All language subtitles for The.Vietnam.War.2017.Part08.1080p.BluRay.x264.AAC.5.1-POOP

...you got through!
Did you pass Chee on the road?

No.
Where are the children?

Kansas found
a shelter for them.

Get down, everybody!

JOAN FUREY:
My older sister and I one time

uh, we're watching the movie
So Proudly We Ha il on TV.

Listen, we still have
a few minutes!

FUREY:
That's a story about the nurses

who were trapped on Bataan and
Corregidor during World War II.

(explosion)

It was the first, probably,
time in my life that...

I, uh...

I realized that women could do
brave and courageous things.

It wasn't just something
men could do.

(helicopter blades whirring)

♪

NARRATOR:
Second Lieutenant Joan Furey

had wanted to be a nurse ever
since she was a small child.

She attended nursing school,

and, when a high school
classmate was killed during Tet,

joined the Army to do
what she could for the wounded.

Furey was assigned
to the 71st Evacuation Hospital

at Pleiku, in the heart
of the Central Highlands.

Nothing had prepared her
for what she saw and did

over the next 12 months.

(indistinct chatter)

(grunts)

Wounded men were choppered in

at all times
of the day and night.

So were Viet Cong
and NVA soldiers,

who sometimes spat
at the medical personnel

trying to save
their limbs or lives.

(explosions)

Whenever the hospital
came under mortar fire,

Furey stayed with
the most seriously wounded men

in the ICU.

(distant explosions)

We had flak vests and helmets,

and we crawled
around on the floor.

(explosion, clattering,
men shouting)

I mean, you really,

you just could not leave them
unattended.

(explosion)

We just kind of had to swallow
your own fear.

NARRATOR:
A triage officer made
the grim decisions

as to who might be saved

and those for whom
there was no hope.

FUREY:
One of the things
that initially was so difficult

was what we called
"expected" patients.

And these were patients
that would be brought in

from the battlefield
and it was determined

they had no chance to survive.

But they weren't dead yet.

They brought in a...

a young soldier
who had a head injury,

and they said, "He's expected."

I kind of freaked out, uh,

and I decided that,
no, they were wrong,

and I was gonna take care
of this patient.

I told the corpsman
to get me blood.

And he's saying,
"Well, Lieutenant,

the patient is expected."

I said, "Get me blood."

So, I take off
the dressing, and...

the whole back of his head
had been gone.

When that happened,

all the blood
I had been giving him came out.

A friend of mine who came over
just walked me out of there.

And a few minutes later,
you walk right back in...

...and you get back
to doing it.

(amplified heartbeat)

("Dazed and Confused"
by Led Zeppelin playing)

♪ Been dazed and confused

♪ For so long,
it's not true... ♪

NARRATOR:
Richard Nixon had taken office
as president

in January of 1969,

pledged to restore
law and order

and end the war with honor.

(gunfire)
Things were calmer at home,

but in Vietnam,
peace was no closer.

("Dazed and Confused" continues)

American soldiers still died
pursuing guerrillas

who appeared and disappeared
like phantoms.

Americans still died
capturing hills

only to give them up and have
to take them back again.

Men and materiel were
still flowing into the south

despite the controversial
bombing of Cambodia.

Through it all,
Hanoi remained immovable.

The communists insisted
there could be no peace

until the Saigon government
was replaced

and the United States withdrew
from Vietnam.

Meanwhile, the American public
was losing patience.

♪

(men shouting)

(gunfire fades)

Privately, Nixon knew that
military victory was impossible,

that things would have
to be settled

at the bargaining table
in Paris.

He had to find a way

to extricate Americans
from Vietnam

without seeming to surrender.

Nixon also believed

his reputation
as an implacable anti-communist

could work to his advantage
with Hanoi.

"We'll just slip the word
to them," he said,

"you know, 'Nixon's obsessed
about communism.

"'We can't restrain him
when he's angry,

"and he has his hand
on the nuclear button,'

"and Ho Chi Minh
will be in Paris in two days

begging for peace."

But Ho Chi Minh
was old and ailing now.

And Le Duan and the other men

who had been calling the shots
in Hanoi for years

had no intention
of giving up their goal

of uniting their country
under communist control.

("While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
by the Beatles playing)

Richard Nixon, having promised
a swift end to the war,

would, like all the presidents
who came before him,

end up widening it.

In the process, he would
re-ignite opposition to the war

on American campuses

that threatened to tear
the country apart again.

♪ I look at you all

♪ See the love there
that's sleeping ♪

(crowd clamoring)

♪ While my guitar

♪ Gently weeps

♪ I look at the floor...

MERRILL McPEAK:
The late '60s

were a kind of confluence
of several rivulets.

BEATLES:
♪ Still my guitar...

McPEAK:
There was
the antiwar movement itself...

♪

...the whole movement
towards racial equality,

the environment...

the role of women.

And the anthems
for that counterculture

were provided by the most
brilliant rock-and-roll music

that you can imagine.

BEATLES:
♪ And I notice...

I don't know how we
could exist today as a country

without that experience.

With all of its warts
and ups and downs,

that produced
the America we have today,

and we are better for it.

(gunfire)
♪ Surely be learning...

McPEAK:
And I felt that way in Vietnam.

♪ Still my guitar...

McPEAK:
I turned the volume up
on all that stuff.

That represented
what I was trying to defend.

♪

(gunfire, artillery fire,
shouting)

(explosion)

♪ Oh, oh

(fading):
♪ Ooh, ooh, oh, oh...

HAL KUSHNER:
I never prayed

the whole time
I was in the P.O.W. camp,

but I had, like, a mantra.

Every night
when I went to sleep,

after a certain point,
I would say,

"I'll be here
when the morning comes."

And I felt if I could just live
one more day,

then I could live one more day,
and then one more day.

NARRATOR:
At the peace talks in Paris,

the Nixon administration
had introduced a new demand--

U.S. troops would not withdraw

until all American prisoners
had come home

and Hanoi had provided
a strict accounting

of those missing in action.

No one knew
how many prisoners there were.

Most were airmen
held in or around Hanoi,

but a handful of others,
like Hal Kushner,

were struggling to survive
in makeshift jungle camps

in South Vietnam.

Hanoi would not reveal
the names of the men they held,

because they still insisted
they were not prisoners of war,

but war criminals.

They subjected many
to brutal torture,

extracted "confessions,"

and refused
to permit inspections

by the International Red Cross.

The Johnson administration had
generally downplayed the issue,

hoping quiet diplomacy
might bring the men home.

The Nixon administration

launched
a "go public" campaign instead,

meant to put the plight
of American prisoners

and those missing in action

at the center of things.

It also provided a rebuke

to those
in the antiwar movement

who seemed more sympathetic

to North Vietnamese civilians
who had been bombed

than they were to U.S. airmen

who had been shot down
doing that bombing.

Sybil Stockdale, whose husband,
Commander James Stockdale,

was the highest-ranking prisoner
in Hanoi,

formed the National League
of Families

of Prisoners and Missing
in Southeast Asia,

and led delegations of wives
to Paris

to confront
North Vietnamese negotiators.

Five million Americans began
wearing tin or copper bracelets

engraved
with a missing man's name

and date of loss.

More than 50 million
P.O.W./M.I.A. bumper stickers

would be sold
over the next four years.

Despite what their jailers
had told them,

the prisoners had not been
forgotten by their country.

Eventually,
one journalist wrote,

many "people began to speak

"as though the North Vietnamese
had kidnapped 400 Americans

and the United States had gone
to war to retrieve them."

At the same time, the Saigon
government of Nguyen Van Thieu

was holding prisoners
of its own.

There would eventually be

some 40,000 North Vietnamese
and Viet Cong soldiers

in four crowded camps.

Another 200,000
South Vietnamese civilians

would also be held,
many without trial.

NGUYEN TAI:

JAMES GILLAM:
There are certain rules
to tunnel warfare.

Don't turn on the light

unless you're really, really,
really sure you're alone.

Use your senses.

Do your first killing
as quietly as you can.

That means don't shoot.

I chased somebody
into a tunnel,

met them at a bend
in the corner, in the dark.

I thought I was alone

and then I smelled
their breath.

And we had a wrestling match
in the dark.

And I got the upper hand

and crushed
this person's trachea,

held him down while he died...

...and then got out.

I beat and strangled
someone to death

in a tunnel

in the dark.

Um...

But that wasn't
the only casualty.

The other casualty was
the civilized version of me.

(gunfire)

(gunfire continuing)

(shouting)

NARRATOR:
April 1969

marked the high point
of American military commitment

to South Vietnam.

543,482 men and women
were now in country,

and tens of thousands more
were stationed

at airbases and aboard ships
beyond its borders.

40,794 had died.

And more than $70 billion
had been spent.

