1 00:00:06,548 --> 00:00:08,846 ...you got through! Did you pass Chee on the road? 2 00:00:08,967 --> 00:00:10,310 No. Where are the children? 3 00:00:10,427 --> 00:00:12,020 Kansas found a shelter for them. 4 00:00:12,137 --> 00:00:13,855 Get down, everybody! 5 00:00:16,892 --> 00:00:19,645 My older sister and I one time 6 00:00:19,770 --> 00:00:23,820 uh, we're watching the movie So Proudly We Hail on TV. 7 00:00:23,941 --> 00:00:25,341 Listen, we still have a few minutes! 8 00:00:25,442 --> 00:00:27,194 That's a story about the nurses 9 00:00:27,319 --> 00:00:32,120 who were trapped on Bataan and Corregidor during World War II. 10 00:00:34,326 --> 00:00:37,956 It was the first, probably, time in my life that... 11 00:00:38,080 --> 00:00:39,878 I, uh... 12 00:00:39,998 --> 00:00:44,174 I realized that women could do brave and courageous things. 13 00:00:44,294 --> 00:00:46,797 It wasn't just something men could do. 14 00:00:52,511 --> 00:00:55,355 Second Lieutenant Joan Furey 15 00:00:55,472 --> 00:01:00,273 had wanted to be a nurse ever since she was a small child. 16 00:01:00,394 --> 00:01:02,021 She attended nursing school, 17 00:01:02,145 --> 00:01:05,445 and, when a high school classmate was killed during Tet, 18 00:01:05,566 --> 00:01:09,821 joined the Army to do what she could for the wounded. 19 00:01:11,280 --> 00:01:14,955 Furey was assigned to the 71st Evacuation Hospital 20 00:01:15,075 --> 00:01:18,705 at Pleiku, in the heart of the Central Highlands. 21 00:01:20,330 --> 00:01:23,880 Nothing had prepared her for what she saw and did 22 00:01:24,001 --> 00:01:26,299 over the next 12 months. 23 00:01:30,382 --> 00:01:32,510 Wounded men were choppered in 24 00:01:32,676 --> 00:01:35,304 at all times of the day and night. 25 00:01:35,429 --> 00:01:38,353 So were Viet Cong and NVA soldiers, 26 00:01:38,515 --> 00:01:41,439 who sometimes spat at the medical personnel 27 00:01:41,560 --> 00:01:45,281 trying to save their limbs or lives. 28 00:01:48,567 --> 00:01:51,070 Whenever the hospital came under mortar fire, 29 00:01:51,194 --> 00:01:54,789 Furey stayed with the most seriously wounded men 30 00:01:54,906 --> 00:01:56,123 in the ICU. 31 00:01:58,076 --> 00:01:59,498 We had flak vests and helmets, 32 00:01:59,620 --> 00:02:01,293 and we crawled around on the floor. 33 00:02:02,914 --> 00:02:04,040 I mean, you really, 34 00:02:04,207 --> 00:02:06,050 you just could not leave them unattended. 35 00:02:07,711 --> 00:02:10,931 We just kind of had to swallow your own fear. 36 00:02:12,507 --> 00:02:15,226 A triage officer made the grim decisions 37 00:02:15,344 --> 00:02:17,392 as to who might be saved 38 00:02:17,512 --> 00:02:20,891 and those for whom there was no hope. 39 00:02:21,016 --> 00:02:23,940 One of the things that initially was so difficult 40 00:02:24,061 --> 00:02:26,905 was what we called "expected" patients. 41 00:02:27,022 --> 00:02:29,571 And these were patients that would be brought in 42 00:02:29,733 --> 00:02:32,156 from the battlefield and it was determined 43 00:02:32,277 --> 00:02:34,871 they had no chance to survive. 44 00:02:34,988 --> 00:02:37,582 But they weren't dead yet. 45 00:02:38,742 --> 00:02:40,039 They brought in a... 46 00:02:40,160 --> 00:02:43,505 a young soldier who had a head injury, 47 00:02:43,622 --> 00:02:47,092 and they said, "He's expected." 48 00:02:47,209 --> 00:02:49,428 I kind of freaked out, uh, 49 00:02:49,586 --> 00:02:52,590 and I decided that, no, they were wrong, 50 00:02:52,756 --> 00:02:55,760 and I was gonna take care of this patient. 51 00:02:55,926 --> 00:02:58,395 I told the corpsman to get me blood. 52 00:02:58,512 --> 00:03:00,139 And he's saying, "Well, Lieutenant, 53 00:03:00,263 --> 00:03:01,936 the patient is expected." 54 00:03:02,099 --> 00:03:03,942 I said, "Get me blood." 55 00:03:04,101 --> 00:03:07,025 So, I take off the dressing, and... 56 00:03:07,145 --> 00:03:10,649 the whole back of his head had been gone. 57 00:03:10,774 --> 00:03:12,276 When that happened, 58 00:03:12,442 --> 00:03:15,616 all the blood I had been giving him came out. 59 00:03:15,779 --> 00:03:20,000 A friend of mine who came over just walked me out of there. 60 00:03:20,117 --> 00:03:23,667 And a few minutes later, you walk right back in... 61 00:03:25,664 --> 00:03:27,632 ...and you get back to doing it. 62 00:03:51,314 --> 00:03:53,316 # Been dazed and confused # 63 00:03:53,442 --> 00:03:55,319 # For so long, it's not true... # 64 00:03:55,485 --> 00:03:58,329 Richard Nixon had taken office as president 65 00:03:58,488 --> 00:04:01,412 in January of 1969, 66 00:04:01,533 --> 00:04:03,752 pledged to restore law and order 67 00:04:03,869 --> 00:04:06,088 and end the war with honor. 68 00:04:06,204 --> 00:04:08,332 Things were calmer at home, 69 00:04:08,498 --> 00:04:11,342 but in Vietnam, peace was no closer. 70 00:04:15,130 --> 00:04:18,509 American soldiers still died pursuing guerrillas 71 00:04:18,633 --> 00:04:21,432 who appeared and disappeared like phantoms. 72 00:04:22,679 --> 00:04:25,603 Americans still died capturing hills 73 00:04:25,724 --> 00:04:29,024 only to give them up and have to take them back again. 74 00:04:29,144 --> 00:04:33,274 Men and materiel were still flowing into the south 75 00:04:33,398 --> 00:04:36,902 despite the controversial bombing of Cambodia. 76 00:04:37,027 --> 00:04:40,622 Through it all, Hanoi remained immovable. 77 00:04:40,739 --> 00:04:43,709 The communists insisted there could be no peace 78 00:04:43,867 --> 00:04:47,542 until the Saigon government was replaced 79 00:04:47,704 --> 00:04:52,050 and the United States withdrew from Vietnam. 80 00:04:52,209 --> 00:04:56,089 Meanwhile, the American public was losing patience. 81 00:05:07,140 --> 00:05:11,941 Privately, Nixon knew that military victory was impossible, 82 00:05:12,062 --> 00:05:13,564 that things would have to be settled 83 00:05:13,730 --> 00:05:16,904 at the bargaining table in Paris. 84 00:05:17,025 --> 00:05:18,322 He had to find a way 85 00:05:18,443 --> 00:05:20,741 to extricate Americans from Vietnam 86 00:05:20,862 --> 00:05:22,910 without seeming to surrender. 87 00:05:23,031 --> 00:05:24,874 Nixon also believed 88 00:05:24,991 --> 00:05:27,835 his reputation as an implacable anti-communist 89 00:05:27,953 --> 00:05:30,797 could work to his advantage with Hanoi. 90 00:05:30,914 --> 00:05:33,258 "We'll just slip the word to them," he said, 91 00:05:33,375 --> 00:05:37,221 "you know, 'Nixon's obsessed about communism. 92 00:05:37,337 --> 00:05:39,590 "'We can't restrain him when he's angry, 93 00:05:39,714 --> 00:05:42,593 "and he has his hand on the nuclear button, ' 94 00:05:42,717 --> 00:05:45,846 "and Ho Chi Minh will be in Paris in two days 95 00:05:45,971 --> 00:05:48,850 begging for peace." 96 00:05:48,974 --> 00:05:53,024 But Ho Chi Minh was old and ailing now. 97 00:05:53,144 --> 00:05:55,192 And Le Duan and the other men 98 00:05:55,313 --> 00:05:58,362 who had been calling the shots in Hanoi for years 99 00:05:58,483 --> 00:06:00,861 had no intention of giving up their goal 100 00:06:00,986 --> 00:06:04,616 of uniting their country under communist control. 101 00:06:06,950 --> 00:06:10,454 Richard Nixon, having promised a swift end to the war, 102 00:06:10,579 --> 00:06:13,674 would, like all the presidents who came before him, 103 00:06:13,790 --> 00:06:16,009 end up widening it. 104 00:06:16,126 --> 00:06:19,721 In the process, he would re-ignite opposition to the war 105 00:06:19,838 --> 00:06:21,465 on American campuses 106 00:06:21,631 --> 00:06:25,135 that threatened to tear the country apart again. 107 00:06:25,260 --> 00:06:28,730 # I look at you all # 108 00:06:28,847 --> 00:06:32,397 # See the love there that's sleeping # 109 00:06:34,853 --> 00:06:37,231 # While my guitar # 110 00:06:37,355 --> 00:06:39,278 # Gently weeps # 111 00:06:42,402 --> 00:06:45,246 # I look at the floor... # 112 00:06:45,363 --> 00:06:47,331 The late '60s 113 00:06:47,449 --> 00:06:51,499 were a kind of confluence of several rivulets. 114 00:06:51,661 --> 00:06:53,459 # Still my guitar... # 115 00:06:53,580 --> 00:06:56,504 There was the antiwar movement itself... 116 00:06:59,794 --> 00:07:04,425 ...the whole movement towards racial equality, 117 00:07:04,549 --> 00:07:07,018 the environment... 118 00:07:07,135 --> 00:07:09,888 the role of women. 119 00:07:10,013 --> 00:07:12,391 And the anthems for that counterculture 120 00:07:12,515 --> 00:07:16,941 were provided by the most brilliant rock-and-roll music 121 00:07:17,062 --> 00:07:18,985 that you can imagine. 122 00:07:19,105 --> 00:07:20,857 # And I notice... # 123 00:07:20,982 --> 00:07:25,237 I don't know how we could exist today as a country 124 00:07:25,362 --> 00:07:29,412 without that experience. 125 00:07:29,532 --> 00:07:32,536 With all of its warts and ups and downs, 126 00:07:32,702 --> 00:07:36,377 that produced the America we have today, 127 00:07:36,498 --> 00:07:38,045 and we are better for it. 128 00:07:38,166 --> 00:07:39,964 # Surely be learning... # 129 00:07:40,085 --> 00:07:42,008 And I felt that way in Vietnam. 130 00:07:42,128 --> 00:07:43,926 # Still my guitar... # 131 00:07:44,047 --> 00:07:46,550 I turned the volume up on all that stuff. 132 00:07:48,718 --> 00:07:52,222 That represented what I was trying to defend. 133 00:08:06,569 --> 00:08:08,947 # Oh, Oh # 134 00:08:09,072 --> 00:08:11,951 # Ooh, ooh, oh, oh... # 135 00:08:15,662 --> 00:08:17,380 I never prayed 136 00:08:17,497 --> 00:08:20,046 the whole time I was in the P.O.W. camp, 137 00:08:20,166 --> 00:08:22,965 but I had, like, a mantra. 138 00:08:23,086 --> 00:08:25,339 Every night when I went to sleep, 139 00:08:25,463 --> 00:08:28,558 after a certain point, I would say, 140 00:08:28,675 --> 00:08:32,851 "I'll be here when the morning comes." 141 00:08:32,971 --> 00:08:35,144 And I felt if I could just live one more day, 142 00:08:35,265 --> 00:08:38,610 then I could live one more day, and then one more day. 143 00:08:38,768 --> 00:08:41,567 At the peace talks in Paris, 144 00:08:41,688 --> 00:08:46,194 the Nixon administration had introduced a new demand... 145 00:08:46,317 --> 00:08:48,319 U.S. troops would not withdraw 146 00:08:48,445 --> 00:08:51,699 until all American prisoners had come home 147 00:08:51,823 --> 00:08:54,372 and Hanoi had provided a strict accounting 148 00:08:54,492 --> 00:08:56,745 of those missing in action. 149 00:08:56,870 --> 00:09:00,215 No one knew how many prisoners there were. 150 00:09:00,331 --> 00:09:04,177 Most were airmen held in or around Hanoi, 151 00:09:04,294 --> 00:09:06,968 but a handful of others, like Hal Kushner, 152 00:09:07,130 --> 00:09:10,509 were struggling to survive in makeshift jungle camps 153 00:09:10,633 --> 00:09:13,307 in South Vietnam. 154 00:09:13,470 --> 00:09:16,974 Hanoi would not reveal the names of the men they held, 155 00:09:17,140 --> 00:09:20,986 because they still insisted they were not prisoners of war, 156 00:09:21,144 --> 00:09:23,192 but war criminals. 157 00:09:23,313 --> 00:09:26,533 They subjected many to brutal torture, 158 00:09:26,649 --> 00:09:28,743 extracted "confessions," 159 00:09:28,860 --> 00:09:30,988 and refused to permit inspections 160 00:09:31,154 --> 00:09:34,033 by the International Red Cross. 161 00:09:34,157 --> 00:09:38,207 The Johnson administration had generally downplayed the issue, 162 00:09:38,328 --> 00:09:42,299 hoping quiet diplomacy might bring the men home. 163 00:09:42,415 --> 00:09:44,008 The Nixon administration 164 00:09:44,125 --> 00:09:46,924 launched a "go public" campaign instead, 165 00:09:47,045 --> 00:09:49,639 meant to put the plight of American prisoners 166 00:09:49,756 --> 00:09:51,804 and those missing in action 167 00:09:51,925 --> 00:09:53,893 at the center of things. 168 00:09:54,010 --> 00:09:56,104 It also provided a rebuke 169 00:09:56,221 --> 00:09:58,269 to those in the antiwar movement 170 00:09:58,389 --> 00:10:00,437 who seemed more sympathetic 171 00:10:00,558 --> 00:10:03,687 to North Vietnamese civilians who had been bombed 172 00:10:03,812 --> 00:10:05,439 than they were to U.S. airmen 173 00:10:05,563 --> 00:10:09,067 who had been shot down doing that bombing. 174 00:10:09,192 --> 00:10:13,698 Sybil Stockdale, whose husband, Commander James Stockdale, 175 00:10:13,822 --> 00:10:16,496 was the highest-ranking prisoner in Hanoi, 176 00:10:16,616 --> 00:10:18,869 formed the National League of Families 177 00:10:19,035 --> 00:10:22,414 of Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, 178 00:10:22,539 --> 00:10:25,167 and led delegations of wives to Paris 179 00:10:25,291 --> 00:10:28,670 to confront North Vietnamese negotiators. 180 00:10:28,795 --> 00:10:33,392 Five million Americans began wearing tin or copper bracelets 181 00:10:33,508 --> 00:10:36,011 engraved with a missing man's name 182 00:10:36,136 --> 00:10:38,514 and date of loss. 183 00:10:38,638 --> 00:10:42,859 More than 50 million P.O.W./M.I.A. bumper stickers 184 00:10:42,976 --> 00:10:46,571 would be sold over the next four years. 185 00:10:46,688 --> 00:10:48,986 Despite what their jailers had told them, 186 00:10:49,107 --> 00:10:53,283 the prisoners had not been forgotten by their country. 187 00:10:53,403 --> 00:10:55,826 Eventually, one journalist wrote, 188 00:10:55,947 --> 00:10:58,075 many "people began to speak 189 00:10:58,241 --> 00:11:02,212 "as though the North Vietnamese had kidnapped 400 Americans 190 00:11:02,328 --> 00:11:06,754 and the United States had gone to war to retrieve them." 191 00:11:06,875 --> 00:11:11,301 At the same time, the Saigon government of Nguyen Van Thieu 192 00:11:11,421 --> 00:11:14,641 was holding prisoners of its own. 193 00:11:14,757 --> 00:11:16,600 There would eventually be 194 00:11:16,718 --> 00:11:20,439 some 40,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers 195 00:11:20,597 --> 00:11:22,474 in four crowded camps. 196 00:11:22,599 --> 00:11:26,524 Another 200,000 South Vietnamese civilians 197 00:11:26,644 --> 00:11:30,524 would also be held, many without trial. 198 00:12:51,980 --> 00:12:54,950 There are certain rules to tunnel warfare. 199 00:12:57,193 --> 00:12:59,867 Don't turn on the light 200 00:13:00,029 --> 00:13:02,999 unless you're really, really, really sure you're alone. 201 00:13:03,116 --> 00:13:06,711 Use your senses. 202 00:13:06,828 --> 00:13:09,923 Do your first killing as quietly as you can. 203 00:13:10,039 --> 00:13:12,087 That means don't shoot. 204 00:13:13,418 --> 00:13:16,092 I chased somebody into a tunnel, 205 00:13:16,212 --> 00:13:21,469 met them at a bend in the corner, in the dark. 206 00:13:21,592 --> 00:13:23,060 I thought I was alone 207 00:13:23,219 --> 00:13:26,393 and then I smelled their breath. 208 00:13:26,514 --> 00:13:32,487 And we had a wrestling match in the dark. 209 00:13:32,603 --> 00:13:34,947 And I got the upper hand 210 00:13:35,064 --> 00:13:38,284 and crushed this person's trachea, 211 00:13:38,401 --> 00:13:41,029 held him down while he died... 212 00:13:42,780 --> 00:13:44,657 ...and then got out. 213 00:13:47,410 --> 00:13:50,084 I beat and strangled someone to death 214 00:13:50,246 --> 00:13:51,998 in a tunnel 215 00:13:52,123 --> 00:13:54,091 in the dark. 216 00:13:54,208 --> 00:13:55,755 Um... 217 00:13:55,918 --> 00:13:58,296 But that wasn't the only casualty. 218 00:13:58,421 --> 00:14:02,676 The other casualty was the civilized version of me. 219 00:14:23,237 --> 00:14:26,116 April 1969 220 00:14:26,240 --> 00:14:29,164 marked the high point of American military commitment 221 00:14:29,285 --> 00:14:30,707 to South Vietnam. 222 00:14:30,828 --> 00:14:38,178 543,482 men and women were now in country, 223 00:14:38,294 --> 00:14:42,299 and tens of thousands more were stationed 224 00:14:42,465 --> 00:14:45,435 at airbases and aboard ships beyond its borders. 225 00:14:46,761 --> 00:14:51,437 40,794 had died. 226 00:14:51,557 --> 00:14:56,484 And more than $70 billion had been spent. 227 00:15:00,191 --> 00:15:02,489 That spring, a new battle 228 00:15:02,652 --> 00:15:04,700 caught the attention of the American public, 229 00:15:04,821 --> 00:15:09,497 a struggle to take still another numbered hill... 230 00:15:09,659 --> 00:15:13,254 Hill 937 on military maps. 231 00:15:13,371 --> 00:15:15,248 For nine days, 232 00:15:15,373 --> 00:15:17,309 American and South Vietnamese troops have been trying 233 00:15:17,333 --> 00:15:19,256 to take a mountain near the Laotian border, 234 00:15:19,377 --> 00:15:22,221 and ten times they have been thrown back. 235 00:15:46,863 --> 00:15:49,412 The casualties have been so high- 236 00:15:49,532 --> 00:15:52,786 50 Americans and 250 North Vietnamese killed... 