picture was taken. I hope it will contribute to preventing war.
22:36We showed Kim Phuc pictures we took of her 13 years ago, the first time she tried to sit up.
22:42It was the courage and determination of this 10-year-old that permitted this lovely lady to be alive today.
22:50To survive is to forgive. In the world of Kim Phuc, what she really wants to do is study one
22:56day in the United States.
22:58Bob Simon, CBS News, Tainan.
23:02And what of the Americans who fought in Vietnam? Whatever happened to them?
23:07There's no single answer to that question, of course. There are multitudes of answers.
23:12You may remember another cassette in this series. It was titled Courage Under Fire
23:17and included Charles Kuralt's report on one American army unit on and about Christmas Day, 1965.
23:2420 years later, Kuralt looked back at some of the men he met there and what had happened since.
23:31One instant in the war in Vietnam changed the lives of three men I knew there.
23:37Sergeant James Floyd, forward observer. Sergeant Ralph Bosselet, platoon sergeant.
23:43And Sergeant Jose Duenas, squad leader.
23:48In 1965, 20 years ago, before the war turned sour in the nation's mouth,
23:54they were doing dangerous work at the edge of a booby-trapped jungle at a place called Lai Cay.
24:00Just to keep the history straight, they believed in what they were doing.
24:05Liberating, fighting oppression, that was my thoughts.
24:11This was the one instant out of so many in Vietnam, as I reported it at the time.
24:17Sergeant Floyd, the artillery observer, and Sergeant Duenas, the quiet expert on mines,
24:22were out there with a squad covering them.
24:25And then suddenly there was a call for medics.
24:27The first man the medics pulled out after the mine went off was James Floyd.
24:31He was 22 years old. He had already been admitted to West Point from the ranks.
24:39He was going to go there in a few months to become a career army officer.
24:43One instant in Vietnam changed all that.
24:47Feeling better now that you have morphine?
24:48Not yet, man. That leg's about to get me.
24:51The leg was too badly shredded. A few days later in an army hospital, he lost it.
24:58I looked up James Floyd the other day in Pensacola, Florida.
25:02He tried taxidermy, tried commercial fishing.
25:05Had to leave everything he tried to keep going back into the hospital all these years.
25:10What's left of his leg keeps deteriorating.
25:13He's had a stomach operation. He's had three heart attacks.
25:16He's 42.
25:18A used car doesn't run as good as a new one.
25:21And then you have to keep replacing parts, so...
25:24The truth is, one instant in Vietnam messed up James Floyd's life.
25:29But he has his wife, Mary, who works as a bookkeeper.
25:33And he does not complain about anything.
25:36Everybody has difficulties.
25:41Mine just came all of a sudden.
25:43At least James Floyd came back from Vietnam alive.
25:47Jose Duenas didn't.
25:49But in the same instant Floyd was wounded, Duenas was killed.
25:55He had a family back in California.
25:57Mrs. Duenas had to bring up the children by herself.
26:01One thing is what kind of promise when I buried my husband.
26:06I said, don't worry.
26:08When she buried her husband, she said she promised him the children would have a good education.
26:14And they have had.
26:16And its memories are still, you know, painful.
26:19The children were too young 20 years ago to see the story we did about their father.
26:24When we visited recently, they said they wanted to see it.
26:27And Sergeant Duenas, the quiet expert on mines, were out there with a squad covering them.
26:33And then suddenly there was a call.
26:35It was only one instant of many in Vietnam.
26:39All the good friends that I had there, particularly Sergeant Duenas, he'll stay with me forever.
26:46Twenty years later, Ralph Bosselay, retired from the Army as Sergeant Major, winner of the Silver Star for Gallantry,
26:53has no apologies to make for fighting for what he still thinks was a noble cause in Vietnam.
26:59So much energy to help these people.
27:03Really.
27:04Wanting to help.
27:05Honest.
27:06Not just putting time, but wanting to help.
27:10That was great.
27:11It was a great feeling.
27:14One instant in Vietnam cost Cecilia Duenas one of the most important memories any child can have.
27:21I remember the nuns coming over afterwards.
27:23I remember a lot of the tears, but I don't remember anything of my father.