(explosion in distance)

That spring, a new battle

caught the attention
of the American public,

a struggle to take still
another numbered hill--

Hill 937 on military maps.

CHET HUNTLEY:
For nine days,

American and South Vietnamese
troops have been trying

to take a mountain
near the Laotian border,

and ten times
they have been thrown back.

(booming, shouting)

(gunfire)

(shouting over radio)

The casualties
have been so high--

50 Americans and
250 North Vietnamese killed--

that the mountain has come
to be known as "Hamburger Hill."

Today, another 600 allied troops
were thrown into the battle.

(helicopter blades whirring)

(gunfire)

(explosion, screaming)

NARRATOR:
A weary G.I. told a reporter

that his battalion commander

"won't stop until he kills
every damn one of us."

(explosion, gunfire)

After 11 days of fighting,

the Battle for Hamburger Hill
ended.

56 Americans died.

420 more were wounded.

A week later, the Americans
abandoned the hill,

just as they had abandoned
so many other hills

they had taken at great cost
over the years in Vietnam.

General, could you explain for
us again the strategy involved

in the decision to
withdraw American troops

after they had taken
Hill 937, or Hamburger Hill?

No piece of ground, as such,

is important to us.

HUNTLEY:
In the United States Senate,

Senator Kennedy
of Massachusetts delivered

a brief speech
criticizing what he called

a "senseless and
irresponsible military pride

"in which American men
are sent to their deaths

in pointless battles like
this one for Hamburger Hill."

Kennedy called
upon President Nixon

to issue new orders
to commanders in Vietnam

to halt such actions

and he charged
that they contradict

the president's
stated intentions

of seeking a negotiated peace.

NARRATOR:
There had been more deadly weeks
during the war,

costlier battles,
larger numbers of casualties.

But more and more Americans
seemed to have had enough.

The following month,
Li fe magazine

published the names
and photographs

of all 242 Americans

who had died in combat
in just one week.

For the first time,
in a national publication,

casualty statistics
came with human faces.

The only way they could
measure success in Vietnam

was, was was kill ratios--

how many of them
versus how many of us.

Well, the only thing
that's important

to the American people
is the "us."

You know, if there's three
us dead, that's the number.

Not 30, you know,
Vietnamese dead.

And, so, politically,
an attrition strategy

just can't last very long.

We don't care
what the ratio is,

we just want
the absolute number

of how many American kids died.

NARRATOR:
A Gallup poll now found
that most Americans

believed Vietnam
had been a mistake.

Richard Nixon knew he needed
to signal to the public

that an end was in sight.

The National Security Council
had warned Nixon

that the Joint Chiefs of Staff,

the secretaries of state
and defense,

the C.I.A.,
and the U.S. Embassy in Saigon

all privately agreed that
without U.S. combat troops,

the South Vietnamese

"cannot now, or in
the foreseeable future,

"stand up to both Viet Cong

and sizeable
North Vietnamese forces."

Nonetheless,

Secretary of Defense
Melvin Laird said,

the war was now
to be "Vietnamized."

Saigon's troops would gradually
take over responsibility

for engaging the enemy.

It would be
General Creighton Abrams' task

to ready the ARVN
for that role,

and to make sure
that American casualties

were held down in the interim.

("The Letter" by The Box Tops
starts playing)

Meanwhile, American troops
would start to go home.

♪ Gimme a ticket
for an aeroplane ♪

♪ Ain't got time
to take a fast train ♪

DUONG VAN MAI ELLIOTT:
When Nixon came in

and he announced
the phase withdrawal,

turning over the fighting
to the Vietnamese,

which was something
the French had tried before.

They call itjaunissement--

yellowizing the war.

We knew that the Vietnamese Army
was not up to fighting this war.

If they couldn't do it
with the Americans,

how were they going
to do it without the Americans?

♪ Lonely days are gone

NARRATOR:
Although Washington planned
to vastly increase

military support
of the South Vietnamese Army,

General Abrams knew
that Vietnamization alone

could never defeat the enemy.

But he had his orders.

McPEAK:
The reason I was
ordered home early

was because Nixon...
President Nixon

announced the policy
of Vietnamization.

Now, Vietnamization was a lie,

but it had
an element of truth in it.

We were leaving, okay?

And that sealed
the South's fate.

I knew it.

And I think anybody
who was conscious

and could see
what was going on

knew it.

NARRATOR:
Nixon then flew
to Midway Island

to meet with South Vietnamese
President Nguyen Van Thieu.

He had not dared
invite Thieu to Washington

for fear of sparking
mass demonstrations.

♪ Lonely days are gone

President Thieu informed me

that the progress
of the training program

and the equipping program

for South Vietnamese forces

had been so successful, uh,
that he could now recommend

that the United States
begin to replace

U.S. combat forces
with Vietnamese forces.

(speaking Vietnamese)

NARRATOR:
Thieu had said no such thing

but felt he had to go along.

"There is nothing I can do,"
he told a friend.

"Just as we could
do nothing about it

"when Eisenhower,
Kennedy, and Johnson

decided to come in."

"We were clearly
on the way out of Vietnam,"

National Security Advisor
Henry Kissinger remembered,

"by negotiation if possible,

by unilateral withdrawal
if necessary."

He and the president
were redefining

what victory would look like.

TOM VALLELY:
Nixon and Kissinger...

They...

Their job is to clean up.

They're, they're...

The war's over, okay?

When Nixon and Kissinger,
when they come, they're...

they're not gonna win the war.

("Taps" playing)
So they develop

a secret strategy.

They surrender without saying
they surrendered.

This is not a bad strategy,
this is the only strategy.

("Circle for a Landing" by
Three Dog Night starts playing)

(indistinct announcement
over P.A.)

NARRATOR:
As American soldiers began
leaving South Vietnam,

American weaponry
and materiel poured in.

♪ Circle for a landing

♪ Get your feet
back on the ground ♪

More than a million
M16 rifles,

40,000 grenade launchers,
thousands of wheeled vehicles--

so many,
one congressman complained,

that it seemed as if
the United States taxpayer

was being asked to "put every
South Vietnamese soldier

behind the wheel."

NEIL SHEEHAN:
It didn't make any sense,
of course,

because we tried that
in 1962 and '63.

The people hadn't changed.

They were just
giving 'em more furniture.

NGUYEN THOI BUNG:

NARRATOR:
South Vietnamese armed forces
were expanded

from 850,000 men
to over a million.

But nothing could alter
the fact

that rampant corruption

continually eroded
their effectiveness.

DON WEBSTER:
The way it works is this:

a man makes a deal
with his commanding officer,

perhaps to pay the officer
his full salary.

In exchange, you never have
to show up for duty,

except perhaps once a week
at the ceremony.

So while you're theoretically
in the Army,

you can hold
a full-time civilian job.

LAM QUANG THI:

(gunfire)

NARRATOR:
Many ARVN units did fight well.

They had borne the brunt
of the fighting

during the Tet Offensive,

and, by the middle of 1969,

90,000 of them
had been killed in combat.

Their bravery was
often overlooked by Americans.

VALLELY:
We were disdainful of them.

We overstated their incompetence

because we wanted
to overstate our importance.

(booming in distance)

(men shouting, gunfire)

Part of going to war in Vietnam
I, I enjoyed.

If you survive it,
it's, it's quite thrilling.

It's the history of the world.

It's hard to survive.

I mean, in, where I was,
survival is an issue.

I would have loved to have been
in the National Guard.

Period.

("Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence
Clearwater Revival playing)

I knew the core issue

of what was acceptable in war
and what wasn't.

I knew that.

I didn't need to get that
from the Marine Corps.

I got that from Sunday school.

NARRATOR:
Thomas John Vallely
was born in Boston,

the son of a judge,

and brought up
in the suburb of Newton.

Undiagnosed dyslexia kept him
from doing well in school.

By 1969,

Vallely was a radio operator
in the Marine Corps,

part of a massive
search-and-destroy mission

in Quang Nam Province in the
northern part of South Vietnam.

(men shouting, gunfire)

On August 13,

his company was ambushed

and came
under heavy machine gun fire.

(gunfire)

VALLELY:
It was a "grab 'em by the belt"
type of situation.

And we lost a lot of people.

So did they.

Lot of people laying around.

(gunfire, explosion)

NARRATOR:
Vallely radioed
for reinforcements.

Then he picked up a rifle
and ammunition

from a wounded Marine,

and, firing as he went,
took up a position

just ten feet
from an enemy machine gun.

He hurled a smoke grenade
to mark their position.

And then, as enemy fire
swept back and forth

across the field,

he moved from Marine to Marine,

pointing out targets
among the trees

and encouraging his comrades.

For his conspicuous gallantry,

Tom Vallely was awarded
the Silver Star.

VALLELY:
You want to tell
your grandchildren

it has a lot to do
with courage,

uh, but it, it's
really quite reactive.