237 00:15:52,910 --> 00:15:55,538 that the mountain has come to be known as "Hamburger Hill." 238 00:15:55,705 --> 00:15:59,300 Today, another 600 allied troops were thrown into the battle. 239 00:16:11,053 --> 00:16:13,351 A weary G.I. told a reporter 240 00:16:13,473 --> 00:16:15,475 that his battalion commander 241 00:16:15,600 --> 00:16:20,447 "won't stop until he kills every damn one of us." 242 00:16:26,861 --> 00:16:29,114 After 11 days of fighting, 243 00:16:29,238 --> 00:16:31,912 the Battle for Hamburger Hill ended. 244 00:16:33,409 --> 00:16:36,083 56 Americans died. 245 00:16:36,245 --> 00:16:40,500 420 more were wounded. 246 00:16:40,625 --> 00:16:44,220 A week later, the Americans abandoned the hill, 247 00:16:44,337 --> 00:16:47,216 just as they had abandoned so many other hills 248 00:16:47,340 --> 00:16:51,846 they had taken at great cost over the years in Vietnam. 249 00:16:54,013 --> 00:16:56,892 General, could you explain for us again the strategy involved 250 00:16:57,016 --> 00:16:59,986 in the decision to withdraw American troops 251 00:17:00,102 --> 00:17:03,231 after they had taken Hill 937, or Hamburger Hill? 252 00:17:05,441 --> 00:17:09,321 No piece of ground, as such, 253 00:17:09,445 --> 00:17:11,823 is important to us. 254 00:17:11,948 --> 00:17:13,666 HUNTLEY". In the United States Senate, 255 00:17:13,783 --> 00:17:15,501 Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts delivered 256 00:17:15,618 --> 00:17:17,416 a brief speech criticizing what he called 257 00:17:17,537 --> 00:17:20,461 a "senseless and irresponsible military pride 258 00:17:20,581 --> 00:17:22,959 "in which American men are sent to their deaths 259 00:17:23,084 --> 00:17:25,803 in pointless battles like this one for Hamburger Hill." 260 00:17:25,920 --> 00:17:27,968 Kennedy called upon President Nixon 261 00:17:28,130 --> 00:17:30,224 to issue new orders to commanders in Vietnam 262 00:17:30,341 --> 00:17:31,843 to halt such actions 263 00:17:31,968 --> 00:17:33,766 and he charged that they contradict 264 00:17:33,886 --> 00:17:35,229 the president's stated intentions 265 00:17:35,346 --> 00:17:37,019 of seeking a negotiated peace. 266 00:17:39,892 --> 00:17:43,192 There had been more deadly weeks during the war, 267 00:17:43,312 --> 00:17:47,658 costlier battles, larger numbers of casualties. 268 00:17:47,817 --> 00:17:53,995 But more and more Americans seemed to have had enough. 269 00:17:54,115 --> 00:17:56,459 The following month, Life magazine 270 00:17:56,576 --> 00:17:58,578 published the names and photographs 271 00:17:58,703 --> 00:18:01,422 of all 242 Americans 272 00:18:01,539 --> 00:18:05,385 who had died in combat in just one week. 273 00:18:05,501 --> 00:18:09,347 For the first time, in a national publication, 274 00:18:09,505 --> 00:18:13,351 casualty statistics came with human faces. 275 00:18:16,262 --> 00:18:18,981 The only way they could measure success in Vietnam 276 00:18:19,098 --> 00:18:21,192 was, was was kill ratios... 277 00:18:21,309 --> 00:18:23,437 how many of them versus how many of us. 278 00:18:23,561 --> 00:18:25,689 Well, the only thing that's important 279 00:18:25,855 --> 00:18:28,108 to the American people is the "us." 280 00:18:28,232 --> 00:18:31,782 You know, if there's three us dead, that's the number. 281 00:18:31,902 --> 00:18:35,031 Not 30, you know, Vietnamese dead. 282 00:18:35,156 --> 00:18:38,205 And, so, politically, an attrition strategy 283 00:18:38,326 --> 00:18:40,454 just can't last very long. 284 00:18:40,578 --> 00:18:42,046 We don't care what the ratio is, 285 00:18:42,163 --> 00:18:43,443 we just want the absolute number 286 00:18:43,497 --> 00:18:46,091 of how many American kids died. 287 00:18:46,208 --> 00:18:49,462 A Gallup poll now found that most Americans 288 00:18:49,587 --> 00:18:53,342 believed Vietnam had been a mistake. 289 00:18:53,466 --> 00:18:56,390 Richard Nixon knew he needed to signal to the public 290 00:18:56,552 --> 00:18:58,725 that an end was in sight. 291 00:19:00,640 --> 00:19:04,019 The National Security Council had warned Nixon 292 00:19:04,143 --> 00:19:06,145 that the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 293 00:19:06,270 --> 00:19:08,898 the secretaries of state and defense, 294 00:19:09,065 --> 00:19:13,946 the C.I.A., and the U.S. Embassy in Saigon 295 00:19:14,070 --> 00:19:17,074 all privately agreed that without U.S. combat troops, 296 00:19:17,239 --> 00:19:18,786 the South Vietnamese 297 00:19:18,908 --> 00:19:23,459 "cannot now, or in the foreseeable future, 298 00:19:23,579 --> 00:19:25,673 "stand up to both Viet Cong 299 00:19:25,790 --> 00:19:29,420 and sizeable North Vietnamese forces." 300 00:19:29,543 --> 00:19:31,420 Nonetheless, 301 00:19:31,587 --> 00:19:34,591 Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird said, 302 00:19:34,757 --> 00:19:38,136 the war was now to be "Vietnamized." 303 00:19:38,260 --> 00:19:41,890 Saigon's troops would gradually take over responsibility 304 00:19:42,014 --> 00:19:44,517 for engaging the enemy. 305 00:19:44,642 --> 00:19:47,737 It would be General Creighton Abrams' task 306 00:19:47,853 --> 00:19:50,106 to ready the ARVN for that role, 307 00:19:50,272 --> 00:19:52,946 and to make sure that American casualties 308 00:19:53,067 --> 00:19:55,161 were held down in the interim. 309 00:19:57,780 --> 00:20:02,957 Meanwhile, American troops would start to go home. 310 00:20:03,077 --> 00:20:05,876 # Gimme a ticket for an aeroplane # 311 00:20:05,996 --> 00:20:08,249 # Ain't got time to take a fast train # 312 00:20:08,374 --> 00:20:09,974 When Nixon came in 313 00:20:10,042 --> 00:20:13,797 and he announced the phase withdrawal, 314 00:20:13,921 --> 00:20:16,299 turning over the fighting to the Vietnamese, 315 00:20:16,465 --> 00:20:18,843 which was something the French had tried before. 316 00:20:18,968 --> 00:20:20,720 They call it jaunissement... 317 00:20:20,845 --> 00:20:24,145 yellowizing the war. 318 00:20:24,265 --> 00:20:30,272 We knew that the Vietnamese Army was not up to fighting this war. 319 00:20:30,396 --> 00:20:32,819 If they couldn't do it with the Americans, 320 00:20:32,982 --> 00:20:35,986 how were they going to do it without the Americans? 321 00:20:36,152 --> 00:20:39,156 # Lonely days are gone # 322 00:20:39,321 --> 00:20:42,120 Although Washington planned to vastly increase 323 00:20:42,241 --> 00:20:45,165 military support of the South Vietnamese Army, 324 00:20:45,286 --> 00:20:48,460 General Abrams knew that Vietnamization alone 325 00:20:48,581 --> 00:20:50,834 could never defeat the enemy. 326 00:20:51,000 --> 00:20:53,378 But he had his orders. 327 00:20:53,502 --> 00:20:56,176 The reason I was ordered home early 328 00:20:56,338 --> 00:20:58,136 was because Nixon... President Nixon 329 00:20:58,257 --> 00:21:01,511 announced the policy of Vietnamization. 330 00:21:01,677 --> 00:21:05,727 Now, Vietnamization was a lie, 331 00:21:05,848 --> 00:21:09,694 but it had an element of truth in it. 332 00:21:09,852 --> 00:21:12,071 We were leaving, okay? 333 00:21:12,188 --> 00:21:14,031 And that sealed the South's fate. 334 00:21:14,148 --> 00:21:15,525 I knew it. 335 00:21:15,649 --> 00:21:18,528 And I think anybody who was conscious 336 00:21:18,694 --> 00:21:20,367 and could see what was going on 337 00:21:20,529 --> 00:21:21,701 knew it. 338 00:21:21,822 --> 00:21:24,291 Nixon then flew to Midway Island 339 00:21:24,408 --> 00:21:27,958 to meet with South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu. 340 00:21:28,078 --> 00:21:31,207 He had not dared invite Thieu to Washington 341 00:21:31,332 --> 00:21:34,211 for fear of sparking mass demonstrations. 342 00:21:34,335 --> 00:21:35,678 # Lonely days are gone # 343 00:21:35,795 --> 00:21:37,889 President Thieu informed me 344 00:21:38,005 --> 00:21:41,760 that the progress of the training program 345 00:21:41,884 --> 00:21:43,557 and the equipping program 346 00:21:43,677 --> 00:21:45,850 for South Vietnamese forces 347 00:21:45,971 --> 00:21:50,977 had been so successful, uh, that he could now recommend 348 00:21:51,101 --> 00:21:54,401 that the United States begin to replace 349 00:21:54,522 --> 00:21:58,777 U.S. combat forces with Vietnamese forces. 350 00:22:04,073 --> 00:22:06,451 Thieu had said no such thing 351 00:22:06,575 --> 00:22:09,078 but felt he had to go along. 352 00:22:09,245 --> 00:22:11,919 "There is nothing I can do," he told a friend. 353 00:22:12,039 --> 00:22:14,337 "Just as we could do nothing about it 354 00:22:14,458 --> 00:22:17,052 "when Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson 355 00:22:17,169 --> 00:22:20,093 decided to come in." 356 00:22:20,256 --> 00:22:23,180 "We were clearly on the way out of Vietnam," 357 00:22:23,300 --> 00:22:26,429 National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger remembered, 358 00:22:26,554 --> 00:22:29,273 "by negotiation if possible, 359 00:22:29,390 --> 00:22:33,145 by unilateral withdrawal if necessary." 360 00:22:33,269 --> 00:22:36,239 He and the president were redefining 361 00:22:36,355 --> 00:22:39,199 what victory would look like. 362 00:22:39,316 --> 00:22:42,240 Nixon and Kissinger... 363 00:22:42,361 --> 00:22:44,363 They... 364 00:22:44,488 --> 00:22:46,741 Their job is to clean up. 365 00:22:46,866 --> 00:22:48,459 They're, they're... 366 00:22:48,576 --> 00:22:50,453 The war's over, okay? 367 00:22:50,619 --> 00:22:54,044 When Nixon and Kissinger, when they come, they're... 368 00:22:54,164 --> 00:22:55,507 they're not gonna win the war. 369 00:22:55,624 --> 00:22:57,968 So they develop 370 00:22:58,085 --> 00:22:59,712 a secret strategy. 371 00:22:59,837 --> 00:23:03,683 They surrender without saying they surrendered. 372 00:23:06,176 --> 00:23:09,350 This is not a bad strategy, this is the only strategy. 373 00:23:17,688 --> 00:23:21,192 As American soldiers began leaving South Vietnam, 374 00:23:21,317 --> 00:23:24,491 American weaponry and materiel poured in. 375 00:23:26,113 --> 00:23:28,161 # Circle for a landing # 376 00:23:28,324 --> 00:23:30,497 # Get your feet back on the ground # 377 00:23:30,618 --> 00:23:33,588 More than a million M16 rifles, 378 00:23:33,704 --> 00:23:39,632 40,000 grenade launchers, thousands of wheeled vehicles... 379 00:23:39,752 --> 00:23:41,345 so many, one congressman complained, 380 00:23:41,503 --> 00:23:44,677 that it seemed as if the United States taxpayer 381 00:23:44,798 --> 00:23:48,974 was being asked to "put every South Vietnamese soldier 382 00:23:49,094 --> 00:23:51,472 behind the wheel." 383 00:23:51,597 --> 00:23:53,725 It didn't make any sense, of course, 384 00:23:53,849 --> 00:23:56,728 because we tried that in 1962 and '63. 385 00:23:56,852 --> 00:23:58,650 The people hadn't changed. 386 00:23:58,771 --> 00:24:00,371 They were just giving 'em more furniture. 387 00:24:23,462 --> 00:24:27,262 South Vietnamese armed forces were expanded 388 00:24:27,383 --> 00:24:31,638 from 850,000 men to over a million. 389 00:24:31,762 --> 00:24:33,685 But nothing could alter the fact 390 00:24:33,806 --> 00:24:35,228 that rampant corruption 391 00:24:35,391 --> 00:24:38,770 continually eroded their effectiveness. 392 00:24:38,894 --> 00:24:40,988 The way it works is this: 393 00:24:41,105 --> 00:24:43,528 a man makes a deal with his commanding officer, 394 00:24:43,649 --> 00:24:46,243 perhaps to pay the officer his full salary. 395 00:24:46,402 --> 00:24:49,326 In exchange, you never have to show up for duty, 396 00:24:49,446 --> 00:24:51,915 except perhaps once a week at the ceremony. 397 00:24:52,074 --> 00:24:54,076 So while you're theoretically in the Army, 398 00:24:54,201 --> 00:24:56,579 you can hold a full-time civilian job. 399 00:24:57,871 --> 00:25:00,715 LAM QUANG THY. 400 00:25:16,682 --> 00:25:20,277 Many ARVN units did fight well. 401 00:25:23,397 --> 00:25:25,399 They had borne the brunt of the fighting 402 00:25:25,524 --> 00:25:26,946 during the Tet Offensive, 403 00:25:27,067 --> 00:25:29,866 and, by the middle of 1969, 404 00:25:29,987 --> 00:25:34,584 90,000 of them had been killed in combat. 405 00:25:34,700 --> 00:25:40,082 Their bravery was often overlooked by Americans. 406 00:25:40,205 --> 00:25:43,800 We were disdainful of them. 407 00:25:43,959 --> 00:25:46,883 We overstated their incompetence 408 00:25:47,004 --> 00:25:50,725 because we wanted to overstate our importance. 409 00:26:02,770 --> 00:26:07,901 Part of going to war in Vietnam I, I enjoyed. 410 00:26:08,025 --> 00:26:12,781 If you survive it, it's, it's quite thrilling. 411 00:26:12,905 --> 00:26:15,784 It's the history of the world. 412 00:26:17,284 --> 00:26:18,661 It's hard to survive. 413 00:26:18,786 --> 00:26:20,663 I mean, in, where I was, survival is an issue. 414 00:26:20,829 --> 00:26:24,879 I would have loved to have been in the National Guard. 415 00:26:27,127 --> 00:26:28,379 Period. 416 00:26:30,047 --> 00:26:32,846 I knew the core issue 417 00:26:33,008 --> 00:26:35,807 of what was acceptable in war and what wasn't. 418 00:26:35,928 --> 00:26:37,180 I knew that. 419 00:26:37,346 --> 00:26:40,065 I didn't need to get that from the Marine Corps. 420 00:26:40,182 --> 00:26:43,607 I got that from Sunday school. 421 00:26:43,727 --> 00:26:46,606 Thomas John Vallely was born in Boston, 422 00:26:46,730 --> 00:26:48,073 the son of a judge, 423 00:26:48,190 --> 00:26:51,034 and brought up in the suburb of Newton. 424 00:26:51,193 --> 00:26:56,541 Undiagnosed dyslexia kept him from doing well in school. 425 00:26:56,698 --> 00:26:58,700 By 1969, 426 00:26:58,826 --> 00:27:02,376 Vallely was a radio operator in the Marine Corps, 427 00:27:02,538 --> 00:27:05,542 part of a massive search-and-destroy mission 428 00:27:05,707 --> 00:27:09,837 in Quang Nam Province in the northern part of South Vietnam. 429 00:27:11,672 --> 00:27:13,265 On August 13, 430 00:27:13,382 --> 00:27:15,055 his company was ambushed 431 00:27:15,217 --> 00:27:18,687 and came under heavy machine gun fire. 432 00:27:26,103 --> 00:27:30,233 It was a "grab 'em by the belt" type of situation. 433 00:27:30,357 --> 00:27:33,236 And we lost a lot of people. 434 00:27:34,778 --> 00:27:36,075 So did they. 435 00:27:37,990 --> 00:27:40,038 Lot of people laying around. 436 00:27:42,703 --> 00:27:45,001 Vallely radioed for reinforcements. 437 00:27:45,122 --> 00:27:48,626 Then he picked up a rifle and ammunition 438 00:27:48,750 --> 00:27:51,128 from a wounded Marine, 439 00:27:51,253 --> 00:27:53,255 and, firing as he went, took up a position 440 00:27:53,422 --> 00:27:56,221 just ten feet from an enemy machine gun. 441 00:27:56,341 --> 00:28:01,768 He hurled a smoke grenade to mark their position. 442 00:28:01,889 --> 00:28:05,769 And then, as enemy fire swept back and forth 443 00:28:05,893 --> 00:28:08,021 across the field, 444 00:28:08,145 --> 00:28:09,692 he moved from Marine to Marine, 445 00:28:09,813 --> 00:28:11,440 pointing out targets among the trees 446 00:28:11,607 --> 00:28:14,326 and encouraging his comrades. 447 00:28:20,365 --> 00:28:23,244 For his conspicuous gallantry, 448 00:28:23,368 --> 00:28:27,123 Tom Vallely was awarded the Silver Star. 449 00:28:27,247 --> 00:28:29,466 You want to tell your grandchildren 450 00:28:29,583 --> 00:28:32,678 it has a lot to do with courage, 451 00:28:32,794 --> 00:28:36,298 uh, but it, it's really quite reactive. 452 00:28:36,423 --> 00:28:38,676 It's survival. 453 00:28:38,800 --> 00:28:40,894 Either you're... 454 00:28:41,011 --> 00:28:43,560 It's, it's... 455 00:28:43,680 --> 00:28:46,024 There's no choice here. 456 00:28:46,141 --> 00:28:50,146 You react or you're not gonna have grandchildren. 457 00:28:53,023 --> 00:28:54,334 Give me an "F"! 458 00:28:54,358 --> 00:28:55,234 "F"! 459 00:28:55,359 --> 00:28:56,576 Give me a "U"! 460 00:28:56,693 --> 00:28:57,569 "U"! 461 00:28:57,694 --> 00:28:58,786 Give me a "C"! 462 00:28:58,904 --> 00:29:00,656 "C"! Give me a "K"! 463 00:29:00,822 --> 00:29:01,664 U Kn! 464 00:29:01,823 --> 00:29:02,995 What's that spell?! 