The first episode talked about longshoremen in Marseilles protesting the French involvement, I’m not sure of other protests.
He has withheld donations in the past when PBS airs anything that goes against the Koch political or financial philosophy. He also donates to Lincoln Center and other art endeavors. Seems odd, I know.
Spotted a footage error. In what was supposed to be footage from the early to mid-1960s, there is a Marine carrying an attached M-203, which was not introduced to the military until the 70s. The standalone version, the M-79 grenade launcher, was standard issue.
You sure it’s not an XM148? Those were in service from end of 1966 until being replaced by the M203 in 1969.
You would have to go back to WW2 and look at the news reel footage of the map of Europe going Nazi. That was pretty much Russia and China were viewed, country after country rolled over and went communist, back when Russia and the US were technology peers. The USA, pretty much eked out a tie in Korea, spent god knows how much keeping Western Europe from declaring for the Russians, as they were not going to do WW1 redux with nukes.
Vietnam is where the Russians were stopped, Nicaragua was where they were contained, and Afganistan is where they were rolled back. Everyone backs a winner, and for a time Russia looked like a winner, and they spent rubles like a drunken sailor keeping the world in a revolutionary fever.
I just read this article from the Washington Post entitled “Meet Lynn Novick.” The subtitle is: “The ‘Vietnam War’ co-director has been making movies with Ken Burns for decades. Why is only one of them famous?”
Reading the article, it is apparent why Lynn Novick is credited as co-director. For example, she conducted most of the interviews, not Ken Burns. What really surprised me, though, was the last sentence of this paragraph:
Wow, good catch. I’ve never seen one of those, though I fam-fired the M-79 during weapons training in 1968 prior to going to Da Nang. Come to think of it, I never even saw an M-16 until the day I arrived there. They handed one to me and told me to “figure it out”. :smack:
One of my physics professors in school got a bunch of research funding from the Department of Defense. Someone once asked him if he had any ethical qualms about where the money came from. He replied, “Would you prefer they used it to buy more bombs?”
I just wish the Koch family would spend all their money on historical documentaries.
I would’ve like to have heard from more historians on the French involvement…but I love every thing Burns does generally. And I love military history.
I watched the latest instalment last night, This Is what we do, and it by far has the most jarring realizations for me at least. It covers the time period 1967-68. What got me the most was first, how outnumbered the Marines apparently were in combat, because much of the US forces In Vietnam according to the documentary, were acting in support capacities, not in combat.
Second, there was apparently a crossover number being promoted by TPTB in Defence where the body count of enemy had to reach a certain number before they could be assured that the enemy weren’t going to be replaced. This seems to be a illusory figure because enemy soldiers were being supplemented all the time by civilians, and infiltrations in South Vietnam by Communist disrupters were not abating.
Third, the instability of So. Vietnam, given the corruption of its leaders and the inability of the government to keep the level of dissent from totally undermining their cause, whatever that was. The degree of upheaval in So. Vietnam compared with the cohesion and organization of the No Vietnamese made an American commander declare that the US was fighting on the wrong side. That quote wasn’t in the episode This is what we do, but earlier on. You have to wonder, with So. Vietnam so in tatters, what hope did the US have?
Fourth, the extended interview with Musgrave (sorry but I can’t remember his first name ) What got me was how he described ambush after ambush after ambush. I was practically writhing on my sofa listening to him.Musgrave described how Vietnam Cong would bait them, then run off. US commanders would order the soldiers to pursue, and Musgrave would beg them not to. He knew it was an ambush. And of course he had to follow orders, and that was when he was injured so badly, the medics gave up on him 3 times, but he survived. US commanders couldn’t or wouldn’t learn from this? How to avoid ambushes?
Other notes: When a Marine was injured or killed, his fellow soldiers always retrieved the wounded or dead. The Viet Cong routinely picked off the rescuing soldiers.
Viet Cong liked to fight in such close proximity with Americans that when American air cover bombed the VC position, it often killed Americans too. One soldier commented, the VC didn’t mind dying.
