Jump to content

Vietnam in HD


Garandomatic
 Share

Recommended Posts

Didn't see a post on it yet, so I thought I'd open one up. Any thoughts? I was impressed by a great deal of it, but I'm pretty new to the study of Vietnam. Some of the footage gave me chills. I was born 5 years after South Vietnam fell, but it is still close to me given a lot of my dad's friends (he was drafted, but failed the physical due to a leg injury). Anyways, experts opinions welcome.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Didn't see a post on it yet, so I thought I'd open one up. Any thoughts? I was impressed by a great deal of it, but I'm pretty new to the study of Vietnam. Some of the footage gave me chills. I was born 5 years after South Vietnam fell, but it is still close to me given a lot of my dad's friends (he was drafted, but failed the physical due to a leg injury). Anyways, experts opinions welcome.

I stumbled across it after it started. Galloway talking about picking up the napalmed soldier by his ankles was chilling. Sorry I can't remember what the soldiers name,who later

died, was.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I didn't watch much of it, the wife hates anything Vietnam. But from what I did see, it looks like an excellent resource for what uniforms, equipment and weapons were used. I especially liked the shots of the 'mitchell' helmet covers, on the combat troops almost universally faded and worn. post-32632-1320878059.jpg Unlike this one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That part about Jimmy Nakayama was in the movie "We Were Soldiers Once" and I always wondered about it. Good God, it really happened, huh? I knew his name was on the KIA list at the end of the movie, but man, what a horrible thought.

 

One thing I noticed was how many of the soldiers had mags for the M16 stuck in their helmet band. Seems really odd, you'd think they'd slip loose. Looking forward to tonight. A janitor at my school was with the 12th ACR and was there during Tet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Very well done. It is about time that nation really learns why we were there and what we were trying to do. I'd like to sayThank You to all of our members who were there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have been watching when I can.Reminded me of growing up and seeing the evening news.Every night they would post the body count on the news and detail some of the stories coming out of SEA.I thought there is some very good footage they used.

 

I caught the segment with Joe Galloway.Mr Galloway has given some very good interviews over the years and Im sure he has more stories to tell.Very intresting and humble man.

 

Just last night I was telling a friend of the series when I took him out for dinner for veterans day and gave him a enameled ribbon bar to wear that has the colors of the campaign medal.He served with the 173rd Abn and was attached as an FO when they made the combat jump.He said the local newspaper had just interviewed him and he wasnt sure it was going to come out right as the guy really didnt have a clue about Viet Nam.My buddy also mentions the battle of Dak To once in a while.Doesnt say much but you can tell it still gives him goose bumps.He was there to help out after the main battle and talks of the loss of life and the pure carnage he saw.Doesnt get into details and I dont ask.Just let him say what he wants.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Goodly amount of new (to me) footage worth adding to the memory bank... without which it would be the "same old same old" - so, its making a significant contribution. It's in 3 parts.

post-3976-1320949920.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have this taped .......and am looking for a bit of TV time !

 

looks good from the 15 seconds I have seen so far .

 

I want to do it all in one hit .

 

 

 

owen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have some problems with it.

 

I arrived in country with my unit (we were boat people!) in January 1966 and left in September 1968. So, i was there for the big build up and the Tet Offensive.

 

What offends me the most about Vietnam history is that in March, 1968 we had won. We had destroyed the Viet Cong during the Tet Offensive. They actually were in pretty bad shape before the Tet Offensive which is why the NVA was being infiltrated into the country. After Tet the NVA were also destroyed.

 

Then Walter Cronkite made his famous speech (after doing an in depth study of five days in country) Johnson stopped the bombing in the north and then threw the towel in.

 

I blame Walter Cronkite for every single American death after his speech. I am not the only Vietnam veteran that feels that way.

 

Once the bombing in the north stopped, the NVA quickly had all of their destroyed supplies and equipment replaced by their fraternal commie brethern and the fight started all over again. Only this time, Johnson and then Nixon pretty much tied our hands behind our backs and the fight from our side was severely rerstrained.

