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I grew up in
a small farming community

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in southern Minnesota
called Worthington.

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Small town America...
at least my small town...

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had great virtues.

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It was a safe place to grow up.

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There was Little League baseball
in the summer,

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and there was hockey
in the winter.

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Everybody knows everyone
else's business and their faults

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and what's happening
in their marriages

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00:01:06,408 --> 00:01:09,332
and where the kids
have gone wrong.

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It was full of the Kiwanis boys
and the Elks Club

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and the country club set and
the kind of chatty housewives

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and the holier-than-thou
ministers.

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I remember the clay
my draft notice arrived.

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It was a summer afternoon,
maybe June of '68.

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And I remember taking
that envelope into the house

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and putting it
on the kitchen table

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where my mom and dad
were having lunch.

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And they didn't even read it.

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They just looked at it
and knew what it was.

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And the silence of that lunch...

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I didn't speak, my mom didn't
speak, my dad didn't speak...

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was just that piece of paper

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lying at the center
of the table.

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It was enough to make me cry
to this day, not for myself,

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but for my mom and dad,

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who both of them had been
in the Navy during World War II,

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had believed in service to one's
country and all those values.

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considers all
civilians potential enemies...

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On the one hand I did think
the war was less than righteous.

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On the other hand
I love my country.

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And I valued my life in a small
town and my friends and family.

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And so the summer of '68,
I wrestled with what to do,

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was for me, at least,
more torturous

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and devastating and
emotionally painful

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than anything
that happened in Vietnam.

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In the end I just capitulated.

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And one clay I got on a bus with
other recent graduates,

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and we went over to Sioux Falls
about 60 miles away,

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and raised our hands
and got in the Army.

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But it wasn't a decision, it was
a forfeiture of a decision.

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It was letting my body go,

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turning a switch
in my conscience,

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just turning it off,

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so it wouldn't be barking
at me saying,

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"You're doing a bad and evil and
stupid and unpatriotic thing."

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Last week's casualty figures in
the Vietnam War released today

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showed 299 Americans killed,
the lowest figure in two months.

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By June of 1968,
the spirit of revolution-

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over the Vietnam War, over
injustice, over human rights...

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seemed to have spread
everywhere.

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The pressure to bring an end
to the war was building.

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President Lyndon Johnson
had already decided

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not to run again,

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00:05:01,517 --> 00:05:05,272
assassinations and unrest
had staggered the nation,

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and the country was preparing
to choose a new president.

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Meanwhile, American and North
Vietnamese diplomats in Paris

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were getting nowhere.

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The communists insisted there
could be

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no substantive negotiations

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until the United States stopped
all bombing of North Vietnam.

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The new secretary
of defense, Clark Clifford,

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who had turned from hawk to dove

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after just a few months
in office,

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begged the president
to call a total halt.

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"We can only hope for success
at the bargaining table,"

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he told Johnson.

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"We are in a war we cannot win."

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The president refused
to stop the bombing.

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Over the following months,

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there would be reports of
progress on the battlefield

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and in the countryside.

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But that progress came so slowly
and at so high a cost

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in human lives that the war
against the war

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intensified back home,

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pitting classes and generations
against one another,

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spreading distrust of political
leaders who seemed unable

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or unwilling to bring
the fighting to an end.

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Young men from all over
the country would continue

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to face questions and choices

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their fathers and grandfathers
had rarely had to face

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when asked to fight
in other wars:

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What obligation did a citizen
owe his country?

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What should one do when asked
to fight a war

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in which one did not believe?

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How was a soldier to distinguish
between a shadowy enemy

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and the Vietnamese civilians
he was supposed to be defending?

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The coming summer of 1968

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would be one of the most
consequential

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00:07:12,023 --> 00:07:15,368
in American history.

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Earlier this year,
top U.S. leaders vowed

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that the U.S. Marine outpost
at Khe Sanh,

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then under a 77-day enemy siege,
would be defended at all cost.

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Johnson had
said in the fall of '67,

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and as we went into '68,

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"I don't want no damn
Dien Bien Phu."

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So the whole American military,
from the Joint Chiefs on down,

98
00:08:00,404 --> 00:08:04,204
whether they believed in saving
Khe Sanh or not,

99
00:08:04,325 --> 00:08:07,420
were hell-bent for leather
to make damn sure

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the siege was broken.

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Now the telltale moment
of that is that a week

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after the siege was broken,

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they plowed the base under
and abandoned it.

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That was Vietnam in a microcosm.

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00:08:27,974 --> 00:08:30,397
There was a new
commander in Vietnam now,

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00:08:30,518 --> 00:08:35,365
General Creighton W. Abrams,
a hero of World War II,

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a soldier's soldier,
one reporter said,

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who "could inspire
aggressiveness in a begonia."

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Some newsman once described him

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as looking like an unmade bed
smoking a cigar.

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He's gruff.

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He drank a lot.

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He's grumpy in the morning.

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Sometimes staff officers would
schedule appointments with him

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in the morning

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for, with generals who were
causing him trouble.

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Abrams was a welcome
new face for the American war.

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Reporters found him more frank
and open than his predecessor.

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"The overall public affairs
policy of this command,"

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he told his subordinates,

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"will be to let results speak
for themselves."

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"Occasionally," one officer
said, "we are allowed

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to state frankly that we didn't
do a damn thing this month."

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Many soldiers would believe
for the rest of their lives

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that if Abrams had taken command
sooner

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the outcome could have been
different.

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You're told very succinctly,

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"We need to rack up as much
body count as we can.

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How many gooks did you kill
today?"

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And it was the kill ratio
that determined

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whether or not you called it
a victory or a loss.

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So if you killed
20 North Vietnamese

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and lost only two people,

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they declared a great victory
for that particular firefight.

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Lieutenant Vincent Okamoto
was born during World War II

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in a Japanese-American
internment camp

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at Poston, Arizona, the seventh
son of Japanese immigrants.

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All six of his brothers had
served in uniform...

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two fought with the celebrated
442nd Regimental Combat Team

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in Italy and France,

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the most highly decorated unit
of that war...

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and so, when Okamoto's country
went to war in Vietnam,

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he believed he should go, too.

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He was now a platoon leader with
Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion,

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27th Regiment, 25th Infantry
Division, based at Cu Chi,

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some 20 miles northwest of
Saigon, an area honeycombed

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with miles of Viet Cong tunnels.

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My parents are
Japanese immigrants.

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I had rice literally every clay
of my life

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until I went into the military.

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So we were conducting a cordon
and search of a village.

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Didn't find any weapons,

153
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didn't find any communist
literature or whatever.

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So we took a prolonged
lunch break.

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Everybody wants to get
out of the sun.

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Well, my RTO, my medic and I

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went into this particular house,
and there was...

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there were three women,
and a babe in arms,

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and a kid about four years old.

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And she was cooking... rice.

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Well, here, here's Okamoto,
Mrs. Okamoto's son,

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that hadn't had rice now... hot,
steamed rice... for months.

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I'm looking at it,
it looks pretty good to me.

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So I-I get my interpreter.

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I said, "Hey, tell this woman,
the grandma,

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"that I'll give her
a pack of cigarettes,

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"my C-ration turkey loaf,
and a can of peaches

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for some of that steamed rice
and that fish and vegetables."

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It was great.

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And I asked for seconds.

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My RTO says, "Damn, ain't
these people poor enough

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without you eating their food?"

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I said, "You know, hell,
they got enough rice here

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to feed a dozen men."

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And then, it just dawned,

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they did have enough rice
to feed a dozen men.

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So I had my interpreter
ask the woman,

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"Who's all this rice for?"

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"1 don't know, I don't know."

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So we started looking
around again.

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We found a tunnel mouth.

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I was given a grenade.

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After the smoke cleared,
we pulled, I think,

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seven or eight bodies
to the town square.

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And we wanted to see who would
cry over these people.

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And then we'd have more people
to question.

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The women that lived
in that house,

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and I had eaten their rice,

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they're all squatting down,
wailing.

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And you couldn't identify these,
these...

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they're just charred bodies.

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Um...

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And I think that was
the first time I knew

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that I personally
had killed people.

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I got an "Attaboy"
from the supervisor.

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But, uh...

197
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it wasn't something that you can
say had glory in it,

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or you felt a real sense
of accomplishment.

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00:13:42,705 --> 00:13:45,834
Over that summer,
Okamoto was wounded two times

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and made 22 helicopter assaults,

201
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four of them as commander
of Bravo Company.

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00:13:52,756 --> 00:13:58,104
On the morning of August 23,
he made his 23rd assault.

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00:13:58,220 --> 00:14:02,316
Nineteen helicopters ferried
the first and second platoons

204
00:14:02,433 --> 00:14:06,939
to a new landing zone
near Cambodia.

205
00:14:07,062 --> 00:14:09,986
Their task was to dig in,
stay put,

206
00:14:10,107 --> 00:14:13,953
and somehow block a battalion
of North Vietnamese troops,

207
00:14:14,111 --> 00:14:17,285
who were trying to escape
across the border.

208
00:14:17,406 --> 00:14:20,285
Okamoto's unit was reinforced
by a platoon

209
00:14:20,451 --> 00:14:25,002
of mechanized infantry,
three APCs, and a tank,

210
00:14:25,122 --> 00:14:29,218
but they were still
badly outnumbered.

211
00:14:29,335 --> 00:14:33,306
He and the fewer than 150 men
under his command

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00:14:33,422 --> 00:14:36,346
spent the rest of that day
and all of the next

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00:14:36,467 --> 00:14:39,641
preparing as best they could
for an attack,

214
00:14:39,762 --> 00:14:41,480
setting Claymore mines

215
00:14:41,597 --> 00:14:45,147
and hanging three coils
of razor wire.

216
00:14:48,270 --> 00:14:50,898
August the 24th,
about 10:00 that night,

217
00:14:51,023 --> 00:14:54,527
we got hit with a very heavy
mortar barrage.

218
00:14:56,028 --> 00:14:59,498
Within the first
I would say ten seconds,

219
00:14:59,657 --> 00:15:03,082
all three of those armored
personnel carriers and tanks

220
00:15:03,202 --> 00:15:05,580
were knocked out with
rocket-propelled grenades.

221
00:15:09,375 --> 00:15:12,754
Trip flares briefly
lit up the landscape.

222
00:15:12,878 --> 00:15:15,427
Scores of enemy troops
were running at them

223
00:15:15,547 --> 00:15:17,515
through the elephant grass.

224
00:15:18,926 --> 00:15:23,853
VC mortar shells blasted
two gaps in the razor wire.

225
00:15:24,014 --> 00:15:27,644
If Okamoto and his outnumbered
men couldn't plug them,

226
00:15:27,768 --> 00:15:30,191
they were sure to be overrun.

227
00:15:30,354 --> 00:15:34,029
He and the four men closest
to him held their M-16s

228
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above their heads
and fired blindly.

229
00:15:38,153 --> 00:15:40,781
The enemy kept coming.

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00:15:40,906 --> 00:15:42,579
I had my four people.

231
00:15:42,700 --> 00:15:46,170
And through the light
of the flares, I said,

232
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"A couple you guys go and man
the machine guns

233
00:15:48,247 --> 00:15:49,624
out on those APCs."

234
00:15:49,748 --> 00:15:51,796
Well, the response I
got was, like, uh...

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"Fuck you, I ain't going
up there."

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So I ran to the first armored
personnel carrier, and I...

237
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pulled the, the gunner out of
the turret, dead.

238
00:16:03,679 --> 00:16:07,104
I jumped in there,
manned the machine gun,

239
00:16:07,224 --> 00:16:09,943
and fired until
it ran out of ammo.

240
00:16:10,060 --> 00:16:13,860
Okamoto moved to
the second disabled APC

241
00:16:13,981 --> 00:16:17,827
and then the third,
emptying their guns.

242
00:16:17,943 --> 00:16:21,117
And they were
still coming at us.

243
00:16:21,238 --> 00:16:24,868
So I crawled out there, till I
was about ten meters from 'em.

244
00:16:24,992 --> 00:16:28,587
And I killed 'em
with hand grenades.

245
00:16:28,704 --> 00:16:31,378
Two enemy grenades fell near him

246
00:16:31,498 --> 00:16:33,921
and he managed to throw
both back.

247
00:16:34,084 --> 00:16:37,759
But a third landed
just beyond his reach.

248
00:16:37,921 --> 00:16:41,516
Shrapnel fragments peppered
his legs and back.

249
00:16:43,594 --> 00:16:46,518
I just knew for
sure I was going to die.

250
00:16:46,638 --> 00:16:48,640
"Okamoto, you're not going
to make it out of here.

251
00:16:48,766 --> 00:16:49,983
"Mom's going to take it hard,

252
00:16:50,100 --> 00:16:53,274
but, you know, you're not going
to make it out of here."

253
00:16:53,437 --> 00:16:54,734
And that's liberating.

254
00:16:54,855 --> 00:16:57,153
When you know you're going
to die, you don't...

255
00:16:57,274 --> 00:16:58,617
the fear leaves.

256
00:16:58,734 --> 00:17:00,454
At least in my case,
I was no longer afraid.

257
00:17:00,611 --> 00:17:02,672
I was just mad because here are
all these little guys

258
00:17:02,696 --> 00:17:05,700
trying to kill my ass.

259
00:17:05,824 --> 00:17:07,622
And if that's the case,

260
00:17:07,785 --> 00:17:10,538
then I'm going to make it as
tough on them as I possibly can

261
00:17:10,662 --> 00:17:11,662
before I go down.

262
00:17:14,291 --> 00:17:17,135
I killed a lot of brave men
that night.

263
00:17:17,294 --> 00:17:19,388
And I rationalized that
by telling myself,

264
00:17:19,505 --> 00:17:22,304
"Well, maybe what you did...
just maybe...

265
00:17:22,466 --> 00:17:24,889
saved the lives of a couple
of your people."

266
00:17:28,806 --> 00:17:32,606
During the night, the
enemy had slipped into Cambodia,

267
00:17:32,726 --> 00:17:36,071
dragging as many of their dead
with them as they could.

268
00:17:38,899 --> 00:17:43,325
A third of Okamoto's company
had been lost.

269
00:17:45,906 --> 00:17:47,374
For his efforts that day,

270
00:17:47,491 --> 00:17:51,337
Vincent Okamoto received the
Distinguished Service Cross,

271
00:17:51,453 --> 00:17:54,878
the Army's second highest honor.

272
00:17:54,998 --> 00:17:57,376
Before his tour of duty ended,

273
00:17:57,501 --> 00:18:01,347
he would become the most highly
decorated Japanese-American

274
00:18:01,463 --> 00:18:04,137
to survive the Vietnam War.

275
00:18:07,010 --> 00:18:08,603
You know what?

276
00:18:10,222 --> 00:18:12,600
The real heroes
are the men that died.

277
00:18:16,103 --> 00:18:19,698
19-, 20-year-old
high school dropouts.

278
00:18:19,815 --> 00:18:22,113
They didn't have escape routes
that the elite

279
00:18:22,234 --> 00:18:25,864
and the wealthy
and the privileged had.

280
00:18:26,029 --> 00:18:27,029
And that was unfair.

281
00:18:30,075 --> 00:18:32,828
And so they looked upon
military service as...

282
00:18:34,705 --> 00:18:36,252
like the weather.

283
00:18:36,373 --> 00:18:38,216
You had to go in,
and you'd do it.

284
00:18:40,210 --> 00:18:44,716
But to see these kids,
who had the least to gain,

285
00:18:44,882 --> 00:18:46,276
there wasn't anything
to look forward to;

286
00:18:46,300 --> 00:18:47,643
they weren't going
to be rewarded

287
00:18:47,759 --> 00:18:50,729
for their service in Vietnam.

288
00:18:50,846 --> 00:18:56,444
And yet their infinite patience,
their loyalty to each other,

289
00:18:56,560 --> 00:19:00,906
their courage under fire
was just phenomenal.

290
00:19:02,107 --> 00:19:04,530
And you would ask yourself,

291
00:19:04,651 --> 00:19:08,497
"How does America produce
young men like this?"

292
00:19:48,445 --> 00:19:52,450
At first, Radio Hanoi
had portrayed the Tet Offensive

293
00:19:52,574 --> 00:19:55,293
as a series of
"tremendous victories"

294
00:19:55,452 --> 00:19:58,922
in which "hundreds of thousands
of people have risen up

295
00:19:59,039 --> 00:20:03,010
and destroyed enemy positions."