465 00:29:03,158 --> 00:29:05,001 Two days after the battle 466 00:29:05,160 --> 00:29:07,288 in which Tom Vallely distinguished himself, 467 00:29:07,412 --> 00:29:09,085 and while half a million Americans 468 00:29:09,206 --> 00:29:11,504 were still in Vietnam, 469 00:29:11,625 --> 00:29:13,502 half a million Americans gathered 470 00:29:13,627 --> 00:29:16,380 on a dairy farm in upstate New York 471 00:29:16,505 --> 00:29:19,725 for a music festival: Woodstock. 472 00:29:19,841 --> 00:29:22,185 # Way down yonder in Vietnam # 473 00:29:22,302 --> 00:29:24,350 # Put down your books and pick up a gun # 474 00:29:24,513 --> 00:29:25,698 # We're gonna have a whole lot of fun # 475 00:29:25,722 --> 00:29:30,228 # And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for? # 476 00:29:30,352 --> 00:29:32,696 # Don't ask me, I don't give a damn # 477 00:29:32,813 --> 00:29:35,157 # The next stop is Vietnam # 478 00:29:35,274 --> 00:29:37,402 # And it's five, six, seven # 479 00:29:37,526 --> 00:29:39,654 # Open up the pearly gates # 480 00:29:39,778 --> 00:29:42,827 # Well, there ain't no time to wonder why, whoopee # 481 00:29:42,948 --> 00:29:44,916 # We're all gonna die # 482 00:30:39,421 --> 00:30:43,676 Ladies and gentlemen, Santana! 483 00:30:43,800 --> 00:30:46,519 You've been told once, you've been told twice. 484 00:30:46,636 --> 00:30:48,183 That's all... spread it out! 485 00:30:50,307 --> 00:30:51,604 # What's your name? # 486 00:30:51,725 --> 00:30:53,773 This guy from Arkansas 487 00:30:53,894 --> 00:30:58,195 told me he would not carry the radio for me. 488 00:30:58,315 --> 00:31:03,196 He said, "I will not follow you like Cheetah follows Tarzan. 489 00:31:03,320 --> 00:31:05,448 It's not gonna happen, Sarge." 490 00:31:05,572 --> 00:31:10,294 And I thought, "Oh, this is gonna be a really long year." 491 00:31:10,410 --> 00:31:12,458 I've got people down there sweeping, 492 00:31:12,579 --> 00:31:13,796 so get 'em down there. 493 00:31:13,914 --> 00:31:15,541 # It's the time # 494 00:31:15,665 --> 00:31:18,794 He evolved a little bit. 495 00:31:18,960 --> 00:31:21,634 You know, he, he kind of got the idea 496 00:31:21,755 --> 00:31:24,804 that the enemy's bullets are colorblind. 497 00:31:24,925 --> 00:31:28,179 They would shoot anybody, not just me. 498 00:31:30,806 --> 00:31:34,527 African-Americans had served in every American war 499 00:31:34,643 --> 00:31:37,021 since the revolution. 500 00:31:37,145 --> 00:31:39,489 In the early years of the Vietnam War, 501 00:31:39,648 --> 00:31:41,992 they suffered a disproportionate number 502 00:31:42,109 --> 00:31:44,032 of combat deaths. 503 00:31:44,152 --> 00:31:47,326 When civil rights leaders complained, 504 00:31:47,447 --> 00:31:50,246 the Defense Department made a concerted effort 505 00:31:50,367 --> 00:31:52,415 to right that balance, 506 00:31:52,536 --> 00:31:56,006 and by 1969, it had succeeded. 507 00:31:56,164 --> 00:31:58,007 But behind the lines, 508 00:31:58,166 --> 00:32:01,670 African-American soldiers were still treated differently 509 00:32:01,837 --> 00:32:04,056 from their white counterparts. 510 00:32:14,891 --> 00:32:17,161 And here there's all, all these beast motherfuckers 511 00:32:17,185 --> 00:32:18,371 walking around here with their hair 512 00:32:18,395 --> 00:32:20,864 looking like goddamn girls, 513 00:32:20,981 --> 00:32:22,198 and we can't wear our hair 514 00:32:22,315 --> 00:32:23,908 motherfucking three inches long. 515 00:32:24,025 --> 00:32:26,278 The motherfucking regulation is three inches. 516 00:32:26,403 --> 00:32:29,031 And most of the brothers can wear a afro, 517 00:32:29,197 --> 00:32:30,995 the hair gonna be motherfucking two inches. 518 00:32:31,116 --> 00:32:32,709 And why we got to get our hair cut? 519 00:32:32,868 --> 00:32:34,211 That's what I want to know. 520 00:32:34,369 --> 00:32:36,212 # Yeah, man, ooh, yeah # 521 00:32:36,371 --> 00:32:39,215 Vietnam was a microcosm. 522 00:32:39,374 --> 00:32:41,092 Everything that was happening in America 523 00:32:41,209 --> 00:32:42,961 was happening in Vietnam, really, 524 00:32:43,086 --> 00:32:45,214 in one way, shape, or form. 525 00:32:45,338 --> 00:32:47,136 In the rear, 526 00:32:47,257 --> 00:32:50,727 there were Confederate flags flying. 527 00:32:50,886 --> 00:32:53,890 I mean, of all things to have over here, man, 528 00:32:54,055 --> 00:32:56,228 why a Confederate flag? 529 00:32:56,391 --> 00:32:58,519 As a matter of fact, I think there ought to be 530 00:32:58,643 --> 00:33:02,523 some goddamn law to fucking outlaw them goddamn flags, man. 531 00:33:02,647 --> 00:33:06,743 The fucking Confederacy is gone, man. 532 00:33:06,902 --> 00:33:09,246 When one is in an environment 533 00:33:09,404 --> 00:33:14,035 where everyone has a gun, automatic weapon, 534 00:33:14,159 --> 00:33:16,753 I'll be goddamned if someone's gonna call me a nigger 535 00:33:16,912 --> 00:33:18,835 or give me a bullshit order. 536 00:33:18,955 --> 00:33:22,835 I mean, that was the attitude, to risk my life for what? 537 00:33:22,959 --> 00:33:24,381 # Sweeter than honey # 538 00:33:24,503 --> 00:33:27,382 There was all kind of craziness happening, 539 00:33:27,506 --> 00:33:30,726 because white people were still calling, you know, us niggers, 540 00:33:30,842 --> 00:33:33,721 and then there were some black people calling us Uncle Toms. 541 00:33:33,845 --> 00:33:35,267 There were the antiwar folks 542 00:33:35,388 --> 00:33:37,607 who were calling us baby killers, say... 543 00:33:37,724 --> 00:33:39,702 You know, you can say what you want, but you can say it 544 00:33:39,726 --> 00:33:41,412 from over there because if you get in range, 545 00:33:41,436 --> 00:33:45,316 you're gonna get serious damage done to you. 546 00:33:45,440 --> 00:33:46,987 Say what you want from a distance, 547 00:33:47,108 --> 00:33:49,253 but if you get close to me, I'm gonna rip your throat out. 548 00:33:49,277 --> 00:33:50,824 You know? 549 00:33:50,946 --> 00:33:54,496 But when we walked outside that wire, 550 00:33:54,616 --> 00:33:57,540 we went out into the bush, we were tight. 551 00:33:57,661 --> 00:33:59,880 Even with our differences. 552 00:33:59,996 --> 00:34:01,964 Maybe we had threatened each other, 553 00:34:02,123 --> 00:34:05,127 we'd had a fight back in the base, 554 00:34:05,293 --> 00:34:07,921 but when we were out there, you know, 555 00:34:08,046 --> 00:34:11,596 we, we were a, a fighting unit. 556 00:34:13,093 --> 00:34:16,893 And it's almost like an identity crisis. 557 00:34:17,013 --> 00:34:21,018 I was born here, and my parents were born here. 558 00:34:21,142 --> 00:34:23,361 I felt, in a way, 559 00:34:23,478 --> 00:34:26,527 more American than Mexican. 560 00:34:26,648 --> 00:34:28,195 ...hand and repeat after me... 561 00:34:28,316 --> 00:34:32,617 The U.S. military did not officially count Hispanics, 562 00:34:32,737 --> 00:34:37,334 but an estimated 170,000 would serve in Vietnam 563 00:34:37,492 --> 00:34:41,497 and more than 3,000 lost their lives. 564 00:34:41,621 --> 00:34:44,215 Like their fathers and grandfathers, 565 00:34:44,332 --> 00:34:48,337 many saw military service as both a patriotic duty 566 00:34:48,503 --> 00:34:51,222 and an opportunity to advance their standing 567 00:34:51,339 --> 00:34:53,842 in the United States. 568 00:34:54,009 --> 00:34:57,058 But as casualties mounted 569 00:34:57,178 --> 00:34:59,180 and with a burgeoning Chicano identity movement 570 00:34:59,347 --> 00:35:01,691 among farm workers and college students, 571 00:35:01,808 --> 00:35:06,439 anti-war sentiment in Hispanic communities grew. 572 00:35:06,563 --> 00:35:10,193 We're protesting against the discriminatory draft laws 573 00:35:10,317 --> 00:35:12,365 that give deferments 574 00:35:12,485 --> 00:35:15,614 to all the Anglo middle-class people of this country 575 00:35:15,739 --> 00:35:18,709 and make the heaviest burdens of the war 576 00:35:18,867 --> 00:35:21,871 fall on the poor, fall on the Mexicano. 577 00:35:22,037 --> 00:35:24,256 I had learned 578 00:35:24,372 --> 00:35:28,297 about my sister and my mother's antiwar activities 579 00:35:28,418 --> 00:35:30,295 while I was still in Vietnam. 580 00:35:30,420 --> 00:35:32,548 In fact, my sister wrote and said, 581 00:35:32,714 --> 00:35:35,092 "I hope you're okay with this." 582 00:35:35,216 --> 00:35:36,843 And she was honest with me. 583 00:35:36,968 --> 00:35:38,845 She told me what they were doing. 584 00:35:38,970 --> 00:35:42,065 She says, "I'm doing it for you, 'cause I want you to come home." 585 00:35:50,523 --> 00:35:53,743 In line with our policy of taking a stand 586 00:35:53,860 --> 00:35:55,578 on the pressing issues of the day, 587 00:35:55,695 --> 00:35:58,574 we now present another in our continuing series of editorials. 588 00:35:58,698 --> 00:35:59,574 The subject: 589 00:35:59,699 --> 00:36:02,498 are our draft laws unfair? 590 00:36:02,619 --> 00:36:04,667 Here again, speaking for our program, 591 00:36:04,788 --> 00:36:07,337 is Mr. Patrick Paulsen, vice president. 592 00:36:09,209 --> 00:36:11,462 Now, we don't claim the draft is perfect, 593 00:36:11,586 --> 00:36:13,634 and we do have a constructive proposal 594 00:36:13,755 --> 00:36:15,757 for a workable alternative. 595 00:36:15,924 --> 00:36:17,926 We propose a draft lottery 596 00:36:18,051 --> 00:36:20,395 in which the names of all eligible males 597 00:36:20,512 --> 00:36:22,059 will be put into a hat, 598 00:36:22,180 --> 00:36:25,730 and the men will be drafted according to their head sizes. 599 00:36:25,850 --> 00:36:29,354 The tiny heads will go into the military service 600 00:36:29,479 --> 00:36:33,825 and the fat heads will go into government. 601 00:36:33,942 --> 00:36:35,819 Roger, 3-1 is on his way. 602 00:36:35,944 --> 00:36:38,572 5-8-1. 603 00:36:38,697 --> 00:36:42,702 A 19-year-old high school dropout says, 604 00:36:42,826 --> 00:36:45,625 "Why are we here?" 605 00:36:45,787 --> 00:36:47,505 And the, the standard response, 606 00:36:47,622 --> 00:36:49,545 at least on an official level, was, 607 00:36:49,666 --> 00:36:52,510 to prevent international communism 608 00:36:52,627 --> 00:36:55,506 from conquering the world. 609 00:36:55,630 --> 00:36:59,430 The men say, "Hey, that, that's bullshit." 610 00:37:01,678 --> 00:37:03,180 So the other reason put forth, 611 00:37:03,304 --> 00:37:05,306 at least in the latter days of the war, 612 00:37:05,473 --> 00:37:07,817 was to maintain America's international credibility 613 00:37:07,976 --> 00:37:10,479 with our allies, and our enemies. 614 00:37:10,645 --> 00:37:14,650 Uh, no 19, 20-year-old kid wants to die to maintain 615 00:37:14,816 --> 00:37:17,990 the credibility of Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon. 616 00:37:18,111 --> 00:37:21,490 And so, within a relatively short time, 617 00:37:21,614 --> 00:37:23,708 the guys were saying, 618 00:37:23,825 --> 00:37:26,578 "Look, we shouldn't be here, but we are. 619 00:37:26,703 --> 00:37:28,580 "So my only function in life 620 00:37:28,705 --> 00:37:31,834 "is to try and keep you alive, buddy, 621 00:37:32,000 --> 00:37:35,004 "and to keep my precious ass from being killed. 622 00:37:35,170 --> 00:37:38,800 And then to go home and forget about this." 623 00:37:41,301 --> 00:37:43,929 The grunts, uh, 624 00:37:44,053 --> 00:37:47,182 don't always do what the captain says, you know. 625 00:37:47,307 --> 00:37:50,732 We got, uh... the captain will stay back, 626 00:37:50,852 --> 00:37:52,729 he'll tell the platoon or something 627 00:37:52,854 --> 00:37:55,528 to go out so many hundred meters, you know. 628 00:37:55,690 --> 00:37:57,363 We don't do it. 629 00:37:57,525 --> 00:37:59,277 We only go as far as we get out of sight, 630 00:37:59,402 --> 00:38:00,824 sit down, and come back in. 631 00:38:00,945 --> 00:38:02,798 What happens to an unpopular officer 632 00:38:02,822 --> 00:38:04,824 out in the field? 633 00:38:04,949 --> 00:38:07,873 Mostly unpopular officers, from what I've heard, 634 00:38:07,994 --> 00:38:10,588 if they, if they mess with a grunt too much, 635 00:38:10,705 --> 00:38:13,584 they get shot at. 636 00:38:13,708 --> 00:38:17,087 It had always been a part of war. 637 00:38:17,212 --> 00:38:20,216 In Vietnam, it was called "fragging," 638 00:38:20,381 --> 00:38:24,557 after the fragmentation grenades most often used. 639 00:38:24,719 --> 00:38:28,394 Beginning in the summer of 1969, 640 00:38:28,556 --> 00:38:32,402 as thousands of American troops began going home, 641 00:38:32,519 --> 00:38:36,069 the number of reports of the murder or attempted murder 642 00:38:36,189 --> 00:38:38,191 by enlisted men of their superiors 643 00:38:38,316 --> 00:38:41,320 increased alarmingly. 644 00:38:41,444 --> 00:38:46,575 The Army would investigate nearly 800 cases. 645 00:38:46,699 --> 00:38:48,622 Most took place far from the fighting, 646 00:38:48,743 --> 00:38:51,417 usually the violent outcome of arguments over race 647 00:38:51,579 --> 00:38:53,707 or women or drugs 648 00:38:53,832 --> 00:38:56,802 rather than the war itself. 649 00:38:56,918 --> 00:38:59,467 But there were exceptions. 650 00:38:59,587 --> 00:39:01,464 It's a totally different army 651 00:39:01,589 --> 00:39:05,435 than what we sent to Vietnam in 1965. 652 00:39:05,552 --> 00:39:09,557 And the new lieutenant comes in, all gung-ho for body count. 653 00:39:09,681 --> 00:39:13,106 He wants contact, he goes crazy, and says, 654 00:39:13,268 --> 00:39:15,521 "1 want a volunteer for this." 655 00:39:18,356 --> 00:39:24,113 That new gung-ho officer was a clear and present danger 656 00:39:24,237 --> 00:39:27,912 to the life and limb of the grunts. 657 00:39:28,032 --> 00:39:30,581 They'd have subtle hints, like a little note saying, 658 00:39:30,702 --> 00:39:33,296 "We're gonna kill your ass if you keep this up." 659 00:39:33,454 --> 00:39:36,378 Or instead of a fragmentation grenade, 660 00:39:36,499 --> 00:39:40,220 they may throw a smoke grenade in an officer's hooch or bunker. 661 00:39:40,336 --> 00:39:44,307 And if they didn't correct their behavior and outlook, 662 00:39:44,424 --> 00:39:47,803 yeah, they would frag them. 663 00:39:47,927 --> 00:39:51,557 I saw it happen in a very, uh, strange way. 664 00:39:51,681 --> 00:39:59,816 We were in a base and a Marine started running towards me. 665 00:39:59,939 --> 00:40:01,987 I didn't realize that what he... 666 00:40:02,108 --> 00:40:04,202 what he was doing back in the dark over there 667 00:40:04,319 --> 00:40:06,492 was actually throw a hand grenade 668 00:40:06,613 --> 00:40:10,038 underneath the space that is underneath a hooch. 669 00:40:11,576 --> 00:40:13,829 And when it exploded, I went, "Holy shit." 670 00:40:13,995 --> 00:40:17,295 And I knew right away what he had done. 671 00:40:17,415 --> 00:40:20,669 And he was an African-American Marine. 672 00:40:20,793 --> 00:40:22,670 African-Americans were treated 673 00:40:22,795 --> 00:40:25,139 with disrespect by their superiors. 674 00:40:25,256 --> 00:40:29,102 This was not uncommon. 675 00:40:29,218 --> 00:40:34,099 So in a ways, as bad as this sounds, 676 00:40:34,223 --> 00:40:36,601 maybe that guy had it coming to him. 677 00:40:36,726 --> 00:40:38,194 I don't know. 678 00:40:41,439 --> 00:40:44,238 In Paris, the 29th session of the so-called peace talks 679 00:40:44,359 --> 00:40:45,235 took place. 680 00:40:45,360 --> 00:40:47,158 There was no progress. 681 00:40:47,278 --> 00:40:50,578 In Vietnam, it was announced that 139 Americans 682 00:40:50,698 --> 00:40:52,200 lost their lives last week, 683 00:40:52,325 --> 00:40:54,874 bringing total deaths in our longest war... 684 00:40:55,036 --> 00:40:57,880 The four-way peace talks in Paris 685 00:40:58,039 --> 00:41:00,588 continued to go nowhere. 686 00:41:00,708 --> 00:41:04,258 To break the logjam, Nixon directed Henry Kissinger 687 00:41:04,379 --> 00:41:07,053 to begin secret talks, 688 00:41:07,173 --> 00:41:09,767 the first in a series of clandestine meetings 689 00:41:09,884 --> 00:41:12,637 with the North Vietnamese alone. 690 00:41:12,762 --> 00:41:14,981 They first met in an apartment building 691 00:41:15,098 --> 00:41:17,100 on the Rue de Rivoli. 692 00:41:17,225 --> 00:41:20,149 The Viet Cong and the South Vietnamese government 693 00:41:20,269 --> 00:41:22,943 were not included. 694 00:41:23,064 --> 00:41:25,988 Hanoi remained immovable. 