 

I came home to a country that hated American servicemen and spit on my service. For mnore than ten years after Vietnam, I had learned that it was a very bad idea to admit that I had been in Vietnam and or even in the service. The American Legion shamed my Father at the local Legion Club when he helped into the club (I was on critches from a gun shot wound and on leave from Great Lakes Naval Hospital) and attempted to sponsor my membership. I was told I wasn't worthy to join the club and the Poist Commander got a round of applause when he asked me to leave the meeting room because it was for members onlty.

 

The narrator of the Vietnam series on History Channel is making sure everyone knows what losers we were and it is bringing up a lot of bad feelings about it. I am not the only one about that either.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i saw the last 30 mins of the first one and it seemed like a very well done miniseries. i think since everyone is gone i will try watching them :w00t:

 

philip

Link to comment
Share on other sites

vintageproductions

I have also recordered it.

I have watched about two and a half episodes so far. What I have seen has been some amazing footage. A lot I have never seen before.

For what it's worth I think it is great.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is unbelievable that the Legion did that... unreal. I worry a lot about the "climate" of today's America, and I guess the one good thing is we haven't treated today's soldiers the way we did... A different helicopter veteran than you and I have discussed was greeted with spit and dog crap in San Francisco when he came home. To Hell with that.

 

I still like a decent amount of the content and footage, but I wouldn't have detected that kind of bias myself, as I wasn't really looking for it, you know? Where does a guy look to try to get a clear picture of the war?

 

 

I have some problems with it.

 

I arrived in country with my unit (we were boat people!) in January 1966 and left in September 1968. So, i was there for the big build up and the Tet Offensive.

 

What offends me the most about Vietnam history is that in March, 1968 we had won. We had destroyed the Viet Cong during the Tet Offensive. They actually were in pretty bad shape before the Tet Offensive which is why the NVA was being infiltrated into the country. After Tet the NVA were also destroyed.

 

Then Walter Cronkite made his famous speech (after doing an in depth study of five days in country) Johnson stopped the bombing in the north and then threw the towel in.

 

I blame Walter Cronkite for every single American death after his speech. I am not the only Vietnam veteran that feels that way.

 

Once the bombing in the north stopped, the NVA quickly had all of their destroyed supplies and equipment replaced by their fraternal commie brethern and the fight started all over again. Only this time, Johnson and then Nixon pretty much tied our hands behind our backs and the fight from our side was severely rerstrained.

 

I came home to a country that hated American servicemen and spit on my service. For mnore than ten years after Vietnam, I had learned that it was a very bad idea to admit that I had been in Vietnam and or even in the service. The American Legion shamed my Father at the local Legion Club when he helped into the club (I was on critches from a gun shot wound and on leave from Great Lakes Naval Hospital) and attempted to sponsor my membership. I was told I wasn't worthy to join the club and the Poist Commander got a round of applause when he asked me to leave the meeting room because it was for members onlty.

 

The narrator of the Vietnam series on History Channel is making sure everyone knows what losers we were and it is bringing up a lot of bad feelings about it. I am not the only one about that either.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is unbelievable that the Legion did that... unreal. I worry a lot about the "climate" of today's America, and I guess the one good thing is we haven't treated today's soldiers the way we did... A different helicopter veteran than you and I have discussed was greeted with spit and dog crap in San Francisco when he came home. To Hell with that.

 

I still like a decent amount of the content and footage, but I wouldn't have detected that kind of bias myself, as I wasn't really looking for it, you know? Where does a guy look to try to get a clear picture of the war?

There will always be bias' & cynicism about war. The Legion paid dearly for their actions, as did all the other groups until the Viet vets came to be in charge of those self~same groups. It is still a long way from what it was immediately following it's inception and, while it may never be what it once was it has evolved into a better fraternal order, IMO. If ever there is a return to the grandness of times past then it will actually be the veterans who will be better served and, ergo the rest of our nation. Flag waving complete.

As far as bias & cynicism there are lots of ways to approach being called a 'baby killer' {we never kill more than we can eat}; 'what do you feel when you shoot women & children?'; "Recoil, ma'am, recoil". Of course these are the stupid, callous comments but they are indicative of how each of us who was there has built a form of barrier to these ignoramuses. Like many, even today, my opinion about the war was about faster promotions and a lot of tax free money. I came home and put down almost 20% on my first house and then paid it off in eleven years and then went out and bought an airplane and taught myself to fly {okay, 2:3 ain't stupid}. Still, being in the military, to me meant putting my skills to use and making the training after Vietnam was much more intense.