296
00:20:03,126 --> 00:20:06,926
"But after a couple of weeks,"
one North Vietnamese remembered,

297
00:20:07,047 --> 00:20:09,800
"we didn't hear any more news.

298
00:20:09,967 --> 00:20:12,186
"The Saigon regime
was still there

299
00:20:12,302 --> 00:20:15,476
"and the U.S. planes
were still bombing.

300
00:20:15,639 --> 00:20:19,314
It was obvious the radio wasn't
telling the truth."

301
00:20:22,521 --> 00:20:25,240
Casualty figures were
never revealed,

302
00:20:25,357 --> 00:20:28,952
but to North Vietnamese citizens
secretly listening to reports

303
00:20:29,069 --> 00:20:31,663
on the BBC and Radio Saigon,

304
00:20:31,780 --> 00:20:35,000
it was clear that they
had been heavy.

305
00:21:36,762 --> 00:21:42,189
In late August 1968, Le Duan
and the North Vietnamese leadership

306
00:21:42,309 --> 00:21:45,313
launched still another
offensive.

307
00:21:45,437 --> 00:21:49,112
The result was the same
as Tet and Mini-Tet.

308
00:21:50,901 --> 00:21:56,453
They lost 17,000 more men.

309
00:21:56,573 --> 00:21:59,292
Thousands of fresh recruits
had to be ordered south

310
00:21:59,409 --> 00:22:01,582
to replace them.

311
00:22:01,745 --> 00:22:04,294
"The war began to seem
like an open pit,"

312
00:22:04,414 --> 00:22:06,883
one North Vietnamese remembered.

313
00:22:07,000 --> 00:22:11,096
"The more young people were lost
there, the more they sent."

314
00:22:12,464 --> 00:22:14,762
The sons of some party officials

315
00:22:14,883 --> 00:22:18,638
and their friends were sent
abroad to escape the draft.

316
00:22:18,762 --> 00:22:20,981
University students
were exempted.

317
00:22:21,098 --> 00:22:23,647
People with money
bribed recruiters

318
00:22:23,767 --> 00:22:26,020
to overlook their offspring

319
00:22:26,144 --> 00:22:29,899
or paid physicians to declare
them unfit to serve.

320
00:22:47,374 --> 00:22:50,173
Most draftees were poor
people from the countryside,

321
00:22:50,293 --> 00:22:53,137
especially receptive
to the slogans

322
00:22:53,296 --> 00:22:56,891
and promises of the revolution.

323
00:22:57,008 --> 00:22:59,181
Thousands of replacements made
their way

324
00:22:59,302 --> 00:23:01,100
down the Ho Chi Minh Trail

325
00:23:01,221 --> 00:23:04,521
past burned-out vehicles
and military graveyards,

326
00:23:04,641 --> 00:23:08,817
the stones neatly marked
with the names of the dead

327
00:23:08,979 --> 00:23:11,277
and the date each had died.

328
00:23:13,233 --> 00:23:16,362
They encountered small groups
of wounded men

329
00:23:16,486 --> 00:23:18,830
moving in the other direction.

330
00:23:18,947 --> 00:23:21,621
Those without arms walked.

331
00:23:21,742 --> 00:23:24,495
Legless men rode
in camouflaged trucks.

332
00:23:24,661 --> 00:23:27,039
There were blinded soldiers

333
00:23:27,164 --> 00:23:31,340
and others who had been
hideously burned by napalm.

334
00:23:31,501 --> 00:23:33,970
"You'll see all kinds of
pleasures in the South,"

335
00:23:34,087 --> 00:23:38,593
the weary wounded told the
young men moving toward the war.

336
00:23:38,717 --> 00:23:42,142
"Everyone was frightened,"
a political officer remembered,

337
00:23:42,262 --> 00:23:45,311
"especially when we met
those men.

338
00:23:45,432 --> 00:23:48,527
It was like looking
at our future selves."

339
00:23:52,314 --> 00:23:54,737
The youngest delegate
of the New Jersey delegation

340
00:23:54,858 --> 00:23:57,361
casts his vote for the next
president of the United States,

341
00:23:57,527 --> 00:23:58,528
Richard Nixon.

342
00:23:58,653 --> 00:24:02,203
We've got 18.

343
00:24:02,365 --> 00:24:04,367
David, we doubled it, 18.

344
00:24:04,493 --> 00:24:06,871
Richard Nixon
had been a prominent

345
00:24:07,037 --> 00:24:09,916
and controversial figure
in American politics

346
00:24:10,040 --> 00:24:12,884
for more than two decades.

347
00:24:13,001 --> 00:24:15,254
He'd been a congressman
and senator,

348
00:24:15,378 --> 00:24:18,348
best known for his fierce
anticommunism,

349
00:24:18,465 --> 00:24:20,638
then served eight years

350
00:24:20,759 --> 00:24:23,808
as Dwight Eisenhower's
vice president.

351
00:24:23,929 --> 00:24:26,773
He narrowly lost
the presidential race

352
00:24:26,890 --> 00:24:29,643
to John Kennedy in 1960

353
00:24:29,768 --> 00:24:31,896
and was defeated again
two years later

354
00:24:32,062 --> 00:24:35,157
trying to become
governor of California.

355
00:24:35,273 --> 00:24:39,403
His career seemed to be over.

356
00:24:39,569 --> 00:24:43,619
But then, in one of the most
extraordinary comebacks

357
00:24:43,740 --> 00:24:45,868
in U.S. political history,

358
00:24:45,992 --> 00:24:48,336
he had outsmarted
and out-maneuvered

359
00:24:48,453 --> 00:24:50,296
and out-campaigned his rivals

360
00:24:50,413 --> 00:24:55,089
to win the 1968
Republican nomination.

361
00:24:55,252 --> 00:24:57,050
Richard M. Nixon...

362
00:25:01,675 --> 00:25:04,519
His pick for vice president
was the tough-talking

363
00:25:04,636 --> 00:25:08,891
but largely unknown governor
of Maryland, Spiro Agnew.

364
00:25:10,976 --> 00:25:12,899
Nixon made the case for himself

365
00:25:13,019 --> 00:25:16,523
as the man who could bring
a fractured America together

366
00:25:16,648 --> 00:25:20,573
and bring an honorable end
to the war.

367
00:25:20,694 --> 00:25:24,324
When the strongest nation
in the world can be tied down

368
00:25:24,447 --> 00:25:28,327
for four years in a war in
Vietnam with no end in sight;

369
00:25:28,451 --> 00:25:30,346
when the richest nation
in the world can't manage

370
00:25:30,370 --> 00:25:32,247
its own economy;

371
00:25:32,372 --> 00:25:34,249
when the nation
with the greatest tradition

372
00:25:34,374 --> 00:25:38,129
of the rule of law is plagued
by unprecedented lawlessness;

373
00:25:38,253 --> 00:25:41,427
when a nation that has been
known for a century

374
00:25:41,548 --> 00:25:42,970
for equality of opportunity

375
00:25:43,133 --> 00:25:46,478
is torn by unprecedented
racial violence;

376
00:25:46,636 --> 00:25:48,638
and when the president
of the United States

377
00:25:48,805 --> 00:25:52,435
cannot travel abroad or
to any major city at home

378
00:25:52,559 --> 00:25:55,153
without fear of a hostile
demonstration,

379
00:25:55,312 --> 00:25:57,656
then it's time
for new leadership

380
00:25:57,772 --> 00:25:59,365
for the United States
of America.

381
00:26:08,325 --> 00:26:10,327
Good evening from Chicago,

382
00:26:10,452 --> 00:26:12,625
where the 35th National
Democratic Convention

383
00:26:12,746 --> 00:26:16,171
opens tomorrow with the promise
of turmoil inside this hall

384
00:26:16,333 --> 00:26:18,176
and a threat of violence
without.

385
00:26:18,293 --> 00:26:22,093
Both sides moved in
their troops on a balmy Sunday morning

386
00:26:22,213 --> 00:26:24,386
for the confrontation
of Chicago.

387
00:26:24,507 --> 00:26:26,475
Some 6,000 crack Army troops,

388
00:26:26,593 --> 00:26:29,392
riot trained and
ready for action...

389
00:26:29,512 --> 00:26:33,016
The Army soldiers moved out to
secret locations around the city

390
00:26:33,183 --> 00:26:35,686
after one of the largest troop
movements in domestic history.

391
00:26:38,396 --> 00:26:42,617
Some 15,000 protesters
had gathered in Chicago,

392
00:26:42,734 --> 00:26:46,113
most to register
their anguish over the war...

393
00:26:48,365 --> 00:26:51,369
Some bent on disrupting
the convention.

394
00:26:54,663 --> 00:26:58,384
Richard J. Daley,
the Democratic mayor of Chicago,

395
00:26:58,541 --> 00:27:02,262
was determined that
there be no trouble in his city.

396
00:27:04,089 --> 00:27:08,390
Twelve thousand Chicago
policemen were on alert.

397
00:27:08,551 --> 00:27:11,851
In addition to the
6,000 U.S. Army troops,

398
00:27:11,972 --> 00:27:15,647
there were 6,000 more armed
National Guardsmen

399
00:27:15,767 --> 00:27:19,613
and a thousand intelligence
agents from the FBI,

400
00:27:19,729 --> 00:27:22,858
the CIA, and the military.

401
00:27:24,317 --> 00:27:27,116
Mayor Daley cordoned off
the Chicago Amphitheater

402
00:27:27,237 --> 00:27:28,739
where the convention
was being held

403
00:27:28,905 --> 00:27:32,284
and denied the protestors
permits to march

404
00:27:32,409 --> 00:27:35,003
or to sleep in the city's parks.

405
00:27:36,413 --> 00:27:38,349
Are you planning
to go without the permit

406
00:27:38,373 --> 00:27:39,493
if you don't get the permit?

407
00:27:39,582 --> 00:27:40,925
Given the fact

408
00:27:41,084 --> 00:27:44,679
that for many months we have
notified this city

409
00:27:44,796 --> 00:27:48,517
and this nation that we wish
to hold a demonstration,

410
00:27:48,633 --> 00:27:50,385
an assembly in Chicago

411
00:27:50,510 --> 00:27:52,979
to register our convictions
about the war,

412
00:27:53,096 --> 00:27:56,475
the tens of thousands of people
coming to the city of Chicago

413
00:27:56,599 --> 00:27:58,351
constitute a permit.

414
00:28:00,395 --> 00:28:02,523
Our fight is with the militarism

415
00:28:02,647 --> 00:28:04,320
that is developing
in this country

416
00:28:04,441 --> 00:28:07,285
in the response to legitimate
political and social grievances

417
00:28:07,402 --> 00:28:09,279
by bringing in troops

418
00:28:09,404 --> 00:28:12,248
rather than dealing with the
real issues and real problems.

419
00:28:15,785 --> 00:28:17,985
In the name of
security, freedom of the press,

420
00:28:18,038 --> 00:28:20,257
freedom of movement,
perhaps as far

421
00:28:20,373 --> 00:28:22,375
as the demonstrators themselves
are concerned,

422
00:28:22,500 --> 00:28:26,596
even freedom of speech have
been severely restricted here.

423
00:28:26,713 --> 00:28:31,765
A democratic convention is about
to begin in a police state.

424
00:28:31,885 --> 00:28:34,434
There just doesn't seem to be
any other way to say it.

425
00:28:36,639 --> 00:28:39,017
Will the
delegates please be seated.

426
00:28:39,142 --> 00:28:41,065
Vice President Hubert Humphrey,

427
00:28:41,186 --> 00:28:44,690
President Johnson's chosen
successor, was the frontrunner.

428
00:28:44,814 --> 00:28:48,944
He had always been a hero
to his party's liberal wing,

429
00:28:49,069 --> 00:28:51,948
but because he had loyally
supported the president

430
00:28:52,072 --> 00:28:55,918
and the war, many delegates,
and most of the demonstrators

431
00:28:56,034 --> 00:29:00,084
outside the convention hall,
backed his antiwar rival,

432
00:29:00,205 --> 00:29:02,958
Senator Eugene McCarthy.

433
00:29:06,294 --> 00:29:08,717
On the second night
of the convention,

434
00:29:08,838 --> 00:29:10,886
the police drove hundreds
of demonstrators

435
00:29:11,007 --> 00:29:14,807
out of Lincoln Park
with clubs and tear gas.

436
00:29:20,225 --> 00:29:22,995
The delegates wearing
bands of black crepe on their arms...

437
00:29:23,019 --> 00:29:26,193
The next afternoon,
the Democrats heatedly debated

438
00:29:26,314 --> 00:29:30,785
a plank in the party platform
calling for an end to the war.

439
00:29:30,902 --> 00:29:34,372
When Humphrey supporters
voted it down,

440
00:29:34,531 --> 00:29:38,161
the antiwar delegates erupted.

441
00:29:38,284 --> 00:29:40,763
who have joined New York
in this extraordinary demonstration

442
00:29:40,787 --> 00:29:45,258
of antiwar sentiment
on the convention floor.

443
00:29:47,377 --> 00:29:49,688
The demonstrators
resisted when police attempted to arrest

444
00:29:49,712 --> 00:29:51,965
a young man who tried to rip
down an American flag.

445
00:29:52,090 --> 00:29:54,184
Watch... watch these fuckers.

446
00:29:54,300 --> 00:29:56,098
Don't turn your back
on these fuckers!

447
00:30:02,976 --> 00:30:04,328
The cops were all...

448
00:30:04,352 --> 00:30:05,912
they were guys
from the neighborhoods...

449
00:30:05,979 --> 00:30:09,574
Italians, Polish guys,
Irish guys.

450
00:30:09,691 --> 00:30:11,989
Probably some of them
had been in Vietnam.

451
00:30:12,110 --> 00:30:13,532
And if they hadn't been,

452
00:30:13,653 --> 00:30:17,658
they certainly had cousins
or brothers who were.

453
00:30:17,782 --> 00:30:22,083
Philip Caputo, who had
fought with the Marines in Vietnam,

454
00:30:22,245 --> 00:30:23,997
was now a reporter,

455
00:30:24,122 --> 00:30:28,002
assigned to cover the conflict
in American streets.

456
00:30:28,126 --> 00:30:30,925
Get a picture of them
throwing the rocks!

457
00:30:33,089 --> 00:30:35,012
So all of a sudden
the streets are filled

458
00:30:35,133 --> 00:30:37,261
with these kids who don't look
like college kids

459
00:30:37,427 --> 00:30:39,896
are supposed to look
in the cops' view.

460
00:30:43,683 --> 00:30:45,323
And some of them were
committing vandalism

461
00:30:45,435 --> 00:30:49,110
and yelling obscenities.

462
00:30:49,272 --> 00:30:52,697
And I think a lot of policemen
saw that

463
00:30:52,817 --> 00:30:59,120
as abusing the privileges that
they had and scorning them.

464
00:30:59,240 --> 00:31:00,537
They are provoking us

465
00:31:00,658 --> 00:31:03,582
but we do not want to confront
them now... move back, please.

466
00:31:16,007 --> 00:31:20,558
Move back! Move back!

467
00:31:32,357 --> 00:31:37,989
That's a report, on film, from
Grant Park, downtown Chicago.

468
00:31:40,323 --> 00:31:42,667
That evening,
thousands of demonstrators,

469
00:31:42,784 --> 00:31:45,913
barred from getting anywhere
near the convention,

470
00:31:46,037 --> 00:31:49,917
were marching toward
Democratic Party headquarters

471
00:31:50,041 --> 00:31:53,170
in the Hilton Hotel
on Michigan Avenue instead.

472
00:31:53,294 --> 00:31:56,673
The marchers seem
to have come from everywhere

473
00:31:56,798 --> 00:32:00,143
and now are coming up south
on Michigan Avenue

474
00:32:00,260 --> 00:32:01,603
back toward the point where

475
00:32:01,719 --> 00:32:05,519
the police were blocking them
before.

476
00:32:07,684 --> 00:32:09,161
Get your hands up!

477
00:32:09,185 --> 00:32:10,687
Hands LIP!

478
00:32:10,812 --> 00:32:12,029
Come on!

479
00:32:19,988 --> 00:32:21,786
Come on now!
Go! Go!