27:27The same instant cost James Floyd his leg and his promising future.
27:32But he says this.
27:33I don't harbor any bitterness, uh, um, the, it leads you alive.
27:41The same instant cost Ralph Bosselay his best soldier and one of his best friends.
27:46He says this.
27:49You don't want us to win the war, then don't send us over there.
27:51God don't send us over there.
27:54Corona tried to stop crying.
27:56Ralph Bosselay didn't even try to stop.
27:58It was there they found out.
28:00Jose Duenas was killed.
28:03It was just one instant out of so many in Vietnam.
28:08Jose Duenas was the bravest man I ever met.
28:12Multiply this instant by tens of thousands if you want to understand what war is.
28:18But just to keep the history straight, Bosselay, Floyd and Duenas all thought they were in Vietnam to defend freedom,
28:25to do something decent and fine.
28:27Twenty years later, we heard from them and their families not one word of bitterness or regret.
28:33We did, however, hear this.
28:35Don't, don't tell me I wasted all those men.
28:38I will not stand for it. I will not hear it.
28:42In 1982, Bill Moyers examined what had happened to another American unit,
28:47Charlie Company of the 2nd Battalion of the 28th Infantry, 1st Division.
28:51They had fought in Vietnam in 1968 and returned home.
28:55Not to a hero's welcome, but to a country that seemed, at best, indifferent.
29:00CBS News invited 30 veterans of that unit to meet for a weekend at a small town in Florida.
29:07Their first reunion since they left Vietnam.
29:10It was, as Moyers reported, a weekend of bittersweet memories.
29:18They came back to your hometown.
29:21You saw them, but hardly noticed.
29:23They returned from Vietnam and slipped quietly into the mainstream.
29:28They would not talk about the war, and no one seemed to want to ask them about it.
29:33They are the forgotten warriors of a war America does not want to remember.
29:37But forgetting is impossible.
29:39And the time has come to hear these men who did their duty and thought no one cared.
29:44For they are America.
29:50They arrived in Florida from all over the country.
29:53A farmer from Oklahoma.
29:56A mechanic from Georgia.
29:58A chemical salesman from South Dakota.
30:01A civil servant from Wisconsin.
30:03A geologist from Louisiana.
30:06A career NCO in the Army from Virginia.
30:09Together, again, all these years later.
30:13They arrived cautiously, uncertain, wondering what the others remembered.
30:18And how each had changed.
30:20See you in the future.
30:21Doing that one.
30:22You, Ross, Carnegie.
30:26Off Spicy.
30:26Never bubble bubble.
30:30Like that.
30:32Michael, Michael Federal.
30:33Yeah, yeah, yeah.
30:34Wait, wait, turn around, turn around, I want to see this.
30:36It hasn't been cut since.
30:37How are you doing?
30:38How are you doing?
30:40How are you doing?
30:40Jim Irwin.
30:41Yeah, how are you doing?
30:43Yeah, we're in Florida, that's right.
30:45That's right.
30:45How are you doing?
30:46Dickman.
30:47Dickman.
30:47Yeah, first platoon.
30:49Lockheed.
30:50Lockheed.
30:50Lockheed.
30:51Yeah, this is my wife's hand.
30:53Hi.
30:54This is my little brother.
30:56My little brother.
30:57My little brother.
30:57I hate your little brother.
30:59We look down for each other.
31:01My A's?
31:03Why you don't change a bit?
31:05Oh, how are you doing?
31:06Are you doing this?
31:08He's not bad.
31:08He can be right about it all the time.
31:10But he don't change, does he?
31:13I try not to.
31:14This is like I'm wearing a photograph taken 12 years ago.
31:18It's just like all these guys I'm going to see here for the first time in 13 years.
31:23I have no communication with them.
31:26You didn't want to think of them as friends when you were there.
31:30They could leave quickly.
31:34They could leave to come home and?
31:36They could leave to come home and they could die.
31:38So you didn't really want to think of them as close friends.
31:41It wasn't until later, two or three years later when you realized that these guys had been under circumstances that
31:47couldn't, you can't talk to anybody else.
31:51Nobody else will know except somebody who's been there just like me.