695 00:41:26,109 --> 00:41:29,864 They would not even admit they had troops in South Vietnam, 696 00:41:29,988 --> 00:41:33,913 let alone discuss withdrawing them. 697 00:41:34,033 --> 00:41:35,751 Now Kissinger warned 698 00:41:35,910 --> 00:41:39,084 that if there were no change in their position by November 1, 699 00:41:39,205 --> 00:41:41,082 the one-year anniversary 700 00:41:41,249 --> 00:41:43,547 of President Johnson's bombing halt, 701 00:41:43,668 --> 00:41:45,341 President Nixon 702 00:41:45,461 --> 00:41:48,340 would "consider steps of grave consequence." 703 00:42:00,935 --> 00:42:04,405 September 2, 1969, 704 00:42:04,522 --> 00:42:06,775 was the 24th anniversary 705 00:42:06,899 --> 00:42:10,654 of Ho Chi Minh's declaration of Vietnamese independence 706 00:42:10,778 --> 00:42:13,122 in Hanoi's Ba Dinh Square. 707 00:42:15,158 --> 00:42:19,959 At 9:45 that morning, Ho died. 708 00:42:20,079 --> 00:42:24,676 He was said to be 79, but like so much about him, 709 00:42:24,792 --> 00:42:30,094 the precise date of his birth was shrouded in mystery. 710 00:42:30,214 --> 00:42:32,808 He had been "Uncle Ho" for decades, 711 00:42:32,925 --> 00:42:36,179 the living embodiment of the struggle against the Japanese, 712 00:42:36,304 --> 00:42:39,183 the French, the Saigon government, 713 00:42:39,307 --> 00:42:42,151 and then the Americans. 714 00:42:44,395 --> 00:42:47,148 In a speech to the National Assembly, 715 00:42:47,273 --> 00:42:51,653 Le Duan, the First Secretary of the Communist Party, 716 00:42:51,819 --> 00:42:53,071 who had been the architect 717 00:42:53,196 --> 00:42:55,745 of North Vietnamese military policy 718 00:42:55,865 --> 00:42:57,117 for a decade, 719 00:42:57,241 --> 00:43:01,212 promised to fulfill what he said was Ho's vision: 720 00:43:01,329 --> 00:43:07,177 the reunification of the country on communist terms. 721 00:43:08,795 --> 00:43:11,423 Nothing had changed. 722 00:43:11,547 --> 00:43:13,400 Hanoi has given the false impression 723 00:43:13,424 --> 00:43:16,678 that all is wine and roses and it isn't so. 724 00:43:16,803 --> 00:43:19,147 The same day Ho Chi Minh died, 725 00:43:19,263 --> 00:43:21,812 an unusual press conference was held 726 00:43:21,933 --> 00:43:24,812 at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center. 727 00:43:24,936 --> 00:43:27,564 Two ailing prisoners of war, 728 00:43:27,688 --> 00:43:31,158 Robert Frishman and Douglas Hegdahl, 729 00:43:31,275 --> 00:43:33,528 who had recently been released by the North Vietnamese, 730 00:43:33,653 --> 00:43:35,747 spoke in public for the first time 731 00:43:35,863 --> 00:43:37,661 about the severe treatment 732 00:43:37,782 --> 00:43:41,127 they and their fellow prisoners had received. 733 00:43:41,244 --> 00:43:43,713 I don't think solitary confinement, 734 00:43:43,830 --> 00:43:47,585 forced statements, living in a cage for three years, 735 00:43:47,708 --> 00:43:51,554 being put in straps, not being allowed to sleep or eat, 736 00:43:51,671 --> 00:43:55,096 removal of fingernails, being hung from a ceiling, 737 00:43:55,216 --> 00:43:57,469 having an infected arm which was almost lost, 738 00:43:57,593 --> 00:43:59,812 not receiving medical care, 739 00:43:59,929 --> 00:44:02,057 being dragged along the ground with a broken leg, 740 00:44:02,223 --> 00:44:05,102 or not allowing exchange of mail to prisoners of war 741 00:44:05,226 --> 00:44:06,569 are humane. 742 00:44:06,686 --> 00:44:10,862 Douglas Hegdahl was quiet, self-effacing, 743 00:44:10,982 --> 00:44:13,531 and so apparently clueless, 744 00:44:13,651 --> 00:44:15,699 his North Vietnamese guards 745 00:44:15,820 --> 00:44:18,539 had called him the "stupid one." 746 00:44:18,656 --> 00:44:20,078 But once released, 747 00:44:20,241 --> 00:44:23,415 he was a gold mine of information. 748 00:44:23,536 --> 00:44:27,416 He had memorized the names of more than 200 prisoners 749 00:44:27,540 --> 00:44:31,135 to the tune of "Old McDonald Had a Farm." 750 00:44:31,252 --> 00:44:34,096 Thanks to him, scores of American families 751 00:44:34,213 --> 00:44:36,261 would find out for the first time 752 00:44:36,424 --> 00:44:41,555 that their sons and husbands and fathers were still alive. 753 00:44:41,679 --> 00:44:45,149 Within a few days of the press conference, 754 00:44:45,266 --> 00:44:49,021 Hanoi's treatment of the prisoners began to improve. 755 00:44:49,145 --> 00:44:52,991 "A lot less brutality," one captive remembered, 756 00:44:53,107 --> 00:44:55,610 "and larger bowls of rice." 757 00:45:10,458 --> 00:45:11,852 All right, who's wounded? 758 00:45:11,876 --> 00:45:14,470 All right, give me some cover! 759 00:45:14,629 --> 00:45:17,257 Devallier is the lone medic in the platoon. 760 00:45:17,381 --> 00:45:18,507 He's scared, 761 00:45:18,633 --> 00:45:20,977 scared from the moment he gets out of the chopper 762 00:45:21,093 --> 00:45:22,470 to the moment it picks him up. 763 00:45:22,637 --> 00:45:25,481 Scared that someday he's going to get killed 764 00:45:25,640 --> 00:45:28,610 picking up a wounded buddy. 765 00:45:32,355 --> 00:45:34,528 I was the replacement 766 00:45:34,649 --> 00:45:38,244 for a medic who had been killed. 767 00:45:38,361 --> 00:45:41,911 First time out, we were assigned to do a patrol. 768 00:45:42,031 --> 00:45:45,410 Remember to stop the bleeding! 769 00:45:45,534 --> 00:45:51,132 And we stumbled actually into an ambush. 770 00:45:54,001 --> 00:45:57,346 And it was incredibly terrifying. 771 00:45:57,463 --> 00:45:59,716 Guys were screaming and yelling. 772 00:45:59,840 --> 00:46:02,093 There was shooting everywhere. 773 00:46:02,218 --> 00:46:06,189 That first firefight, I remember praying to God, 774 00:46:06,305 --> 00:46:12,403 if He got me through this that I would make a difference. 775 00:46:12,520 --> 00:46:16,821 That I really would make a difference. 776 00:46:16,941 --> 00:46:19,990 Sometimes their lives depend on you, I mean; 777 00:46:20,111 --> 00:46:23,035 you hold it in your hands, as a medic. 778 00:46:23,155 --> 00:46:25,999 It's just hard to say but right then, 779 00:46:26,117 --> 00:46:28,336 you hold life and death in your hand. 780 00:46:28,452 --> 00:46:32,127 In Vietnam, medics and navy corpsmen 781 00:46:32,248 --> 00:46:34,717 accompanied infantry units on patrols, 782 00:46:34,834 --> 00:46:36,677 search and destroy missions, 783 00:46:36,794 --> 00:46:40,264 and large-scale combat operations. 784 00:46:40,381 --> 00:46:44,136 Nearly 2,000 would lose their lives. 785 00:46:47,930 --> 00:46:50,479 Unlike in previous wars, 786 00:46:50,599 --> 00:46:53,899 many medics in Vietnam chose to carry weapons, 787 00:46:54,020 --> 00:46:56,398 and when the shooting started, 788 00:46:56,522 --> 00:46:59,196 were willing to use them to protect themselves 789 00:46:59,317 --> 00:47:02,161 and their wounded comrades. 790 00:47:02,278 --> 00:47:05,657 I carried an M16, 791 00:47:05,781 --> 00:47:08,830 but I did not know if I could kill. 792 00:47:08,951 --> 00:47:12,546 Part of being a medic was to save lives. 793 00:47:12,663 --> 00:47:18,887 I wondered, if the scenario presented itself, would I? 794 00:47:19,003 --> 00:47:23,600 I did participate in shooting at the enemy. 795 00:47:23,758 --> 00:47:26,136 We killed a lot of people. 796 00:47:26,260 --> 00:47:29,514 I feel that responsibility. 797 00:47:30,973 --> 00:47:33,817 I feel blood on my hands. 798 00:47:39,231 --> 00:47:43,828 When you kill someone for your country, 799 00:47:43,944 --> 00:47:46,868 all things change. 800 00:47:49,992 --> 00:47:52,415 # Come ye # 801 00:47:54,830 --> 00:47:58,209 # Ye who would have peace... # 802 00:47:58,334 --> 00:47:59,734 We believed it's possible 803 00:47:59,835 --> 00:48:01,883 to create a substantial majority in this country 804 00:48:02,004 --> 00:48:03,597 for withdrawal from Vietnam, 805 00:48:03,714 --> 00:48:05,466 and that's what we're about in the long run. 806 00:48:05,591 --> 00:48:07,434 In November, we'll be back again, 807 00:48:07,551 --> 00:48:09,019 in December, we'll be back again. 808 00:48:09,136 --> 00:48:10,979 And we intend to build the movement, 809 00:48:11,138 --> 00:48:13,391 which will make it imperative 810 00:48:13,516 --> 00:48:15,814 that the United States withdraw from Vietnam. 811 00:48:15,935 --> 00:48:18,779 The organizers of the moratorium do not aim 812 00:48:18,896 --> 00:48:21,490 at confrontation or scuffles with the police. 813 00:48:21,649 --> 00:48:24,573 Instead, they want to involve the most people possible 814 00:48:24,693 --> 00:48:27,617 in some gesture of protest, however modest, 815 00:48:27,738 --> 00:48:31,242 so as to show the administration that a large bloc of Americans 816 00:48:31,367 --> 00:48:33,836 care not about winning or losing the war, 817 00:48:33,994 --> 00:48:36,167 but only about ending it. 818 00:48:36,288 --> 00:48:39,508 # Ye who have no fear # 819 00:48:39,625 --> 00:48:40,751 Thank you. 820 00:48:40,876 --> 00:48:43,095 Now, I understand 821 00:48:43,212 --> 00:48:45,465 that there has been and continues to be 822 00:48:45,589 --> 00:48:48,433 opposition to the war in Vietnam on the campuses 823 00:48:48,551 --> 00:48:51,430 and also in the nation. 824 00:48:51,554 --> 00:48:52,555 Uh, we expect it. 825 00:48:52,680 --> 00:48:54,557 However, under no circumstances 826 00:48:54,682 --> 00:48:57,856 will I be affected whatever by it. 827 00:48:57,977 --> 00:49:01,777 Hoping to undercut support for the moratorium, 828 00:49:01,897 --> 00:49:04,070 Nixon canceled the draft calls 829 00:49:04,191 --> 00:49:07,946 for the months of November and December 1969. 830 00:49:08,070 --> 00:49:11,370 And he instituted a random lottery system 831 00:49:11,490 --> 00:49:14,209 based on the date of a young man's birth, 832 00:49:14,368 --> 00:49:17,212 intended to treat rich and poor alike 833 00:49:17,371 --> 00:49:21,001 and do away with unfair deferments. 834 00:49:21,125 --> 00:49:24,629 It was good policy and a brilliant political maneuver. 835 00:49:26,172 --> 00:49:27,515 On the line, brothers and sisters. 836 00:49:27,631 --> 00:49:29,008 On the line now. 837 00:49:30,801 --> 00:49:32,895 As people across the country organized 838 00:49:33,053 --> 00:49:34,851 for the peaceful moratorium, 839 00:49:34,972 --> 00:49:36,895 members of a radical faction 840 00:49:37,057 --> 00:49:39,731 of the Students for a Democratic Society... 841 00:49:39,894 --> 00:49:41,066 the "Weathermen"... 842 00:49:41,187 --> 00:49:42,234 took more direct action. 843 00:49:42,396 --> 00:49:43,648 # The man in a trench coat # 844 00:49:43,772 --> 00:49:46,366 Less interested in ending the war 845 00:49:46,484 --> 00:49:48,953 than in sparking a violent revolution, 846 00:49:49,069 --> 00:49:53,791 they staged what they called four "Days of Rage" in Chicago. 847 00:49:53,908 --> 00:49:56,002 # You better duck clown the alleyway # 848 00:49:56,118 --> 00:49:59,167 We no longer simply resist the pigs. 849 00:49:59,288 --> 00:50:01,256 We no longer trap ourselves 850 00:50:01,373 --> 00:50:02,875 so that the only possible motion 851 00:50:03,000 --> 00:50:05,048 is in response to pig attacks. 852 00:50:05,169 --> 00:50:07,388 We have gone on the offensive. 853 00:50:07,505 --> 00:50:09,382 It is we who call the shots now. 854 00:50:09,507 --> 00:50:11,635 "Kill all the rich people," 855 00:50:11,759 --> 00:50:12,976 one of their leaders said. 856 00:50:13,093 --> 00:50:16,063 "Break up their cars and apartments. 857 00:50:16,180 --> 00:50:18,274 "Bring the revolution home. 858 00:50:18,432 --> 00:50:19,934 "Kill your parents. 859 00:50:20,059 --> 00:50:23,188 That's really where it's at." 860 00:50:23,312 --> 00:50:25,189 Weathermen takes its name from a line 861 00:50:25,314 --> 00:50:26,941 in a Bob Dylan song which says, 862 00:50:27,107 --> 00:50:28,825 "You don't need a weatherman 863 00:50:28,943 --> 00:50:30,365 to know the way the wind blows." 864 00:50:30,486 --> 00:50:31,988 # Wash the plain clothes # 865 00:50:32,112 --> 00:50:33,489 # You don't need a weatherman # 866 00:50:33,614 --> 00:50:37,244 # To know which way the wind blows # 867 00:50:37,368 --> 00:50:39,621 The Weathermen assumed 868 00:50:39,787 --> 00:50:42,415 thousands would rally to their cause. 869 00:50:42,540 --> 00:50:45,544 Only 600 did. 870 00:50:45,668 --> 00:50:49,138 They blew up a statue honoring slain policemen, 871 00:50:49,296 --> 00:50:52,470 ran through the streets wielding chains and pipes, 872 00:50:52,633 --> 00:50:54,727 smashing windows and windshields 873 00:50:54,843 --> 00:50:58,347 and charging police barriers. 874 00:50:58,472 --> 00:51:00,145 Six were shot. 875 00:51:00,266 --> 00:51:02,985 250 were jailed. 876 00:51:03,143 --> 00:51:06,317 75 policemen were injured; 877 00:51:06,480 --> 00:51:09,484 a city attorney was paralyzed for life. 878 00:51:11,694 --> 00:51:15,073 The Black Panthers denounced the Weathermen 879 00:51:15,197 --> 00:51:18,167 as "anarchistic, opportunistic... 880 00:51:18,325 --> 00:51:21,795 Custeristic." 881 00:51:21,912 --> 00:51:24,961 Probably 1969 was the year 882 00:51:25,082 --> 00:51:27,210 in which most of us were more alienated 883 00:51:27,334 --> 00:51:31,180 and felt more like revolutionaries. 884 00:51:31,297 --> 00:51:35,973 And it led to a lot of crazy responses. 885 00:51:36,093 --> 00:51:39,939 I wanted the country to undergo a radical transformation, 886 00:51:40,055 --> 00:51:42,934 a redistribution of wealth and power. 887 00:51:43,058 --> 00:51:45,311 But to try to bring that about 888 00:51:45,436 --> 00:51:48,155 through armed struggle in the United States 889 00:51:48,272 --> 00:51:50,195 was insane. 890 00:51:50,357 --> 00:51:52,701 These were all infantile fantasies 891 00:51:52,818 --> 00:51:55,571 that people came to out of the frustration 892 00:51:55,696 --> 00:51:58,324 of not having a workable strategy 893 00:51:58,449 --> 00:52:01,703 for ending the war. 894 00:52:01,827 --> 00:52:03,388 What do you think people ought to do, governor, 895 00:52:03,412 --> 00:52:05,210 who are genuinely opposed to the war 896 00:52:05,372 --> 00:52:07,500 but not in favor of the Viet Cong? 897 00:52:07,625 --> 00:52:11,971 Well, I think that we have had... experiences before 898 00:52:12,087 --> 00:52:14,556 of people who have been opposed to wars, 899 00:52:14,715 --> 00:52:17,559 and I think they deal through their own representatives, 900 00:52:17,676 --> 00:52:20,054 and it's dealt with in government channels. 901 00:52:20,179 --> 00:52:22,557 But once the killing starts, 902 00:52:22,723 --> 00:52:24,566 the very difficult thing then is, 903 00:52:24,683 --> 00:52:28,483 how do you register these protests 904 00:52:28,604 --> 00:52:30,572 without lending comfort and aid to the enemy, 905 00:52:30,689 --> 00:52:32,566 without strengthening his resistance 906 00:52:32,691 --> 00:52:33,738 and his will to fight 907 00:52:33,901 --> 00:52:36,404 and thus killing more of our men? 908 00:52:36,528 --> 00:52:40,578 And most Americans in the past have always respected it. 909 00:52:40,741 --> 00:52:42,243 You see, the people in this country 910 00:52:42,409 --> 00:52:44,332 aren't fighting a Vietnam War. 911 00:52:44,453 --> 00:52:45,921 The government's fighting it. 912 00:52:46,038 --> 00:52:47,158 Well, the government is, uh, 913 00:52:47,247 --> 00:52:49,341 the government is the people, supposedly, No. 914 00:52:49,458 --> 00:52:51,618 But in this instance, it is not. Not anymore, it's not. 915 00:52:51,752 --> 00:52:53,129 No, I agree with you, it is not. 916 00:52:53,253 --> 00:52:54,596 Not in this situation, it's not. 917 00:52:54,713 --> 00:52:56,090 Shouldn't I let my government know 918 00:52:56,256 --> 00:52:57,348 that I think they're crazy? 919 00:52:57,466 --> 00:52:58,934 I think they are insane, really. 920 00:52:59,051 --> 00:53:00,974 This is an insane thing we're doing. 921 00:53:01,095 --> 00:53:02,563 As a matter of fact, 922 00:53:02,680 --> 00:53:04,728 Nixon said he will not listen to us 923 00:53:04,848 --> 00:53:06,441 and that he will not be dictated to 924 00:53:06,558 --> 00:53:08,310 from the people in the streets. 925 00:53:08,435 --> 00:53:12,281 The people in the streets are me. 926 00:53:15,359 --> 00:53:19,614 The moratorium on October 15, 927 00:53:19,780 --> 00:53:21,248 held all across the country, 928 00:53:21,365 --> 00:53:24,164 was the largest outpouring of public dissent 929 00:53:24,284 --> 00:53:25,706 in American history. 