480
00:32:21,906 --> 00:32:25,581
I place before you
for the Democratic nomination

481
00:32:25,702 --> 00:32:28,376
as president
of the United States

482
00:32:28,538 --> 00:32:32,759
the name of Senator Eugene J.
McCarthy of Minnesota.

483
00:32:37,088 --> 00:32:41,309
Downtown Chicago at Balbo
and Michigan Avenues,

484
00:32:41,426 --> 00:32:45,147
there has been in progress for
some time a peace demonstration.

485
00:32:45,263 --> 00:32:47,516
The police have come
to put it down.

486
00:32:47,640 --> 00:32:50,109
The National Guard
has been called to help.

487
00:33:16,085 --> 00:33:17,553
Get him!

488
00:33:17,670 --> 00:33:20,173
Get him! Get him!

489
00:33:28,765 --> 00:33:30,688
people screaming...

490
00:33:30,808 --> 00:33:32,244
I turned on the television.

491
00:33:32,268 --> 00:33:34,079
I don't think I was
too particularly thoughtful

492
00:33:34,103 --> 00:33:35,400
as a junior in college,

493
00:33:35,521 --> 00:33:38,775
but I thought the country was
coming apart at the seams.

494
00:33:38,900 --> 00:33:40,994
It looked like we were
devolving into madness.

495
00:33:42,820 --> 00:33:46,745
And I couldn't tell, was it
protestors or the police

496
00:33:46,866 --> 00:33:47,866
or was everybody insane?

497
00:33:53,664 --> 00:33:56,292
At the convention
there was more confusion.

498
00:33:56,417 --> 00:33:59,387
Some antiwar delegates
once pledged

499
00:33:59,504 --> 00:34:02,633
to the murdered Robert Kennedy
now threw their support

500
00:34:02,757 --> 00:34:04,725
behind yet another candidate,

501
00:34:04,842 --> 00:34:08,437
South Dakota senator
George McGovern.

502
00:34:08,554 --> 00:34:11,774
And with George McGovern
as president of the United States,

503
00:34:11,891 --> 00:34:15,737
we wouldn't have to have
Gestapo tactics

504
00:34:15,853 --> 00:34:19,608
in the streets of Chicago.

505
00:34:26,489 --> 00:34:28,833
The persistent
chanting by the crowd,

506
00:34:28,950 --> 00:34:31,123
"The whole world is watching."

507
00:34:31,244 --> 00:34:34,418
LBJ, watching
the chaos on television,

508
00:34:34,539 --> 00:34:36,382
considered flying to Chicago

509
00:34:36,499 --> 00:34:39,628
and getting back
in the race himself.

510
00:34:39,752 --> 00:34:42,676
Mayor Daley told the president
he'd have enough delegates

511
00:34:42,797 --> 00:34:44,640
to win the nomination,

512
00:34:44,757 --> 00:34:49,012
but the Secret Service warned it
could not guarantee his safety.

513
00:34:53,558 --> 00:34:58,029
I got to Australia the
week of August 1968-R&R.

514
00:34:58,187 --> 00:35:00,565
I never really wanted
to go on R&R.

515
00:35:00,690 --> 00:35:03,193
I felt that, how can you relax?

516
00:35:03,317 --> 00:35:06,947
So I turn on the TV
and the first scene...

517
00:35:07,071 --> 00:35:09,199
The TV gets bright.

518
00:35:09,365 --> 00:35:11,834
The first scene on...
it was the camera...

519
00:35:11,951 --> 00:35:15,751
was a close-up, was over the
shoulder of this storm trooper

520
00:35:15,872 --> 00:35:18,045
who had a kid by the scruff
of his shirt.

521
00:35:18,207 --> 00:35:20,710
And he smacks him with his bat.

522
00:35:20,835 --> 00:35:23,839
And there's blood and everything
and all this jumble.

523
00:35:23,963 --> 00:35:26,591
And then the camera pans out
and it's far away.

524
00:35:26,716 --> 00:35:28,360
And these riots and
there's fighting going on.

525
00:35:28,384 --> 00:35:29,931
And I go, "Oh, my God,

526
00:35:30,052 --> 00:35:31,725
the Russians invaded
Czechoslovakia."

527
00:35:31,888 --> 00:35:34,732
And then ditto, ditto, ditto,
"Chicago Democratic Convention,

528
00:35:34,891 --> 00:35:36,609
United States of America."

529
00:35:36,726 --> 00:35:39,229
And I said...
you know, at that moment my...

530
00:35:39,353 --> 00:35:41,230
I-I was politicized.

531
00:35:58,831 --> 00:36:00,504
At that moment in time,

532
00:36:00,625 --> 00:36:03,674
I realized that anybody who
really cared for America

533
00:36:03,794 --> 00:36:07,048
was sent halfway around the
world chasing some ghost

534
00:36:07,173 --> 00:36:10,052
in the jungle, killing
somebody else's grandmother

535
00:36:10,176 --> 00:36:12,053
for no reason at all.

536
00:36:14,263 --> 00:36:17,893
And, in the meantime,
my country's being torn apart.

537
00:36:18,017 --> 00:36:19,860
So I saw somebody who looked
like my dad

538
00:36:19,977 --> 00:36:21,399
hitting somebody
who looked like me.

539
00:36:21,521 --> 00:36:25,401
Oh, my God,
whose side would I be on?

540
00:36:44,460 --> 00:36:46,007
In the end,

541
00:36:46,128 --> 00:36:49,098
Humphrey won the nomination
on the first ballot.

542
00:36:49,215 --> 00:36:51,638
He told the press
how pleased he was,

543
00:36:51,801 --> 00:36:55,806
but he confessed to his wife
that the convention had left him

544
00:36:55,930 --> 00:36:59,651
feeling heartbroken, battered,
and beaten,

545
00:36:59,809 --> 00:37:01,903
as if he'd survived a shipwreck.

546
00:37:03,980 --> 00:37:06,574
A presidential commission would
declare what had happened

547
00:37:06,691 --> 00:37:10,912
in Chicago a "police riot,"
but in a Gallup poll,

548
00:37:11,028 --> 00:37:14,282
56% of Americans approved

549
00:37:14,407 --> 00:37:18,002
of the way the police had
handled the demonstrators.

550
00:37:18,160 --> 00:37:22,290
And when Richard Nixon chose
to open his campaign

551
00:37:22,415 --> 00:37:24,543
with a motorcade
through the Chicago Loop,

552
00:37:24,667 --> 00:37:29,173
nearly half a million Chicagoans
turned out to cheer him.

553
00:37:36,429 --> 00:37:38,352
Hello, Mom, Pop.

554
00:37:38,472 --> 00:37:40,645
I really can't tell you too much
about this country

555
00:37:40,766 --> 00:37:42,393
except the rice paddies stink.

556
00:37:42,518 --> 00:37:46,864
And it's just miles and miles
of nothing but rice paddies.

557
00:37:46,981 --> 00:37:48,358
And they got dikes in them.

558
00:37:48,482 --> 00:37:49,482
Real cool looking.

559
00:37:49,525 --> 00:37:51,072
We go through them with our APCs

560
00:37:51,193 --> 00:37:53,537
and tear them down
and everything else.

561
00:37:57,783 --> 00:38:01,663
On August 29, the day after
police and demonstrators clashed

562
00:38:01,787 --> 00:38:05,542
in Chicago, 20-year-old private
Michael Holmes

563
00:38:05,666 --> 00:38:08,966
arrived in Vietnam.

564
00:38:09,086 --> 00:38:13,057
He was born and brought up in
the tiny town of Williamsville,

565
00:38:13,174 --> 00:38:15,723
in the heart
of the Missouri Ozarks.

566
00:38:15,885 --> 00:38:18,229
His father and mother
ran the general store

567
00:38:18,387 --> 00:38:20,981
where Michael worked
every day after school.

568
00:38:21,098 --> 00:38:25,023
He floated the rivers,
hunted deer and squirrels,

569
00:38:25,144 --> 00:38:28,114
and was going steady
with a girl named Darlene.

570
00:38:28,230 --> 00:38:32,110
He had trouble keeping up
in high school,

571
00:38:32,234 --> 00:38:35,738
did not complete community
college and, as a result,

572
00:38:35,905 --> 00:38:39,785
was immediately drafted
into the Army.

573
00:38:39,909 --> 00:38:45,040
In Vietnam, he was assigned to
F Troop, 17th Armored Cavalry,

574
00:38:45,164 --> 00:38:48,509
196th Light Infantry Brigade,

575
00:38:48,626 --> 00:38:51,175
stationed at an isolated
firebase

576
00:38:51,295 --> 00:38:56,426
22 miles south of Danang
called Baldy.

577
00:38:56,550 --> 00:38:58,928
So you ask
what the size of Baldy was.

578
00:38:59,095 --> 00:39:01,769
Well, it's just about
as big as Williamsville

579
00:39:01,931 --> 00:39:05,060
and maybe a little bit bigger.

580
00:39:05,184 --> 00:39:09,360
I sent you a picture of me
and a bunch of the other guys.

581
00:39:13,192 --> 00:39:14,910
It's not really that bad.

582
00:39:15,027 --> 00:39:16,654
It's... in a way I like it.

583
00:39:16,779 --> 00:39:18,781
It's just being away from home

584
00:39:18,948 --> 00:39:20,621
and everything
that I don't like.

585
00:39:23,911 --> 00:39:27,757
In Williamsville, family
and friends gathered to listen

586
00:39:27,873 --> 00:39:30,217
to Michael's reports
from Vietnam

587
00:39:30,334 --> 00:39:34,589
and to fill him in on what was
happening back home.

588
00:39:34,714 --> 00:39:37,638
We're all clown here
at your clad and mother's tonight

589
00:39:37,800 --> 00:39:40,974
and we thought we'd all
say something for you.

590
00:39:41,095 --> 00:39:45,976
And you could hear our voice
and feel like you's back home.

591
00:39:46,100 --> 00:39:46,976
And we're looking forward...

592
00:39:47,101 --> 00:39:48,398
Hello, Mike.

593
00:39:48,519 --> 00:39:50,372
I've been doing a lot of
squirrel hunting lately,

594
00:39:50,396 --> 00:39:52,490
and killing quite a few.

595
00:39:52,648 --> 00:39:55,868
Well, the Ozarks really look
beautiful this time of year.

596
00:39:55,985 --> 00:39:57,282
Looking forward to seeing you.

597
00:39:57,403 --> 00:39:59,003
Uh, this is Jerry, Mike.

598
00:39:59,113 --> 00:40:02,287
I think Ricky and Carol
broke up, Mike.

599
00:40:02,408 --> 00:40:04,160
Ricky, he's really prowling now.

600
00:40:04,326 --> 00:40:07,079
Mike, this is Glenda.

601
00:40:07,204 --> 00:40:10,378
Um, I got a boyfriend,
and his name's Danny.

602
00:40:10,499 --> 00:40:11,671
And...

603
00:40:11,834 --> 00:40:13,427
Mike, this is Glen.

604
00:40:13,544 --> 00:40:15,797
All these other boys been
talking about hunting,

605
00:40:15,921 --> 00:40:17,639
I'm gonna talk about girls.

606
00:40:17,757 --> 00:40:20,556
Girls and fast cars.

607
00:40:20,676 --> 00:40:23,680
Gene Bilbury got him
a new Bonneville.

608
00:40:23,804 --> 00:40:27,183
Michael, this is Mother.

609
00:40:27,308 --> 00:40:30,653
The picture you sent us was real
good, it looked just like you.

610
00:40:30,770 --> 00:40:34,616
I even liked that moustache,
and I didn't think I would.

611
00:40:34,732 --> 00:40:36,200
And we miss you a lot.

612
00:40:36,358 --> 00:40:38,295
This is your dad talking.

613
00:40:38,319 --> 00:40:43,075
We think that you'll be okay,
just don't be nosing around

614
00:40:43,199 --> 00:40:45,793
where you don't have
any business

615
00:40:45,910 --> 00:40:49,289
and get hold of a booby trap
or something.

616
00:40:49,413 --> 00:40:53,463
This is about the end of this
tape, so goodbye for now.

617
00:41:01,217 --> 00:41:05,017
We burned down
a whole lot of hooches today

618
00:41:05,137 --> 00:41:08,266
of these people who don't
cooperate with us, you know.

619
00:41:08,390 --> 00:41:10,063
Yeah, I don't I don't really
understand it

620
00:41:10,184 --> 00:41:15,315
because if, if they are,
you know, not VC,

621
00:41:15,439 --> 00:41:18,443
and we do that to them,
you know, treat them bad,

622
00:41:18,567 --> 00:41:20,535
then they're gonna turn VC.

623
00:41:20,653 --> 00:41:22,155
The Army does everything
backward.

624
00:41:28,744 --> 00:41:32,920
One morning that fall,
several APCs from F Troop

625
00:41:33,040 --> 00:41:35,964
moved cautiously up
Highway One toward Danang.

626
00:41:36,085 --> 00:41:40,465
Michael Holmes rode
in the second vehicle.

627
00:41:49,348 --> 00:41:54,070
His APC hit a BOO-pound bomb
buried beneath the road.

628
00:41:54,186 --> 00:41:57,440
Three of his
friends died instantly.

629
00:41:57,606 --> 00:41:59,825
Holmes was thrown clear

630
00:41:59,942 --> 00:42:04,243
and woke up five hours later
in the hospital.

631
00:42:07,449 --> 00:42:09,451
Hello, Mom, Pop.

632
00:42:09,618 --> 00:42:10,835
This is me.

633
00:42:10,953 --> 00:42:12,751
Up to this point I didn't know

634
00:42:12,872 --> 00:42:16,126
if there was really
a war going on over here.

635
00:42:16,250 --> 00:42:20,005
I just thought maybe they was
playing a game or something.

636
00:42:20,129 --> 00:42:23,633
But I could've reached out and
touched two of those people.

637
00:42:23,799 --> 00:42:25,801
I knew them real good.

638
00:42:25,926 --> 00:42:27,487
And please don't worry about me
getting hurt

639
00:42:27,511 --> 00:42:30,560
because I'm not hurt
all that bad.

640
00:42:30,681 --> 00:42:33,981
Two more Purple Hearts
and I'm out of the field,

641
00:42:34,101 --> 00:42:37,822
and I think maybe I get to get
out of the country altogether.

642
00:42:43,319 --> 00:42:48,746
Six months later, Michael
Holmes was on patrol, walking point,

643
00:42:48,866 --> 00:42:52,996
when he was killed by
a North Vietnamese soldier.

644
00:43:01,420 --> 00:43:03,468
This is Long An province.

645
00:43:03,589 --> 00:43:06,889
Since 1962, it has been an
important testing ground

646
00:43:07,009 --> 00:43:09,103
for the pacification program.

647
00:43:09,219 --> 00:43:13,975
Amidst the flat rice fields and
coconut trees lies Loc Tien Mot.

648
00:43:14,099 --> 00:43:17,649
The hamlet chief says only more
troops will make his people safe

649
00:43:17,770 --> 00:43:19,443
from the Viet Cong.

650
00:43:19,563 --> 00:43:20,815
During the night, he adds,

651
00:43:20,940 --> 00:43:24,035
the guerrillas go from house
to house collecting taxes.

652
00:43:24,193 --> 00:43:27,993
The government may have left
its traces of pacification.

653
00:43:28,113 --> 00:43:29,990
The Viet Cong have not left.

654
00:43:30,115 --> 00:43:33,210
Liz Trotta, NBC News,
South Vietnam.

655
00:43:34,870 --> 00:43:37,544
Since the Viet Cong
had been so badly weakened

656
00:43:37,665 --> 00:43:41,169
in the Tet Offensive and the two
offensives that followed it,

657
00:43:41,293 --> 00:43:43,045
General Abrams believed

658
00:43:43,212 --> 00:43:45,840
that hundreds of thousands
of ARVN troops

659
00:43:45,965 --> 00:43:48,639
could now be freed
to secure the countryside

660
00:43:48,759 --> 00:43:51,603
and win support for the
government in Saigon.

661
00:43:53,514 --> 00:43:56,438
But permanent security
was not possible

662
00:43:56,558 --> 00:43:59,732
unless the Viet Cong
political infrastructure...

663
00:43:59,853 --> 00:44:02,606
the tax collectors
and village chiefs,

664
00:44:02,731 --> 00:44:05,575
runners and spies
and sympathizers...