31:54Hey, hey!
31:54I got a picture of you!
31:56How are you doing?
31:57How are you doing?
31:58How are you doing?
32:00Yes, sir!
32:00How are you doing?
32:03How are you doing?
32:05He had a first or third squad.
32:07Third squad!
32:07Yeah, he had a second.
32:08After you got hit, I got a picture of you.
32:11Before or after.
32:12Yeah.
32:13And I got a picture of you there with just a little T-shirt.
32:16We took a break, right?
32:17And you were sitting there and they came right up on you?
32:19Yes!
32:20That's right.
32:20It was an RPG or something.
32:21They fired the RPG?
32:22Right!
32:25and then I hit the ground and stayed there, and Pete was the man behind me, damn it, shoot, he
32:33started shooting right there.
32:36Frank, did color make any difference in Vietnam?
32:40What was that?
32:43Being black, guys being white.
32:47There was no such thing as color in Vietnam.
32:51But there was no black or white.
32:54You never felt any discrimination?
32:57No.
32:58You didn't?
33:00We would eat, drink, out of the same pan.
33:04We all shared boxes and stuff.
33:08If I got one, I'd share with everybody.
33:10And then if Searing got one, he'd share with everybody.
33:13If Bob got one, he'd share with everybody.
33:16And then we were more or less like one big family.
33:23Brothers?
33:23Right.
33:24And we were close at that time.
33:29And so it's you!
33:32That's a hair piece, I know it!
33:35Look at that, can you tell me?
33:38You were golden, you're brave!
33:43No!
33:45No!
33:46No!
33:47No!
33:48No!
33:50Did you go over idealistic about the war?
33:52No, I went over scared.
33:54Yeah.
33:56I think the main idea in everybody's mind was just to survive the year.
34:01I really had no idea what it was all about.
34:06When you got back, how did you feel about it?
34:15At that point, I was probably more mad than anything else,
34:18because there were so many young people that were wasted there.
34:23Just the talent was absolutely gone.
34:27And you couldn't really talk to anybody about it,
34:29the people that were my contemporaries.
34:32There was no way that you can convey the feeling that you had.
34:36When you tried, what happened?
34:39When I tried, usually what happened, they said,
34:40well, what the hell were you doing there?
34:43And said, well, I was over there doing what the country told me to do.
34:48Supposedly this was everybody's idea of the right thing.
34:53And their response?
34:55It's usually, you've got to be crazy.
34:57Why did you go?
34:58What did you do when you were here?
34:59Did you accomplish anything?
35:01And it made, really, it was something that, uh,
35:06a bit of the stomach feeling that, you know, why did I go then?
35:10Hey, come here!
35:12Come over here!
35:12I got a picture of you!
35:14You ain't gonna recognize yourself!
35:16There!
35:17He's the one with the green hat!
35:21I can't remember his real name.
35:25This is Kid Bowen over here.
35:28That's White Rock.
35:29I don't remember him.
35:30No, no, no!
35:32I don't know, he didn't last long.
35:34And we need to call Jerry Johnson Blondie.
35:36Yeah, yeah.
35:37I remember he turned real red.
35:38I was still sleeping.
35:39It was real early.
35:40The sun just came up and they just opened my eyes and looked above me
35:42and the bombs had already separated from the plane.
35:46And they're both headed in the same direction.
35:47Bombs dropping the plane, starting to arc up.
35:50They landed right on this family village.
35:52Where in the village?
35:54Women and kids screaming, covered with napalm.
35:58That is one of the nastiest things you will ever see.
36:02That has got to be one of the most miserable ways to die that there could ever be.
36:06Did you go to the village?
36:07That was pretty slow.
36:08Lots of us ran over there real quick.
36:09We shot them.
36:11You shot whom?
36:13The kids and those women.
36:14Why?
36:15They were dying slowly.
36:17We ended it quickly.
36:20Dying, screaming.
36:24That's no good.
36:24But again, dammit, those are isolated incidents.
36:27Those things.
36:28I mean, they can't help but happen.
36:31We came back at night and that's what bothered me more than anything.
36:34We got back at night and I expected the army to do something for us to have a steak dinner
36:39or something for us.