It's survival.

Either you're...

It's, it's...

There's no choice here.

You react or you're not gonna
have grandchildren.

COUNTRY JOE McDONALD:
Give me an "F"!

CROWD:
"F"!

McDONALD:
Give me a "U"!

CROWD:
"U"!

McDONALD:
Give me a "C"!

"C"!
Give me a "K"!

"K"!

What's that spell?!

NARRATOR:
Two days after the battle

in which Tom Vallely
distinguished himself,

and while
half a million Americans

were still in Vietnam,

half a million Americans
gathered

on a dairy farm
in upstate New York

for a music festival: Woodstock.

♪ Way down yonder in Vietnam

♪ Put down your books
and pick up a gun ♪

♪ We're gonna have a whole lot
of fun ♪

♪ And it's one, two, three,
what are we fighting for? ♪

♪ Don't ask me,
I don't give a damn ♪

♪ The next stop is Vietnam

♪ And it's five, six, seven

♪ Open up the pearly gates

♪ Well, there ain't no time
to wonder why, whoopee ♪

♪ We're all gonna die

("Soul Sacrifice" by Santana
playing)

♪

(song ends, crowd cheering)

MAN:
Ladies and gentlemen, Santana!

You've been told once,
you've been told twice.

That's all--
spread it out!

("Time of the Season"
by the Zombies playing)

♪ What's your name?

GILLAM:
This guy from Arkansas

told me he would not carry
the radio for me.

He said, "I will not follow you
like Cheetah follows Tarzan.

It's not gonna happen, Sarge."

And I thought, "Oh, this is
gonna be a really long year."

I've got people
down there sweeping,

so get 'em down there.

♪ It's the time

GILLAM:
He evolved a little bit.

You know,
he, he kind of got the idea

that the enemy's bullets
are colorblind.

They would shoot anybody,
not just me.

NARRATOR:
African-Americans had served
in every American war

since the revolution.

In the early years
of the Vietnam War,

they suffered
a disproportionate number

of combat deaths.

When civil rights leaders
complained,

the Defense Department
made a concerted effort

to right that balance,

and by 1969, it had succeeded.

But behind the lines,

African-American soldiers
were still treated differently

from their white counterparts.

("Respect" by Otis Redding
playing)

SOLDIER:
And here there's all, all
these beast motherfuckers

walking around here
with their hair

looking like goddamn girls,

and we can't wear our hair

motherfucking
three inches long.

The motherfucking regulation
is three inches.

And most of the brothers
can wear a afro,

the hair gonna be
motherfucking two inches.

And why we got to get
our hair cut?

That's what I want to know.

♪ Yeah, man, ooh, yeah

WAYNE SMITH:
Vietnam was a microcosm.

Everything that was happening
in America

was happening in Vietnam,
really,

in one way, shape, or form.

In the rear,

there were Confederate flags
flying.

SOLDIER 2:
I mean, of all things to have
over here, man,

why a Confederate flag?

As a matter of fact,
I think there ought to be

some goddamn law to fucking
outlaw them goddamn flags, man.

The fucking Confederacy
is gone, man.

SMITH:
When one is in an environment

where everyone has a gun,
automatic weapon,

I'll be goddamned if someone's
gonna call me a nigger

or give me a bullshit order.

I mean, that was the attitude,
to risk my life for what?

REDDING:
♪ Sweeter than honey

ROGER HARRIS:
There was all kind of craziness
happening,

because white people were still
calling, you know, us niggers,

and then there were some black
people calling us Uncle Toms.

There were the antiwar folks

who were calling us
baby killers, say...

You know, you can say what you
want, but you can say it

from over there
because if you get in range,

you're gonna get serious damage
done to you.

Say what you want
from a distance,

but if you get close to me,
I'm gonna rip your throat out.

You know?

JUAN RAMIREZ:
But when we walked outside
that wire,

we went out into the bush,
we were tight.

Even with our differences.

Maybe we had threatened
each other,

we'd had a fight back
in the base,

but when we were out there,
you know,

we, we were a, a fighting unit.

And it's almost like
an identity crisis.

I was born here,
and my parents were born here.

I felt, in a way,

more American than Mexican.

MAN:
...hand and repeat after me...

NARRATOR:
The U.S. military did not
officially count Hispanics,

but an estimated 170,000
would serve in Vietnam

and more than 3,000
lost their lives.

Like their fathers
and grandfathers,

many saw military service
as both a patriotic duty

and an opportunity to advance
their standing

in the United States.

But as casualties mounted

and with a burgeoning
Chicano identity movement

among farm workers
and college students,

anti-war sentiment
in Hispanic communities grew.

We're protesting against
the discriminatory draft laws

that give deferments

to all the Anglo middle-class
people of this country

and make the heaviest burdens
of the war

fall on the poor,
fall on theMexicano.

RAMIREZ:
I had learned

about my sister and my mother's
antiwar activities

while I was still in Vietnam.

In fact,
my sister wrote and said,

"I hope you're okay with this."

And she was honest with me.

She told me
what they were doing.

She says, "I'm doing it for you,
'cause I want you to come home."

(indistinct chanting)

(TV clicks on)

In line with our policy
of taking a stand

on the pressing issues
of the day,

we now present another in our
continuing series of editorials.

The subject:

are our draft laws unfair?

Here again,
speaking for our program,

is Mr. Patrick Paulsen,
vice president.

(applause)

Now, we don't claim
the draft is perfect,

and we do have
a constructive proposal

for a workable alternative.

We propose a draft lottery

in which the names
of all eligible males

will be put into a hat,

and the men will be drafted
according to their head sizes.

The tiny heads will go
into the military service

and the fat heads
will go into government.

SOLDIER (on radio):
Roger, 3-1 is on his way.

SOLDIER (over radio):
5-8-1.

VINCENT OKAMOTO:
A 19-year-old high school
dropout says,

"Why are we here?"

And the, the standard response,

at least on
an official level, was,

to prevent
international communism

from conquering the world.

The men say, "Hey,
that, that's bullshit."

So the other reason put forth,

at least in the latter days
of the war,

was to maintain America's
international credibility

with our allies,
and our enemies.

Uh, no 19, 20-year-old kid
wants to die to maintain

the credibility of
Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon.

And so, within a relatively
short time,

the guys were saying,

"Look, we shouldn't be here,
but we are.

"So my only function in life

"is to try and keep you alive,
buddy,

"and to keep my precious ass
from being killed.

And then to go home
and forget about this."

SOLDIER:
The grunts, uh,

don't always do what the captain
says, you know.

We got, uh-- the captain
will stay back,

he'll tell the platoon
or something

to go out so many
hundred meters, you know.

We don't do it.

We only go as far
as we get out of sight,

sit down, and come back in.

JOHN PILGER:
What happens to
an unpopular officer

out in the field?

Mostly unpopular officers,
from what I've heard,

if they, if they mess with
a grunt too much,

they get shot at.

NARRATOR:
It had always been
a part of war.

In Vietnam,
it was called "fragging,"

after the fragmentation grenades
most often used.

Beginning in
the summer of 1969,

as thousands of American troops
began going home,

the number of reports of the
murder or attempted murder

by enlisted men
of their superiors

increased alarmingly.

The Army would investigate
nearly 800 cases.

Most took place
far from the fighting,

usually the violent outcome
of arguments over race

or women or drugs

rather than the war itself.

But there were exceptions.

OKAMOTO:
It's a totally different army

than what we sent
to Vietnam in 1965.

And the new lieutenant comes in,
all gung-ho for body count.

He wants contact,
he goes crazy, and says,

"I want a volunteer for this."

(rapid gunfire)

That new gung-ho officer
was a clear and present danger

to the life and limb
of the grunts.

They'd have subtle hints,
like a little note saying,

"We're gonna kill your ass
if you keep this up."

Or instead
of a fragmentation grenade,

they may throw a smoke grenade
in an officer's hooch or bunker.

And if they didn't correct
their behavior and outlook,

yeah, they would frag them.

I saw it happen in a very, uh,
strange way.

We were in a base and a Marine
started running towards me.

I didn't realize that what he...

what he was doing back
in the dark over there

was actually
throw a hand grenade

underneath the space
that is underneath a hooch.

(explosion)

And when it exploded,
I went, "Holy shit."

And I knew right away
what he had done.

And he was
an African-American Marine.

African-Americans were treated

with disrespect
by their superiors.

This was not uncommon.

So in a ways,
as bad as this sounds,

maybe that guy
had it coming to him.

I don't know.

In Paris, the 29th session
of the so-called peace talks

took place.

There was no progress.

In Vietnam, it was announced
that 139 Americans

lost their lives last week,

bringing total deaths
in our longest war...

NARRATOR:
The four-way
peace talks in Paris

continued to go nowhere.