665
00:44:05,693 --> 00:44:10,494
were killed, captured,
or persuaded to defect.

666
00:44:10,614 --> 00:44:16,747
To do that, the CIA
had created the Phoenix Program.

667
00:44:16,870 --> 00:44:19,794
The villagers
of Thuy Xuan have been assembled

668
00:44:19,915 --> 00:44:21,588
in the village schoolyard,

669
00:44:21,750 --> 00:44:25,095
where teams of government
interrogators are trying

670
00:44:25,254 --> 00:44:27,757
to pick out from among them
the members of the Viet Cong

671
00:44:27,881 --> 00:44:29,633
who live here.

672
00:44:29,758 --> 00:44:33,012
This sort of Phoenix exercise
is a weekly event

673
00:44:33,137 --> 00:44:35,981
in districts
throughout South Vietnam.

674
00:44:38,559 --> 00:44:40,357
After recovering
from his wounds,

675
00:44:40,477 --> 00:44:44,448
Lieutenant Vincent Okamoto
became an intelligence officer

676
00:44:44,606 --> 00:44:47,780
attached to the program.

677
00:44:47,901 --> 00:44:49,254
The Phoenix Program
was premised on the fact

678
00:44:49,278 --> 00:44:51,548
that the North Vietnamese coming
down the Ho Chi Minh Trail,

679
00:44:51,572 --> 00:44:53,074
when they went
into South Vietnam,

680
00:44:53,198 --> 00:44:54,759
they were strangers,
just like the Americans.

681
00:44:54,783 --> 00:44:58,287
They didn't know the terrain,
they didn't know the people.

682
00:44:58,412 --> 00:45:01,632
So in order for them
to function operationally,

683
00:45:01,790 --> 00:45:03,963
they needed the Viet Cong
infrastructure.

684
00:45:04,126 --> 00:45:08,427
And so the project was
to eliminate those guys.

685
00:45:08,547 --> 00:45:11,141
And I think it made
a great deal of sense.

686
00:45:13,135 --> 00:45:16,309
The communists
thought Phoenix was very effective.

687
00:45:16,430 --> 00:45:18,899
They saw it as
a significant threat

688
00:45:19,016 --> 00:45:21,314
to the viability
of the revolution

689
00:45:21,435 --> 00:45:25,906
because to the extent that you
could take a sharp pointed knife

690
00:45:26,023 --> 00:45:27,696
and carve out the Viet Cong,

691
00:45:27,816 --> 00:45:29,989
the shadow Viet Cong,
the shadow government,

692
00:45:30,152 --> 00:45:33,281
then their means of control
over the civilian population

693
00:45:33,405 --> 00:45:35,453
in the South was dealt
a death blow.

694
00:45:37,785 --> 00:45:40,709
The pressure the Phoenix
Program put on the Viet Cong

695
00:45:40,829 --> 00:45:45,084
caused dangerous signs of what
one communist official described

696
00:45:45,209 --> 00:45:49,339
as "wavering" among his
followers in the Mekong Delta...

697
00:45:49,463 --> 00:45:53,138
depression, discouragement,
and widespread drunkenness

698
00:45:53,258 --> 00:45:57,308
even among men
going into battle.

699
00:45:58,847 --> 00:46:02,693
But Phoenix's targeting was only
as good as the intelligence

700
00:46:02,810 --> 00:46:08,158
upon which it was based,
and that varied widely.

701
00:46:08,273 --> 00:46:11,652
This film, made
by a CBS stringer cameraman

702
00:46:11,777 --> 00:46:14,781
some weeks ago shows
South Vietnamese forces

703
00:46:14,905 --> 00:46:16,202
interrogating an old man

704
00:46:16,323 --> 00:46:18,542
identified as a minor
VC official.

705
00:46:20,869 --> 00:46:22,097
In the Phoenix Program,

706
00:46:22,121 --> 00:46:26,171
Americans served
in an advisory capacity;

707
00:46:26,291 --> 00:46:29,511
most of the day-to-day
enforcement was left to

708
00:46:29,628 --> 00:46:33,053
the South Vietnamese Provincial
Reconnaissance Units...

709
00:46:33,173 --> 00:46:35,050
the PRUs...

710
00:46:35,217 --> 00:46:37,515
who sometimes were
more interested

711
00:46:37,636 --> 00:46:42,142
in settling old scores
than in rooting out communists.

712
00:46:44,101 --> 00:46:47,150
It was scary because
it was subject to abuse,

713
00:46:47,271 --> 00:46:50,525
and was abused.

714
00:46:50,649 --> 00:46:55,280
Again, the geniuses in Saigon
would use their computers

715
00:46:55,404 --> 00:46:58,874
to come up with the blacklists.

716
00:47:00,909 --> 00:47:03,503
You get the list, and you check
with other intelligence officers

717
00:47:03,620 --> 00:47:05,543
in the district.

718
00:47:05,664 --> 00:47:08,417
And you try to pool
that information.

719
00:47:08,542 --> 00:47:10,544
Next night,
or a couple nights later,

720
00:47:10,669 --> 00:47:13,092
a bunch of cowboys from the PRUs
would go out there.

721
00:47:13,255 --> 00:47:16,805
And, you know,
knock on the door,

722
00:47:16,925 --> 00:47:18,222
"April Fool, motherfucker!"

723
00:47:18,343 --> 00:47:19,343
And boom.

724
00:47:20,971 --> 00:47:22,564
There wasn't any
real accountability.

725
00:47:25,851 --> 00:47:28,479
Later, the director
of the Phoenix Program

726
00:47:28,604 --> 00:47:32,074
admitted to Congress
that no one knew how many

727
00:47:32,191 --> 00:47:36,788
of the more than 20,000 who had
been killed were innocent.

728
00:47:38,947 --> 00:47:41,166
And although the program
did succeed

729
00:47:41,283 --> 00:47:44,162
in degrading the Viet Cong
infrastructure,

730
00:47:44,286 --> 00:47:46,960
the government of Nguyen
Van Thieu remained

731
00:47:47,080 --> 00:47:49,048
as unpopular as ever.

732
00:47:51,960 --> 00:47:55,305
A poll taken in the Delta
province of Long An

733
00:47:55,464 --> 00:47:59,685
would show 35% of the people
ready to vote for Thieu,

734
00:47:59,801 --> 00:48:03,806
20% favoring
the National Liberation Front,

735
00:48:03,931 --> 00:48:08,732
and 45% backing someone, anyone,

736
00:48:08,852 --> 00:48:11,275
opposed to both the Viet Cong

737
00:48:11,396 --> 00:48:15,242
and the American-backed regime
in Saigon.

738
00:48:19,905 --> 00:48:21,407
In Vietnam there's a wound

739
00:48:21,531 --> 00:48:23,625
that does not cease
its bleeding.

740
00:48:23,742 --> 00:48:29,249
I'm talking about the scream
of death and the wound of war.

741
00:48:29,373 --> 00:48:31,341
We did not come to talk
with you, Mr. Humphrey.

742
00:48:31,458 --> 00:48:33,256
We have come to arrest you.

743
00:48:33,377 --> 00:48:34,924
Now you've had equal time.

744
00:48:35,045 --> 00:48:36,045
Shut up!

745
00:48:38,006 --> 00:48:41,601
Hubert Humphrey's
presidential campaign was in trouble.

746
00:48:41,718 --> 00:48:45,188
Richard Nixon was comfortably
ahead in the polls

747
00:48:45,347 --> 00:48:47,190
and refused to debate.

748
00:48:47,307 --> 00:48:49,856
"I've come to the conclusion

749
00:48:49,977 --> 00:48:51,900
that there's no way
to win the war,"

750
00:48:52,020 --> 00:48:55,524
he told three of
his speechwriters in private.

751
00:48:55,649 --> 00:48:57,447
"But we have to say
the opposite,

752
00:48:57,567 --> 00:49:00,571
just to keep some
bargaining leverage."

753
00:49:00,696 --> 00:49:04,997
Compounding Humphrey's problem
was a third-party candidate,

754
00:49:05,117 --> 00:49:06,494
George Wallace,

755
00:49:06,618 --> 00:49:09,667
the segregationist former
governor of Alabama.

756
00:49:09,788 --> 00:49:13,088
He was sure to peel away
some white voters

757
00:49:13,208 --> 00:49:16,553
who normally voted Democratic.

758
00:49:16,670 --> 00:49:20,720
Humphrey had confided his doubts
about the war to Johnson

759
00:49:20,882 --> 00:49:25,058
early on, but had always
remained stubbornly loyal to him

760
00:49:25,178 --> 00:49:26,395
in public.

761
00:49:26,555 --> 00:49:30,310
Now his advisors told him that
if he wanted to win

762
00:49:30,434 --> 00:49:32,607
he had to break
with the president

763
00:49:32,728 --> 00:49:36,403
and make a bold gesture
toward ending the war.

764
00:49:38,233 --> 00:49:41,328
On September 30,
he called for a total halt

765
00:49:41,445 --> 00:49:44,164
to the bombing of North Vietnam.

766
00:49:44,281 --> 00:49:46,704
I would stop
the bombing of the North

767
00:49:46,825 --> 00:49:50,079
as an acceptable risk for peace

768
00:49:50,245 --> 00:49:54,842
because I believe it could lead
to success in the negotiations

769
00:49:54,958 --> 00:49:56,756
and thereby shorten the war.

770
00:49:56,918 --> 00:50:00,798
This would be the best
protection for our troops.

771
00:50:00,922 --> 00:50:04,267
Johnson felt
betrayed and refused to speak

772
00:50:04,384 --> 00:50:06,557
to his own vice president
for a time.

773
00:50:07,929 --> 00:50:11,650
But on October 31, just five
days before the election,

774
00:50:11,767 --> 00:50:15,271
the president himself
made a surprise announcement.

775
00:50:17,439 --> 00:50:21,535
He was stopping all bombing
of North Vietnam.

776
00:50:21,651 --> 00:50:25,281
There had been real progress
in Paris, he said.

777
00:50:25,405 --> 00:50:29,581
Hanoi had agreed for the first
time to talk with Saigon,

778
00:50:29,701 --> 00:50:34,298
and the United States had agreed
to include the Viet Cong.

779
00:50:34,456 --> 00:50:39,963
It suddenly looked as if
peace were possible.

780
00:50:40,128 --> 00:50:41,846
Humphrey was jubilant.

781
00:50:41,963 --> 00:50:44,762
His poll numbers rose overnight.

782
00:50:44,883 --> 00:50:49,229
He was confident he would now
be able to overtake Nixon.

783
00:50:49,346 --> 00:50:52,691
But then, on November 2,

784
00:50:52,808 --> 00:50:56,563
with just three days to go until
Americans went to the polls,

785
00:50:56,686 --> 00:50:59,530
President Thieu
suddenly announced

786
00:50:59,648 --> 00:51:02,743
that the South Vietnamese
government would not attend

787
00:51:02,859 --> 00:51:05,112
the proposed talks after all.

788
00:51:06,988 --> 00:51:09,491
A representative
of the Nixon campaign

789
00:51:09,658 --> 00:51:13,538
at the candidate's personal
direction had secretly contacted

790
00:51:13,662 --> 00:51:15,130
the Saigon government

791
00:51:15,247 --> 00:51:18,046
urging Thieu to stay away
from the talks,

792
00:51:18,166 --> 00:51:20,840
promising that once
Nixon was elected,

793
00:51:21,002 --> 00:51:25,178
he would drive a harder bargain
with Hanoi than Humphrey would.

794
00:51:25,298 --> 00:51:30,680
Thanks to a CIA bug planted
in Thieu's Saigon office

795
00:51:30,804 --> 00:51:34,354
and an FBI wiretap on
the South Vietnamese embassy

796
00:51:34,474 --> 00:51:38,320
in Washington, Johnson got wind
of what had happened

797
00:51:38,437 --> 00:51:40,690
and called his friend
Everett Dirksen,

798
00:51:40,856 --> 00:51:43,200
the Republican Senate
minority leader,

799
00:51:43,358 --> 00:51:48,080
to warn him that the Nixon
people were committing treason.

800
00:51:48,196 --> 00:51:50,076
I'm reading their hand, Everett.

801
00:51:50,115 --> 00:51:51,958
I don't want to
get this in the campaign.

802
00:51:52,075 --> 00:51:53,372
That's right.

803
00:51:53,493 --> 00:51:54,720
And they oughtn't
to be doing this.

804
00:51:54,744 --> 00:51:55,791
This is treason.
I know.

805
00:51:55,912 --> 00:51:58,006
And I think it would
shock America

806
00:51:58,123 --> 00:52:01,969
if a principal candidate was
playing with a source like this

807
00:52:02,085 --> 00:52:03,462
on a matter this important.

808
00:52:03,587 --> 00:52:04,713
Yeah.

809
00:52:04,880 --> 00:52:06,052
I know this...

810
00:52:06,214 --> 00:52:08,808
that they're contacting
a foreign power

811
00:52:08,925 --> 00:52:10,142
in the middle of a war.

812
00:52:10,260 --> 00:52:11,261
That's a mistake.

813
00:52:11,386 --> 00:52:12,603
And it's a damn bad mistake.

814
00:52:15,223 --> 00:52:16,019
Mr. President?

815
00:52:16,141 --> 00:52:17,017
Yes.

816
00:52:17,142 --> 00:52:18,815
This is Dick Nixon.
Yes, Dick.

817
00:52:18,935 --> 00:52:20,232
I just went on Meet the Press

818
00:52:20,395 --> 00:52:25,697
and said that I had given you
my personal assurance

819
00:52:25,817 --> 00:52:28,866
that I would do everything
possible to cooperate

820
00:52:28,987 --> 00:52:31,911
both before the election and
if elected, after the election.

821
00:52:32,032 --> 00:52:33,409
I just wanted you to know

822
00:52:33,533 --> 00:52:36,707
that I feel very, very
strongly about this

823
00:52:36,828 --> 00:52:40,332
and any rumblings around

824
00:52:40,457 --> 00:52:44,212
about somebody
trying to sabotage

825
00:52:44,336 --> 00:52:45,804
the Saigon government's attitude

826
00:52:45,921 --> 00:52:47,218
certainly has no...

827
00:52:47,339 --> 00:52:51,594
absolutely no credibility
as far as I am concerned.

828
00:52:51,760 --> 00:52:52,977
That's, that's...

829
00:52:53,094 --> 00:52:54,562
I'm very happy
to hear that, Dick,

830
00:52:54,679 --> 00:52:57,523
because that is taking place.

831
00:52:57,641 --> 00:53:01,271
My God, I would never do
anything to encourage Saigon

832
00:53:01,436 --> 00:53:02,997
not to come to the table
because basically,

833
00:53:03,021 --> 00:53:05,274
that was what you got.

834
00:53:05,398 --> 00:53:06,490
Well, that's good, Dick.

835
00:53:06,608 --> 00:53:08,576
We've got to get this
goddamned war off the plate,

836
00:53:08,693 --> 00:53:11,088
the quicker the better, and the
hell with the political credit.

837
00:53:11,112 --> 00:53:12,113
Believe me.

838
00:53:12,239 --> 00:53:13,239
Thank you, Dick.

839
00:53:17,369 --> 00:53:20,839
Nixon was lying
and Johnson knew it.

840
00:53:20,956 --> 00:53:22,833
But to go public
with the information,

841
00:53:22,958 --> 00:53:25,632
the president would have
to reveal the methods

842
00:53:25,752 --> 00:53:26,844
by which he had learned

843
00:53:26,962 --> 00:53:30,136
of the Republican
candidate's duplicity.

844
00:53:30,298 --> 00:53:32,721
He was unwilling to do so.

845
00:53:32,842 --> 00:53:36,346
Nixon's secret was safe.

846
00:53:36,471 --> 00:53:38,599
The American public
was never told

847
00:53:38,723 --> 00:53:42,978
that the regime for which 35,000
Americans had died

848
00:53:43,103 --> 00:53:45,447
had been willing to boycott
peace talks

849
00:53:45,564 --> 00:53:49,114
to help elect Richard Nixon
or that he had been willing

850
00:53:49,234 --> 00:53:54,832
to delay an end to the bloodshed
in order to get elected.

851
00:53:54,948 --> 00:53:59,328
At 10:45 this morning,
Eastern Standard Time...