930 00:53:29,790 --> 00:53:34,466 # Blackbird singing in the dead of night # 931 00:53:34,628 --> 00:53:39,805 # Take these broken wings and learn to fly # 932 00:53:39,967 --> 00:53:43,767 # All your life # 933 00:53:43,887 --> 00:53:48,484 # You were only waiting for this moment to arise # 934 00:53:48,600 --> 00:53:51,319 It was peaceful, middle-class, 935 00:53:51,478 --> 00:53:54,448 carefully focused on ending the war. 936 00:53:54,565 --> 00:53:56,943 "It's nice," one marcher said, 937 00:53:57,067 --> 00:53:58,785 "to go to a demonstration 938 00:53:58,902 --> 00:54:03,749 without having to swear allegiance to Chairman Mao." 939 00:54:03,866 --> 00:54:05,288 # All your life # 940 00:54:05,409 --> 00:54:07,912 Surely this is a day unique in our history. 941 00:54:08,036 --> 00:54:11,006 Never have so many of our people publicly 942 00:54:11,123 --> 00:54:13,421 and collectively manifested opposition 943 00:54:13,542 --> 00:54:16,591 to this country's involvement in a war. 944 00:54:16,712 --> 00:54:19,636 It is unlikely we will remain unchanged. 945 00:54:19,757 --> 00:54:22,601 Hundreds and hundreds of thousands 946 00:54:22,718 --> 00:54:24,878 in cities from New York, with its eight million people, 947 00:54:24,928 --> 00:54:28,182 to Dubois, Wyoming, with its 800 people, 948 00:54:28,348 --> 00:54:30,521 have sought to impress upon the president 949 00:54:30,684 --> 00:54:32,686 their opposition to the war. 950 00:54:35,230 --> 00:54:42,034 The first large protest march I went to was in Baltimore. 951 00:54:42,154 --> 00:54:45,704 I'd never been with that many people at one time. 952 00:54:45,824 --> 00:54:51,877 Just the energy of the crowd itself was tremendous. 953 00:54:51,997 --> 00:54:54,250 I wondered if everybody was in it 954 00:54:54,374 --> 00:54:56,376 for the right reasons. 955 00:54:56,502 --> 00:55:01,053 I wasn't there to drink or smoke pot. 956 00:55:01,173 --> 00:55:03,392 Not in those situations. 957 00:55:03,509 --> 00:55:07,013 These, to me, were serious business. 958 00:55:07,137 --> 00:55:10,562 This was the business of living life. 959 00:55:10,724 --> 00:55:12,021 This was not a party. 960 00:55:12,142 --> 00:55:14,770 I didn't just want to be with the crowd. 961 00:55:14,895 --> 00:55:16,897 I didn't just want to make noise. 962 00:55:17,022 --> 00:55:19,024 I wanted to make a difference. 963 00:55:19,149 --> 00:55:23,575 And I in no way wanted to dishonor my brother. 964 00:55:23,737 --> 00:55:25,239 # For this moment to arrive # 965 00:55:25,364 --> 00:55:27,332 For most of the government today, 966 00:55:27,449 --> 00:55:28,871 it was business as usual. 967 00:55:28,992 --> 00:55:30,744 But at noon on the Capitol steps, 968 00:55:30,869 --> 00:55:33,247 a thousand young congressional staff employees 969 00:55:33,372 --> 00:55:35,966 stood in silence for 45 minutes. 970 00:55:36,083 --> 00:55:40,634 # Blackbird singing in the dead of night # 971 00:55:40,754 --> 00:55:44,133 The children of several of the president's closest aides 972 00:55:44,258 --> 00:55:45,635 and cabinet members 973 00:55:45,759 --> 00:55:48,433 took part in the national moratorium. 974 00:55:48,554 --> 00:55:51,808 Vice President Agnew's 14-year-old daughter 975 00:55:51,932 --> 00:55:53,559 wanted to march, 976 00:55:53,684 --> 00:55:55,186 but he wouldn't let her. 977 00:55:55,310 --> 00:55:57,278 Coretta Scott King, 978 00:55:57,437 --> 00:56:00,281 the widow of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 979 00:56:00,399 --> 00:56:03,073 led thousands of silent demonstrators 980 00:56:03,193 --> 00:56:06,948 streaming past the White House, where Nixon sat alone, 981 00:56:07,072 --> 00:56:10,372 writing notes to himself on a yellow pad. 982 00:56:10,492 --> 00:56:12,369 "Don't get rattled. Don't waver. 983 00:56:12,494 --> 00:56:15,043 Don't react." 984 00:56:17,666 --> 00:56:19,464 On November 3, 985 00:56:19,585 --> 00:56:22,930 the president sought to seize back the initiative. 986 00:56:23,046 --> 00:56:24,798 Good evening, my fellow Americans. 987 00:56:24,965 --> 00:56:28,811 He went on national television and called for patience 988 00:56:28,927 --> 00:56:32,147 and asked Americans to rally behind him. 989 00:56:32,264 --> 00:56:34,062 To you, 990 00:56:34,182 --> 00:56:38,483 the great silent majority of my fellow Americans, 991 00:56:38,604 --> 00:56:40,481 I ask for your support. 992 00:56:40,606 --> 00:56:43,530 I pledged in my campaign for the presidency 993 00:56:43,650 --> 00:56:45,152 to end the war 994 00:56:45,319 --> 00:56:48,243 in a way that we could win the peace. 995 00:56:48,363 --> 00:56:51,993 The more support I can have from the American people, 996 00:56:52,159 --> 00:56:54,161 the sooner that pledge can be redeemed; 997 00:56:54,286 --> 00:56:57,665 for the more divided we are at home, 998 00:56:57,831 --> 00:57:01,426 the less likely the enemy is to negotiate at Paris. 999 00:57:02,878 --> 00:57:05,222 Let us be united for peace. 1000 00:57:05,339 --> 00:57:09,594 # We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee # 1001 00:57:09,718 --> 00:57:11,846 The speech was a triumph. 1002 00:57:11,970 --> 00:57:15,850 Nixon's approval rate soared to 68%. 1003 00:57:18,185 --> 00:57:20,529 All that's in the news 1004 00:57:20,646 --> 00:57:22,740 is the fact that the moratoriums are meeting, 1005 00:57:22,856 --> 00:57:24,824 that our country's sick... 1006 00:57:24,942 --> 00:57:26,694 sick of this and sick of that. 1007 00:57:26,818 --> 00:57:29,412 It's young people are all the ones that are standing up. 1008 00:57:29,529 --> 00:57:32,874 And there is a silent majority, which is no longer silent. 1009 00:57:33,033 --> 00:57:36,207 We're the people who are wanting to show 1010 00:57:36,370 --> 00:57:39,214 that man deserves freedom no matter where he is. 1011 00:57:39,373 --> 00:57:41,546 # A place where even squares can have a ball # 1012 00:57:41,667 --> 00:57:44,216 Many brave men died in this country to make it free... 1013 00:57:44,336 --> 00:57:45,963 I believe that. 1014 00:57:46,088 --> 00:57:48,261 And let you... and let you have everything. 1015 00:57:48,382 --> 00:57:51,602 Senator Fulbright said some months ago 1016 00:57:51,718 --> 00:57:54,221 that if the Vietnam War went on much longer, 1017 00:57:54,346 --> 00:57:58,146 the best of our young people would be in Canada. 1018 00:57:58,266 --> 00:58:01,065 Indeed, as for these deserters, 1019 00:58:01,186 --> 00:58:05,111 malcontents, radicals, incendiaries, 1020 00:58:05,232 --> 00:58:07,576 the civil and the uncivil disobedience 1021 00:58:07,693 --> 00:58:09,536 among our young, 1022 00:58:09,653 --> 00:58:11,496 SDS, PLP, 1023 00:58:11,613 --> 00:58:12,840 Weatherman one, Weatherman two, 1024 00:58:12,864 --> 00:58:15,037 the Revolutionary Action Movement, 1025 00:58:15,158 --> 00:58:17,252 Panthers, lions, hippies, 1026 00:58:17,411 --> 00:58:20,164 yippies, tigers alike. 1027 00:58:20,288 --> 00:58:22,757 I'd rather swap the whole damn zoo 1028 00:58:22,874 --> 00:58:25,297 for a single platoon of the kind of young Americans 1029 00:58:25,419 --> 00:58:26,716 I saw in Vietnam. 1030 00:58:29,798 --> 00:58:32,972 "We've got the liberal bastards on the run now," 1031 00:58:33,093 --> 00:58:35,596 Nixon told his aides, 1032 00:58:35,762 --> 00:58:39,858 "and we're going to keep them on the run." 1033 00:58:50,152 --> 00:58:54,373 # My son, my son # 1034 00:58:54,489 --> 00:58:56,457 My doorbell rang, 1035 00:58:56,575 --> 00:58:58,703 and it was this guy standing there, 1036 00:58:58,827 --> 00:59:01,922 and he said, "Ms. Howard, we're marching in Memphis 1037 00:59:02,039 --> 00:59:04,838 in protest of the Vietnam War." 1038 00:59:04,958 --> 00:59:06,926 I said, "Really?" 1039 00:59:07,044 --> 00:59:10,469 He said, "And we figured in view of what happened..." 1040 00:59:10,589 --> 00:59:13,718 I said, "Yeah, my son's death." 1041 00:59:13,842 --> 00:59:16,595 He said, "Well, we thought you'd like to join us." 1042 00:59:16,720 --> 00:59:18,973 I said, "One of the reasons he died 1043 00:59:19,097 --> 00:59:20,474 "was so you have the right. 1044 00:59:20,599 --> 00:59:23,318 "In this country, you have a right. 1045 00:59:23,477 --> 00:59:25,525 "Go right ahead and demonstrate. 1046 00:59:25,645 --> 00:59:27,613 Have at it." 1047 00:59:27,731 --> 00:59:30,075 I said, "But no, I won't be joining you." 1048 00:59:30,192 --> 00:59:31,819 I said, "But I'll tell you what. 1049 00:59:31,943 --> 00:59:33,661 "If you ever ring my doorbell again, 1050 00:59:33,779 --> 00:59:36,749 I will blow your damn head off with a .357 Magnum." 1051 00:59:47,125 --> 00:59:49,344 Well, I was stationed in Vietnam 1052 00:59:49,503 --> 00:59:52,848 at a province called Quang Ngai. 1053 00:59:53,006 --> 00:59:54,566 Even back during the time of the French, 1054 00:59:54,633 --> 00:59:58,604 it was a very heavily Viet Minh area, 1055 00:59:58,720 --> 01:00:01,189 and, when I arrived, heavily Viet Cong. 1056 01:00:02,849 --> 01:00:06,399 No province suffered more during the American war 1057 01:00:06,520 --> 01:00:08,864 than the coastal province of Quang Ngai. 1058 01:00:11,066 --> 01:00:15,788 More than 70% of its villages had been shelled by Navy ships, 1059 01:00:15,904 --> 01:00:19,704 bombed, bulldozed, or burned to the ground, 1060 01:00:19,866 --> 01:00:22,210 and more than 40% of its people 1061 01:00:22,327 --> 01:00:24,876 had been forced into refugee camps 1062 01:00:24,996 --> 01:00:28,421 before Tim O'Brien from Worthington, Minnesota, 1063 01:00:28,542 --> 01:00:30,920 got there in 1969. 1064 01:00:33,046 --> 01:00:34,686 It was a province that was viewed 1065 01:00:34,798 --> 01:00:37,142 much as I guess many Americans might view, 1066 01:00:37,259 --> 01:00:39,478 you know, sort of redneck America. 1067 01:00:39,594 --> 01:00:42,939 Sort of country bumpkins. 1068 01:00:43,056 --> 01:00:44,450 And they may have been country bumpkins, 1069 01:00:44,474 --> 01:00:46,897 but they were fiercely independent. 1070 01:00:47,060 --> 01:00:50,405 Private O'Brien served in Alpha Company, 1071 01:00:50,522 --> 01:00:55,073 3rd Platoon, 5th Battalion, 23rd Americal Division, 1072 01:00:55,235 --> 01:00:58,330 headquartered at a landing zone called Gator, 1073 01:00:58,446 --> 01:01:01,620 "30 or 40 acres of almost-America," 1074 01:01:01,741 --> 01:01:03,368 O'Brien remembered, 1075 01:01:03,493 --> 01:01:06,713 with hot showers and cold beer. 1076 01:01:08,456 --> 01:01:10,129 There was no sense of mission. 1077 01:01:10,250 --> 01:01:11,752 There was no sense of daily purpose. 1078 01:01:11,918 --> 01:01:13,920 We didn't know why we were in a village 1079 01:01:14,087 --> 01:01:16,181 or what we were supposed to accomplish. 1080 01:01:16,298 --> 01:01:18,426 So we'd kick around jugs of rice 1081 01:01:18,592 --> 01:01:21,436 and search houses and frisk people, 1082 01:01:21,553 --> 01:01:23,851 and not knowing what we were looking for 1083 01:01:23,972 --> 01:01:27,351 and rarely finding anything. 1084 01:01:27,475 --> 01:01:28,692 And somebody might die, 1085 01:01:28,810 --> 01:01:30,608 one of our guys, and somebody might not. 1086 01:01:30,729 --> 01:01:33,073 Then we'd come back to the same village a week later 1087 01:01:33,190 --> 01:01:35,409 or two weeks later, do it all over again. 1088 01:01:35,525 --> 01:01:38,278 It was like chasing ghosts. 1089 01:01:42,407 --> 01:01:44,159 An American APC 1090 01:01:44,284 --> 01:01:47,788 accidentally crushed one man from O'Brien's company. 1091 01:01:47,954 --> 01:01:52,130 An enemy grenade skittered off O'Brien's helmet and exploded, 1092 01:01:52,250 --> 01:01:55,629 wounding a G.I. standing a few feet away. 1093 01:01:58,590 --> 01:02:02,470 But mines and booby traps were the greatest menace. 1094 01:02:09,017 --> 01:02:11,520 Somewhere around 80% of our casualties 1095 01:02:11,645 --> 01:02:14,023 came from land mines of all sorts. 1096 01:02:15,774 --> 01:02:18,653 In Vietnam, for me, just to get up in the morning 1097 01:02:18,818 --> 01:02:21,992 and look out at the land and think, 1098 01:02:22,113 --> 01:02:24,866 "In a few minutes I'll be walking out there, 1099 01:02:24,991 --> 01:02:27,835 "and will my corpse be there or there? 1100 01:02:27,994 --> 01:02:31,168 Will I lose a leg out there?" 1101 01:02:31,289 --> 01:02:35,510 I'd always thought of courage as charging enemy bunkers 1102 01:02:35,627 --> 01:02:37,846 or standing up under fire. 1103 01:02:38,004 --> 01:02:41,304 But just to walk through Quang Ngai, 1104 01:02:41,424 --> 01:02:43,677 day after day, from village to village, 1105 01:02:43,802 --> 01:02:48,148 and through the paddies and up into the mountains, 1106 01:02:48,265 --> 01:02:51,769 just to make your legs move was an act of courage 1107 01:02:51,893 --> 01:02:54,521 that if, say, you were living in Sioux City, 1108 01:02:54,688 --> 01:02:56,281 it wouldn't be courageous 1109 01:02:56,398 --> 01:02:58,867 to walk to the grocery store or down Main Street, 1110 01:02:59,025 --> 01:03:01,528 you know, just to have your legs go back and forth. 1111 01:03:01,653 --> 01:03:03,246 But in Vietnam, for me, 1112 01:03:03,363 --> 01:03:05,457 just to walk felt incredibly brave. 1113 01:03:05,573 --> 01:03:08,042 I would sometimes look at my legs as I walked, 1114 01:03:08,159 --> 01:03:10,082 thinking, "How am I doing this?" 1115 01:03:42,444 --> 01:03:44,663 Bao Ninh was 17 1116 01:03:44,779 --> 01:03:47,623 when he was drafted into the North Vietnamese Army 1117 01:03:47,741 --> 01:03:48,833 to fight the Americans, 1118 01:03:48,950 --> 01:03:52,250 just as his father had fought the French. 1119 01:03:52,370 --> 01:03:55,590 His war would take place in the Central Highlands 1120 01:03:55,707 --> 01:03:57,801 of South Vietnam. 1121 01:03:57,917 --> 01:04:00,011 It was American firepower 1122 01:04:00,128 --> 01:04:04,634 that Bao Ninh and his fellow soldiers feared the most. 1123 01:06:30,153 --> 01:06:32,201 Back in the spring, 1124 01:06:32,322 --> 01:06:35,747 Tim O'Brien's outfit had been sent into an area of operations 1125 01:06:35,867 --> 01:06:38,620 the Americans called "Pinkville," 1126 01:06:38,745 --> 01:06:40,588 clusters of villages 1127 01:06:40,705 --> 01:06:44,050 that included a hamlet they called My Lai. 1128 01:06:46,002 --> 01:06:48,096 We hated going there. 1129 01:06:48,254 --> 01:06:50,973 When we'd get the word, "You're headed for Pinkville," 1130 01:06:51,090 --> 01:06:53,110 one guy would say to another, "Somebody's gonna die," 1131 01:06:53,134 --> 01:06:54,454 or, "Somebody's gonna lose a leg." 1132 01:06:54,594 --> 01:06:56,562 We were terrified of the place. 1133 01:06:56,679 --> 01:07:00,104 It was littered with land mines. 1134 01:07:00,225 --> 01:07:02,023 The villagers were... 1135 01:07:02,143 --> 01:07:03,941 The expressions on their faces, 1136 01:07:04,062 --> 01:07:08,317 including the children of, say, six or five years old, 1137 01:07:08,441 --> 01:07:13,538 had a mixture of hostility and terror. 1138 01:07:15,907 --> 01:07:17,329 I can't say many of the villagers 1139 01:07:17,450 --> 01:07:19,452 came with open arms to us, 1140 01:07:19,619 --> 01:07:21,621 but this place was special. 1141 01:07:21,746 --> 01:07:23,714 And I remember talking to fellow soldiers, 1142 01:07:23,831 --> 01:07:26,084 thinking, "What is it with this place?" 1143 01:07:27,460 --> 01:07:29,462 And then about three-quarters of the way 1144 01:07:29,629 --> 01:07:31,222 through my tour in Vietnam, 1145 01:07:31,339 --> 01:07:34,513 the story of the My Lai Massacre broke in the States. 1146 01:07:35,843 --> 01:07:38,813 On November 12, 1969, 1147 01:07:38,972 --> 01:07:41,475 the Dispatch News Service in Washington 1148 01:07:41,599 --> 01:07:45,649 moved a story by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. 1149 01:07:47,021 --> 01:07:49,240 It was soon followed by the publication 1150 01:07:49,357 --> 01:07:54,329 of graphic photos taken by Army photographer Ronald Haeberle. 1151 01:07:55,822 --> 01:07:59,622 The story and the pictures stunned the country. 1152 01:07:59,742 --> 01:08:01,289 HUNTLEY". Charges have been made 1153 01:08:01,411 --> 01:08:04,130 that troops of the Americal Division 1154 01:08:04,247 --> 01:08:07,672 killed as many as 567 South Vietnamese civilians 1155 01:08:07,792 --> 01:08:10,921 during a sweep in March 1968. 