To break the logjam,
Nixon directed Henry Kissinger

to begin secret talks,

the first in a series
of clandestine meetings

with the North Vietnamese alone.

They first met
in an apartment building

on the Rue de Rivoli.

The Viet Cong and the
South Vietnamese government

were not included.

Hanoi remained immovable.

They would not even admit they
had troops in South Vietnam,

let alone discuss
withdrawing them.

Now Kissinger warned

that if there were no change
in their position by November 1,

the one-year anniversary

of President Johnson's
bombing halt,

President Nixon

would "consider steps
of grave consequence."

September 2, 1969,

was the 24th anniversary

of Ho Chi Minh's declaration
of Vietnamese independence

in Hanoi's Ba Dinh Square.

At 9:45 that morning, Ho died.

He was said to be 79,
but like so much about him,

the precise date of his birth
was shrouded in mystery.

He had been "Uncle Ho"
for decades,

the living embodiment of the
struggle against the Japanese,

the French,
the Saigon government,

and then the Americans.

♪

In a speech
to the National Assembly,

Le Duan, the First Secretary
of the Communist Party,

who had been the architect

of North Vietnamese
military policy

for a decade,

promised to fulfill
what he said was Ho's vision:

the reunification of the country
on communist terms.

Nothing had changed.

ROBERT FRISHMAN:
Hanoi has given
the false impression

that all is wine and roses
and it isn't so.

NARRATOR:
The same day Ho Chi Minh died,

an unusual press conference
was held

at the Bethesda Naval
Medical Center.

Two ailing prisoners of war,

Robert Frishman
and Douglas Hegdahl,

who had recently been released
by the North Vietnamese,

spoke in public
for the first time

about the severe treatment

they and their fellow prisoners
had received.

I don't think
solitary confinement,

forced statements, living in
a cage for three years,

being put in straps, not being
allowed to sleep or eat,

removal of fingernails,
being hung from a ceiling,

having an infected arm
which was almost lost,

not receiving medical care,

being dragged along the ground
with a broken leg,

or not allowing exchange of mail
to prisoners of war

are humane.

NARRATOR:
Douglas Hegdahl was quiet,
self-effacing,

and so apparently clueless,

his North Vietnamese guards

had called him
the "stupid one."

But once released,

he was a gold mine
of information.

He had memorized the names
of more than 200 prisoners

to the tune of
"Old McDonald Had a Farm."

Thanks to him,
scores of American families

would find out
for the first time

that their sons and husbands
and fathers were still alive.

Within a few days
of the press conference,

Hanoi's treatment of the
prisoners began to improve.

"A lot less brutality,"
one captive remembered,

"and larger bowls of rice."

(explosion)

(men yelling)

(rapid gunfire)

DEVALLIER:
All right, who's wounded?

All right, give me some cover!

RICHARD THRELKELD:
Devallier is the lone medic
in the platoon.

He's scared,

scared from the moment
he gets out of the chopper

to the moment
it picks him up.

Scared that someday
he's going to get killed

picking up a wounded buddy.

(rapid gunfire, men yelling)

WAYNE SMITH:
I was the replacement

for a medic
who had been killed.

First time out, we were assigned
to do a patrol.

MAN:
Remember to stop the bleeding!

SMITH:
And we stumbled actually
into an ambush.

(explosion)

And it was incredibly
terrifying.

Guys were screaming and yelling.

There was shooting everywhere.

That first firefight,
I remember praying to God,

if He got me through this
that I would make a difference.

That I really would make
a difference.

MEDIC:
Sometimes their lives depend
on you, I mean;

you hold it in your hands,
as a medic.

It's just hard to say
but right then,

you hold life and death
in your hand.

NARRATOR:
In Vietnam,
medics and navy corpsmen

accompanied infantry units
on patrols,

search and destroy missions,

and large-scale
combat operations.

Nearly 2,000
would lose their lives.

(helicopter whirring)

Unlike in previous wars,

many medics in Vietnam chose
to carry weapons,

and when the shooting started,

were willing to use them
to protect themselves

and their wounded comrades.

SMITH:
I carried an M16,

but I did not know
if I could kill.

Part of being a medic
was to save lives.

I wondered, if the scenario
presented itself, would I?

I did participate
in shooting at the enemy.

We killed a lot of people.

I feel that responsibility.

I feel blood on my hands.

When you kill someone
for your country,

all things change.

("Come Ye" by Nina Simone
playing)

♪ Come ye

♪ Ye who would have peace...

SAM BROWN:
We believed it's possible

to create a substantial
majority in this country

and that's what we're about
in the long run.

In November,
we'll be back again,

in December,
we'll be back again.

And we intend to build
the movement,

which will make it imperative

that the United States
withdraw from Vietnam.

REPORTER:
The organizers
of the moratorium do not aim

at confrontation
or scuffles with the police.

Instead, they want to involve
the most people possible

in some gesture of protest,
however modest,

so as to show the administration
that a large bloc of Americans

care not about winning
or losing the war,

but only about ending it.

♪ Ye who have no fear

Thank you.

NIXON:
Now, I understand

that there has been
and continues to be

opposition to the war
in Vietnam on the campuses

and also in the nation.

Uh, we expect it.

However, under no circumstances

will I be affected whatever
by it.

NARRATOR:
Hoping to undercut support
for the moratorium,

Nixon canceled the draft calls

for the months
of November and December 1969.

And he instituted
a random lottery system

based on the date
of a young man's birth,

intended
to treat rich and poor alike

and do away
with unfair deferments.

It was good policy and
a brilliant political maneuver.

(siren wails)

On the line,
brothers and sisters.

On the line now.

("Subterranean Homesick Blues"
by Bob Dylan playing)

NARRATOR:
As people across
the country organized

for the peaceful moratorium,

members of a radical faction

of the Students
for a Democratic Society--

the "Weathermen"--

took more direct action.

♪ The man in a trench coat

NARRATOR:
Less interested
in ending the war

than in sparking
a violent revolution,

they staged what they called
four "Days of Rage" in Chicago.

DYLAN:
♪ You better duck
down the alleyway ♪

MAN:
We no longer simply resist
the pigs.

We no longer trap ourselves

so that
the only possible motion

is in response to pig attacks.

We have gone on the offensive.

It is we who call the shots now.

NARRATOR:
"Kill all the rich people,"

one of their leaders said.

"Break up
their cars and apartments.

"Bring the revolution home.

"Kill your parents.

That's really where it's at."

MAN:
Weathermen takes its name
from a line

in a Bob Dylan song which says,

"You don't need a weatherman

to know the way
the wind blows."

DYLAN:
♪ Wash the plain clothes

♪ You don't need a weatherman

♪ To know which way
the wind blows ♪

NARRATOR:
The Weathermen assumed

thousands would rally
to their cause.

Only 600 did.

They blew up a statue
honoring slain policemen,

ran through the streets
wielding chains and pipes,

smashing windows
and windshields

and charging police barriers.

Six were shot.

250 were jailed.

75 policemen were injured;

a city attorney
was paralyzed for life.

(siren wails)

The Black Panthers
denounced the Weathermen

as "anarchistic,
opportunistic...

Custeristic."

BILL ZIMMERMAN:
Probably 1969 was the year

in which most of us
were more alienated

and felt
more like revolutionaries.

And it led
to a lot of crazy responses.

I wanted the country to undergo
a radical transformation,

a redistribution
of wealth and power.

But to try to bring that about

through armed struggle
in the United States

was insane.

These were all
infantile fantasies

that people came to
out of the frustration

of not having
a workable strategy

for ending the war.

REPORTER:
What do you think
people ought to do, governor,

who are genuinely opposed
to the war

but not in favor
of the Viet Cong?

Well, I think that we have
had... experiences before

of people who have been
opposed to wars,

and I think they deal through
their own representatives,

and it's dealt with
in government channels.

But once the killing starts,

the very difficult thing then
is,

how do you register
these protests

without lending comfort
and aid to the enemy,

without strengthening
his resistance

and his will to fight

and thus
killing more of our men?

And most Americans in the past
have always respected it.

You see, the people
in this country

aren't fighting
a Vietnam War.

The government's fighting it.

Well, the government is, uh,

the government
is the people, supposedly,
No.

but in this instance, it is not.
Not anymore, it's not.

No, I agree with you,
it is not.

Not in this situation,
it's not.

Shouldn't I
let my government know

that I think they're crazy?

I think they are insane, really.

This is an insane thing
we're doing.

As a matter of fact,

Nixon said
he will not listen to us

and that he will not
be dictated to

from the people in the streets.

The people in the streets
are me.

(chanting "peace now")

NARRATOR:
The moratorium on October 15,

held all across the country,

was the largest outpouring
of public dissent

in American history.