852
00:53:59,494 --> 00:54:04,591
On Election Day, Richard
Milhous Nixon won the presidency

853
00:54:04,708 --> 00:54:08,133
with 43.4 percent of the vote.

854
00:54:08,253 --> 00:54:12,258
Hubert Humphrey received
42.7 percent.

855
00:54:16,595 --> 00:54:19,724
The Nixon campaign's secret
maneuvering may have helped him

856
00:54:19,848 --> 00:54:23,273
win the election,
but the president-elect's fear

857
00:54:23,393 --> 00:54:26,522
that that maneuvering might
someday be exposed

858
00:54:26,688 --> 00:54:29,032
would be part of his undoing.

859
00:54:32,694 --> 00:54:35,288
Thieu waited several weeks
after the election

860
00:54:35,405 --> 00:54:40,536
before agreeing to send
a delegation to Paris.

861
00:54:40,702 --> 00:54:45,549
There, everything stalled
over the seating arrangements.

862
00:54:45,707 --> 00:54:50,508
The North Vietnamese had
insisted on a square table,

863
00:54:50,629 --> 00:54:54,054
with separate sides for all
four parties to the talks...

864
00:54:54,215 --> 00:54:58,766
Hanoi, the Viet Cong, Saigon,
and the United States.

865
00:54:58,887 --> 00:55:04,064
Saigon refused to take part
unless Hanoi and the Viet Cong

866
00:55:04,184 --> 00:55:06,528
sat on the same side
of the table.

867
00:55:06,645 --> 00:55:10,570
The standoff went on
for ten weeks.

868
00:55:13,485 --> 00:55:17,410
It was the Soviets who finally
came up with a solution:

869
00:55:17,572 --> 00:55:19,745
a round table.

870
00:55:25,121 --> 00:55:27,590
Type of injury
is urgent, shrapnel wounds.

871
00:55:29,167 --> 00:55:31,010
The area is insecure.

872
00:55:34,631 --> 00:55:35,928
Keep your head down.

873
00:55:38,134 --> 00:55:39,977
Got some fire.

874
00:55:42,972 --> 00:55:46,442
You have these
19-year-old kids with these huge hearts.

875
00:55:46,559 --> 00:55:49,608
They will do what you ask them.

876
00:55:49,729 --> 00:55:53,984
The issue is are you asking them
to do something worthwhile?

877
00:55:54,109 --> 00:55:55,235
That's up to the adults.

878
00:55:55,360 --> 00:55:57,704
And that's where
the failure comes.

879
00:55:57,821 --> 00:56:00,290
The failure isn't the kids
saying, "I'm not gonna do this."

880
00:56:00,448 --> 00:56:02,826
Because that's not the way
they are built.

881
00:56:02,951 --> 00:56:05,170
19-year-olds don't know to take
a raincoat on

882
00:56:05,286 --> 00:56:06,833
when it's raining, all right?

883
00:56:06,955 --> 00:56:09,253
That's-that's why they're
so good at being warriors.

884
00:56:09,374 --> 00:56:10,842
They'll do it.

885
00:56:10,959 --> 00:56:12,319
They won't even ask you
a question.

886
00:56:13,712 --> 00:56:16,135
"All right, we'll do it."

887
00:56:16,297 --> 00:56:18,971
The responsibility is on
the grownups to make sure

888
00:56:19,134 --> 00:56:20,636
they're not being wasted

889
00:56:20,760 --> 00:56:24,731
because they'll do what they're
told, and they'll do it well.

890
00:56:27,642 --> 00:56:31,488
Karl Marlantes was
born in Astoria, Oregon,

891
00:56:31,604 --> 00:56:34,824
the son of a veteran
of the Battle of the Bulge.

892
00:56:34,941 --> 00:56:37,820
He had joined the Marine
Reserves the summer before

893
00:56:37,986 --> 00:56:39,863
his freshman year at Yale,

894
00:56:39,988 --> 00:56:44,164
eager to prove himself
and defend his country.

895
00:56:44,325 --> 00:56:46,202
When he became a Rhodes scholar,

896
00:56:46,327 --> 00:56:49,831
the Marines allowed him
to defer going on active duty,

897
00:56:49,998 --> 00:56:53,673
and instead of serving in
Vietnam, he went to Oxford

898
00:56:53,793 --> 00:56:58,048
in the fall of 1967.

899
00:56:58,173 --> 00:57:00,175
A few months after he got there,

900
00:57:00,300 --> 00:57:03,895
he wrote to his parents
back home.

901
00:57:04,012 --> 00:57:05,732
"It is with
a little apprehension

902
00:57:05,805 --> 00:57:09,059
"that I write this letter.

903
00:57:09,184 --> 00:57:11,186
"I have given up my scholarship,

904
00:57:11,352 --> 00:57:15,607
"and I will be on active duty
as of May 3.

905
00:57:15,732 --> 00:57:19,157
"As you know, I feel the U.S.
is absolutely wrong

906
00:57:19,277 --> 00:57:21,120
"to be in the war.

907
00:57:21,237 --> 00:57:23,786
"A lot of people are dying
for no good reason.

908
00:57:23,907 --> 00:57:28,413
"I can only feel an
increasing rage and frustration.

909
00:57:28,536 --> 00:57:30,914
And a complete feeling
of helplessness."

910
00:57:32,624 --> 00:57:38,222
"1 have, in effect, been hiding,
and I'll not do it anymore.

911
00:57:38,338 --> 00:57:43,219
"I guess I'm about to do
a highly immoral thing.

912
00:57:43,384 --> 00:57:44,476
"1 will be taking part

913
00:57:44,594 --> 00:57:46,892
"in one of the greatest crimes
of our century,

914
00:57:47,013 --> 00:57:51,814
"and I will be doing so
out of frustration, bitterness,

915
00:57:51,935 --> 00:57:55,485
"and a sense of the absurd that
I have only come to appreciate

916
00:57:55,605 --> 00:57:58,279
"in its entirety
in the past year.

917
00:57:58,399 --> 00:58:01,118
From now on
my logic will be changed."

918
00:58:03,071 --> 00:58:04,948
"I can do something.

919
00:58:05,073 --> 00:58:07,747
"That is, I can do my very best
to get 40 kids

920
00:58:07,867 --> 00:58:10,165
"out of Vietnam alive,

921
00:58:10,286 --> 00:58:13,711
"and if I have to turn
into an evil machine to do it,

922
00:58:13,832 --> 00:58:15,675
then by God I will."

923
00:58:18,753 --> 00:58:22,724
It was my friends,
guys that I trained with.

924
00:58:22,841 --> 00:58:27,597
I felt like I was going
to let the side down.

925
00:58:27,720 --> 00:58:30,644
That by not joining in
with them and sharing the burden

926
00:58:30,765 --> 00:58:33,814
that I wouldn't be
a decent person.

927
00:58:33,935 --> 00:58:36,814
It's a mixed bag because I went
over there and killed people

928
00:58:36,938 --> 00:58:38,736
for, you know...
is that why I did that?

929
00:58:40,775 --> 00:58:42,402
Do you go off and kill people

930
00:58:42,527 --> 00:58:44,575
if you're not
pretty sure it's right?

931
00:58:44,696 --> 00:58:48,166
And if your nation
isn't pretty sure it's right?

932
00:58:48,283 --> 00:58:52,413
If there isn't some consensus,
do you do that?

933
00:58:55,290 --> 00:58:56,758
I was at Fort Lewis, Washington,

934
00:58:56,875 --> 00:59:00,721
and Canada was, what,
a 90-minute bus ride away.

935
00:59:00,837 --> 00:59:03,090
I wrote my mom and dad
and asked for money.

936
00:59:03,214 --> 00:59:06,263
I asked for my passport.

937
00:59:06,384 --> 00:59:08,807
And they sent them to me with,
again, no questions.

938
00:59:08,928 --> 00:59:10,568
Like, "What do you want
the passport for?"

939
00:59:10,638 --> 00:59:12,185
They just sent it.

940
00:59:12,307 --> 00:59:13,729
And I kept all this stuff
stashed,

941
00:59:13,850 --> 00:59:16,603
including civilian clothes
stashed in my footlocker,

942
00:59:16,728 --> 00:59:18,446
thinking maybe I'll...
maybe I'll do it.

943
00:59:20,481 --> 00:59:23,075
It was this kind of "maybe"
thing going on

944
00:59:23,192 --> 00:59:26,696
all throughout this training
as Vietnam got closer

945
00:59:26,821 --> 00:59:29,290
and closer and closer.

946
00:59:29,407 --> 00:59:32,627
What prevented me from doing it?

947
00:59:32,744 --> 00:59:36,044
I think it was
pretty simple and stupid.

948
00:59:36,164 --> 00:59:39,668
It was a fear of embarrassment,

949
00:59:39,834 --> 00:59:44,214
a fear of ridicule
and humiliation.

950
00:59:45,924 --> 00:59:48,268
What my girlfriend would have
thought of me

951
00:59:48,384 --> 00:59:51,854
and the people in the Gobbler
Cafe in downtown Worthington.

952
00:59:53,514 --> 00:59:55,608
The Kiwanis boys
and the country club boys

953
00:59:55,725 --> 00:59:58,023
and that small town
I grew up in,

954
00:59:58,186 --> 01:00:00,530
the things they'd say about me.

955
01:00:00,647 --> 01:00:06,575
"What a coward and what a sissy
for going to Canada."

956
01:00:09,656 --> 01:00:11,374
And I would
imagine my mom and dad

957
01:00:11,532 --> 01:00:14,706
overhearing something like that.

958
01:00:18,289 --> 01:00:21,759
I couldn't summon
the courage to say no

959
01:00:21,876 --> 01:00:31,479
to those nameless, faceless
people who really, in essence,

960
01:00:31,594 --> 01:00:35,565
this was the
United States of America.

961
01:00:35,682 --> 01:00:39,232
And I couldn't say no to them.

962
01:00:39,394 --> 01:00:45,242
And I had to live with it now
for, you know, 40 years.

963
01:00:45,358 --> 01:00:51,036
That's a long time to live with
a failure of conscience

964
01:00:51,155 --> 01:00:56,127
and a failure of nerve.

965
01:00:56,244 --> 01:00:59,919
And the nightmare of Vietnam
for me is not the bombs

966
01:01:00,081 --> 01:01:01,378
and the bullets.

967
01:01:10,174 --> 01:01:13,929
It's that failure of nerve

968
01:01:14,053 --> 01:01:15,600
that I so regret.

969
01:01:26,774 --> 01:01:31,655
In the fall of 1968 was
probably the toughest time we had.

970
01:01:34,824 --> 01:01:41,799
Our daily life was a continuing
struggle for survival.

971
01:01:41,956 --> 01:01:49,340
Our food ration was three cups
of rice per day.

972
01:01:50,757 --> 01:01:54,853
We slept
on a large bamboo pallet.

973
01:01:54,969 --> 01:01:58,940
Sometimes there were ten or 12
people on one pallet.

974
01:01:59,057 --> 01:02:01,276
And we were sick.

975
01:02:01,392 --> 01:02:03,440
We were very sick.

976
01:02:03,561 --> 01:02:07,987
Four people died within...

977
01:02:08,149 --> 01:02:09,651
a month.

978
01:02:09,776 --> 01:02:12,495
And then two more died
very shortly after that.

979
01:02:15,156 --> 01:02:17,534
Thirteen Americans would die

980
01:02:17,658 --> 01:02:21,458
during Captain Hal Kushner's
time in jungle prison camps

981
01:02:21,579 --> 01:02:23,126
in South Vietnam.

982
01:02:24,499 --> 01:02:27,423
He was a doctor
but had no medications,

983
01:02:27,543 --> 01:02:30,137
no antibiotics
or saline solution

984
01:02:30,254 --> 01:02:32,507
with which to treat
his comrades.

985
01:02:32,673 --> 01:02:37,053
All he could do was bury each
in a bamboo coffin

986
01:02:37,178 --> 01:02:40,808
and make sure the spot was
marked with a heap of stones

987
01:02:40,932 --> 01:02:43,560
daubed with Mercurochrome.

988
01:02:45,812 --> 01:02:48,565
We had nothing to eat.

989
01:02:48,689 --> 01:02:52,444
And I thought
that I was just going insane.

990
01:02:52,568 --> 01:02:55,822
So we were sitting around
and with this little fire.

991
01:02:55,947 --> 01:02:57,915
And we saw
the camp commander's cat,

992
01:02:58,032 --> 01:02:59,534
who had free rein of the camp.

993
01:02:59,659 --> 01:03:00,956
And he came down to our area.

994
01:03:01,077 --> 01:03:03,079
And we were starving to death.

995
01:03:03,204 --> 01:03:06,549
So someone suggested,
"Let's eat the cat."

996
01:03:08,876 --> 01:03:09,968
So we killed the cat.

997
01:03:11,587 --> 01:03:14,966
And we cut the head off
and we cut the paws off.

998
01:03:15,091 --> 01:03:18,391
And we had this little carcass
of about two pounds.

999
01:03:18,511 --> 01:03:22,561
And one of the guards came down,
and we told him it was a weasel,

1000
01:03:22,682 --> 01:03:25,151
and we threw a rock at it
and killed it.

1001
01:03:25,268 --> 01:03:26,895
And then he looked around

1002
01:03:27,019 --> 01:03:30,319
and someone had neglected
to bury one of the paws.

1003
01:03:30,439 --> 01:03:31,907
And he saw the paw.

1004
01:03:32,066 --> 01:03:35,616
And he knew instantly that
it was the camp commander's cat.

1005
01:03:35,736 --> 01:03:38,205
And things got very serious.

1006
01:03:40,324 --> 01:03:43,419
And they lined us up
and they said, "Who did this?"

1007
01:03:43,536 --> 01:03:44,753
Nobody said anything.

1008
01:03:44,912 --> 01:03:46,789
I thought they were
going to kill us all.

1009
01:03:46,914 --> 01:03:48,712
Just execute us.

1010
01:03:48,833 --> 01:03:53,930
And one of the people
who was a ringleader in this

1011
01:03:54,088 --> 01:03:56,261
said he did it.

1012
01:03:56,382 --> 01:03:59,852
And I said that I did it also.

1013
01:03:59,969 --> 01:04:02,097
And we all said we did it.

1014
01:04:02,221 --> 01:04:04,064
"I am Spartacus," you know?

1015
01:04:04,182 --> 01:04:05,809
It was that.

1016
01:04:05,933 --> 01:04:10,063
So they called that person
and me out.

1017
01:04:10,188 --> 01:04:13,658
And the guard kicked him
and beat him to the ground,

1018
01:04:13,774 --> 01:04:15,822
and just beat him unmercifully.

1019
01:04:17,320 --> 01:04:20,699
And they hit me in the face
with fists and didn't beat me

1020
01:04:20,823 --> 01:04:22,666
as badly as they beat him.

1021
01:04:22,783 --> 01:04:26,708
And then tied me with commo wire
very tightly to a hooch

1022
01:04:26,829 --> 01:04:30,333
and left me for a day.

1023
01:04:30,458 --> 01:04:34,258
And with the carcass of the cat
draped around my neck.

1024
01:04:34,378 --> 01:04:35,880
And I was so crazy I thought,

1025
01:04:36,005 --> 01:04:37,973
"Maybe they're going to let me
eat this cat."

1026
01:04:38,132 --> 01:04:40,635
But I had to bury it.

1027
01:04:40,760 --> 01:04:45,857
So, the fellow that they beat
very badly died two weeks later.

1028
01:04:47,350 --> 01:04:51,196
But to me the tragedy of it
was we didn't get the cat.

1029
01:04:57,151 --> 01:04:59,404
For the
capital of a nation at war,

1030
01:04:59,528 --> 01:05:03,032
Saigon abounds with a phenomenal
number of young men

1031
01:05:03,157 --> 01:05:06,161
of draft age in sharp,
civilian clothes.

1032
01:05:06,285 --> 01:05:09,585
Saigon cowboys they're called.

1033
01:05:09,705 --> 01:05:13,175
It's a war profiteer's economy,
fanned by the forced draft

1034
01:05:13,292 --> 01:05:14,635
of American money.

1035
01:05:14,752 --> 01:05:16,299
They count it a good year
in Saigon

1036
01:05:16,420 --> 01:05:18,718
when the prices only go up
by 25%.