And let me belabor THAT point about training while I'm on this platform. When 'Stomin' Norman' and all the other four stars told how they had vowed after Vietnam such inadequate preparation would never happen again, they weren't the only ones. All around, me and my fellow vets had the same feeling. We had no idea when the next 'shootin' holiday' would occur but we were going to be as ready as Jimmy Carter would let us {witness 'Desert One' as an example of 'on the cheap'}.

I agree about LBJ and his criminal conduct of the war from the moment he took office which brings me to 'Crafty Richard', the man most responsible for bringing the carnage to an end. Others may feel differently but Nixon let there be no doubt this man brought home more men than we will ever know just by his policies toward NVN. Congress would not unleash him entirely but what he did within his constraints can be likened to Trumans' decisiveness over Hiroshima & Nagasaki, a lot of lives were NOT lost.

Okay, I think I've ranted too long. I have not seen this TV series and don't really go out of my way to watch this stuff anyway. That doesn't mean it is not important because these series will always need to be shown, no matter the bias. It will be up to each of us to decide how we receive the info and take it from there. I applaud you who DO watch and hope you gather a lot more than might have ever been discussed by us old guys at the dinner table.

EOR.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The new Vietnam footage is great, and battle tactics with CGI recreations and retrospection like those of Galloway make it a real keeper.

 

And this morning (Nov11) on 'Morning Joe', Ken Burns said he was working a Vietnam documentary. I didn't care that much for Burn's WWII but his Civil War is a seminal work.

 

Tony

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As the proud son of a Vietnam Veteran I try to absorb as much about the time period as possible. And Bud, my heart goes out to you for the treatment you received after your service. Shame, shame, shame on anyone who would treat a returning veteran like that. My pops died withing a year of coming back, and I was too young to learn of his experiences so I can only hope that he wasn't subjugated to that kind of garbage. I thought the footage of the vets talking about their homecomings was quite emotional. It was obvious that even after 40 years there was still a lot of emotional pain just under the surface.

 

The footage (in hd) has been quite good. Loads of stuff I've never seen before and fairly comprehensive, or as comprehensive as you can get in a 6 hour mini-series. I'll be getting a copy as soon as possible.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bud, I don't see how you can blame Water Cronkite for every American death in Vietnam after saying what he truthfully thought about the war. All the Vietnam communists had to do was to hold out to win....and since they continued to fight after the US had dropped more bombs on them than had been dropped in WWII it was pretty evident that they were going to win eventually. All they had to do was hold out. Maybe now days if the talking heads were to say something like Cronkite did about our current mess in Afghanistan, rather than repeating the Washington line, we'd get out of that one some day in the not all that distant future.

 

When I came back to the US from a year in Vietnam at the end of 1970, a young woman walked up to me in an airport. I was in my dress uniform with the Screaming Eagle on my combat sleeve. She came up to me and spit in my face and walked away. She never said a thing to me. I just wiped off the spit and got on with my trip home. It is a sad thing to remember, but Americans blamed those who faught that war and not their elected leaders that provoked and maintained it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This has been a great reference series with alot of new footage I've never seen before....I'm atuned to uniforms and patches and what you'll see here is how rare pocket patches were for vietnam uniforms. Of course the River Section 513 PBR patch jumped out as one of the first I saw.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bud, I don't see how you can blame Water Cronkite for every American death in Vietnam after saying what he truthfully thought about the war. All the Vietnam communists had to do was to hold out to win....and since they continued to fight after the US had dropped more bombs on them than had been dropped in WWII it was pretty evident that they were going to win eventually. All they had to do was hold out. Maybe now days if the talking heads were to say something like Cronkite did about our current mess in Afghanistan, rather than repeating the Washington line, we'd get out of that one some day in the not all that distant future.

 

When I came back to the US from a year in Vietnam at the end of 1970, a young woman walked up to me in an airport. I was in my dress uniform with the Screaming Eagle on my combat sleeve. She came up to me and spit in my face and walked away. She never said a thing to me. I just wiped off the spit and got on with my trip home. It is a sad thing to remember, but Americans blamed those who faught that war and not their elected leaders that provoked and maintained it.