("Blackbird"
by the Beatles playing)

♪ Blackbird singing
in the dead of night ♪

♪ Take these broken wings
and learn to fly ♪

♪ All your life

♪ You were only waiting
for this moment to arise ♪

NARRATOR:
It was peaceful, middle-class,

carefully focused
on ending the war.

"It's nice," one marcher said,

"to go to a demonstration

without having to swear
allegiance to Chairman Mao."

♪ All your life

FRANK McGEE:
Surely this is a day
unique in our history.

Never have
so many of our people publicly

and collectively
manifested opposition

to this country's involvement
in a war.

It is unlikely
we will remain unchanged.

Hundreds and hundreds
of thousands

in cities from New York,
with its eight million people,

to Dubois, Wyoming,
with its 800 people,

have sought to impress
upon the president

their opposition to the war.

(bell rings)

CAROL CROCKER:
The first large protest march
I went to was in Baltimore.

I'd never been with that many
people at one time.

Just the energy of the crowd
itself was tremendous.

I wondered
if everybody was in it

for the right reasons.

I wasn't there to drink
or smoke pot.

Not in those situations.

These, to me,
were serious business.

This was the business
of living life.

This was not a party.

I didn't just want
to be with the crowd.

I didn't just want
to make noise.

I wanted to make a difference.

And I in no way
wanted to dishonor my brother.

♪ For this moment to arrive

QUINN:
For most
of the government today,

it was business as usual.

But at noon
on the Capitol steps,

a thousand young
congressional staff employees

stood in silence
for 45 minutes.

♪ Blackbird singing
in the dead of night ♪

NARRATOR:
The children of several of
the president's closest aides

and cabinet members

took part
in the national moratorium.

Vice President Agnew's
14-year-old daughter

wanted to march,

but he wouldn't let her.

Coretta Scott King,

the widow
of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,

led thousands
of silent demonstrators

streaming past the White House,
where Nixon sat alone,

writing notes to himself
on a yellow pad.

"Don't get rattled.
Don't waver.

Don't react."

On November 3,

the president sought
to seize back the initiative.

Good evening,
my fellow Americans.

NARRATOR:
He went on national television
and called for patience

and asked Americans
to rally behind him.

NIXON:
To you,

the great silent majority
of my fellow Americans,

I ask for your support.

I pledged in my campaign
for the presidency

to end the war

in a way
that we could win the peace.

The more support I can have
from the American people,

the sooner that pledge
can be redeemed;

for the more divided we are
at home,

the less likely the enemy
is to negotiate at Paris.

("Okie From Muskogee"
by Merle Haggard playing)

Let us be united for peace.

♪ We don't smoke marijuana
in Muskogee ♪

NARRATOR:
The speech was a triumph.

Nixon's approval rate
soared to 68%.

MAN:
All that's in the news

is the fact that
the moratoriums are meeting,

that our country's sick...

sick of this and sick of that.

It's young people are all
the ones that are standing up.

And there is a silent majority,
which is no longer silent.

We're the people
who are wanting to show

that man deserves freedom
no matter where he is.

♪ A place where even squares
can have a ball ♪

Many brave men died in
this country to make it free...

I believe that.

and let you...
and let you have everything.

SPIRO AGNEW:
Senator Fulbright
said some months ago

that if the Vietnam War
went on much longer,

the best of our young people
would be in Canada.

Indeed, as for these deserters,

malcontents, radicals,
incendiaries,

the civil
and the uncivil disobedience

among our young,

SDS, PLP,

Weatherman one, Weatherman two,

the Revolutionary
Action Movement,

Panthers, lions, hippies,

yippies, tigers alike.

I'd rather swap
the whole damn zoo

for a single platoon
of the kind of young Americans

I saw in Vietnam.

(applause)

NARRATOR:
"We've got the liberal bastards
on the run now,"

Nixon told his aides,

"and we're going to keep them
on the run."

("My Son" by Jan Howard playing)

♪ My son, my son

JAN HOWARD:
My doorbell rang,

and it was this guy
standing there,

and he said, "Ms. Howard,
we're marching in Memphis

in protest of the Vietnam War."

I said, "Really?"

He said, "And we figured
in view of what happened..."

I said, "Yeah, my son's death."

He said, "Well, we thought
you'd like to join us."

I said,
"One of the reasons he died

"was so you have the right.

"In this country,
you have a right.

"Go right ahead and demonstrate.

Have at it."

I said, "But no,
I won't be joining you."

I said, "But I'll tell you what.

"If you ever
ring my doorbell again,

I will blow your damn head off
with a .357 Magnum."

TIM O'BRIEN:
Well, I was stationed in Vietnam

at a province
called Quang Ngai.

Even back during the time
of the French,

it was a very heavily
Viet Minh area,

and, when I arrived,
heavily Viet Cong.

NARRATOR:
No province suffered more during
the American war

than the coastal province
of Quang Ngai.

(artillery fire)

More than 70% of its villages
had been shelled by Navy ships,

bombed, bulldozed,
or burned to the ground,

and more than 40% of its people

had been forced
into refugee camps

before Tim O'Brien
from Worthington, Minnesota,

got there in 1969.

O'BRIEN:
It was a province
that was viewed

much as I guess
many Americans might view,

you know,
sort of redneck America.

Sort of country bumpkins.

And they may have been
country bumpkins,

but they were
fiercely independent.

NARRATOR:
Private O'Brien served
in Alpha Company,

3rd Platoon, 5th Battalion,
23rd Americal Division,

headquartered
at a landing zone called Gator,

"30 or 40 acres
of almost-America,"

O'Brien remembered,

with hot showers and cold beer.

O'BRIEN:
There was no sense of mission.

There was no sense
of daily purpose.

We didn't know
why we were in a village

or what we were supposed
to accomplish.

So we'd kick around
jugs of rice

and search houses
and frisk people,

and not knowing
what we were looking for

and rarely finding anything.

And somebody might die,

one of our guys,
and somebody might not.

Then we'd come back to
the same village a week later

or two weeks later,
do it all over again.

It was like chasing ghosts.

(helicopter blades whirring)

NARRATOR:
An American APC

accidentally crushed one man
from O'Brien's company.

An enemy grenade skittered off
O'Brien's helmet and exploded,

wounding a G.I. standing
a few feet away.

But mines and booby traps
were the greatest menace.

O'BRIEN:
Somewhere around 80%
of our casualties

came from land mines
of all sorts.

In Vietnam, for me,
just to get up in the morning

and look out at the land
and think,

"In a few minutes
I'll be walking out there,

"and will my corpse
be there or there?

Will I lose a leg out there?"

I'd always thought of courage
as charging enemy bunkers

or standing up under fire.

But just to walk
through Quang Ngai,

day after day,
from village to village,

and through the paddies
and up into the mountains,

just to make your legs move
was an act of courage

that if, say,
you were living in Sioux City,

it wouldn't be courageous

to walk to the grocery store
or down Main Street,

you know, just to have
your legs go back and forth.

But in Vietnam, for me,

just to walk felt
incredibly brave.

I would sometimes look
at my legs as I walked,

thinking, "How am I doing this?"

BAO NINH:

NARRATOR:
Bao Ninh was 17

when he was drafted
into the North Vietnamese Army

to fight the Americans,

just as his father
had fought the French.

His war would take place
in the Central Highlands

of South Vietnam.

It was American firepower

that Bao Ninh and his fellow
soldiers feared the most.

(explosion)

BAO NINH:

(explosion)

(birds chirping, squawking)

NARRATOR:
Back in the spring,

Tim O'Brien's outfit had been
sent into an area of operations

the Americans called
"Pinkville,"

clusters of villages

that included a hamlet
they called My Lai.

O'BRIEN:
We hated going there.

When we'd get the word,
"You're headed for Pinkville,"

one guy would say to another,
"Somebody's gonna die,"

or, "Somebody's
gonna lose a leg."

We were terrified of the place.

It was littered
with land mines.

The villagers were...

The expressions on their faces,

including the children
of, say, six or five years old,

had a mixture of hostility
and terror.

I can't say
many of the villagers

came with open arms to us,

but this place was special.

And I remember talking
to fellow soldiers,

thinking,
"What is it with this place?"

And then about three-quarters
of the way

through my tour in Vietnam,

the story of the My Lai Massacre
broke in the States.

NARRATOR:
On November 12, 1969,

the Dispatch News Service
in Washington

moved a story by investigative
journalist Seymour Hersh.

It was soon followed
by the publication

of graphic photos taken by Army
photographer Ronald Haeberle.

The story and the pictures
stunned the country.

HUNTLEY:
Charges have been made

that troops
of the Americal Division

killed as many as
567 South Vietnamese civilians

during a sweep in March 1968.