1037
01:05:22,843 --> 01:05:24,516
Years of American presence,

1038
01:05:24,637 --> 01:05:28,892
and the tens of billions of U.S.
dollars that came with it,

1039
01:05:29,016 --> 01:05:31,519
had transformed much
of South Vietnam,

1040
01:05:31,686 --> 01:05:35,316
creating a false economy
that was utterly dependent

1041
01:05:35,439 --> 01:05:38,989
on that presence
becoming perpetual.

1042
01:05:39,110 --> 01:05:42,330
Since the U.S. began
its big buildup in the mid-'60s,

1043
01:05:42,446 --> 01:05:44,869
millions of dollars worth of
goods have entered the country

1044
01:05:45,032 --> 01:05:46,625
each month.

1045
01:05:46,742 --> 01:05:49,666
Some economists say ten percent
or more of the cargo

1046
01:05:49,787 --> 01:05:52,381
is diverted into
black market channels.

1047
01:05:56,168 --> 01:05:58,717
With so much money
flowing into the country,

1048
01:05:58,838 --> 01:06:02,012
corruption and crime
inevitably grew.

1049
01:06:04,635 --> 01:06:06,933
Government officials
were on the take.

1050
01:06:07,054 --> 01:06:09,898
So were many ARVN officers.

1051
01:06:10,057 --> 01:06:13,402
Policemen could not be trusted.

1052
01:06:16,605 --> 01:06:20,610
Who benefit from
the financial aspect of the war?

1053
01:06:21,777 --> 01:06:23,279
Generals.

1054
01:06:23,404 --> 01:06:25,577
Don't deny that.

1055
01:06:25,740 --> 01:06:29,085
Then they get the money,
then they become richer.

1056
01:06:29,243 --> 01:06:34,500
We have a term, and I call it,
they were war profiteers,

1057
01:06:34,623 --> 01:06:38,799
from Thieu and Ky down
to every echelon.

1058
01:06:38,919 --> 01:06:41,388
The Vietnamese had a saying:

1059
01:06:41,505 --> 01:06:44,600
a house leaks from the roof
on down.

1060
01:06:49,638 --> 01:06:54,439
And that was, of course, their
way to elliptically refer

1061
01:06:54,560 --> 01:06:58,110
to the ever-present, nagging
problem of corruption.

1062
01:06:58,272 --> 01:07:03,574
They were stealing
from us and selling to anybody.

1063
01:07:03,694 --> 01:07:05,334
Two-man helicopter,
you want one of those?

1064
01:07:05,446 --> 01:07:08,416
They got it in a box
in the back.

1065
01:07:08,532 --> 01:07:12,787
Probably get it for 12,000 bucks
if you negotiated strongly.

1066
01:07:14,205 --> 01:07:17,880
The corruption was endemic.

1067
01:07:18,000 --> 01:07:21,129
And we tolerated it.

1068
01:07:21,253 --> 01:07:25,633
Tons of American goods
piled up on Saigon's clocks.

1069
01:07:25,800 --> 01:07:29,304
Some GIs took advantage, too.

1070
01:07:29,470 --> 01:07:33,316
U.S. products flowed
out the back doors of PXs.

1071
01:07:33,432 --> 01:07:36,436
In just one year,

1072
01:07:36,560 --> 01:07:42,863
the black market cost
the U.S. military $2 billion.

1073
01:07:42,983 --> 01:07:45,827
The impact of the war
has disrupted the ancient patterns

1074
01:07:45,986 --> 01:07:47,954
of Vietnamese life.

1075
01:07:48,072 --> 01:07:51,042
The cities are crowded to the
bursting point with people

1076
01:07:51,158 --> 01:07:54,002
uprooted from the land
and the ancestral values

1077
01:07:54,120 --> 01:07:56,418
of a rural-oriented society

1078
01:07:56,539 --> 01:07:59,167
but who have found nothing
to replace them.

1079
01:07:59,291 --> 01:08:02,465
Before U.S. troops arrived,

1080
01:08:02,586 --> 01:08:06,591
eight out of ten South
Vietnamese lived in villages.

1081
01:08:06,715 --> 01:08:10,015
By the end of the 1960s,

1082
01:08:10,177 --> 01:08:14,557
almost half would be crowded
into urban areas.

1083
01:08:14,682 --> 01:08:18,687
Saigon's population tripled
to three million.

1084
01:08:18,853 --> 01:08:23,108
Half the refugees had
no permanent shelter.

1085
01:08:25,526 --> 01:08:28,200
Cholera and typhoid
killed thousands.

1086
01:08:30,739 --> 01:08:34,494
Hungry children roamed the
streets, scavenging, begging,

1087
01:08:34,618 --> 01:08:38,873
searching for jobs to do
or pockets to pick.

1088
01:08:39,039 --> 01:08:43,545
Tens of thousands of young women
left their village homes

1089
01:08:43,711 --> 01:08:48,842
and came to Saigon to become
bar girls and prostitutes.

1090
01:08:53,345 --> 01:08:54,722
The communist government
in Hanoi

1091
01:08:54,847 --> 01:08:56,895
tried to make the most of it,

1092
01:08:57,057 --> 01:09:01,528
accusing the United States and
its puppet government in Saigon

1093
01:09:01,645 --> 01:09:04,740
of destroying
Vietnamese culture in the South.

1094
01:09:08,444 --> 01:09:12,039
But the citizens of Saigon
were far freer

1095
01:09:12,156 --> 01:09:13,624
than the North Vietnamese.

1096
01:09:13,741 --> 01:09:18,087
The South Vietnamese people
could express their views,

1097
01:09:18,204 --> 01:09:19,672
for and against
their government,

1098
01:09:19,788 --> 01:09:24,794
in the pages of hundreds
of newspapers and magazines.

1099
01:09:24,919 --> 01:09:28,264
And they held demonstrations
denouncing

1100
01:09:28,422 --> 01:09:32,393
the rampant corruption and
demanding religious freedom

1101
01:09:32,510 --> 01:09:34,933
and better treatment
for veterans.

1102
01:09:38,933 --> 01:09:42,312
For all of its problems,
one man remembered,

1103
01:09:42,436 --> 01:09:46,907
Saigon was "filthy and free."

1104
01:11:19,283 --> 01:11:22,207
In the densely
populated Mekong Delta,

1105
01:11:22,369 --> 01:11:27,045
the war in the countryside
suddenly intensified.

1106
01:11:27,207 --> 01:11:29,426
General Abrams assigned
the commander

1107
01:11:29,543 --> 01:11:33,889
of the 9th Infantry Division,
General Julian J. Ewell,

1108
01:11:34,006 --> 01:11:36,759
the job of destroying
the remaining Viet Cong

1109
01:11:36,884 --> 01:11:39,182
south of Saigon.

1110
01:11:39,303 --> 01:11:43,729
His operation was called
Speedy Express.

1111
01:11:45,559 --> 01:11:50,190
"The hearts and minds approach
can be overdone," Ewell said.

1112
01:11:50,314 --> 01:11:54,694
"In the Delta the only way to
overcome VC control and terror

1113
01:11:54,818 --> 01:11:57,867
is by brute force."

1114
01:11:59,406 --> 01:12:02,410
Patrols would pursue the enemy
around the clock.

1115
01:12:02,576 --> 01:12:05,955
The night sky was filled
with helicopters,

1116
01:12:06,080 --> 01:12:08,629
some armed with instruments
that could detect

1117
01:12:08,749 --> 01:12:10,751
traces of carbon and ammonia

1118
01:12:10,876 --> 01:12:13,629
that meant human beings
were below,

1119
01:12:13,754 --> 01:12:16,928
though not which side
they were on.

1120
01:12:17,091 --> 01:12:21,267
In areas designated
"free-fire zones,"

1121
01:12:21,428 --> 01:12:24,102
anyone out after curfew
could be shot.

1122
01:12:26,100 --> 01:12:29,946
During the day, anyone seen
running was targeted.

1123
01:12:32,481 --> 01:12:36,452
Colonel Robert Gard was one
of Ewell's artillery commanders.

1124
01:12:36,610 --> 01:12:41,662
If someone was told that
anyone who runs away should be assumed

1125
01:12:41,782 --> 01:12:45,582
to be an enemy, I certainly
would disagree with that.

1126
01:12:45,703 --> 01:12:47,455
That's totally improper.

1127
01:12:47,621 --> 01:12:51,216
People run away
because they're afraid.

1128
01:12:51,333 --> 01:12:55,383
I've seen instances of farmers,

1129
01:12:55,504 --> 01:12:58,178
when you descend
in a helicopter suddenly,

1130
01:12:58,298 --> 01:13:01,222
and they freeze, and they're
frightened, and they run.

1131
01:13:01,343 --> 01:13:05,974
You can't just make
a blanket judgment.

1132
01:13:06,140 --> 01:13:10,611
General Ewell boasted
of his unit's statistical record-

1133
01:13:10,728 --> 01:13:16,280
10,899 Viet Cong killed
in six months

1134
01:13:16,400 --> 01:13:19,574
with a loss of only
242 Americans,

1135
01:13:19,695 --> 01:13:25,293
an astonishing
kill ratio of 45-to-1.

1136
01:13:27,828 --> 01:13:32,504
To say that we killed
only enemy combatants,

1137
01:13:32,624 --> 01:13:36,174
and to talk about ratios
of 40-to-1

1138
01:13:36,336 --> 01:13:39,385
simply defies my imagination.

1139
01:13:40,966 --> 01:13:44,220
At Abrams' recommendation,
Ewell was promoted,

1140
01:13:44,344 --> 01:13:48,770
but the Army Inspector General
would eventually estimate

1141
01:13:48,891 --> 01:13:51,940
that more than half
of the roughly 11,000 kills

1142
01:13:52,060 --> 01:13:54,358
claimed by the 9th Infantry

1143
01:13:54,521 --> 01:13:57,491
had been unarmed,
innocent civilians.

1144
01:14:01,195 --> 01:14:04,039
No one was ever held
accountable.

1145
01:14:59,753 --> 01:15:04,680
I think moving away
from one's family's ideologies

1146
01:15:04,800 --> 01:15:11,558
is a scary balance
on a very tricky precipice

1147
01:15:11,682 --> 01:15:15,357
because they have been
the focal point

1148
01:15:15,477 --> 01:15:16,854
of how we judge how we're doing.

1149
01:15:16,979 --> 01:15:21,610
And I was now trying to judge
my decisions and my actions

1150
01:15:21,775 --> 01:15:25,825
on the basis of my own ideas
and own thoughts.

1151
01:15:25,946 --> 01:15:29,120
The war was
already uncomfortably close

1152
01:15:29,283 --> 01:15:31,627
to Carol Crocker.

1153
01:15:31,743 --> 01:15:34,462
Her brother Mogie had
volunteered to fight

1154
01:15:34,621 --> 01:15:39,468
and had been killed in Vietnam
in 1966.

1155
01:15:39,585 --> 01:15:41,212
She was still grieving.

1156
01:15:43,505 --> 01:15:47,430
That fall, Carol had entered
Goucher College in Baltimore,

1157
01:15:47,551 --> 01:15:52,432
an all-women's school with
a long conservative tradition.

1158
01:15:52,556 --> 01:15:54,479
We dressed for dinner.

1159
01:15:54,600 --> 01:15:57,649
We had an 11:00 curfew.

1160
01:15:57,769 --> 01:16:03,026
Obviously no boys or men
were allowed in the dorms.

1161
01:16:03,150 --> 01:16:05,118
That was the rule.

1162
01:16:07,279 --> 01:16:11,000
It could not have even been any
later than the beginning

1163
01:16:11,116 --> 01:16:16,794
of the second semester that most
of the rules that were in place

1164
01:16:16,914 --> 01:16:21,761
and had been in place for many,
many years, no longer existed.

1165
01:16:30,385 --> 01:16:31,465
The challenge

1166
01:16:31,511 --> 01:16:35,607
to campuses countrywide was

1167
01:16:35,724 --> 01:16:37,351
how do we maintain
our student body

1168
01:16:37,476 --> 01:16:43,074
to behave in a civil manner,
and teach them,

1169
01:16:43,190 --> 01:16:46,114
and not have them try
to burn us down?

1170
01:16:46,234 --> 01:16:48,703
If that means not dressing
for dinner, so be it.

1171
01:16:53,283 --> 01:16:56,207
Our guy friends,
we were spending time and talking

1172
01:16:56,328 --> 01:16:57,329
and they were scared.

1173
01:16:57,454 --> 01:16:59,297
And they were worried.

1174
01:16:59,414 --> 01:17:02,418
And they weren't sure
what they were going to do.

1175
01:17:02,542 --> 01:17:06,217
And more discussion was
happening about

1176
01:17:06,380 --> 01:17:10,180
whether this was a valid war.

1177
01:17:10,300 --> 01:17:14,806
And this was really, for me,
the first time I opened my ears

1178
01:17:14,930 --> 01:17:17,308
to the war in a way other than

1179
01:17:17,432 --> 01:17:20,902
that it was about
my brother's death.

1180
01:17:21,019 --> 01:17:23,693
I honored him.

1181
01:17:23,814 --> 01:17:28,240
I respected him
for doing what he believed in.

1182
01:17:28,360 --> 01:17:30,237
But I did not agree with him.

1183
01:17:35,117 --> 01:17:38,587
Eva Jefferson was a
sophomore at Northwestern.

1184
01:17:38,745 --> 01:17:41,919
A serviceman's daughter, she had
entered college convinced

1185
01:17:42,082 --> 01:17:45,803
the American government would
never mislead its citizens.

1186
01:17:45,919 --> 01:17:49,640
But for her, too,
things had begun to change.

1187
01:17:49,756 --> 01:17:51,554
Earlier that year,

1188
01:17:51,675 --> 01:17:54,929
when a handful of black
Northwestern students decided

1189
01:17:55,053 --> 01:17:57,181
to occupy the bursar's office

1190
01:17:57,305 --> 01:18:00,684
demanding African-American
studies, she joined them,

1191
01:18:00,809 --> 01:18:04,655
then called her parents
to tell them what she'd done.

1192
01:18:04,771 --> 01:18:07,570
And I said,
"Mom and Dad, guess where I am?

1193
01:18:07,691 --> 01:18:09,318
We just took over
the bursar's office."

1194
01:18:09,443 --> 01:18:11,286
They were horrified.

1195
01:18:11,403 --> 01:18:14,452
And upon reflection,
of course they were horrified.

1196
01:18:14,614 --> 01:18:16,050
And they said,
"If you don't get out of there

1197
01:18:16,074 --> 01:18:17,427
we're going to cut off
your money."

1198
01:18:17,451 --> 01:18:19,795
So that was the moment
in my own consciousness

1199
01:18:19,953 --> 01:18:21,955
when I became independent.

1200
01:18:22,080 --> 01:18:24,299
I thought, "Well, they're going
to cut off my money.

1201
01:18:24,458 --> 01:18:26,051
C 'est la vie."

1202
01:18:26,168 --> 01:18:30,264
"The University met all
our demands in three clays,"

1203
01:18:30,380 --> 01:18:31,632
she remembered.

1204
01:18:31,798 --> 01:18:34,472
"If you asked for black studies
on Friday,

1205
01:18:34,593 --> 01:18:36,641
you got it on Monday."

1206
01:18:36,762 --> 01:18:41,017
It felt like something
was happening that was profound,

1207
01:18:41,141 --> 01:18:42,893
that was irreversible.

1208
01:18:43,018 --> 01:18:44,895
But also you're
18, 19 years old.

1209
01:18:45,020 --> 01:18:46,020
It's exciting.

1210
01:18:48,065 --> 01:18:51,194
I felt as though
a revolution was coming.

1211
01:18:51,318 --> 01:18:55,118
And I thought the revolution
would be won by our side.

1212
01:19:02,746 --> 01:19:07,001
Relations between parents
and children, brothers and sisters,

1213
01:19:07,167 --> 01:19:10,296
were changing everywhere.

1214
01:19:10,420 --> 01:19:14,095
When I stood in the
living room and I was hugging two brothers,

1215
01:19:14,216 --> 01:19:16,514
it didn't matter to me
about their choices

1216
01:19:16,676 --> 01:19:20,852
or that they were on two
different sides of the fence.

1217
01:19:21,014 --> 01:19:25,019
All I knew was that they were
both my brothers

1218
01:19:25,143 --> 01:19:27,771
and they were both back in the
same room and there we were.