36:41You know, you walk back in.
36:42I didn't even know we came back.
36:44There ain't nothing.
36:45There was nothing.
36:46I came back home.
36:47You know what they did?
36:49I got in San Francisco.
36:50I walked into a bar.
36:51He says, how old are you, sonny?
36:53Yeah.
36:54I couldn't buy a drink.
36:55I wasn't 21 yet.
36:57I couldn't buy a drink.
36:58Yeah.
36:59And this guy's carding me and saying I can't have a drink.
37:02And yet I was over there fighting in this war.
37:05We were sneaking in the back door.
37:07Yeah.
37:07In the back door of the country at night.
37:09And we didn't get nothing.
37:12And you wonder to yourself, well, am I really back?
37:15Just like everybody else.
37:17I came back into this country and fought a war.
37:21Okay?
37:22Nobody know me from Hoagy's Coast.
37:25All right?
37:26I felt like an alien.
37:28All right?
37:28And the first thing I wanted to do, because, hey, when you walk around in that uniform
37:32and you just go off the airplane, everybody know you just came from Vietnam.
37:35Well, the people in San Francisco used to seeing you.
37:37Everybody came into San Francisco and traveling.
37:39So you wasn't nothing new.
37:41You were just another one among the assembly line.
37:45That's probably what you might call it.
37:47And the majority of the guys, just like I did, I went and bought me civilian clothes and changed
37:52quick and left everything.
37:54Everything that I bought from Vietnam, my uniform, I left them in the airport.
38:01So when I got on the plane, went home, I sit there and looked just like everybody else.
38:07You know?
38:07And when I got home, it was the same thing.
38:10Everybody looked at me and smiled.
38:11Uh-huh.
38:12Hey, where you been?
38:14You been?
38:15Welcome back.
38:17I'd like to drink to the future prosperity of this group, all the Charlie Company, all the
38:25Vietnam veterans, because we've, I think, finally outlived a very unpleasant thing.
38:32And I'd like to drink to your prosperity.
38:42You know, by and large, we're all back and our suffering is over.
38:47And the guys that died over there, God knows their suffering is over.
38:52There's a lot of guys in hospitals, and we can't get together and forget about them.
38:59You know, we love them, and we want them to know that we're thinking about them.
39:05And Godspeed, and the next life, whatever it is, I hope it's a lot better than the one
39:10they're in right now.
39:12A toast to the disabled veterans of this country.
39:17All right.
39:34For many of these men, the memories of 68 have been softened by time.
39:38But others are still angry at having to risk their lives for a lost cause.
39:42The army had a job to do, its officers ordered by their commander-in-chief to fight on.
39:48The ordinary GI, hearing rumors of peace, thought only of survival.
39:53No one wanted to be the last to die in Vietnam.
39:56For many, there was now another struggle between the urge to stay alive and the duty to obey.
40:02And the tension between officers and men would rankle for years to come.
40:08When I first got there in 68, I think many people back home were still positive about us being in
40:14Vietnam.
40:15But I think people learn thereafter that, you know, hey, what are they doing over there?
40:21You know, take the hill, give it back tomorrow, lose casualties, take it, give it back.
40:28You knew it was just a game.
40:29So, after three months there, you realized, even shorter than that, that you're here to survive.
40:35You're not here to help the United, you're not here fighting for freedom.
40:39You're here to survive, to help your guys on the left and right of you to survive.
40:45Well, I learned how to survive from one fella, myself.
40:52You can't learn to survive from nobody else's teachings because it don't take but a split second and your life
41:01is gone.
41:02I would say I wouldn't give one wife of ours, our company...
41:07For the whole country.
41:09For the whole goddamn country.
41:10That's right, I'll go along with that.
41:12When we pulled out, it went right back to the same damn situation it was before we went there.
41:17When I saw on TV, they turned our helicopters off the boats, off the docks, made me throw up.
41:25That way it was, we fought all this time for nothing.
41:28Are you surprised at how much they're talking about the work?
41:32Yeah, it brought back a lot of memories.
41:34Right.
41:35A lot of memories.