NARRATOR:
20 months earlier,

on the morning
of March 16, 1968,

105 men from a rifle company

belonging
to the Americal Division,

and led
by Captain Ernest Medina

and Lieutenant William Calley,

had been ordered to helicopter
into the village of My Lai 4.

Since arriving in Vietnam,
they had lost 28 men

to mines and booby traps
and unseen snipers.

Two days earlier, a popular
squad leader had been killed.

They had been told
a unit of main-force Viet Cong

was waiting for them,

and they were eager
for revenge.

But they received
no hostile fire,

encountered no enemy soldiers.

Instead,
over the next four hours,

Medina, Calley,
and their men murdered

407 defenseless old men,
women, children, and infants.

Many of the women and girls
were raped

before they were shot.

There would have been
still more slaughter

had a helicopter pilot named
Hugh Thompson, Jr., not landed

between the men and some
of their intended targets

and ordered his crew to open
fire on their fellow Americans

if they did not stop
shooting civilians.

At the same time,
just a mile or so away,

another company murdered
97 more villagers.

O'BRIEN:
And suddenly it was like
a window shade going up,

and then there's light,

and we understood
what had engendered

this horror in these kids' faces

and fear and the...
and the hatred.

Hundred and some American
soldiers in four hours or so

butchering innocent people,

in all kinds of ways--
machine-gunning them

and throwing them in wells
and scalping them

and killing them in ditches

and taking a lunch break
and then doing it some more.

Systematic homicide.

MIKE WALLACE:
What kind of people?

Men, women, children?

PAUL MEADLO:
Men, women, children.

WALLACE: Babies?
MEADLO: Babies.

Uh, Lieutenant Calley
came over and said,

"You know what to do with them,
don't you?"

And, uh, I said, "Yes."

So l took it for granted that
he just wanted us to watch them.

And he left and came back

about ten or...
ten or 15 minutes later,

and said, "How come you ain't,
uh, killed them yet?"

You killed how many
at that time?

Well, I fired my automatic,
so, uh...

you can't, uh...
you just spray the area on them,

so you really can't know
how many you killed

because it comes out
so doggone fast.

So I, I might've killed
about, uh, ten or 15 of them.

Men, women,
and children?

Men, women, and children.

And babies?
And babies.

Why did I do it?

Because I felt like
I was ordered to do it.

And it seemed like, uh...

Well, at the time, I felt like
I was doing the right thing.

I really did.

Because, uh, like I said,
I lost buddies,

I lost... I lost a good...

damn good buddy--
Bobby Wilson--

and it was on my conscience,
and it was on...

So after I done it, I felt good.

But later on that day,
it was getting to me.

It's so hard, I think,
for a good many Americans

to understand
that young, capable,

brave American boys

could line up

old men, women,
children, and babies

and shoot them down
in cold blood.

How do you explain that?

I wouldn't know.

(low, distant chatter)

NARRATOR:
The killing of civilians
has happened in every war.

In Vietnam,
it was not policy or routine,

but it was not
an aberration, either.

Still, the scale
and deliberateness and intimacy

of what happened at My Lai

was different.

SHEEHAN:
It was different

because they were killing
Vietnamese point-blank

with rifles and grenades.

They were murdering them
directly.

They weren't doing it
with bombs and artillery.

If they'd been doing it
with bombs and artillery,

nobody would have said a word,

because it was going on
all the time.

NARRATOR:
Not every soldier

participated in the killings
that day.

Some led villagers away
to safety.

But a failure
of military leadership

at nearly every level had
created the conditions

that made the massacre possible.

The My Lai story might have
shocked the American public,

but it was not news
to the Army.

It had occurred
almost two years before,

just after the Tet Offensive.

Hugh Thompson,
the helicopter pilot

who had tried
to stop the massacre,

reported what he had seen,

but no one
in the chain of command

was willing to act.

The slaughter was covered up.

Later, an ex-corporal
named Ronald Ridenhour,

who had heard
about what had happened

from several men
who had been there,

wrote letters to the
president of the United States,

the secretary of defense,

and more than two dozen other
high-ranking officials.

STAN ATKINSON:
Personally, what
decision-making process

did you go through before
you decided to take your action?

I guess I just wrestled
with my own conscience

to try to decide
what action to take.

I felt that I had
to take some action.

I had to do something.

I couldn't just...

just rest with this knowledge
for the rest of my life

that I couldn't... I couldn't
live with myself if I did.

NARRATOR:
President Nixon's
first reaction

was to investigate those
who reported the slaughter.

"It's those dirty rotten Jews
from New York

who are behind it,"

he told an aide.

Eventually, Lieutenant General
William R. Peers,

a veteran of 30 months as
a troop commander in Vietnam,

was assigned to head a panel

to look into
what had really happened.

Peers found that 30 persons,

including
the division commander,

General Samuel W. Koster,

had either committed atrocities

or had conspired
to cover them up.

Peers had wanted to call My Lai
a "massacre."

His superiors
made him use the phrase,

"a tragedy
of major proportions."

In the end, the Army indicted
25 officers and men,

including the platoon leader,
Lieutenant William Calley.

VALLELY:
Calley's a killer.

Calley's a murderer

and a... a sick person.

I'm not gonna be
in any, you know, uh,

propaganda movie for
the United States Marine Corps,

but we didn't have that guy.

We had individuals who, who...

who committed war crimes,
of course.

And, um, you know,
I wanted to kill them.

I sometimes wish
I did kill 'em.

But... I was afraid to kill 'em.

♪ Two, one, two, three, four

("Give Peace a Chance"
by The Plastic Ono Band plays)

(loud crowd chatter)

♪ Everybody's talking about...

ZIMMERMAN:
I never considered
the Vietnamese our enemy.

They had never done anything

to threaten the security
of the United States.

They were off
10,000 miles away,

minding their own business,

and we went there
to their country,

told them
what kind of government

we wanted them to have.

JAMES WILLBANKS:
Well, when I see
the war protesters,

I react on a couple of levels.

Intellectually, I certainly
understand their right

to the freedom of speech.

But I will tell you

that when I see them
waving NLF flags,

the enemy that I and my friends
had to fight,

and some of my friends
had to die fighting,

that doesn't sit very well
with me.

♪ All we are saying...

NARRATOR:
On November 15, 1969,

half a million citizens
turned out

against the war in Washington,
again.

♪ Everybody's talking
about revolution... ♪

NARRATOR:
This time, buses provided
an impenetrable wall

around the White House.

President Nixon claimed
he was too busy

watching football on television

to pay attention,

but he did suggest that
Army helicopters might be used

to blow out
the marchers' candles.

♪ All we are saying...

(car horns honking)

NARRATOR:
Hundreds of thousands
of others demonstrated

in San Francisco and New York.

(indistinct shouting)

(cheering and whistling,
indistinct shouting)

The most striking
antiwar protest

of this Thanksgiving Day

occurred not in this country,
but in Vietnam,

though its form was
uniquely American.

About 100 American soldiers

stationed at a hospital
in Pleiku

refused to eat their traditional
turkey dinner.

They described their fast as a
passive protest against the war.

("Born Under a Bad Sign" by
Booker T. and the M.G.'s plays)

The Army did what the Army does.

Every year, you know,
for Thanksgiving,

they make a big deal.

They're gonna bring in turkey,

they're gonna bring in
mashed potatoes,

and apple pie and whatever.

And by this point, I think,

a lot of us were very,
very cynical about the war

and what was going on.

But we weren't gonna make
a big deal about it.

We knew there were gonna be
TV people there.

And a couple of the organizers
were looking for people to talk.

They came to me, I said, "No."

I said, "Look, I'm gonna fast
and do my thing."

I said,
"But I, I really don't want

to be involved
with any media thing."

NARRATOR:
That Thanksgiving Day,
Lieutenant Furey was on duty

when one of her patients took
a sudden turn for the worse.

FUREY:
Some patients,
they just get into your heart.

And this kid,
I think he was 18.

His name was Timmy.

It was unlikely
he was gonna survive.

And I just got so angry.

I just lost it.

I remember walking out
of the O.R.,

I ripped off the gown,
and I ripped off the mask,

I walked outside, I said,
"Where are those reporters?"

I mean, you know, you don't
demonstrate against the war

in a war zone.

By that time, of course,
you, you had the attitude,

"What are they gonna do?

Send me to Vietnam?"

(loud, overlapping chatter
and shouting)

(indistinct chanting)

JOHN MUSGRAVE:
Let's just say that being
a Marine combat veteran

on a college campus
in 1969 and 1970--

it wasn't a real good thing
to be

if you wanted to get dates
and be popular.

When I came home,
it seemed like

I didn't have anything
to give to anybody else.

NARRATOR:
Marine Corporal John Musgrave
had very nearly died

in combat below the DMZ
in the autumn of 1967.