1219
01:19:27,896 --> 01:19:31,992
Captain Matt
Harrison, Jr... Chips-

1220
01:19:32,109 --> 01:19:38,037
had graduated West Point,
served a tour in Vietnam

1221
01:19:38,198 --> 01:19:42,248
and took part in two of the
war's bloodiest battles...

1222
01:19:42,369 --> 01:19:45,999
Hill 1338 and Hill 875.

1223
01:19:48,291 --> 01:19:51,921
He was back stateside
in the autumn of 1968,

1224
01:19:52,045 --> 01:19:56,095
when the family began to worry
about his younger brother, Bob,

1225
01:19:56,216 --> 01:20:00,221
whom his siblings sometimes
called Robin.

1226
01:20:00,345 --> 01:20:05,226
He and I were just
great pals since we were growing up

1227
01:20:05,392 --> 01:20:09,363
because we moved every year
or two years.

1228
01:20:09,479 --> 01:20:11,573
And, you know,
new set of friends

1229
01:20:11,690 --> 01:20:12,907
but always had my brother.

1230
01:20:14,568 --> 01:20:16,570
Bob was in ROTC

1231
01:20:16,695 --> 01:20:20,745
and polished and buffed his
shoes and had short hair

1232
01:20:20,907 --> 01:20:24,753
and said "Yes, sir"
and "Yes, ma'am."

1233
01:20:24,870 --> 01:20:29,091
And then we moved to California
his senior year in high school.

1234
01:20:29,249 --> 01:20:35,632
And he was the consummate blond
surfer boy and cutting school.

1235
01:20:35,755 --> 01:20:37,928
And he was immediately
very popular

1236
01:20:38,049 --> 01:20:40,393
and having a great time.

1237
01:20:43,471 --> 01:20:45,599
Robin did not go to West Point,

1238
01:20:45,765 --> 01:20:48,518
entered Marin Junior College
instead,

1239
01:20:48,643 --> 01:20:51,567
and then shocked his family
by signing on

1240
01:20:51,688 --> 01:20:55,443
with the Marine...
not the Army... Reserves.

1241
01:20:57,235 --> 01:21:01,331
At some point Robin
became convinced that...

1242
01:21:01,448 --> 01:21:05,624
that the war was wrong, and not
only wrong, it was immoral.

1243
01:21:05,744 --> 01:21:10,875
So he quit going
to the Reserve weekends,

1244
01:21:10,999 --> 01:21:13,969
and because of that
he was activated...

1245
01:21:14,085 --> 01:21:19,137
and was very likely now he was
going to be going to Vietnam

1246
01:21:19,257 --> 01:21:22,477
as a Marine Corps rifleman.

1247
01:21:22,594 --> 01:21:24,847
I didn't think being
a Marine Corps rifleman

1248
01:21:24,971 --> 01:21:27,850
was a very safe occupation.

1249
01:21:27,974 --> 01:21:30,978
And I didn't think Robin
would be a particularly good

1250
01:21:31,102 --> 01:21:32,854
Marine Corps rifleman.

1251
01:21:32,979 --> 01:21:37,359
And so I just thought that this
was a very bad outcome for him

1252
01:21:37,484 --> 01:21:38,952
and for the family.

1253
01:21:43,240 --> 01:21:46,790
Matt Harrison knew
that under military regulations,

1254
01:21:46,910 --> 01:21:50,255
if one brother was already
in a combat zone,

1255
01:21:50,372 --> 01:21:53,626
a second brother need not
accept assignment there.

1256
01:21:53,750 --> 01:21:57,254
So to keep Robin out of the war,

1257
01:21:57,379 --> 01:22:02,055
he volunteered for
a second tour in Vietnam.

1258
01:22:02,175 --> 01:22:06,851
I was back in Vietnam
I think in less than 30 days.

1259
01:22:07,013 --> 01:22:08,481
I was a seasoned veteran.

1260
01:22:08,598 --> 01:22:10,817
I was going to go command
a company.

1261
01:22:10,934 --> 01:22:13,733
My chances of getting hurt were
a lot less than Robin's were.

1262
01:22:13,853 --> 01:22:15,776
And if I did choose to make it
a career,

1263
01:22:15,897 --> 01:22:17,899
the fact that I had had
a second tour

1264
01:22:18,024 --> 01:22:20,169
as a rifle company commander
was going to be good for me.

1265
01:22:20,193 --> 01:22:23,197
And so, you know, it wasn't
entirely selfless.

1266
01:22:23,321 --> 01:22:27,701
I honestly don't remember a
tremendous amount of dialogue

1267
01:22:27,867 --> 01:22:29,744
between my mom and dad.

1268
01:22:29,869 --> 01:22:32,964
I think they felt like
if Bob had gone,

1269
01:22:33,081 --> 01:22:34,879
he would have been killed.

1270
01:22:35,041 --> 01:22:40,514
Whereas I think they felt that
Chips was going to be okay.

1271
01:22:40,630 --> 01:22:45,477
I can't imagine, having
had a son now go to Iraq,

1272
01:22:45,593 --> 01:22:51,066
how my mother could have gotten
through every single day at all,

1273
01:22:51,182 --> 01:22:56,564
without believing very firmly
that he was going to be fine.

1274
01:22:59,399 --> 01:23:02,073
Matt Harrison's
decision to serve a second tour

1275
01:23:02,193 --> 01:23:05,413
did not fully
protect his brother Robin.

1276
01:23:05,572 --> 01:23:08,075
He went AWOL:
was court-martialed

1277
01:23:08,199 --> 01:23:10,952
and sentenced to three months
hard labor.

1278
01:23:11,077 --> 01:23:13,330
The sentence was suspended.

1279
01:23:13,455 --> 01:23:15,128
He returned to the Marines,

1280
01:23:15,248 --> 01:23:17,421
served as a chaplain's
assistant,

1281
01:23:17,542 --> 01:23:20,796
applied for conscientious
objector status,

1282
01:23:20,920 --> 01:23:25,266
and then went AWOL again.

1283
01:23:25,425 --> 01:23:28,112
I remember the
FBI coming and knocking on the door

1284
01:23:28,136 --> 01:23:30,138
and looking for him.

1285
01:23:30,263 --> 01:23:33,984
They asked if Robert Harrison
was there

1286
01:23:34,100 --> 01:23:37,900
and I just knew this wasn't good

1287
01:23:38,021 --> 01:23:41,275
and said "No"
and slammed the door.

1288
01:23:41,399 --> 01:23:46,405
And Bob went out the back

1289
01:23:46,529 --> 01:23:48,873
and ran out to the main street.

1290
01:23:48,990 --> 01:23:53,962
And as I understand it,
got in a car and left

1291
01:23:54,079 --> 01:23:57,049
and that was the last
I saw of him.

1292
01:24:01,795 --> 01:24:05,425
I don't think a military
mom at the time would want

1293
01:24:05,548 --> 01:24:07,016
to announce,
"My son has gone AWOL.

1294
01:24:07,133 --> 01:24:09,010
"My son has run to Canada.

1295
01:24:09,135 --> 01:24:12,139
"My son is all the words
that were associated with it,

1296
01:24:12,263 --> 01:24:16,109
a deserter, a coward."

1297
01:24:16,226 --> 01:24:18,604
All of the things
that these guys were called.

1298
01:24:20,980 --> 01:24:23,984
I don't think that's what those
guys thought they were doing.

1299
01:24:24,109 --> 01:24:26,157
I do not think they thought
they were deserting.

1300
01:24:26,277 --> 01:24:28,154
I do not think they thought
they were cowards.

1301
01:24:28,279 --> 01:24:31,249
In fact, I think they thought
they were very brave.

1302
01:24:35,286 --> 01:24:38,039
When Matt Harrison
assumed command of Alpha Company,

1303
01:24:38,164 --> 01:24:43,512
2nd Battalion, 14th Regiment
of the 25th Infantry Division,

1304
01:24:43,628 --> 01:24:46,177
his Army had changed.

1305
01:24:49,050 --> 01:24:52,145
I was commanding
a company of draftees,

1306
01:24:52,262 --> 01:24:54,606
almost none of whom
wanted to be there.

1307
01:24:54,722 --> 01:24:56,349
They didn't want to be
in the Army

1308
01:24:56,516 --> 01:24:58,314
and they certainly didn't
want to be

1309
01:24:58,435 --> 01:25:00,233
an infantryman in Vietnam.

1310
01:25:00,353 --> 01:25:03,698
There were times when it was
very difficult

1311
01:25:03,857 --> 01:25:06,110
to keep the men under control,

1312
01:25:06,234 --> 01:25:08,532
particularly if we had taken
casualties on the way

1313
01:25:08,695 --> 01:25:10,163
into a village.

1314
01:25:11,823 --> 01:25:16,454
One of the things I learned is
the veneer of civilization

1315
01:25:16,578 --> 01:25:19,206
is very thin... very thin...

1316
01:25:19,372 --> 01:25:24,424
on me, probably on you,
and I think on everybody.

1317
01:25:26,254 --> 01:25:28,677
I just saw over and over again

1318
01:25:28,798 --> 01:25:32,723
some nice young guy
out of Huron, South Dakota,

1319
01:25:32,886 --> 01:25:35,981
who back in Huron helped
old ladies across the street

1320
01:25:36,097 --> 01:25:38,850
and went to church every Sunday.

1321
01:25:38,975 --> 01:25:46,075
It did not take long for that
veneer of civilization to erode.

1322
01:25:46,232 --> 01:25:50,328
And he was now capable
of doing things

1323
01:25:50,445 --> 01:25:53,415
that just simply are inhuman.

1324
01:25:55,825 --> 01:25:59,420
I was not willing to allow it
to happen on my watch

1325
01:25:59,579 --> 01:26:02,002
and I didn't think it was good
for the soldiers

1326
01:26:02,123 --> 01:26:03,545
to do those kinds of things.

1327
01:26:03,666 --> 01:26:07,716
Now, I'm not saying that we
didn't do some horrific things.

1328
01:26:07,837 --> 01:26:08,837
We did.

1329
01:26:10,757 --> 01:26:14,261
But there's a difference
between being spontaneous

1330
01:26:14,385 --> 01:26:16,854
and being premeditated.

1331
01:26:23,269 --> 01:26:27,445
Many years later,
Robin Harrison, still adrift,

1332
01:26:27,607 --> 01:26:29,609
got caught up
in the world of drugs

1333
01:26:29,776 --> 01:26:36,159
and died 10,000 miles from home
in a hotel room in Hong Kong,

1334
01:26:36,282 --> 01:26:39,456
another casualty,
his brother Matt believed,

1335
01:26:39,619 --> 01:26:42,293
of the war in Vietnam.

1336
01:27:11,317 --> 01:27:13,319
I dropped a bomb one afternoon

1337
01:27:13,444 --> 01:27:16,197
that must have had a broken fin
or something on the bomb.

1338
01:27:16,322 --> 01:27:19,622
It just went crazy, went over
and hit, you know,

1339
01:27:19,742 --> 01:27:22,336
a mile away
from where I was aiming.

1340
01:27:22,453 --> 01:27:29,086
And it started a series
of secondary explosions,

1341
01:27:29,210 --> 01:27:32,339
meaning that I had hit
an ammunition dump,

1342
01:27:32,463 --> 01:27:33,941
or a cache of ammunition
or something.

1343
01:27:33,965 --> 01:27:35,763
So it cooked off for 15 minutes.

1344
01:27:35,883 --> 01:27:39,558
As we were leaving,
the thing was still blowing up.

1345
01:27:39,679 --> 01:27:42,307
The best result I achieved
in a year,

1346
01:27:42,432 --> 01:27:45,652
it was a result of a gross miss
from what I was aiming at.

1347
01:27:45,768 --> 01:27:50,365
Now that's the exact reverse of
how you want to use air power.

1348
01:27:52,150 --> 01:27:55,199
Major Merrill McPeak
was a crack fighter pilot

1349
01:27:55,361 --> 01:27:59,366
when he arrived in Vietnam
in late 1968.

1350
01:27:59,532 --> 01:28:03,287
At first, he had helped provide
air support for the Army,

1351
01:28:03,411 --> 01:28:07,757
with a guaranteed number of
sorties per day, he remembered,

1352
01:28:07,874 --> 01:28:10,844
"whether or not they had
anything in front of them

1353
01:28:10,960 --> 01:28:12,212
worth blowing up."

1354
01:28:14,714 --> 01:28:17,718
At the end of any
sortie where we dropped bombs

1355
01:28:17,884 --> 01:28:19,807
on what we called
"trees in contact"

1356
01:28:19,927 --> 01:28:22,476
because there was nothing
important down there,

1357
01:28:22,597 --> 01:28:25,441
we would always get back a list
of bomb damage assessment

1358
01:28:25,558 --> 01:28:27,026
from the forward air controller.

1359
01:28:27,143 --> 01:28:32,240
And it would be, like,
"12 supply sources destroyed,

1360
01:28:32,357 --> 01:28:34,701
two structures collapsed."

1361
01:28:34,817 --> 01:28:36,194
All these metrics.

1362
01:28:36,319 --> 01:28:38,162
It was phony.

1363
01:28:38,279 --> 01:28:39,405
Just a waste of time.

1364
01:28:41,449 --> 01:28:44,874
Then, McPeak was
assigned to a top-secret squadron

1365
01:28:44,994 --> 01:28:47,747
seeking to pinpoint men
and supplies

1366
01:28:47,872 --> 01:28:51,092
moving on the Ho Chi Minh Trail
in Laos.

1367
01:28:51,209 --> 01:28:55,180
He and his fellow pilots
called their unit Misty,

1368
01:28:55,296 --> 01:28:58,425
after its radio call sign.

1369
01:28:58,549 --> 01:29:00,096
I spent four months in Misty.

1370
01:29:00,218 --> 01:29:03,768
And that was the best
four months of the war,

1371
01:29:03,888 --> 01:29:05,265
as far as I'm concerned,

1372
01:29:05,390 --> 01:29:08,769
because what we were doing was
simple, straightforward,

1373
01:29:08,893 --> 01:29:10,270
and made sense.

1374
01:29:10,395 --> 01:29:14,025
We want to stop traffic from
A to B down this dirt road.

1375
01:29:14,148 --> 01:29:17,072
That I can understand.

1376
01:29:17,193 --> 01:29:19,321
Somebody in Saigon
wasn't saying,

1377
01:29:19,445 --> 01:29:22,164
"Go bomb trees at such-and-such
a location."

1378
01:29:22,281 --> 01:29:25,080
We went out and actually found
the target.

1379
01:29:34,460 --> 01:29:36,133
It was dangerous work.

1380
01:29:36,295 --> 01:29:41,096
One out of five pilots
was shot down.

1381
01:29:49,559 --> 01:29:53,530
Misty put up seven sorties a day
from dawn to dusk,

1382
01:29:53,646 --> 01:29:56,820
on the lookout for
signs of human activity...

1383
01:29:56,983 --> 01:30:02,160
gardens, encampments, roadside
trees coated with dust,

1384
01:30:02,280 --> 01:30:06,330
or wet roads on either side
of fords

1385
01:30:06,451 --> 01:30:11,423
that signaled a truck convoy
had recently passed through.

1386
01:30:15,418 --> 01:30:18,513
I have enormous respect
for those truck drivers.

1387
01:30:20,173 --> 01:30:22,050
They left their homes
in the North,

1388
01:30:22,175 --> 01:30:26,021
and they weren't drafted
for a year or two.

1389
01:30:26,179 --> 01:30:27,726
They just left and didn't know

1390
01:30:27,847 --> 01:30:29,815
if they were ever
going to come back.

1391
01:30:31,642 --> 01:30:35,317
Although McPeak and his
fellow pilots did not know it,

1392
01:30:35,438 --> 01:30:37,065
among the drivers threading
their way

1393
01:30:37,190 --> 01:30:40,945
down the Ho Chi Minh Trail
by night were hundreds of women.

1394
01:31:06,344 --> 01:31:09,894
For three years, Nguyen
Nguyet Anh drove her section

1395
01:31:10,056 --> 01:31:16,564
of the Trail, ferrying arms
and supplies south,

1396
01:31:16,687 --> 01:31:21,318
then heading back north
with cargoes of wounded men.

1397
01:31:34,580 --> 01:31:36,799
They drove in stages.

1398
01:31:36,916 --> 01:31:39,840
So they knew 15, 20 clicks
of the road.