VC had AK 47s, Soviet-supplied. Good and efficient weapons, reliable. Americans had the newly issued M16 rifle, prone to jamming, unreliable. A lot of soldiers were killed because they couldn’t unjam their rifles.
I’m Canadian, and my father and uncle served in WWII. My uncle was bayoneted in Hong Kong by Japanese soldier. A common charge against the British defeat in Hong Kong in 1941was that the weapons issued to soldiers like my uncle were substandard and faulty. A soldier not being able to defend himself with such a basic essential piece of his kit upsets me to no end.
More viewing tonight…
By 67-68, the US was fully committed to ground troops in large numbers. Enemy troop sizes were routinely underestimated, and allied forces routinely walked into a shit storm because of it.
No hope whatsoever from the very start of things. We were treated as invaders by both north and south and both north and south governments were corrupt, the south much more so and unable to get their shit together.
The “crossover number” was just bullshit from Westmoreland to justify tens of thousands of additional troops. The bombing was ineffective and everyone except Johnson seemed to know that.
How do you avoid ambushes in dense jungle? The nature of an ambush is to surprise your enemy, and the VC were adept at using camouflage. There’s not much to be done about a young, inexperienced officer making a stupid decision and not relying on his NCOs for sound advice.
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Nice article from a four star general that was involved in the film. Oregon's General Merrill McPeak on PBS' 'The Vietnam War,' mistakes made, and lessons learned - oregonlive.com
Last night’s ep was the toughest to watch for me. There was so much emotion being shared. From the massacre in My Lai, to vets coming home and being met with disgust so bad they wanted to kill themselves, to the shootings at Ohio and Jackson, it was difficult to hold back the tears. And those are just a few of the examples. Until last night, the song “Ohio” was just another old, tired song from the 70s. Right now, I can’t listen to it without choking up.
This episode really put *hate *in the spotlight. I am sad that today, as then, so many think they know what’s best for so many other people.
I was bingeing something else last week (Buffy S1 ;)), so have just made it through the 1st 3 eps. Pretty astounding, how blatantly and early just about everyone in authority acknowledged that we had negligible interest in VN, and no chance of winning. As well as the horrendous nature of the Diem crew we were supporting.
Just astounding that we would have repeated such efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan decades later.
I had never heard of the guy in the North other than Ho, but the 3d ep seems to say he was calling the shots.
Minor nit - I find the yellow subtitles somewhat fatiguing. Makes it a bit of effort to watch.
I came in to post the same thing. I lived through all that, and I’ve seen stuff about it many times, but it still hits you in the gut real hard.
Q: And babies?
A: And babies.
4 eps in - other than an early mention of a small protest of DOW, I haven’t heard much (anything?) about the “military industrial complex” and its involvement/encouragement of our war efforts.
I’ve been tuning in sporadically. I’ve very little knowledge on the subject other than the things that most of us kinda sorta know. Holy cow, this is making me sadder than I could have imagined 
Like most who have only heard about it second hand, I was aware that there was backlash against the returning military but I guess maybe I thought it was an exaggeration or something. I mean, I couldn’t imagine people who are supposedly dedicated to peace treating their fellow citizens that way. WTF??? And, as was already mentioned, it was so clear (at least according to this presentation) that many in power knew this was a futile, unwinnable endeavor and yet it went on and on and on . . .
Particularly poignant was John Kerry’s speech.
Sorry if I’ve only parroted what others have said. This one is really getting me verklempt.
Yeah - I’m only up to 67. Some 6 years to go, half a million men over there, and pretty much EVERYONE acknowledges that we have NO CHANCE of winning. What a disaster!
Just finished the 2 hour episode “River Styx” (up through the end of 1965). During the leadup to the battle at LZ X-Ray, I was wondering… is all this footage real? Or is some of it recreation? Or maybe used from other events? I was especially wondering if the Viet Cong would’ve had any cameramen with them (their footage was grainy and in black/white unlike the American side, but still could be a recreation/other footage) right before the battle.
Ok, at the risk of sounding a little crass, the part in the last episode where they were playing Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” over footage of the North Vietnamese preparing their final offensive into South Vietnam has to rank as one of the coolest scenes I’ve ever seen in a documentary.