Wounded in the jaw
and shoulder,

his ribs shattered,
lung pierced, nerves cut,

he had spent 17 months
in Navy hospitals.

He was now studying
at Baker University

in Baldwin City, Kansas.

(indistinct chanting
and shouting)

But wherever he went,
the war was never far away.

MUSGRAVE:
And the peace movement,
for a while, got real nasty,

calling veterans baby killers.

It did more than piss us off.

It broke our hearts.

What were they thinking?

You don't turn your backs
on your warriors.

I didn't trust anybody anymore.

Just my family.

NARRATOR:
Musgrave was so hurt

by the way
some people treated him

that he volunteered
to return to Vietnam.

Because of his injuries,
the Marines turned him down,

and asked him
to help recruit men instead.

He did for a time,

but when students asked him
questions about the war

he couldn't answer,

he also began to read

about how and why
it was being fought.

MUSGRAVE:
I had friends in country
on a second tour,

and, you know, I, I was still...
considered myself a Marine.

and... and the more I read,

the less I found to be able
to defend our presence there.

So then, I, I just stopped
talking to everybody.

(dog barking)

NARRATOR:
Musgrave gradually felt as if
he were being torn in two.

And he was still haunted
by the memory of those Marines

who had died while he had lived.

MUSGRAVE:
I was dating my .45
in those years, you know.

Coming home at night
after drinking,

and pressing it up
against my temple,

or putting it under my chin,

wondering if this was gonna be
the night

I was gonna have the guts
to do it.

I'd had a round chambered,
and I'd taken the safety off.

Same kind of pistol
I carried in Vietnam.

And I thought, "I'm really gonna
do it tonight."

You know, like, "Whew, I'm
really gonna do it," you know.

And my dogs...
I'd let my dogs out.

I had two dogs.

And they jumped
on the front door

and scratched on the front door.

They wanted in.

And I put the safety
back on the pistol

and set it down
and went and let 'em in.

And they were so open
in their love for me

that I literally said out loud,

"Whoa, if I really want to do
this, I can do this tomorrow."

And I went back in the room,

and I put the pistol
in the drawer, and...

and I... I think
that was the closest I came.

I think maybe
I would have killed...

k-k-killed myself that night.

But something as simple

as my dogs wanting back in...

stopped that thought, you know.

I'm really glad
that it didn't happen.

But at the time,
it just made so much sense.

NARRATOR:
Richard Nixon's
troop withdrawals

finally turned Musgrave
against the war.

"If it ain't worth winning,"
he said,

"it ain't worth dying for."

His loyalty to the Marines

would not yet let him
openly say that,

but he told a campus
antiwar meeting

that they should stop acting
as if they didn't give a damn

about the men
who had been asked to fight,

and received
a standing ovation.

JACK TODD:
The turning point for me,
I think,

was one evening I spent
with my friend Sonny Walter,

who had been, uh... just been
discharged from the Army,

and had come home
and spent an evening

before I went in
pleading with me not to go.

He even offered
to drive me to Canada.

He was showing me some
horrible pictures of Vietnam

from his own service there.

I think everything
that happened after it

had its seeds in that evening.

("The Thrill is Gone"
by B.B. King playing)

NARRATOR:
While attending
the University of Nebraska,

Jack Todd had undergone
Marine officer training,

but bad knees
had forced him to drop out

and he believed
that exempted him

from having to take part
in a war

he had come to see as immoral.

He began work as a reporter
onThe Miami Herald.

But in the autumn of 1969
he received a draft notice

from the Army anyway.

KING:
♪ The thrill is gone

TODD:
So I went into my physical

and I showed them my discharge
from the Marine Corps

and I actually remember
a sergeant,

or whoever
I was talking to, saying,

"But, uh, you were discharged
from an officer program.

We're drafting you
as a private."

(electric buzzing)

NARRATOR:
In late November 1969,

Todd reported for basic training
at Fort Lewis, Washington.

KING:
♪ You know you done me wrong

TODD:
Morale just could
not have been worse.

And-and it seemed to include

even the sergeants
and the officers.

Nobody wanted to go.
Nobody wanted to go.

America just seemed to have
shifted from the Woodstock high

of the summer to this...

this sort of bitter
Nixonian low.

NARRATOR:
Jack Todd and another member
of his unit

began to talk at night
about what it meant

to be true to one's conscience.

("Farewell, Angelina"
by Bob Dylan playing)

Some 170,000 men

were granted
conscientious objector status

during the Vietnam era.

But because Jack Todd

questioned
the existence of God,

that avenue was closed to him.

There were really two choices.

It was go to jail
or go to Canada.

And, for me,
going to jail was just...

That one, I couldn't face.

So I went to Canada.

DYLAN:
♪ Farewell, Angelina

♪ The bells of the crown

TODD:
I remember
that last beautiful drive,

from Seattle to Vancouver,

all the towering Douglas firs
along the road.

And I remember,
after we crossed the border--

it was a breeze, they just
sort of waved us through--

and just looking in the
rearview mirror, thinking,

"Man, there goes my country.

I'll never see it again."

DYLAN:
♪ But farewell, Angelina

♪ The night is on fire

♪ And I must go

I get called a coward
all the time.

It took me a long time

not to feel
that what I had done

was-was cowardly,
because I still had

that military ingrained
feeling inside.

That was the bravest thing
I ever did.

It was
the bravest thing I ever did.

NARRATOR:
Jack Todd eventually found work
as a reporter,

which allowed him to gain
"landed immigrant status,"

a step toward
Canadian citizenship.

Only a quarter of the estimated
30,000 Americans

who crossed into Canada
managed to do so.

DYLAN:
♪ The sky is erupting

♪ And I must go
where it is quiet. ♪

NARRATOR:
At the same time,
some 30,000 Canadians

would volunteer to fight
in Vietnam.

(birds chirping in distance)

KUSHNER:
I thought about...

my parents and my siblings

and my wife and my little girl.

And one of the things
that bothered me, is that I...

I couldn't really remember what
they looked like after a while.

I remembered what
their pictures looked like.

And when I imaged them
in my mind's eye

I would image a picture,
a photograph.

REPORTER:
Valerie Kushner arrived
on the...

NARRATOR:
Hal Kushner's wife, Valerie,

had heard virtually nothing
of her husband

since his capture
by the Viet Cong in 1967,

and she had traveled
to the Far East

to try to improve
conditions for him.

I think my period
of greatest frustration

was just before and just after
the birth of our son.

He was born in April of 1968

and my husband was captured
in November of 1967.

So my husband does not yet
know of his birth.

DON FARMER:
With their father gone,
the Kushner children

rely heavily on their
mother and their grandparents.

Young Mike has never
seen his father,

but six-year-old
Toni-Jean remembers.

And the remembrances
of Major Kushner

are everywhere in their house.

Toni, however,
knows only that he's away,

that he's been captured,
that grandfather fills in

until Dad comes home.

The Kushners worry,
but they do not grieve.

Don Farmer,
ABC News, reporting.

(siren wailing in distance)

NARRATOR:
In February 1970,

in a house in an industrial
suburb of Paris,

Henry Kissinger
began a new series

of secret negotiations--
talks so secret

even the secretary of state
was not told about them.

His negotiating partner

would be Le Duan's close
political ally, Le Duc Tho,

a veteran of 40 years
of revolutionary warfare

and party intrigue--
shrewd, implacable,

and openly scornful
of Vietnamization.

If the United States
could not win

with half a million of its own
troops, he asked Kissinger,

"How can you succeed
when you let your puppet troops

do the fighting?"

The American admitted
he had no answer.

Despite the impasse in Paris,

Nixon's first year
had been a triumph.

He had withdrawn
115,000 troops from Vietnam.

American casualty figures
were down.

Reduced draft calls

and the president's
new lottery system

had blunted some opposition
to the war.

And the violent actions
of some revolutionaries

were tarnishing
the antiwar cause itself.

Between September 1969
and May 1970,

there would be
hundreds of bombings--

banks and courthouses,

induction centers
and ROTC buildings.

("Psychedelic Shack" by
The Temptations starts playing)

One police officer was killed.

Three would-be bombers

accidentally blew themselves up
in Greenwich Village.

TEMPTATIONS:
♪ Well, well

NANCY BIBERMAN:
The antiwar movement split
apart.

And there were people who felt
that the only way

we were ever gonna end the war
was by becoming more violent.

You know, that we had to match
violence with violence.

How that was gonna happen
wasn't spoken about openly.

But there was just
this undercurrent.

This is a plumbing pipe

completely full of gunpowder.

TEMPTATIONS:
♪ Music so high
you can't get over it ♪

NIXON:
My fellow Americans,

we live in an age of anarchy,

both abroad and at home.

We see mindless attacks
on all the great institutions,

which have been created
by free civilizations

in the last 500 years.

Even here in the United States,

great universities are being
systematically destroyed.