1156 01:08:12,213 --> 01:08:14,181 20 months earlier, 1157 01:08:14,299 --> 01:08:17,724 on the morning of March 16, 1968, 1158 01:08:17,844 --> 01:08:20,472 105 men from a rifle company 1159 01:08:20,597 --> 01:08:22,725 belonging to the Americal Division, 1160 01:08:22,849 --> 01:08:24,943 and led by Captain Ernest Medina 1161 01:08:25,059 --> 01:08:27,187 and Lieutenant William Calley, 1162 01:08:27,312 --> 01:08:31,362 had been ordered to helicopter into the village of My Lai 4. 1163 01:08:32,734 --> 01:08:35,954 Since arriving in Vietnam, they had lost 28 men 1164 01:08:36,070 --> 01:08:40,917 to mines and booby traps and unseen snipers. 1165 01:08:41,034 --> 01:08:45,881 Two days earlier, a popular squad leader had been killed. 1166 01:08:46,039 --> 01:08:49,669 They had been told a unit of main-force Viet Cong 1167 01:08:49,792 --> 01:08:51,419 was waiting for them, 1168 01:08:51,544 --> 01:08:54,297 and they were eager for revenge. 1169 01:08:55,632 --> 01:08:58,101 But they received no hostile fire, 1170 01:08:58,217 --> 01:09:03,018 encountered no enemy soldiers. 1171 01:09:04,515 --> 01:09:07,769 Instead, over the next four hours, 1172 01:09:07,894 --> 01:09:10,738 Medina, Calley, and their men murdered 1173 01:09:10,855 --> 01:09:18,489 407 defenseless old men, women, children, and infants. 1174 01:09:28,539 --> 01:09:31,167 Many of the women and girls were raped 1175 01:09:31,292 --> 01:09:33,590 before they were shot. 1176 01:09:36,673 --> 01:09:38,926 There would have been still more slaughter 1177 01:09:39,092 --> 01:09:43,222 had a helicopter pilot named Hugh Thompson, Jr., not landed 1178 01:09:43,346 --> 01:09:46,725 between the men and some of their intended targets 1179 01:09:46,849 --> 01:09:50,444 and ordered his crew to open fire on their fellow Americans 1180 01:09:50,603 --> 01:09:53,823 if they did not stop shooting civilians. 1181 01:09:57,110 --> 01:10:00,614 At the same time, just a mile or so away, 1182 01:10:00,780 --> 01:10:05,456 another company murdered 97 more villagers. 1183 01:10:07,453 --> 01:10:10,457 And suddenly it was like a window shade going up, 1184 01:10:10,623 --> 01:10:12,000 and then there's light, 1185 01:10:12,125 --> 01:10:14,127 and we understood what had engendered 1186 01:10:14,252 --> 01:10:17,552 this horror in these kids' faces 1187 01:10:17,672 --> 01:10:20,391 and fear and the... and the hatred. 1188 01:10:20,508 --> 01:10:24,012 Hundred and some American soldiers in four hours or so 1189 01:10:24,137 --> 01:10:26,811 butchering innocent people, 1190 01:10:26,931 --> 01:10:28,979 in all kinds of ways... machine-gunning them 1191 01:10:29,100 --> 01:10:31,353 and throwing them in wells and scalping them 1192 01:10:31,477 --> 01:10:33,354 and killing them in ditches 1193 01:10:33,479 --> 01:10:36,073 and taking a lunch break and then doing it some more. 1194 01:10:37,233 --> 01:10:39,327 Systematic homicide. 1195 01:10:39,485 --> 01:10:40,987 What kind of people? 1196 01:10:41,112 --> 01:10:42,112 Men, women, children? 1197 01:10:42,196 --> 01:10:43,618 Men, women, children. 1198 01:10:43,740 --> 01:10:45,413 - Babies? - Babies. 1199 01:10:45,533 --> 01:10:47,410 Uh, Lieutenant Calley came over and said, 1200 01:10:47,535 --> 01:10:49,412 "You know what to do with them, don't you?" 1201 01:10:49,537 --> 01:10:51,005 And, uh, I said, "Yes." 1202 01:10:51,164 --> 01:10:55,135 So I took it for granted that he just wanted us to watch them. 1203 01:10:55,251 --> 01:10:57,003 And he left and came back 1204 01:10:57,128 --> 01:10:59,677 about ten or... ten or 15 minutes later, 1205 01:10:59,797 --> 01:11:03,927 and said, "How come you ain't, uh, killed them yet?" 1206 01:11:04,051 --> 01:11:05,598 You killed how many at that time? 1207 01:11:05,720 --> 01:11:08,223 Well, I fired my automatic, so, uh... 1208 01:11:08,347 --> 01:11:10,975 you can't, uh... you just spray the area on them, 1209 01:11:11,100 --> 01:11:13,444 so you really can't know how many you killed 1210 01:11:13,561 --> 01:11:16,280 because it comes out so doggone fast. 1211 01:11:16,397 --> 01:11:20,618 So I, I might've killed about, uh, ten or 15 of them. 1212 01:11:21,778 --> 01:11:23,246 Men, women, and children? 1213 01:11:23,362 --> 01:11:24,909 Men, women, and children. 1214 01:11:25,031 --> 01:11:27,079 And babies? And babies. 1215 01:11:28,576 --> 01:11:30,453 Why did I do it? 1216 01:11:30,578 --> 01:11:33,377 Because I felt like I was ordered to do it. 1217 01:11:33,498 --> 01:11:36,047 And it seemed like, uh... 1218 01:11:38,753 --> 01:11:42,724 Well, at the time, I felt like I was doing the right thing. 1219 01:11:42,840 --> 01:11:44,717 I really did. 1220 01:11:44,842 --> 01:11:47,937 Because, uh, like I said, I lost buddies, 1221 01:11:48,054 --> 01:11:49,931 I lost... I lost a good... 1222 01:11:50,056 --> 01:11:54,402 damn good buddy... Bobby Wilson... 1223 01:11:54,560 --> 01:11:58,190 and it was on my conscience, and it was on... 1224 01:11:58,314 --> 01:12:00,237 So after I done it, I felt good. 1225 01:12:00,399 --> 01:12:04,529 But later on that day, it was getting to me. 1226 01:12:04,654 --> 01:12:07,703 It's so hard, I think, for a good many Americans 1227 01:12:07,824 --> 01:12:10,828 to understand that young, capable, 1228 01:12:10,952 --> 01:12:14,172 brave American boys 1229 01:12:14,288 --> 01:12:17,212 could line up 1230 01:12:17,333 --> 01:12:21,930 old men, women, children, and babies 1231 01:12:22,046 --> 01:12:24,765 and shoot them down in cold blood. 1232 01:12:29,512 --> 01:12:31,731 How do you explain that? 1233 01:12:31,848 --> 01:12:33,771 I wouldn't know. 1234 01:12:43,901 --> 01:12:48,031 The killing of civilians has happened in every war. 1235 01:12:48,155 --> 01:12:52,456 In Vietnam, it was not policy or routine, 1236 01:12:52,577 --> 01:12:55,171 but it was not an aberration, either. 1237 01:12:56,789 --> 01:13:01,590 Still, the scale and deliberateness and intimacy 1238 01:13:01,711 --> 01:13:03,805 of what happened at My Lai 1239 01:13:03,963 --> 01:13:05,215 was different. 1240 01:13:05,339 --> 01:13:06,966 It was different 1241 01:13:07,091 --> 01:13:09,810 because they were killing Vietnamese point-blank 1242 01:13:09,927 --> 01:13:11,270 with rifles and grenades. 1243 01:13:11,387 --> 01:13:13,685 They were murdering them directly. 1244 01:13:13,806 --> 01:13:15,979 They weren't doing it with bombs and artillery. 1245 01:13:16,142 --> 01:13:17,619 If they'd been doing it with bombs and artillery, 1246 01:13:17,643 --> 01:13:18,787 nobody would have said a word, 1247 01:13:18,811 --> 01:13:20,251 because it was going on all the time. 1248 01:13:21,314 --> 01:13:22,566 Not every soldier 1249 01:13:22,690 --> 01:13:24,408 participated in the killings that day. 1250 01:13:24,525 --> 01:13:28,029 Some led villagers away to safety. 1251 01:13:28,154 --> 01:13:30,907 But a failure of military leadership 1252 01:13:31,032 --> 01:13:34,127 at nearly every level had created the conditions 1253 01:13:34,243 --> 01:13:37,622 that made the massacre possible. 1254 01:13:37,747 --> 01:13:41,968 The My Lai story might have shocked the American public, 1255 01:13:42,084 --> 01:13:44,257 but it was not news to the Army. 1256 01:13:44,378 --> 01:13:47,507 It had occurred almost two years before, 1257 01:13:47,673 --> 01:13:50,677 just after the Tet Offensive. 1258 01:13:50,843 --> 01:13:53,187 Hugh Thompson, the helicopter pilot 1259 01:13:53,346 --> 01:13:55,348 who had tried to stop the massacre, 1260 01:13:55,514 --> 01:13:58,313 reported what he had seen, 1261 01:13:58,434 --> 01:14:00,311 but no one in the chain of command 1262 01:14:00,436 --> 01:14:01,562 was willing to act. 1263 01:14:01,687 --> 01:14:05,317 The slaughter was covered up. 1264 01:14:05,441 --> 01:14:09,196 Later, an ex-corporal named Ronald Ridenhour, 1265 01:14:09,320 --> 01:14:10,947 who had heard about what had happened 1266 01:14:11,072 --> 01:14:12,995 from several men who had been there, 1267 01:14:13,115 --> 01:14:16,494 wrote letters to the president of the United States, 1268 01:14:16,619 --> 01:14:18,371 the secretary of defense, 1269 01:14:18,537 --> 01:14:22,383 and more than two dozen other high-ranking officials. 1270 01:14:22,541 --> 01:14:25,670 Personally, what decision-making process 1271 01:14:25,795 --> 01:14:28,594 did you go through before you decided to take your action? 1272 01:14:28,714 --> 01:14:32,389 I guess I just wrestled with my own conscience 1273 01:14:32,510 --> 01:14:34,729 to try to decide what action to take. 1274 01:14:34,887 --> 01:14:36,889 I felt that I had to take some action. 1275 01:14:37,014 --> 01:14:38,357 I had to do something. 1276 01:14:38,474 --> 01:14:39,691 I couldn't just... 1277 01:14:39,809 --> 01:14:42,312 just rest with this knowledge for the rest of my life 1278 01:14:42,436 --> 01:14:45,235 that I couldn't... I couldn't live with myself if I did. 1279 01:14:45,398 --> 01:14:48,322 President Nixon's first reaction 1280 01:14:48,442 --> 01:14:52,572 was to investigate those who reported the slaughter. 1281 01:14:52,697 --> 01:14:55,371 "It's those dirty rotten Jews from New York 1282 01:14:55,491 --> 01:14:56,743 who are behind it," 1283 01:14:56,867 --> 01:14:58,244 he told an aide. 1284 01:14:58,411 --> 01:15:02,666 Eventually, Lieutenant General William R. Peers, 1285 01:15:02,790 --> 01:15:06,590 a veteran of 30 months as a troop commander in Vietnam, 1286 01:15:06,752 --> 01:15:08,425 was assigned to head a panel 1287 01:15:08,546 --> 01:15:11,299 to look into what had really happened. 1288 01:15:11,424 --> 01:15:14,473 Peers found that 30 persons, 1289 01:15:14,593 --> 01:15:16,937 including the division commander, 1290 01:15:17,054 --> 01:15:19,273 General Samuel W. Koster, 1291 01:15:19,390 --> 01:15:21,643 had either committed atrocities 1292 01:15:21,767 --> 01:15:25,738 or had conspired to cover them up. 1293 01:15:29,775 --> 01:15:33,496 Peers had wanted to call My Lai a "massacre." 1294 01:15:33,612 --> 01:15:36,866 His superiors made him use the phrase, 1295 01:15:36,991 --> 01:15:40,996 "a tragedy of major proportions." 1296 01:15:41,120 --> 01:15:46,627 In the end, the Army indicted 25 officers and men, 1297 01:15:46,751 --> 01:15:51,882 including the platoon leader, Lieutenant William Calley. 1298 01:15:54,467 --> 01:15:56,469 Calley's a killer. 1299 01:15:56,594 --> 01:15:58,471 Calley's a murderer 1300 01:15:58,637 --> 01:16:00,810 and a... a sick person. 1301 01:16:02,933 --> 01:16:05,937 I'm not gonna be in any, you know, uh, 1302 01:16:06,062 --> 01:16:08,485 propaganda movie for the United States Marine Corps, 1303 01:16:08,647 --> 01:16:10,524 but we didn't have that guy. 1304 01:16:12,818 --> 01:16:15,241 We had individuals who, who... 1305 01:16:15,362 --> 01:16:17,330 who committed war crimes, of course. 1306 01:16:17,448 --> 01:16:21,373 And, um, you know, I wanted to kill them. 1307 01:16:21,494 --> 01:16:23,997 I sometimes wish I did kill 'em. 1308 01:16:26,832 --> 01:16:30,587 But... I was afraid to kill 'em. 1309 01:16:33,005 --> 01:16:34,928 # Two, one, two, three, four # 1310 01:16:40,513 --> 01:16:42,015 # Everybody's talking about... # 1311 01:16:42,139 --> 01:16:45,234 I never considered the Vietnamese our enemy. 1312 01:16:45,351 --> 01:16:47,024 They had never done anything 1313 01:16:47,144 --> 01:16:49,693 to threaten the security of the United States. 1314 01:16:49,814 --> 01:16:52,533 They were off 10,000 miles away, 1315 01:16:52,650 --> 01:16:54,368 minding their own business, 1316 01:16:54,485 --> 01:16:56,829 and we went there to their country, 1317 01:16:56,946 --> 01:16:58,368 told them what kind of government 1318 01:16:58,531 --> 01:17:00,750 we wanted them to have. 1319 01:17:00,866 --> 01:17:04,996 Well, when I see the war protesters, 1320 01:17:05,121 --> 01:17:06,873 I react on a couple of levels. 1321 01:17:06,997 --> 01:17:09,500 Intellectually, I certainly understand their right 1322 01:17:09,625 --> 01:17:11,298 to the freedom of speech. 1323 01:17:11,418 --> 01:17:12,795 But I will tell you 1324 01:17:12,920 --> 01:17:15,844 that when I see them waving NLF flags, 1325 01:17:15,965 --> 01:17:19,185 the enemy that I and my friends had to fight, 1326 01:17:19,301 --> 01:17:22,475 and some of my friends had to die fighting, 1327 01:17:22,596 --> 01:17:24,223 that doesn't sit very well with me. 1328 01:17:24,348 --> 01:17:27,443 # All we are saying... # 1329 01:17:27,560 --> 01:17:30,484 On November 15, 1969, 1330 01:17:30,604 --> 01:17:32,823 half a million citizens turned out 1331 01:17:32,940 --> 01:17:35,443 against the war in Washington, again. 1332 01:17:35,568 --> 01:17:37,866 # Everybody's talking about revolution... # 1333 01:17:37,987 --> 01:17:41,207 This time, buses provided an impenetrable wall 1334 01:17:41,323 --> 01:17:43,496 around the White House. 1335 01:17:43,617 --> 01:17:45,961 President Nixon claimed he was too busy 1336 01:17:46,078 --> 01:17:48,251 watching football on television 1337 01:17:48,372 --> 01:17:49,589 to pay attention, 1338 01:17:49,707 --> 01:17:54,087 but he did suggest that Army helicopters might be used 1339 01:17:54,253 --> 01:17:56,096 to blow out the marchers' candles. 1340 01:17:56,255 --> 01:17:58,223 # All we are saying... # 1341 01:17:59,884 --> 01:18:01,903 Hundreds of thousands of others demonstrated 1342 01:18:01,927 --> 01:18:05,431 in San Francisco and New York. 1343 01:18:12,730 --> 01:18:15,074 The most striking antiwar protest 1344 01:18:15,191 --> 01:18:16,408 of this Thanksgiving Day 1345 01:18:16,525 --> 01:18:18,948 occurred not in this country, but in Vietnam, 1346 01:18:19,111 --> 01:18:21,489 though its form was uniquely American. 1347 01:18:21,614 --> 01:18:23,708 About 100 American soldiers 1348 01:18:23,824 --> 01:18:26,202 stationed at a hospital in Pleiku 1349 01:18:26,327 --> 01:18:28,876 refused to eat their traditional turkey dinner. 1350 01:18:28,996 --> 01:18:32,967 They described their fast as a passive protest against the war. 1351 01:18:41,759 --> 01:18:43,386 The Army did what the Army does. 1352 01:18:43,510 --> 01:18:45,030 Every year, you know, for Thanksgiving, 1353 01:18:45,095 --> 01:18:46,221 they make a big deal. 1354 01:18:46,347 --> 01:18:47,547 They're gonna bring in turkey, 1355 01:18:47,640 --> 01:18:49,075 they're gonna bring in mashed potatoes, 1356 01:18:49,099 --> 01:18:51,397 and apple pie and whatever. 1357 01:18:51,518 --> 01:18:53,395 And by this point, I think, 1358 01:18:53,520 --> 01:18:56,490 a lot of us were very, very cynical about the war 1359 01:18:56,607 --> 01:18:58,405 and what was going on. 1360 01:18:58,525 --> 01:19:01,904 But we weren't gonna make a big deal about it. 1361 01:19:02,029 --> 01:19:04,578 We knew there were gonna be TV people there. 1362 01:19:04,698 --> 01:19:07,827 And a couple of the organizers were looking for people to talk. 1363 01:19:07,952 --> 01:19:09,545 They came to me, I said, "No." 1364 01:19:09,662 --> 01:19:12,006 I said, "Look, I'm gonna fast and do my thing." 1365 01:19:12,122 --> 01:19:13,965 I said, "But I, I really don't want 1366 01:19:14,083 --> 01:19:16,381 to be involved with any media thing." 1367 01:19:16,502 --> 01:19:20,882 That Thanksgiving Day, Lieutenant Furey was on duty 1368 01:19:21,006 --> 01:19:25,056 when one of her patients took a sudden turn for the worse. 1369 01:19:25,177 --> 01:19:28,181 Some patients, they just get into your heart. 1370 01:19:28,347 --> 01:19:29,894 And this kid, I think he was 18. 1371 01:19:30,015 --> 01:19:31,437 His name was Timmy. 1372 01:19:31,558 --> 01:19:35,984 It was unlikely he was gonna survive. 1373 01:19:36,105 --> 01:19:39,530 And I just got so angry. 1374 01:19:39,692 --> 01:19:43,071 I just lost it. 1375 01:19:43,195 --> 01:19:45,289 I remember walking out of the O.R., 1376 01:19:45,406 --> 01:19:47,300 I ripped off the gown, and I ripped off the mask, 1377 01:19:47,324 --> 01:19:50,544 I walked outside, I said, "Where are those reporters?" 1378 01:20:03,757 --> 01:20:05,902 I mean, you know, you don't demonstrate against the war 1379 01:20:05,926 --> 01:20:07,052 in a war zone. 1380 01:20:07,177 --> 01:20:10,056 By that time, of course, you, you had the attitude, 1381 01:20:10,180 --> 01:20:11,978 "What are they gonna do? 1382 01:20:12,099 --> 01:20:13,976 Send me to Vietnam?" 