41:35Yes, because when my husband was talking this morning, he broke down and went to cry.
41:40He just cried.
41:42Different things they made.
41:43Yeah, they said, and he said he brought back, you know, a lot of memories, and he just started crying.
41:48Had he ever done that before?
41:50Not that I know of, no.
41:53Because he never talked about it with me, you know.
41:56Never at all?
41:57No, never.
41:58Mine, very little.
41:59Did you have a feeling that they were bottling up a lot inside?
42:02Oh, yeah.
42:03I did.
42:04Definitely.
42:04Because I think my husband, I feel, he felt I didn't care.
42:09I didn't care to know what happened, but I made him talk about it.
42:12They thought nobody cared.
42:13Yeah, right, you know, and I guess they just, you know, it was a bad spot for them.
42:18So they didn't want us to know about it.
42:20Why should they have to share something bad with us?
42:23How did you make him tell you?
42:25I didn't know.
42:26I just kind of said, you know, you have to tell me.
42:28You know, because I had to adjust to see how he was.
42:33I mean, he was a very inward person.
42:37And you've got, you know, you can't love somebody that's inward.
42:40They have to share.
42:41And he wasn't sharing.
42:43No, he didn't want to share.
42:45He just wanted to be left alone.
42:47He didn't want to share what happened to him in Vietnam.
42:50What about Frank?
42:51How did he change from high school?
42:53Well, you know, he was real openly when he was in high school, you know.
42:59We'd sit down and talk.
43:00You know, we had a good understanding.
43:02But when he come back from NAMM, I mean, he just shut me out of everything, you know.
43:09He never did sit down and talk about, you know, what was on his mind.
43:13I knew it was something bothering him, but I just couldn't picture it.
43:16And every time I would ask him, he would have said nothing.
43:18Did he have bad dreams?
43:20Yes.
43:20A year ago, he had one bad nightmare.
43:23He woke me up, you know.
43:25All of a sudden, he just jumped up in the bed, you know.
43:28And I said, Frank, what's wrong?
43:30He said, oh, I just had a bad nightmare.
43:32He was just shaking, you know.
43:34He was just shaking like a leaf.
43:36And so I said, tell me about your nightmare.
43:39But he just didn't want to talk about it.
43:41He said, I just had a bad nightmare, you know, about the war.
43:45But he never did want to talk about it.
43:47This was 11 years after he'd left.
43:49That's right.
43:50But yet and still, he'd still have nightmares about the war.
43:55Has he opened up to you more recently to talk about it?
43:58No.
43:59Do you wish he would?
44:00Yes, I do.
44:03No.
44:03So when you came home from Vietnam and we went down to Mr. Charlie's Cafe, what happened?
44:09Well, at that time, you couldn't go in the front door.
44:13A black couldn't?
44:14No.
44:15And then by me being a vet, it didn't make no difference.
44:23You still couldn't go in?
44:25No.
44:25Uh, uh, uh, uh, you was black, uh, and you, hey, where the blacks say that?
44:31Uh, I remember this particular place, the Royal Cafe, you had to go around to the back to get a
44:37sandwich if you weren't one.
44:38You were a Vietnam veteran?
44:41Yeah.
44:41You'd fought in Vietnam?
44:42Sure.
44:43You'd been wounded?
44:44Yes.
44:45Yes.
44:46And you still couldn't go in and eat?
44:47No.
44:48Did you ever ask anybody what VA loans they are or benefits they ever got?
44:53You know, me and my wife went down there to Wisconsin's VA now.
44:57I'll talk about Wisconsin, because I don't know what everybody else gets.
45:00We went in and they said, you can have $5,000 for furniture or something, because you're a veteran.
45:04So I went down there and says, well, here, we want $5,000 for furniture.
45:07He says, well, first you've got to bring up a price listing and the actual price of each piece of
45:12furniture from a reputable dealer.
45:14Then you've got to bring a note from a bank.
45:16Now, remember this.
45:17A note from a bank refusing a loan.
45:20You're not worth a loan.
45:21I'm not lying now.
45:22This is the truth.
45:23And then you had to bring the third thing you had to have was a co-signer to your loan.
45:27You know what I told them it took with their $5,000?