If, when the chips are down,

the world's
most powerful nation,

the United States of America,

acts like a pitiful,
helpless giant,

the forces of totalitarianism
and anarchy

will threaten free nations
and free institutions

throughout the world.

NARRATOR:
On April 30, 1970,

President Nixon
shocked the world

by announcing that he had sent
30,000 American troops

storming into Cambodia.

The previous month,
Prince Norodom Sihanouk

had been overthrown in a coup.

For years, he had allowed
the North Vietnamese

to keep sanctuaries
in his country,

but he had not protested

when American planes
bombed them.

The new president, Lon Nol,

was an anticommunist,
backed by the United States.

Nixon now felt he could do

what American generals had been
wanting to do for years--

pursue the enemy beyond
the borders of South Vietnam.

The 30,000 American troops

were joined by 50,000
ARVN soldiers.

The objective was to attack

North Vietnamese
base camps and supply lines

and to buy time
for the South Vietnamese Army

as it got ready to fight
on its own.

Nixon told the public

he had ordered an "incursion,"
not an "invasion,"

intended only to protect
American boys in South Vietnam

and in response to North
Vietnamese "aggression."

GILLAM:
I wasn't worried
about political conflict.

I was worried about,
"Am I gonna be alive

in the next ten minutes?"

We were on the Western edge
of the invasion.

We went as far
as anybody went in Cambodia.

(gunfire)

And it was a hot LZ.

I got holes shot in my backpack.

I was laying on my face

and they were shooting holes
in my backpack,

which means they missed my head
by maybe four inches.

I really didn't think I would
see the end of that week.

(gunfire)

(indistinct chatter on radio)

NARRATOR:
The sight of American troops
crossing the border

into Cambodia reignited
the antiwar movement.

Come on, let's go!

NARRATOR:
If the troops were coming home,

if the war was winding down,

why had Nixon decided
to widen it?

How could invading
another country

help bring peace
to Southeast Asia?

HUNTLEY:
The reaction on the campuses

was swift and predictable.

The students
and many of their teachers

were against the president.

Princeton students called
for a nationwide student strike.

Antiwar rallies were planned
at Harvard, MIT, Indiana,

Purdue Universities
and other colleges.

NARRATOR:
On Monday morning,
May 4, 1970,

some 2,000 students
gathered on the commons

at Kent State University
in Kent, Ohio.

Some were simply
moving from class to class.

Others planned to attend
a rally called to protest

Nixon's widening of the war

and the presence of the Ohio
National Guard on campus.

Governor James Rhodes
had called in the guardsmen

two days earlier

after a mob set the old wooden
ROTC building on fire

and then prevented
the fire department

from putting out the flames.

Rhodes had compared protestors
to Nazi brownshirts

and promised to use
"every weapon to eradicate

the worst sort of people
we harbor in America."

(bell clanging)

The guardsmen's weapons were
loaded with live ammunition,

though no one in the crowd
knew it.

MAN:
Why do you have to have a gun?!
I don't understand!

MAN (on megaphone):
Leave this area immediately!

NARRATOR:
The students were ordered
to disperse.

They stood their ground.

(shouting)

Tear gas scattered some
of them.

(shouting)

The guardsmen seemed
to fall back.

But then members of Troop G
wheeled around and opened fire

on students gathered in
and around a parking lot.

(distorted gunshots echoing)

PROTESTOR:
Somebody call for an ambulance!

(others shouting)

There's people dying down here!
Get an ambulance up here!

(indistinct shouting)

NARRATOR:
67 rounds in 13 seconds

killed two young women
and two young men...

Including
an ROTC scholarship student

who had simply been
an onlooker.

SAM HYNES:
That dead child on the ground

was one of ours.

If we could kill
our own students,

uh, what had happened
to our country?

NARRATOR:
Nine more students
were wounded,

one of whom
was permanently paralyzed.

Several hundred angry,
grieving students sat down

and demanded to know
why the guardsmen

had fired on their friends.

MAN:
Sir, you've got
a couple hundred students...

NARRATOR:
An officer ordered them

to "disperse
or we will shoot again."

How long will you give us?
You've got five minutes.

GLENN FRANK:
Please listen to me right now!

NARRATOR:
Only the anguished pleas

of geology professor Glenn Frank
averted further tragedy.

STUDENT:
Talk, Dr. Frank. Talk.

(indistinct voices)

MIKE HEANEY:
That just symbolized for me

what this war was doing
to our culture.

These were kids on both sides,

young National Guard boys

who had very little training
and probably scared,

and not well led

and-and young men and women
on the other side

protesting the war out there

for, you know,
idealistic reasons.

And look at what happens

when we let things get as bad
as they got.

("Woodstock" by Joni Mitchell
playing)

NARRATOR:
According to one national poll,

58% of the American people

thought the killings justified.

The parents
of the dead ROTC student

received a flood of hate mail,

suggesting that they should be
grateful their boy was dead

since he'd been
"just another communist."

(man speaking indistinctly
over megaphone)

During the days that followed,
all across the country,

more than four million
college students

demonstrated against the war

and what had happened
at Kent State.

MITCHELL:
♪ I came upon a child of God

♪ He was walking
along the road ♪

♪ And I asked him

♪ Where are you going?

♪ And this he told me

NARRATOR:
448 campuses closed down,

and the National Guard
was called out in 16 states.

MITCHELL:
♪ Band

♪ I'm gonna camp out

NARRATOR:
At Jackson State University
in Mississippi,

state police opened fire
on a dormitory.

Two students died.

12 more were wounded.

Jackson State,
those were my people.

Those were black kids.

And they died.

MITCHELL:
♪ Back to the garden

NARRATOR:
Army private Tim O'Brien

was now back home in Minnesota.

O'BRIEN:
There was a huge march

after the Kent State shootings
in St. Paul,

and I joined the march.

I just wanted to put my body
amidst these 100,000 people,

that word "no" being uttered
by my body, if not by my mouth,

by just making that march.

That same march
I was doing in Vietnam

that seemed senseless
and purposeless

and without direction,

here it felt sensible
and purposeful

and with direction,
heading for that state capital

to say no.

And, boy, did it feel good.

(chanting "Peace now")

NARRATOR:
Marine Corporal Bill Ehrhart

was a student
at Swarthmore College

near his hometown
in eastern Pennsylvania.

EHRHART:
And here's
this very famous photograph.

And I just looked
at this thing.

And I came unglued.

I don't know
how long I sat down on the curb,

and I don't know
if I was there for 15 minutes

or an hour and a half.

Just had a breakdown.

Just crying,
sobbing uncontrollably.

All I could think was,
"It's not enough to send us

"halfway around
the world to die.

"Now they're killing us in
the streets of our own country.

I have to do something."

And I finally...

whenever
I finally cried myself out,

I got up and I joined
the antiwar movement.

MUSGRAVE:
I remember when the kids were
killed at Kent State,

and I thought,

"My God, we're killing
our own children now.

We've really gone mad."

And I wasn't...

That's when I was hiding
from things.

I wasn't
in anybody's movement then.

I was just drinking.

But that was one of the things
that told me

America needed a wake-up call.

("Ohio" by Crosby, Stills,
Nash & Young playing)

♪ Tin soldiers
and Nixon's coming ♪

♪ We're finally on our own

♪ This summer
I hear the drumming ♪

♪ Four dead in Ohio

♪ Got to get down to it

♪ Soldiers are cutting us down

♪ Should have been done
long ago ♪

♪ What if you knew her

♪ And found her dead
on the ground? ♪

♪ How can you run
when you know? ♪

♪

♪ La la-la-la,
la la la la ♪

♪ La la-la-la,
la la la ♪

♪ La la-la-la,
la la la la ♪

♪ La la-la-la,
la la la ♪

♪ Got to get down to it

♪ Soldiers are cutting us down

♪ Should have been done
long ago ♪

♪ What if you knew her

♪ And found her dead
on the ground? ♪

♪ How can you run
when you know? ♪

♪

♪ Tin soldiers
and Nixon's coming ♪

♪ We're finally on our own

♪ This summer
I hear the drumming ♪

♪ Four dead in Ohio

♪ Four dead in Ohio
♪ Four

♪ Four dead in Ohio

♪ Four
♪ Four dead in Ohio

♪ How could they?
♪ Four dead in Ohio

♪ How many more?
♪ Four dead in Ohio

♪ Why?
♪ Four dead in...

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THE PEW CHARITABLE TRUSTS,

THE JOHN S. AND JAMES L.
KNIGHT FOUNDATION,

THE ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION,

THE ARTHUR VINING DAVIS
FOUNDATIONS,

THE FORD FOUNDATION JUSTFILMS,

BY THE CORPORATION

FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING,

AND BY VIEWERS LIKE YOU.

THANK YOU.