1383 01:20:22,943 --> 01:20:25,867 Let's just say that being a Marine combat veteran 1384 01:20:25,988 --> 01:20:29,913 on a college campus in 1969 and 1970... 1385 01:20:30,075 --> 01:20:31,793 it wasn't a real good thing to be 1386 01:20:31,910 --> 01:20:33,958 if you wanted to get dates and be popular. 1387 01:20:36,790 --> 01:20:40,260 When I came home, it seemed like 1388 01:20:40,377 --> 01:20:43,677 I didn't have anything to give to anybody else. 1389 01:20:47,134 --> 01:20:51,139 Marine Corporal John Musgrave had very nearly died 1390 01:20:51,263 --> 01:20:55,894 in combat below the DMZ in the autumn of 1967. 1391 01:20:56,018 --> 01:20:58,771 Wounded in the jaw and shoulder, 1392 01:20:58,937 --> 01:21:02,612 his ribs shattered, lung pierced, nerves cut, 1393 01:21:02,733 --> 01:21:07,034 he had spent 17 months in Navy hospitals. 1394 01:21:07,154 --> 01:21:10,203 He was now studying at Baker University 1395 01:21:10,324 --> 01:21:13,077 in Baldwin City, Kansas. 1396 01:21:15,537 --> 01:21:19,917 But wherever he went, the war was never far away. 1397 01:21:22,169 --> 01:21:26,470 And the peace movement, for a while, got real nasty, 1398 01:21:26,632 --> 01:21:28,600 calling veterans baby killers. 1399 01:21:30,677 --> 01:21:32,475 It did more than piss us off. 1400 01:21:32,638 --> 01:21:34,436 It broke our hearts. 1401 01:21:34,556 --> 01:21:36,809 What were they thinking? 1402 01:21:36,934 --> 01:21:42,191 You don't turn your backs on your warriors. 1403 01:21:42,314 --> 01:21:44,817 I didn't trust anybody anymore. 1404 01:21:46,318 --> 01:21:48,616 Just my family. 1405 01:21:48,737 --> 01:21:51,160 Musgrave was so hurt 1406 01:21:51,323 --> 01:21:53,291 by the way some people treated him 1407 01:21:53,409 --> 01:21:56,709 that he volunteered to return to Vietnam. 1408 01:21:56,829 --> 01:22:00,459 Because of his injuries, the Marines turned him down, 1409 01:22:00,582 --> 01:22:04,428 and asked him to help recruit men instead. 1410 01:22:04,545 --> 01:22:06,468 He did for a time, 1411 01:22:06,588 --> 01:22:09,558 but when students asked him questions about the war 1412 01:22:09,675 --> 01:22:11,427 he couldn't answer, 1413 01:22:11,552 --> 01:22:12,644 he also began to read 1414 01:22:12,761 --> 01:22:17,016 about how and why it was being fought. 1415 01:22:17,182 --> 01:22:20,812 I had friends in country on a second tour, 1416 01:22:20,936 --> 01:22:24,031 and, you know, I, I was still... considered myself a Marine. 1417 01:22:24,148 --> 01:22:26,901 And... and the more I read, 1418 01:22:27,025 --> 01:22:32,247 the less I found to be able to defend our presence there. 1419 01:22:32,364 --> 01:22:36,369 So then, I, I just stopped talking to everybody. 1420 01:22:38,662 --> 01:22:42,587 Musgrave gradually felt as if he were being torn in two. 1421 01:22:42,708 --> 01:22:46,588 And he was still haunted by the memory of those Marines 1422 01:22:46,712 --> 01:22:51,309 who had died while he had lived. 1423 01:22:51,425 --> 01:22:54,554 I was dating my .45 in those years, you know. 1424 01:22:54,678 --> 01:22:57,352 Coming home at night after drinking, 1425 01:22:57,473 --> 01:22:59,475 and pressing it up against my temple, 1426 01:22:59,600 --> 01:23:02,399 or putting it under my chin, 1427 01:23:02,561 --> 01:23:04,814 wondering if this was gonna be the night 1428 01:23:04,938 --> 01:23:06,906 I was gonna have the guts to do it. 1429 01:23:08,692 --> 01:23:10,837 I'd had a round chambered, and I'd taken the safety off. 1430 01:23:10,861 --> 01:23:13,080 Same kind of pistol I carried in Vietnam. 1431 01:23:15,699 --> 01:23:18,999 And I thought, "I'm really gonna do it tonight." 1432 01:23:19,119 --> 01:23:22,919 You know, like, "Whew, I'm really gonna do it," you know. 1433 01:23:23,081 --> 01:23:24,958 And my dogs... I'd let my dogs out. 1434 01:23:25,083 --> 01:23:26,585 I had two dogs. 1435 01:23:26,752 --> 01:23:28,254 And they jumped on the front door 1436 01:23:28,378 --> 01:23:29,658 and scratched on the front door. 1437 01:23:29,755 --> 01:23:31,507 They wanted in. 1438 01:23:31,632 --> 01:23:32,817 And I put the safety back on the pistol 1439 01:23:32,841 --> 01:23:34,593 and set it down and went and let 'em in. 1440 01:23:36,428 --> 01:23:39,102 And they were so open in their love for me 1441 01:23:39,223 --> 01:23:40,850 that I literally said out loud, 1442 01:23:40,974 --> 01:23:46,105 "Whoa, if I really want to do this, I can do this tomorrow." 1443 01:23:46,271 --> 01:23:47,614 And I went back in the room, 1444 01:23:47,731 --> 01:23:49,574 and I put the pistol in the drawer, and... 1445 01:23:49,691 --> 01:23:52,615 and I... I think that was the closest I came. 1446 01:23:52,736 --> 01:23:54,329 I think maybe I would have killed... 1447 01:23:54,446 --> 01:23:56,699 k-k-killed myself that night. 1448 01:23:56,823 --> 01:23:58,166 But something as simple 1449 01:23:58,283 --> 01:24:00,706 as my dogs wanting back in... 1450 01:24:00,827 --> 01:24:04,081 stopped that thought, you know. 1451 01:24:06,833 --> 01:24:09,803 I'm really glad that it didn't happen. 1452 01:24:09,962 --> 01:24:13,091 But at the time, it just made so much sense. 1453 01:24:17,970 --> 01:24:19,893 Richard Nixon's troop withdrawals 1454 01:24:20,013 --> 01:24:23,187 finally turned Musgrave against the war. 1455 01:24:23,308 --> 01:24:26,027 "If it ain't worth winning," he said, 1456 01:24:26,144 --> 01:24:28,488 "it ain't worth dying for." 1457 01:24:28,605 --> 01:24:31,154 His loyalty to the Marines 1458 01:24:31,316 --> 01:24:34,160 would not yet let him openly say that, 1459 01:24:34,278 --> 01:24:36,701 but he told a campus antiwar meeting 1460 01:24:36,822 --> 01:24:39,666 that they should stop acting as if they didn't give a damn 1461 01:24:39,783 --> 01:24:42,536 about the men who had been asked to fight, 1462 01:24:42,661 --> 01:24:45,005 and received a standing ovation. 1463 01:24:49,334 --> 01:24:51,632 The turning point for me, I think, 1464 01:24:51,753 --> 01:24:54,723 was one evening I spent with my friend Sonny Walter, 1465 01:24:54,840 --> 01:24:57,343 who had been, uh... just been discharged from the Army, 1466 01:24:57,509 --> 01:25:00,012 and had come home and spent an evening 1467 01:25:00,178 --> 01:25:02,681 before I went in pleading with me not to go. 1468 01:25:02,848 --> 01:25:05,351 He even offered to drive me to Canada. 1469 01:25:05,517 --> 01:25:08,020 He was showing me some horrible pictures of Vietnam 1470 01:25:08,186 --> 01:25:09,859 from his own service there. 1471 01:25:11,815 --> 01:25:13,692 I think everything that happened after it 1472 01:25:13,859 --> 01:25:15,361 had its seeds in that evening. 1473 01:25:17,571 --> 01:25:20,871 While attending the University of Nebraska, 1474 01:25:20,991 --> 01:25:24,746 Jack Todd had undergone Marine officer training, 1475 01:25:24,870 --> 01:25:28,249 but bad knees had forced him to drop out 1476 01:25:28,373 --> 01:25:30,421 and he believed that exempted him 1477 01:25:30,542 --> 01:25:33,091 from having to take part in a war 1478 01:25:33,211 --> 01:25:35,805 he had come to see as immoral. 1479 01:25:35,922 --> 01:25:39,972 He began work as a reporter on The Miami Herald. 1480 01:25:40,093 --> 01:25:44,724 But in the autumn of 1969 he received a draft notice 1481 01:25:44,848 --> 01:25:47,146 from the Army anyway. 1482 01:25:47,267 --> 01:25:48,610 # The thrill is gone # 1483 01:25:48,727 --> 01:25:50,070 So I went into my physical 1484 01:25:50,228 --> 01:25:52,268 and I showed them my discharge from the Marine Corps 1485 01:25:52,356 --> 01:25:54,029 and I actually remember a sergeant, 1486 01:25:54,149 --> 01:25:55,543 or whoever I was talking to, saying, 1487 01:25:55,567 --> 01:25:57,740 "But, uh, you were discharged from an officer program. 1488 01:25:57,861 --> 01:25:59,283 We're drafting you as a private." 1489 01:26:01,531 --> 01:26:03,909 In late November 1969, 1490 01:26:04,076 --> 01:26:08,377 Todd reported for basic training at Fort Lewis, Washington. 1491 01:26:08,497 --> 01:26:10,420 # You know you done me wrong # 1492 01:26:10,582 --> 01:26:12,505 Morale just could not have been worse. 1493 01:26:12,626 --> 01:26:14,424 And-and it seemed to include 1494 01:26:14,544 --> 01:26:17,343 even the sergeants and the officers. 1495 01:26:17,464 --> 01:26:21,344 Nobody wanted to go. Nobody wanted to go. 1496 01:26:21,468 --> 01:26:24,768 America just seemed to have shifted from the Woodstock high 1497 01:26:24,930 --> 01:26:25,977 of the summer to this... 1498 01:26:26,098 --> 01:26:29,272 this sort of bitter Nixonian low. 1499 01:26:29,393 --> 01:26:32,738 Jack Todd and another member of his unit 1500 01:26:32,854 --> 01:26:35,778 began to talk at night about what it meant 1501 01:26:35,941 --> 01:26:37,443 to be true to one's conscience. 1502 01:26:41,738 --> 01:26:44,116 Some 170,000 men 1503 01:26:44,282 --> 01:26:46,580 were granted conscientious objector status 1504 01:26:46,702 --> 01:26:49,251 during the Vietnam era. 1505 01:26:49,371 --> 01:26:51,044 But because Jack Todd 1506 01:26:51,164 --> 01:26:53,337 questioned the existence of God, 1507 01:26:53,458 --> 01:26:57,133 that avenue was closed to him. 1508 01:26:57,254 --> 01:26:58,471 There were really two choices. 1509 01:26:58,630 --> 01:27:00,348 It was go to jail or go to Canada. 1510 01:27:00,465 --> 01:27:02,934 And, for me, going to jail was just... 1511 01:27:03,051 --> 01:27:04,928 That one, I couldn't face. 1512 01:27:05,053 --> 01:27:06,930 So I went to Canada. 1513 01:27:07,055 --> 01:27:10,730 # Farewell, Angelina # 1514 01:27:10,851 --> 01:27:14,697 # The bells of the crown # 1515 01:27:14,813 --> 01:27:16,986 I remember that last beautiful drive, 1516 01:27:17,149 --> 01:27:19,652 from Seattle to Vancouver, 1517 01:27:19,776 --> 01:27:24,282 all the towering Douglas firs along the road. 1518 01:27:24,406 --> 01:27:26,579 And I remember, after we crossed the border... 1519 01:27:26,700 --> 01:27:29,169 it was a breeze, they just sort of waved us through... 1520 01:27:29,327 --> 01:27:31,421 and just looking in the rearview mirror, thinking, 1521 01:27:31,538 --> 01:27:32,790 "Man, there goes my country. 1522 01:27:32,914 --> 01:27:35,918 I'll never see it again." 1523 01:27:36,042 --> 01:27:39,137 # But farewell, Angelina # 1524 01:27:39,254 --> 01:27:42,474 # The night is on fire # 1525 01:27:42,591 --> 01:27:44,468 # And I must go # 1526 01:27:46,928 --> 01:27:49,602 I get called a coward all the time. 1527 01:27:49,723 --> 01:27:52,818 It took me a long time 1528 01:27:52,934 --> 01:27:55,357 not to feel that what I had done 1529 01:27:55,520 --> 01:27:58,069 was-was cowardly, because I still had 1530 01:27:58,190 --> 01:28:01,569 that military ingrained feeling inside. 1531 01:28:03,195 --> 01:28:06,290 That was the bravest thing I ever did. 1532 01:28:06,406 --> 01:28:08,374 It was the bravest thing I ever did. 1533 01:28:11,203 --> 01:28:14,753 Jack Todd eventually found work as a reporter, 1534 01:28:14,873 --> 01:28:17,877 which allowed him to gain "landed immigrant status," 1535 01:28:18,001 --> 01:28:21,301 a step toward Canadian citizenship. 1536 01:28:21,421 --> 01:28:25,927 Only a quarter of the estimated 30,000 Americans 1537 01:28:26,051 --> 01:28:28,895 who crossed into Canada managed to do so. 1538 01:28:29,012 --> 01:28:31,231 # The sky is erupting # 1539 01:28:31,348 --> 01:28:35,023 # And I must go where it is quiet. # 1540 01:28:35,143 --> 01:28:38,317 At the same time, some 30,000 Canadians 1541 01:28:38,438 --> 01:28:41,908 would volunteer to fight in Vietnam. 1542 01:29:00,794 --> 01:29:04,094 I thought about... 1543 01:29:04,214 --> 01:29:06,137 my parents and my siblings 1544 01:29:06,258 --> 01:29:09,888 and my wife and my little girl. 1545 01:29:10,011 --> 01:29:13,436 And one of the things that bothered me, is that I... 1546 01:29:13,557 --> 01:29:18,154 I couldn't really remember what they looked like after a while. 1547 01:29:18,270 --> 01:29:20,614 I remembered what their pictures looked like. 1548 01:29:20,772 --> 01:29:25,118 And when I imaged them in my mind's eye 1549 01:29:25,277 --> 01:29:28,702 I would image a picture, a photograph. 1550 01:29:31,449 --> 01:29:32,802 Valerie Kushner arrived on the... 1551 01:29:32,826 --> 01:29:34,920 Hal Kushner's wife, Valerie, 1552 01:29:35,036 --> 01:29:37,130 had heard virtually nothing of her husband 1553 01:29:37,247 --> 01:29:40,922 since his capture by the Viet Cong in 1967, 1554 01:29:41,042 --> 01:29:43,636 and she had traveled to the Far East 1555 01:29:43,795 --> 01:29:46,139 to try to improve conditions for him. 1556 01:29:46,256 --> 01:29:49,510 I think my period of greatest frustration 1557 01:29:49,634 --> 01:29:52,513 was just before and just after the birth of our son. 1558 01:29:52,637 --> 01:29:55,186 He was born in April of 1968 1559 01:29:55,307 --> 01:29:59,153 and my husband was captured in November of 1967. 1560 01:29:59,311 --> 01:30:03,157 So my husband does not yet know of his birth. 1561 01:30:03,273 --> 01:30:05,473 With their father gone, the Kushner children 1562 01:30:05,525 --> 01:30:08,620 rely heavily on their mother and their grandparents. 1563 01:30:08,737 --> 01:30:10,177 Young Mike has never seen his father, 1564 01:30:10,322 --> 01:30:12,620 but six-year-old Toni-Jean remembers. 1565 01:30:12,741 --> 01:30:14,181 And the remembrances of Major Kushner 1566 01:30:14,326 --> 01:30:15,953 are everywhere in their house. 1567 01:30:16,077 --> 01:30:18,171 Toni, however, knows only that he's away, 1568 01:30:18,288 --> 01:30:19,974 that he's been captured, that grandfather fills in 1569 01:30:19,998 --> 01:30:21,250 until Dad comes home. 1570 01:30:21,374 --> 01:30:25,220 The Kushners worry, but they do not grieve. 1571 01:30:25,337 --> 01:30:27,305 Don Farmer, ABC News, reporting. 1572 01:30:34,220 --> 01:30:36,314 In February 1970, 1573 01:30:36,431 --> 01:30:39,560 in a house in an industrial suburb of Paris, 1574 01:30:39,684 --> 01:30:42,187 Henry Kissinger began a new series 1575 01:30:42,312 --> 01:30:45,737 of secret negotiations... talks so secret 1576 01:30:45,857 --> 01:30:50,078 even the secretary of state was not told about them. 1577 01:30:50,195 --> 01:30:52,197 His negotiating partner 1578 01:30:52,364 --> 01:30:56,039 would be Le Duan's close political ally, Le Duc Tho, 1579 01:30:56,201 --> 01:30:59,705 a veteran of 40 years of revolutionary warfare 1580 01:30:59,829 --> 01:31:03,550 and party intrigue... shrewd, implacable, 1581 01:31:03,708 --> 01:31:07,383 and openly scornful of Vietnamization. 1582 01:31:07,504 --> 01:31:10,178 If the United States could not win 1583 01:31:10,298 --> 01:31:13,472 with half a million of its own troops, he asked Kissinger, 1584 01:31:13,593 --> 01:31:16,187 "How can you succeed when you let your puppet troops 1585 01:31:16,304 --> 01:31:18,557 do the fighting?" 1586 01:31:18,723 --> 01:31:21,897 The American admitted he had no answer. 1587 01:31:27,691 --> 01:31:29,864 Despite the impasse in Paris, 1588 01:31:29,985 --> 01:31:33,580 Nixon's first year had been a triumph. 1589 01:31:33,697 --> 01:31:39,750 He had withdrawn 115,000 troops from Vietnam. 1590 01:31:41,079 --> 01:31:44,299 American casualty figures were down. 1591 01:31:44,416 --> 01:31:46,965 Reduced draft calls 1592 01:31:47,085 --> 01:31:49,258 and the president's new lottery system 1593 01:31:49,421 --> 01:31:52,425 had blunted some opposition to the war. 1594 01:31:55,343 --> 01:31:57,766 And the violent actions of some revolutionaries 1595 01:31:57,929 --> 01:32:01,433 were tarnishing the antiwar cause itself. 1596 01:32:01,558 --> 01:32:05,404 Between September 1969 and May 1970, 1597 01:32:05,520 --> 01:32:08,114 there would be hundreds of bombings... 1598 01:32:08,231 --> 01:32:10,029 banks and courthouses, 1599 01:32:10,150 --> 01:32:13,279 induction centers and ROTC buildings. 1600 01:32:15,321 --> 01:32:17,198 One police officer was killed. 1601 01:32:18,491 --> 01:32:19,868 Three would-be bombers 1602 01:32:19,993 --> 01:32:23,668 accidentally blew themselves up in Greenwich Village. 1603 01:32:23,788 --> 01:32:25,961 # Well, well # 1604 01:32:26,082 --> 01:32:29,962 The antiwar movement split apart. 1605 01:32:30,128 --> 01:32:32,847 And there were people who felt that the only way 1606 01:32:32,964 --> 01:32:36,685 we were ever gonna end the war was by becoming more violent. 1607 01:32:36,801 --> 01:32:39,645 You know, that we had to match violence with violence. 