45:29I won't tell you.
45:33You know, what was your benefits then?
45:36$5,000 they told her I could have, yet I had to tell them I couldn't even fill a loan.
45:40For what?
45:41My name was good.
45:42Why should I have a bank write a note that I can't have a loan?
45:45That I'm no good on my debts?
45:47Why should they tell it?
45:48Every time we see something on the news, we're killing somebody.
45:52We're running over and taking hostages.
45:54We're running around the streets like a maniac.
45:56We're dealing in drugs.
45:57Hey, I mean, all the rest of us here, we don't deal in drugs.
46:00We don't go around killing people every day.
46:02We're ordinary people that have an ordinary job, pay ordinary taxes, and we do our ordinary work every day.
46:08And we have wife and kids and go to school.
46:10We do nothing out of the ordinary.
46:11You never see it on television.
46:13You see these movies like the deer hunter and all that.
46:16Nothing is close to what it was really like over there.
46:19They don't tell you about what really happened over there.
46:21They don't tell you about people being without showers for 30 or 40 days.
46:24About people never eat hot meals for a whole month.
46:28Or dry socks or boots that didn't have no soles on it.
46:32They don't show anything that really truthfully happened over there.
46:35It's all fictional.
46:36Guys elucidating things, guys smoking pot, guys taking drugs, guys raping women, guys molesting kids.
46:42That's all you ever hear about in this country.
46:44Why don't they, like today is the first time all of us ordinary people get to come here and say,
46:50Hey, we're here, and we're ordinary people.
46:53I've got 20 guys back at home that went into service with me.
46:56They're all ordinary, all have wives and kids, and nobody ever talks about them.
47:01That's what's sitting there.
47:05More than two and a half million Americans served in Vietnam.
47:09Many of those who returned had been changed by the war.
47:12The 1980 census showed a high divorce rate among Vietnam veterans.
47:17More than 735,000 divorces.
47:21There also was a high rate of suicides and drug-related deaths.
47:24But almost 60,000 Americans did not survive Vietnam.
47:29Years later, the nation remembered them with the Vietnam Memorial in Washington.
47:34Two black granite walls forming the shape of a V inscribed with the names of Americans who died in Vietnam.
47:40The monument was dedicated November 13, 1982.
47:45A day of much emotion, as Bruce Morton reported.
47:49Ten crowns are good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.
47:58The parade was for the veterans, impromptu groups, sometimes stopping to sing patriotic songs.
48:04Like the rest of the day, the official program was the least important part.
48:08Mostly the day was people.
48:09People who had served.
48:11People who had mourned.
48:12People and the wall.
48:13A father who had lost his son.
48:16That was the last thing that Jim said.
48:17Dad, I love my country.
48:19I don't want to go, but I love my country.
48:21So, uh, that gives me an uplift.
48:25To know that he loved his country, he didn't want to go, but he was willing to sacrifice his life.
48:30And he did after 30 days over there.
48:32A soldier who'd come back.
48:34All these people on these walls, my friend, as far as I'm concerned.
48:39I wish they could have did something a long time ago.
48:42We didn't need no parades of that.
48:43All we needed was a little bit of respect.
48:46Respect was all around today.
48:48The patriots of an earlier American war talked of risking their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
48:54The lives that were lost remained lost, of course.
48:57Young men denied their chance at fortune.
48:59But maybe today the Americans who went to war and those who didn't, maybe they all regained some honor.
49:07Standing before this monument, we see reflected in a dark mirror dimly a chance now to let go of the
49:16pain, the grief, the resentment, the bitterness, the guilt.
49:25This was a day when it was all right for grown men to cry.
49:29Thank you, America. Thank you, finally, for remembering us.
49:34Memory, honor. Names on a wall full of memory and honor.
49:40God bless America, my home sweet home.
49:47God bless America, my home sweet home.
49:58Ladies and gentlemen, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is now dedicated.
50:04Yeah!
50:10A year and a half later, another ceremony honored the dead of the Vietnam War.
50:15An unknown soldier from that conflict was laid to rest in ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery.
50:22Memorial Day, 1984.
50:24Bob Simon reported.