 

Cronkite arrived in country and made a film report from Khe Sanh. They used the camera angles to show a single crasked C-123 and made it look like several different crashes. He reported that we had totally lost the war and it was obvious to him. The exact opposite was the truth. We had them either on the run or dead. He based his entire report on what the CBS staff told him and they had never left their hotel in Saigon. He had no idea what a resounduing win it was for the us.

 

Johnson saw his lying report and said "if I lost Walter Cronkite, I have lost the midwest" and promptly turned off the bombing in the north. That meant every Soviet-bl;oc ship sailing on the high seas and the Red Chinese railroad could start running gagain and thirty days later, at lai Khe where I was staioned (fifty miles north of Saigon in the Iron Triangle) we started receiving incoming 122mm and 140mm rockets with Russian, Czeck Polish and East german markings on them.

 

We had won the war and Cronkite, through his totally favbricated report, turned a win into a loss.

 

This is history, it is well documented and well recorded. You don't know about it because it is not what the media wants to even consider. I lived it and Cronkite caused friends of mine to die in front of me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The film footage was great, brought back a lot of feelings. This is the best on the war I have seen, however the bias still shows. We may never see an un-biased look at that war. After all these years, I still get mad about it. By any measure the war was won on the ground in 68, but the fools in DC let it slip away. As with the Korean War, the troops did their job, only for the elected idiots to pull the rug out from under them. They forgot the Korean War vets and they condemned the Vietnam vets!

Sorry for the rant, but I believe in all my heart that our troops won both the Korean and Vietnam wars, and they fought as well and did their duty every bit as heroic as our WW2 vets, and did so with little or no support from our fellow citizens.

Thanks to all that have and are now serving.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was there too, Bud. I served in combat most of the time. I don't think you are right at all in your notion of an early victory given up. What Cronkite said was his opinion about the war. What do you find wrong about it? It was in February of 68. The War was just starting to suck in the large numbers of troops that maxed out a year later and proved his forcast of escalation.

 

He said:

 

We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds. They may be right, that Hanoi's winter-spring offensive has been forced by the Communist realization that they could not win the longer war of attrition, and that the Communists hope that any success in the offensive will improve their position for eventual negotiations. It would improve their position, and it would also require our realization, that we should have had all along, that any negotiations must be that -- negotiations, not the dictation of peace terms. For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. This summer's almost certain standoff will either end in real give-and-take negotiations or terrible escalation; and for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us, and that applies to invasion of the North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere commitment of one hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred thousand more American troops to the battle. And with each escalation, the world comes closer to the brink of cosmic disaster. To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy's intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was there too, Bud. I served in combat most of the time. I don't think you are right at all in your notion of an early victory given up. What Cronkite said was his opinion about the war. What do you find wrong about it? It was in February of 68. The War was just starting to suck in the large numbers of troops that maxed out a year later and proved his forcast of escalation.

 

He said:

you might want to read through my second post again. and see what his statement caused.

 

Whatever, I was there a long time and Cronkite made a very big contribution towards making it for nothing and I do blame him fo all the deaths after Joghnson stopped the bombing

Link to comment
Share on other sites

you might want to read through my second post again. and see what his statement caused.

 

Whatever, I was there a long time and Cronkite made a very big contribution towards making it for nothing and I do blame him fo all the deaths after Joghnson stopped the bombing

 

As I understand you, Cronkite said out loud what many were thinking. Johnson had an epiphany and stopped the bombing. We then lost the war..... which we had just won....... over the next several years under Nixon. It's Cronkite's fault.

 

The cow jumped over the moon. The little dog laughed to see such sport. And the dish ran away with the spoon. The cow is at fault.

 

Maybe, like your signature, if Johnson and Cronkite had had a duel it would have settled which of us is delusional. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I as well as my wife (her first husband served 4 tours with the Marines in Vietnam) were totally in awe of what we saw. I have even a greater respect for our forces and even less for these "idiots" that bashed us for being there. I realize that is their right, but having the right doesn't make it right!( And I have NO problem with people who disagree until they resort to violence) Having two uncles who both were awarded Purple Hearts in Vietnam, I just never realized the absolute hell our servicemen & women went through. I was 15 when it ended. I think it was a great testiment to the guts and gile displayed by our troops. Great show.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...