1399
01:31:39,961 --> 01:31:42,430
And they drove from A to B
and back to A.

1400
01:31:46,926 --> 01:31:48,724
And then they rested,
during the daytime,

1401
01:31:48,845 --> 01:31:51,815
and then the next night, they
drove from A to B and back to A.

1402
01:31:53,266 --> 01:31:57,692
They had kind of memorized the
road, which was very important,

1403
01:31:57,812 --> 01:32:00,315
because they were running
without lights at night.

1404
01:32:36,350 --> 01:32:39,900
One time I stumbled across
a bunch of trucks backed up,

1405
01:32:40,021 --> 01:32:42,365
and that was a great morning
for me.

1406
01:32:42,481 --> 01:32:44,700
Occasionally one of 'em would
break down,

1407
01:32:44,817 --> 01:32:46,660
in a spot where the trucks
behind it

1408
01:32:46,819 --> 01:32:48,739
would get trapped and
couldn't back out of there.

1409
01:32:48,779 --> 01:32:53,785
So you try to strafe the last
truck, so that it can't move.

1410
01:32:56,287 --> 01:32:59,006
And these are one-lane roads.

1411
01:32:59,123 --> 01:33:02,218
So once you get
the back truck disabled,

1412
01:33:02,335 --> 01:33:04,554
then you just call in fighters.

1413
01:33:06,005 --> 01:33:08,349
You're shooting fish
in a barrel.

1414
01:33:12,845 --> 01:33:16,691
As she drove the Ho Chi
Minh Trail, Anh thought constantly

1415
01:33:16,849 --> 01:33:19,523
of her fiancé Tran Cong Thang,

1416
01:33:19,644 --> 01:33:24,866
an army engineer she'd fallen
in love with four years earlier.

1417
01:33:24,982 --> 01:33:29,078
He was also stationed
somewhere on the Trail.

1418
01:34:23,958 --> 01:34:28,759
Over 20,000 engineers,
soldiers, and truck drivers died

1419
01:34:28,921 --> 01:34:32,050
along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

1420
01:34:32,174 --> 01:34:36,304
72 military cemeteries would
eventually be required

1421
01:34:36,429 --> 01:34:38,682
to hold their remains.

1422
01:34:59,368 --> 01:35:02,042
We dropped more
tonnage of munitions

1423
01:35:02,163 --> 01:35:07,294
than the United States dropped
in World War II,

1424
01:35:07,460 --> 01:35:10,304
most of it aimed
at the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

1425
01:35:12,465 --> 01:35:14,809
We did not stop traffic
down the trail.

1426
01:35:14,925 --> 01:35:18,304
And that is
a big disappointment for me.

1427
01:35:18,471 --> 01:35:20,940
To this day, it irritates me.

1428
01:35:23,142 --> 01:35:26,442
The real failures were made
at the policy level.

1429
01:35:28,606 --> 01:35:31,951
We were fighting
on the wrong side.

1430
01:35:32,068 --> 01:35:35,663
The South, the government
in the South was corrupt.

1431
01:35:35,821 --> 01:35:37,994
And its people knew it.

1432
01:35:38,157 --> 01:35:39,157
And we knew it.

1433
01:35:40,576 --> 01:35:41,828
I'll tell you something,

1434
01:35:41,952 --> 01:35:44,205
those truck drivers
fought very well.

1435
01:35:44,330 --> 01:35:48,961
I would have been proud
to fight with them.

1436
01:35:49,085 --> 01:35:51,508
So one of the things you got
to do when you go to war

1437
01:35:51,670 --> 01:35:53,172
is pick the right side, okay.

1438
01:35:53,297 --> 01:35:54,514
Get the right allies.

1439
01:35:58,844 --> 01:36:03,190
Merrill McPeak would
serve 37 years and retire

1440
01:36:03,349 --> 01:36:05,818
as Air Force chief of staff.

1441
01:36:08,479 --> 01:36:12,279
Nguyen Nguyet Anh and Tran Cong
Thang were reunited

1442
01:36:12,399 --> 01:36:14,993
after the war and married.

1443
01:36:19,198 --> 01:36:22,543
The peace we seek to win

1444
01:36:22,660 --> 01:36:27,211
is not victory over
any other people,

1445
01:36:27,331 --> 01:36:31,677
but the peace that comes
with healing in its wings;

1446
01:36:31,794 --> 01:36:34,638
with compassion for those
who have suffered;

1447
01:36:34,755 --> 01:36:37,679
with understanding for those
who have opposed us;

1448
01:36:37,800 --> 01:36:41,304
with the opportunity for all
the peoples of this earth

1449
01:36:41,428 --> 01:36:43,226
to choose their own destiny.

1450
01:36:46,058 --> 01:36:47,560
Like Lyndon Johnson,

1451
01:36:47,685 --> 01:36:52,407
Richard Nixon had an ambitious
agenda for his presidency...

1452
01:36:52,565 --> 01:36:56,695
easing a quarter of a century of
tensions with the Soviet Union

1453
01:36:56,819 --> 01:36:58,947
and opening the door to China,

1454
01:36:59,071 --> 01:37:02,792
whose existence the United
States had refused to recognize

1455
01:37:02,908 --> 01:37:06,788
since the communists
took over in 1949.

1456
01:37:06,912 --> 01:37:10,041
But as it had with Johnson,

1457
01:37:10,166 --> 01:37:14,467
the ongoing war in Vietnam
threatened all those plans.

1458
01:37:16,463 --> 01:37:21,765
37,563 Americans had died there

1459
01:37:21,927 --> 01:37:24,601
by the time he took
the oath of office.

1460
01:37:24,722 --> 01:37:28,443
"I'm not going to end up
like LBJ,

1461
01:37:28,559 --> 01:37:30,436
"holed up in the White House,

1462
01:37:30,603 --> 01:37:32,697
afraid to show my face
on the street,"

1463
01:37:32,813 --> 01:37:34,815
Richard Nixon told an aide.

1464
01:37:34,940 --> 01:37:36,783
"I'm going to stop that war.

1465
01:37:36,942 --> 01:37:38,364
Fast."

1466
01:37:38,485 --> 01:37:43,036
Nixon's national security
advisor was Henry Kissinger.

1467
01:37:43,157 --> 01:37:47,537
A refugee from Nazi Germany, he
had taught government at Harvard

1468
01:37:47,661 --> 01:37:51,382
and was already a well-known
advocate of a foreign policy

1469
01:37:51,498 --> 01:37:55,002
based on pragmatism,
not ideology.

1470
01:37:55,127 --> 01:37:59,758
"Give us six months," Kissinger
told a group of Quakers

1471
01:37:59,882 --> 01:38:02,010
demonstrating on
Pennsylvania Avenue,

1472
01:38:02,134 --> 01:38:06,605
"and if we haven't ended the war
by then, you can come back

1473
01:38:06,722 --> 01:38:08,816
and tear down
the White House fence."

1474
01:38:11,769 --> 01:38:17,401
In February of 1969, the North
launched yet another offensive.

1475
01:38:20,069 --> 01:38:24,950
This time, they killed 1,100
Americans in just three weeks.

1476
01:38:28,827 --> 01:38:31,205
Nixon did not feel
he could retaliate

1477
01:38:31,330 --> 01:38:33,674
by resuming the bombing
of the North

1478
01:38:33,791 --> 01:38:37,546
for fear of provoking the
antiwar movement at home.

1479
01:38:37,670 --> 01:38:43,803
So in March, he secretly ordered
B-52s to begin attacking

1480
01:38:43,926 --> 01:38:46,054
the North Vietnamese bases
within Cambodia,

1481
01:38:46,178 --> 01:38:50,524
which had offered sanctuary
to the enemy for years.

1482
01:38:52,268 --> 01:38:54,942
The American public was told
nothing about the bombing.

1483
01:38:55,062 --> 01:38:58,942
Congress was kept in the dark,
as well.

1484
01:38:59,066 --> 01:39:02,696
Even members of Nixon's
own cabinet

1485
01:39:02,820 --> 01:39:05,164
were not initially informed.

1486
01:39:07,741 --> 01:39:11,712
When the New York Times finally
discovered what was happening,

1487
01:39:11,870 --> 01:39:15,044
the White House denied any
bombing was taking place

1488
01:39:15,165 --> 01:39:18,840
and ordered that illegal
wiretaps be placed

1489
01:39:18,961 --> 01:39:21,430
on the telephones
of 17 reporters

1490
01:39:21,547 --> 01:39:23,220
and government officials

1491
01:39:23,340 --> 01:39:27,061
in an effort to find out
who had leaked the story.

1492
01:39:27,219 --> 01:39:30,223
"We will not make
the same old mistakes,"

1493
01:39:30,347 --> 01:39:32,441
Henry Kissinger had joked
to an aide

1494
01:39:32,558 --> 01:39:35,186
shortly after coming
to Washington.

1495
01:39:35,311 --> 01:39:37,405
"We will make our own."

1496
01:39:39,440 --> 01:39:41,568
The war went on.

1497
01:39:51,118 --> 01:39:54,748
There's basically
two sides to heroism.

1498
01:39:54,913 --> 01:39:57,041
One is that I want
to be special.

1499
01:39:57,166 --> 01:39:59,589
I want people to look at me,
I'm an important person.

1500
01:39:59,710 --> 01:40:01,383
I've clone heroic deeds.

1501
01:40:04,214 --> 01:40:07,593
The other side is simply
somebody's got to do something

1502
01:40:07,760 --> 01:40:12,266
to save these people, my platoon
or my company, from destruction.

1503
01:40:12,389 --> 01:40:17,566
The exact same act can be done
with one attitude or the other.

1504
01:40:21,565 --> 01:40:25,445
After leaving Oxford,
First Lieutenant Karl Marlantes

1505
01:40:25,569 --> 01:40:29,119
found himself executive officer
of Charlie Company,

1506
01:40:29,281 --> 01:40:33,127
First Battalion, Fourth Marines,
Third Marine Division,

1507
01:40:33,243 --> 01:40:35,746
just south of the DMZ.

1508
01:40:35,871 --> 01:40:39,751
His unit was fighting
the same sort of war

1509
01:40:39,875 --> 01:40:43,220
over the same terrain that
Marines had been fighting now

1510
01:40:43,337 --> 01:40:44,884
for four years.

1511
01:40:45,005 --> 01:40:46,900
You would hear,
"Well, it's going to be

1512
01:40:46,924 --> 01:40:49,848
Operation Purple Martin I
or Operation Scotland II."

1513
01:40:49,968 --> 01:40:51,936
And, and it'd be
like, "Yeah, whatever."

1514
01:40:52,054 --> 01:40:55,183
What that meant to us was
that someday soon

1515
01:40:55,307 --> 01:40:57,309
some choppers are going
to show up and drop us

1516
01:40:57,476 --> 01:40:59,820
into the jungle someplace
or a valley north of us

1517
01:40:59,937 --> 01:41:01,177
or wherever it was going to be.

1518
01:41:01,230 --> 01:41:02,698
And then we'd be off the hill

1519
01:41:02,815 --> 01:41:04,692
and we'd be humping,
as we called it.

1520
01:41:08,695 --> 01:41:12,996
On March 5, 1969,
Marlantes' company was ordered

1521
01:41:13,117 --> 01:41:16,542
to attack a regiment
of North Vietnamese regulars

1522
01:41:16,662 --> 01:41:21,793
dug in on the slopes of a hill
the Americans called 484.

1523
01:41:21,917 --> 01:41:25,888
A few days earlier,
his unit had taken the hill

1524
01:41:26,004 --> 01:41:29,053
and then, under heavy fire,
had abandoned it.

1525
01:41:29,174 --> 01:41:33,680
This time air strikes meant
to soften up the enemy

1526
01:41:33,804 --> 01:41:35,932
hit the wrong hill.

1527
01:41:36,056 --> 01:41:40,562
Charlie Company was ordered
to advance anyway.

1528
01:41:40,686 --> 01:41:43,360
Marlantes led the way.

1529
01:41:44,690 --> 01:41:46,488
It was a very steep hill.

1530
01:41:46,608 --> 01:41:50,704
And you don't charge because you
have a lot of weight.

1531
01:41:50,821 --> 01:41:53,074
And we had started walking up
and we had probably gotten

1532
01:41:53,198 --> 01:41:54,950
about a third of the way
up the hill

1533
01:41:55,075 --> 01:41:56,418
and then they unleashed on us.

1534
01:41:59,997 --> 01:42:02,077
We were in the middle
of this horrible shit sandwich.

1535
01:42:04,126 --> 01:42:06,094
The Marines took
what cover they could.

1536
01:42:06,211 --> 01:42:10,057
Marlantes realized that if they
continued up the slope

1537
01:42:10,174 --> 01:42:13,269
they would face
machine gun fire,

1538
01:42:13,385 --> 01:42:14,887
but if they stayed
where they were,

1539
01:42:15,053 --> 01:42:17,476
mortar shells
would surely find them.

1540
01:42:21,018 --> 01:42:22,816
And then I stood up

1541
01:42:22,936 --> 01:42:24,904
and went up the hill.

1542
01:42:25,022 --> 01:42:27,901
And I thought it was...
I was all by myself.

1543
01:42:28,025 --> 01:42:30,119
And I was running at this point

1544
01:42:30,235 --> 01:42:34,365
because I wanted to cover
that ground fast as I could.

1545
01:42:34,490 --> 01:42:37,209
And I caught some movement out
of the corner of my eye,

1546
01:42:37,326 --> 01:42:40,205
and I rolled to the ground
to come up with my rifle

1547
01:42:40,329 --> 01:42:43,333
to shoot the person.

1548
01:42:43,457 --> 01:42:46,256
And it was a kid
from my platoon.

1549
01:42:46,376 --> 01:42:49,755
And then I looked behind him,
there was more kids.

1550
01:42:49,922 --> 01:42:53,017
They had all come behind me.

1551
01:42:53,133 --> 01:42:55,386
It felt to me like I was there
for a week

1552
01:42:55,511 --> 01:42:57,013
but I think I was probably
by myself

1553
01:42:57,137 --> 01:43:01,142
four seconds, five seconds.

1554
01:43:01,266 --> 01:43:06,318
The entire platoon just stood up
and out they came.

1555
01:43:06,438 --> 01:43:08,987
It remains to me a moment
that is just

1556
01:43:09,107 --> 01:43:15,205
almost inexpressible of the
heart that these kids had.

1557
01:43:16,448 --> 01:43:18,746
And then we just
hit those bunkers.

1558
01:43:18,867 --> 01:43:22,667
The Marines cleared
the bunkers one by one.

1559
01:43:30,504 --> 01:43:35,977
For his bravery, Marlantes was
awarded the Navy Cross.

1560
01:43:36,093 --> 01:43:39,973
Combat is like crack cocaine.

1561
01:43:40,097 --> 01:43:44,193
It's an enormous high
but it has enormous costs.

1562
01:43:44,309 --> 01:43:48,439
Any sane person would never
do crack.

1563
01:43:48,564 --> 01:43:51,317
Combat is like that.

1564
01:43:51,441 --> 01:43:54,991
You're scared, you're terrified,
you're miserable,

1565
01:43:55,153 --> 01:43:57,702
but then the fighting starts...

1566
01:44:01,577 --> 01:44:04,080
and suddenly everything
is at stake...

1567
01:44:04,204 --> 01:44:06,047
your life, your friend's lives.

1568
01:44:06,164 --> 01:44:08,417
It's almost transcendence

1569
01:44:08,542 --> 01:44:11,045
because you're no longer
a person.

1570
01:44:11,169 --> 01:44:13,592
You lose that sense; you're
just... you're just the platoon.

1571
01:44:13,714 --> 01:44:17,059
And the platoon can't be beat.

1572
01:44:17,175 --> 01:44:19,098
And not to mention there's
a savage joy

1573
01:44:19,219 --> 01:44:21,938
in overcoming your enemy,
just a savage joy.

1574
01:44:22,055 --> 01:44:25,025
And I think that we make
a big mistake if we say,

1575
01:44:25,183 --> 01:44:26,309
"Oh, war is hell."

1576
01:44:26,435 --> 01:44:28,608
We all know
the "war is hell" story.

1577
01:44:28,729 --> 01:44:30,197
It is.

1578
01:44:30,355 --> 01:44:35,111
But there's an enormously
exhilarating part of it.