1608 01:32:39,763 --> 01:32:44,485 How that was gonna happen wasn't spoken about openly. 1609 01:32:44,601 --> 01:32:47,275 But there was just this undercurrent. 1610 01:32:47,395 --> 01:32:49,648 This is a plumbing pipe 1611 01:32:49,773 --> 01:32:53,198 completely full of gunpowder. 1612 01:32:53,318 --> 01:32:55,446 # Music so high you can't get over it # 1613 01:32:55,570 --> 01:32:57,948 My fellow Americans, 1614 01:32:58,073 --> 01:33:00,542 we live in an age of anarchy, 1615 01:33:00,658 --> 01:33:03,161 both abroad and at home. 1616 01:33:04,704 --> 01:33:09,676 We see mindless attacks on all the great institutions, 1617 01:33:09,793 --> 01:33:12,137 which have been created by free civilizations 1618 01:33:12,253 --> 01:33:14,847 in the last 500 years. 1619 01:33:16,216 --> 01:33:18,344 Even here in the United States, 1620 01:33:18,468 --> 01:33:22,018 great universities are being systematically destroyed. 1621 01:33:25,141 --> 01:33:27,860 If, when the chips are down, 1622 01:33:27,977 --> 01:33:30,446 the world's most powerful nation, 1623 01:33:30,563 --> 01:33:32,236 the United States of America, 1624 01:33:32,357 --> 01:33:37,204 acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, 1625 01:33:37,362 --> 01:33:41,037 the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy 1626 01:33:41,157 --> 01:33:43,785 will threaten free nations and free institutions 1627 01:33:43,910 --> 01:33:45,457 throughout the world. 1628 01:33:45,578 --> 01:33:49,583 On April 30, 1970, 1629 01:33:49,707 --> 01:33:51,459 President Nixon shocked the world 1630 01:33:51,584 --> 01:33:54,633 by announcing that he had sent 30,000 American troops 1631 01:33:54,754 --> 01:33:58,384 storming into Cambodia. 1632 01:33:58,550 --> 01:34:01,520 The previous month, Prince Norodom Sihanouk 1633 01:34:01,636 --> 01:34:03,809 had been overthrown in a coup. 1634 01:34:03,930 --> 01:34:06,228 For years, he had allowed the North Vietnamese 1635 01:34:06,391 --> 01:34:08,894 to keep sanctuaries in his country, 1636 01:34:09,060 --> 01:34:10,937 but he had not protested 1637 01:34:11,062 --> 01:34:14,487 when American planes bombed them. 1638 01:34:14,607 --> 01:34:17,201 The new president, Lon Nol, 1639 01:34:17,318 --> 01:34:21,164 was an anticommunist, backed by the United States. 1640 01:34:21,281 --> 01:34:23,579 Nixon now felt he could do 1641 01:34:23,700 --> 01:34:27,295 what American generals had been wanting to do for years... 1642 01:34:27,412 --> 01:34:31,167 pursue the enemy beyond the borders of South Vietnam. 1643 01:34:32,750 --> 01:34:35,549 The 30,000 American troops 1644 01:34:35,670 --> 01:34:40,801 were joined by 50,000 ARVN soldiers. 1645 01:34:40,925 --> 01:34:42,848 The objective was to attack 1646 01:34:42,969 --> 01:34:45,597 North Vietnamese base camps and supply lines 1647 01:34:45,763 --> 01:34:48,983 and to buy time for the South Vietnamese Army 1648 01:34:49,100 --> 01:34:51,478 as it got ready to fight on its own. 1649 01:34:53,521 --> 01:34:55,774 Nixon told the public 1650 01:34:55,899 --> 01:34:59,449 he had ordered an "incursion," not an "invasion," 1651 01:34:59,569 --> 01:35:04,040 intended only to protect American boys in South Vietnam 1652 01:35:04,157 --> 01:35:08,287 and in response to North Vietnamese "aggression." 1653 01:35:11,247 --> 01:35:15,002 I wasn't worried about political conflict. 1654 01:35:15,126 --> 01:35:17,754 I was worried about, "Am I gonna be alive 1655 01:35:17,879 --> 01:35:19,301 in the next ten minutes?" 1656 01:35:20,965 --> 01:35:24,265 We were on the Western edge of the invasion. 1657 01:35:24,385 --> 01:35:27,639 We went as far as anybody went in Cambodia. 1658 01:35:29,015 --> 01:35:30,392 And it was a hot LZ. 1659 01:35:30,516 --> 01:35:35,192 I got holes shot in my backpack. 1660 01:35:35,313 --> 01:35:36,690 I was laying on my face 1661 01:35:36,814 --> 01:35:38,987 and they were shooting holes in my backpack, 1662 01:35:39,108 --> 01:35:42,032 which means they missed my head by maybe four inches. 1663 01:35:43,988 --> 01:35:47,333 I really didn't think I would see the end of that week. 1664 01:35:53,790 --> 01:35:57,294 The sight of American troops crossing the border 1665 01:35:57,418 --> 01:36:01,264 into Cambodia reignited the antiwar movement. 1666 01:36:01,381 --> 01:36:02,553 Come on, let's go! 1667 01:36:02,674 --> 01:36:04,768 If the troops were coming home, 1668 01:36:04,884 --> 01:36:06,886 if the war was winding down, 1669 01:36:07,011 --> 01:36:10,936 why had Nixon decided to widen it? 1670 01:36:11,057 --> 01:36:13,776 How could invading another country 1671 01:36:13,893 --> 01:36:17,739 help bring peace to Southeast Asia? 1672 01:36:17,855 --> 01:36:19,528 The reaction on the campuses 1673 01:36:19,691 --> 01:36:21,159 was swift and predictable. 1674 01:36:21,276 --> 01:36:22,869 The students and many of their teachers 1675 01:36:22,986 --> 01:36:24,454 were against the president. 1676 01:36:24,570 --> 01:36:27,699 Princeton students called for a nationwide student strike. 1677 01:36:27,865 --> 01:36:31,540 Antiwar rallies were planned at Harvard, MIT, Indiana, 1678 01:36:31,661 --> 01:36:33,755 Purdue Universities and other colleges. 1679 01:36:39,043 --> 01:36:42,263 On Monday morning, May 4, 1970, 1680 01:36:42,380 --> 01:36:44,883 some 2,000 students gathered on the commons 1681 01:36:45,049 --> 01:36:48,849 at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. 1682 01:36:48,970 --> 01:36:52,691 Some were simply moving from class to class. 1683 01:36:52,807 --> 01:36:56,186 Others planned to attend a rally called to protest 1684 01:36:56,311 --> 01:36:58,905 Nixon's widening of the war 1685 01:36:59,022 --> 01:37:04,700 and the presence of the Ohio National Guard on campus. 1686 01:37:04,819 --> 01:37:07,823 Governor James Rhodes had called in the guardsmen 1687 01:37:07,947 --> 01:37:09,290 two days earlier 1688 01:37:09,407 --> 01:37:14,789 after a mob set the old wooden ROTC building on fire 1689 01:37:14,912 --> 01:37:16,789 and then prevented the fire department 1690 01:37:16,914 --> 01:37:19,258 from putting out the flames. 1691 01:37:22,295 --> 01:37:26,300 Rhodes had compared protestors to Nazi brownshirts 1692 01:37:26,424 --> 01:37:29,849 and promised to use "every weapon to eradicate 1693 01:37:29,969 --> 01:37:34,190 the worst sort of people we harbor in America." 1694 01:37:38,853 --> 01:37:44,075 The guardsmen's weapons were loaded with live ammunition, 1695 01:37:44,192 --> 01:37:45,910 though no one in the crowd knew it. 1696 01:37:46,027 --> 01:37:49,247 Why do you have to have a gun?! I don't understand! 1697 01:37:49,364 --> 01:37:52,243 Leave this area immediately! 1698 01:37:52,367 --> 01:37:56,122 The students were ordered to disperse. 1699 01:37:56,245 --> 01:37:57,838 They stood their ground. 1700 01:38:03,920 --> 01:38:07,049 Tear gas scattered some of them. 1701 01:38:26,401 --> 01:38:30,247 The guardsmen seemed to fall back. 1702 01:38:30,363 --> 01:38:34,459 But then members of Troop G wheeled around and opened fire 1703 01:38:34,575 --> 01:38:38,580 on students gathered in and around a parking lot. 1704 01:39:10,153 --> 01:39:12,281 Somebody call for an ambulance! 1705 01:39:14,073 --> 01:39:16,952 There's people dying down here! Get an ambulance up here! 1706 01:39:23,666 --> 01:39:27,011 67 rounds in 13 seconds 1707 01:39:27,128 --> 01:39:31,508 killed two young women and two young men... 1708 01:39:34,469 --> 01:39:37,598 Including an ROTC scholarship student 1709 01:39:37,722 --> 01:39:40,191 who had simply been an onlooker. 1710 01:39:45,897 --> 01:39:50,573 That dead child on the ground 1711 01:39:50,735 --> 01:39:53,989 was one of ours. 1712 01:39:54,113 --> 01:39:57,413 If we could kill our own students, 1713 01:39:57,533 --> 01:40:02,585 uh, what had happened to our country? 1714 01:40:04,749 --> 01:40:07,593 Nine more students were wounded, 1715 01:40:07,752 --> 01:40:11,677 one of whom was permanently paralyzed. 1716 01:40:23,017 --> 01:40:27,363 Several hundred angry, grieving students sat down 1717 01:40:27,480 --> 01:40:29,482 and demanded to know why the guardsmen 1718 01:40:29,607 --> 01:40:31,484 had fired on their friends. 1719 01:40:35,029 --> 01:40:37,828 Sir, you've got a couple hundred students... 1720 01:40:37,949 --> 01:40:39,326 An officer ordered them 1721 01:40:39,450 --> 01:40:41,202 to "disperse or we will shoot again." 1722 01:40:41,327 --> 01:40:44,206 How long will you give us? You've got five minutes. 1723 01:40:44,330 --> 01:40:47,209 Please listen to me right now! 1724 01:40:47,333 --> 01:40:49,882 Only the anguished pleas 1725 01:40:50,002 --> 01:40:54,553 of geology professor Glenn Frank averted further tragedy. 1726 01:40:54,674 --> 01:40:56,347 Talk, Dr. Frank. Talk. 1727 01:41:21,701 --> 01:41:24,500 That just symbolized for me 1728 01:41:24,662 --> 01:41:28,508 what this war was doing to our culture. 1729 01:41:28,624 --> 01:41:30,342 These were kids on both sides, 1730 01:41:30,501 --> 01:41:33,220 young National Guard boys 1731 01:41:33,337 --> 01:41:36,591 who had very little training and probably scared, 1732 01:41:36,716 --> 01:41:38,844 and not well led 1733 01:41:38,968 --> 01:41:40,728 and-and young men and women on the other side 1734 01:41:40,845 --> 01:41:42,313 protesting the war out there 1735 01:41:42,430 --> 01:41:44,649 for, you know, idealistic reasons. 1736 01:41:44,765 --> 01:41:47,314 And look at what happens 1737 01:41:47,435 --> 01:41:53,533 when we let things get as bad as they got. 1738 01:41:55,359 --> 01:41:57,908 According to one national poll, 1739 01:41:58,029 --> 01:42:00,703 58% of the American people 1740 01:42:00,865 --> 01:42:03,664 thought the killings justified. 1741 01:42:06,662 --> 01:42:09,882 The parents of the dead ROTC student 1742 01:42:09,999 --> 01:42:12,593 received a flood of hate mail, 1743 01:42:12,710 --> 01:42:16,010 suggesting that they should be grateful their boy was dead 1744 01:42:16,130 --> 01:42:20,681 since he'd been "just another communist." 1745 01:42:25,931 --> 01:42:29,401 During the days that followed, all across the country, 1746 01:42:29,560 --> 01:42:32,063 more than four million college students 1747 01:42:32,229 --> 01:42:34,072 demonstrated against the war 1748 01:42:34,231 --> 01:42:37,110 and what had happened at Kent State. 1749 01:42:39,695 --> 01:42:43,620 # I came upon a child of God # 1750 01:42:43,741 --> 01:42:48,292 # He was walking along the road # 1751 01:42:48,412 --> 01:42:50,255 # And I asked him # 1752 01:42:50,414 --> 01:42:52,587 # Where are you going? # 1753 01:42:52,750 --> 01:42:56,596 # And this he told me # 1754 01:42:56,712 --> 01:43:01,263 448 campuses closed down, 1755 01:43:01,425 --> 01:43:06,932 and the National Guard was called out in 16 states. 1756 01:43:07,098 --> 01:43:08,270 # Band # 1757 01:43:08,432 --> 01:43:10,434 # I'm gonna camp out # 1758 01:43:10,559 --> 01:43:14,029 At Jackson State University in Mississippi, 1759 01:43:14,146 --> 01:43:18,276 state police opened fire on a dormitory. 1760 01:43:18,442 --> 01:43:20,240 Two students died. 1761 01:43:20,361 --> 01:43:23,240 12 more were wounded. 1762 01:43:25,282 --> 01:43:27,284 Jackson State, those were my people. 1763 01:43:27,451 --> 01:43:29,249 Those were black kids. 1764 01:43:29,370 --> 01:43:31,589 And they died. 1765 01:43:31,706 --> 01:43:35,085 # Back to the garden # 1766 01:43:35,209 --> 01:43:37,462 Army private Tim O'Brien 1767 01:43:37,628 --> 01:43:41,303 was now back home in Minnesota. 1768 01:43:41,424 --> 01:43:44,849 There was a huge march 1769 01:43:44,969 --> 01:43:46,767 after the Kent State shootings in St. Paul, 1770 01:43:46,887 --> 01:43:49,185 and I joined the march. 1771 01:43:49,306 --> 01:43:54,483 I just wanted to put my body amidst these 100,000 people, 1772 01:43:54,603 --> 01:43:57,732 that word "no" being uttered by my body, if not by my mouth, 1773 01:43:57,857 --> 01:43:59,279 by just making that march. 1774 01:43:59,400 --> 01:44:02,825 That same march I was doing in Vietnam 1775 01:44:02,945 --> 01:44:05,164 that seemed senseless and purposeless 1776 01:44:05,322 --> 01:44:06,414 and without direction, 1777 01:44:06,532 --> 01:44:09,331 here it felt sensible and purposeful 1778 01:44:09,493 --> 01:44:12,713 and with direction, heading for that state capital 1779 01:44:12,830 --> 01:44:16,130 to say no. 1780 01:44:16,250 --> 01:44:19,424 And, boy, did it feel good. 1781 01:44:24,383 --> 01:44:26,181 Marine Corporal Bill Ehrhart 1782 01:44:26,343 --> 01:44:28,721 was a student at Swarthmore College 1783 01:44:28,846 --> 01:44:32,942 near his hometown in eastern Pennsylvania. 1784 01:44:33,058 --> 01:44:37,484 And here's this very famous photograph. 1785 01:44:37,605 --> 01:44:40,404 And I just looked at this thing. 1786 01:44:44,695 --> 01:44:46,197 And I came unglued. 1787 01:44:48,532 --> 01:44:51,877 I don't know how long I sat down on the curb, 1788 01:44:52,036 --> 01:44:55,415 and I don't know if I was there for 15 minutes 1789 01:44:55,539 --> 01:44:56,961 or an hour and a half. 1790 01:44:57,082 --> 01:44:59,301 Just had a breakdown. 1791 01:44:59,418 --> 01:45:03,013 Just crying, sobbing uncontrollably. 1792 01:45:03,130 --> 01:45:04,983 All I could think was, "It's not enough to send us 1793 01:45:05,007 --> 01:45:07,351 "halfway around the world to die. 1794 01:45:07,468 --> 01:45:10,221 "Now they're killing us in the streets of our own country. 1795 01:45:10,346 --> 01:45:11,689 I have to do something." 1796 01:45:13,682 --> 01:45:14,774 And I finally... 1797 01:45:14,892 --> 01:45:16,690 whenever I finally cried myself out, 1798 01:45:16,811 --> 01:45:19,234 I got up and I joined the antiwar movement. 1799 01:45:22,566 --> 01:45:26,912 I remember when the kids were killed at Kent State, 1800 01:45:27,029 --> 01:45:29,703 and I thought, 1801 01:45:29,824 --> 01:45:32,953 "My God, we're killing our own children now. 1802 01:45:33,077 --> 01:45:34,795 We've really gone mad." 1803 01:45:34,912 --> 01:45:36,209 And I wasn't... 1804 01:45:36,330 --> 01:45:39,209 That's when I was hiding from things. 1805 01:45:39,333 --> 01:45:41,256 I wasn't in anybody's movement then. 1806 01:45:41,418 --> 01:45:43,045 I was just drinking. 1807 01:45:45,172 --> 01:45:50,554 But that was one of the things that told me 1808 01:45:50,678 --> 01:45:52,931 America needed a wake-up call. 1809 01:46:26,130 --> 01:46:28,974 # Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming # 1810 01:46:29,091 --> 01:46:31,935 # We're finally on our own # 1811 01:46:32,052 --> 01:46:35,352 # This summer I hear the drumming # 1812 01:46:35,472 --> 01:46:39,147 # Four dead in Ohio # 1813 01:46:39,268 --> 01:46:41,942 # Got to get down to it # 1814 01:46:42,062 --> 01:46:45,316 # Soldiers are cutting us down # 1815 01:46:45,482 --> 01:46:49,157 # Should have been done long ago # 1816 01:46:51,739 --> 01:46:53,286 # What if you knew her # 1817 01:46:53,407 --> 01:46:57,002 # And found her dead on the ground? # 1818 01:46:57,161 --> 01:47:01,166 # How can you run when you know? # 1819 01:47:22,186 --> 01:47:24,564 # La la-la-la, la la la la # 1820 01:47:24,688 --> 01:47:28,443 # La la-la-la, la la la # 1821 01:47:28,567 --> 01:47:31,537 # La la-la-la, la la la la # 1822 01:47:31,695 --> 01:47:34,949 # La la-la-la, la la la # 1823 01:47:35,074 --> 01:47:37,452 # Got to get down to it # 1824 01:47:37,576 --> 01:47:41,080 # Soldiers are cutting us down # 1825 01:47:41,205 --> 01:47:44,960 # Should have been done long ago # 1826 01:47:47,378 --> 01:47:49,426 # What if you knew her # 1827 01:47:49,546 --> 01:47:53,551 # And found her dead on the ground? # 1828 01:47:53,676 --> 01:47:57,271 # How can you run when you know? # 1829 01:48:17,491 --> 01:48:20,335 # Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming # 1830 01:48:20,452 --> 01:48:23,547 # We're finally on our own # 1831 01:48:23,664 --> 01:48:26,588 # This summer I hear the drumming # 1832 01:48:26,709 --> 01:48:29,053 # Four dead in Ohio # 1833 01:48:29,169 --> 01:48:32,218 # Four dead in Ohio # # Four # 1834 01:48:32,339 --> 01:48:34,467 # Four dead in Ohio # 1835 01:48:34,591 --> 01:48:37,435 # Four # # Four dead in Ohio # 1836 01:48:37,553 --> 01:48:40,102 # How could they? # # Four dead in Ohio # 1837 01:48:40,222 --> 01:48:43,271 # How many more? # # Four dead in Ohio # 1838 01:48:43,434 --> 01:48:45,528 # Why? # # Four dead in... #