50:27Almost ten years after the last Americans left Saigon, the men who fought in Vietnam got their parade.
50:34Other soldiers after other wars got ticker tape and flowers, triumphal marches and champagne.
50:40But Vietnam was not other wars.
50:42For these men, muffled drums and dirges, a coffin and a flag, wrapped in plastic to protect it from the
50:49rain.
50:50We feel like it's a part of us in that casket up there.
50:53Okay, we don't know who it is, you know, but we know it's somebody who is there with us.
50:59It's probably the most ancient of rituals, a nation honoring its fallen.
51:03Consider the ceremony, so precise, orderly, crisp and clean.
51:07So unlike the way it was in Vietnam.
51:10But today, as every day during the war, reality, Vietnam, had a way of punching through.
51:17These men fought in Vietnam, you can tell.
51:20A lone bagpiper led members of the 199th Light Infantry Brigade.
51:25They were not on the schedule.
51:26They asked for permission to join the parade.
51:29It was granted.
51:30Reality punching through.
51:32In the amphitheater of Arlington Cemetery, families of the men still missing from Vietnam,
51:38waited for the coffin and remembered.
51:40Remembered with pain today, not what we did to the Vietnamese, but what we did to ourselves.
51:46The families have been anxious that today's ceremony, the burial of the unknown,
51:50will be seen as the burial of an issue, as the real end of the war.
51:55They've been concerned that efforts to locate their sons, dead or alive, will now seem less urgent.
52:02We are not naive enough to believe that they can account for all of those that are missing,
52:06but we do know that they can account for a great many of them.
52:09The families were reassured by a deeply moved and solemn president.
52:14We write no last chapters, we close no books, we put away no final memories.
52:22An end to America's involvement in Vietnam cannot come before we have achieved the fullest possible accounting of those missing
52:31in action.
52:32Today, we simply say with pride, thank you, dear son.
52:40May God cradle you in his loving arms.
52:42The president might have been even more moved had he been able to see the crowd which had assembled outside
52:48the amphitheater,
52:49on the lawn of the National Cemetery, the haunted from Vietnam,
52:53watching on a television screen the ceremony honoring their unknown comrade-in-arms.
52:58Yes.
52:59Whoo!
53:30Whoo!
53:45Eso!
53:46That's what you're going to do to see.
53:47Hmm.
53:49Whoo!
53:58They've been able to see the crowd they were not immigrants to hear from you,
53:58And the, of course, they coudl.
54:19Lord, we now ask your final benediction upon our comrade, known but to you.
54:25May the day come soon when we can lay down our arms and earnestly give our attention to
54:33do justly, to love kindness, and to walk honestly in your sight. Amen.
54:41Fire! Free volleys!
54:55Aim! Aim!
54:57Ho!
54:58Aim!
55:00Aim!
55:01Red, go!
55:02Oh, my God.
55:58Oh, my God.
56:06The war is over.
56:08The scars are healing.
56:09The memories remain.
56:11We at CBS News have our own sad memories of Vietnam.
56:15Eight of our colleagues killed, more than 30 others wounded.
56:19What you have seen on these cassettes was the product of hundreds of brave journalists
56:23who regularly risked their lives not to fight a war, but to report it.
56:29What they have left us is a record of what the war was about and what it was like.
56:33That, too, is a legacy.
56:36The Vietnam War is beginning to seem distant now.
56:39A whole generation is growing up with no real memory of Vietnam.
56:43We hope, at least, the memories do not disappear too soon.
56:47It's a painful war to remember, but also a war we cannot afford to forget.
56:54This is Walter Cronkite, and this has been the last in our series of videocassettes on the Vietnam War.
57:15This is Walter Cronkite.
57:16This is Walter Cronkite.
57:16This is Walter Cronkite.
57:17This is Walter Cronkite.
57:18This is Walter Cronkite.
57:18This is Walter Cronkite.
57:18This is Walter Cronkite.
57:19This is Walter Cronkite.
57:20This is Walter Cronkite.
57:21This is Walter Cronkite.
57:21This is Walter Cronkite.
57:22This is Walter Cronkite.
57:26This is Walter Cronkite.
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