Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire the vietnam war, begins sunday nite on PBS

No, his name was Mike W. - I won't post a full name on the dangerous internet. Short legs going up into a barrel keg of a body, he was immensely strong and a great all around machinist/mechanic/finish carpenter. Haven't seen him for probably 20 years now but we were great shooting buddies for a while and would have some marathon bullet casting sessions going into the wee hours while we solved the problems of the world.

friend of mine in the navy, on a WWII destroyer.
use to sail at hi speed around a island off the coast of north vietnam. shore based artillery would opened up on them not realizing there was
a battleship over the horizon. He said he was the rabbit in a shooting gallery.
During the summer of love in was stationed in san francisco that was the hippy chicks haight ashberry, etc. He was very disappointed, still complains. he said given he had the military buzz cut, he couldn't get laid no matter how hard he tried. I told him he should have rented a wig.

Finished watching episode 10 last night. 9 and 10 filled in a lot of history between 1970 and 1975 I wasn't aware of, especially after 1972 when I was in the Army - which is the surest way to not know what's going on in the rest of the world.

More government maneuvering, more lies, more "secret" stuff engaged in by the government and a complete abandonment of SVN. There were surely reasons for that, but it sucked all the same.

Last half of episode 10 was very moving, definitely aggravated the allergies to watch.

you are frustrating me, i could only get to six on the pbs site.

7-10 are available to PBS Passport members but there is a way to get around that which for the life of me I cannot duplicate consistently, had to fiddle around each time. When you click on 7-10 it give those two options for Passport whatever and Add to Watchlist, click on the Passport whatever, click on the next screen which does nothing, go back, then scroll down to other episodes, click on one you've already watched, hit Resume, then go back to the newer episode you want to watch and suddenly there will be a "Resume" option for it, or not. Hit that Resume and it takes you to some point 80% through it, so just hit rewind to go back to the beginning and watch all the way through. Or not. Like I said, I had to fiddle with each one, sometimes 4-5 times, and never did discover a set way to get around it.

Or, you could sign up as a Passport member, but that would be too easy...

I'm through Episode 5 and this has been very disturbing, upsetting some long held beliefs. So many complicating factors and arrogance on all sides.
What I do believe is, had not Ho Chi Minh been a communist, this whole tragedy could have been avoided. But given that, there's plenty of blame to go around.
I doubt that five more episodes will change that conclusion for me. But I'll try to keep an open mind.

At the end of WWII it was quickly obvious that there would be a hegemonic reordering of the developed world between communism and democracy, and that 3rd world countries would be the battle ground for the continued spread of communism. There was no room leftover for colonialism. Why didn't the French understand this? They had the only opportunity to rebuild and orchestrate a peaceful transition to a legitimate democracy. Their greed frustrated not only this chance, but any chance thereafter. By the time America inherited the mess, there was truly no winning answer.

Ya gotta be a 'snowflake' if you want to watch that!

Just finished episode 6. Very intense. Battle for Hue, Tet '68, etc. Not pleasant to see but important to watch in order to understand.

Episode 6 at last was an episode I was completely aware of, no surprises. And no disagreements with the presentation either. That's the way the first half of 1968 was presented at the time as I recall.Except the police chief shot the VC prisoner with a S&W .38, not a .45 as the ARVN marine officer recalled. My opinions and conclusions differed in some instances.

There is no question in my mind that this series has been very well done. No question.

Yep. Just watched episode 6....well done.

Watching this episode has been most uncomfortable for me as this Tet offensive was an extremely difficult period for our outfit.

episode 8 brings back a lot of memories. And some i didn't know about. Such as nixon convincing the south vietnamese to withdraw from the peace talks, to insure his victory in the presidential election. And lieing about it, and it's on tape.
Johnson not revealing it, knowing nixon was lieing, but not wanting to admit bugging the south vietnamese embassy.
And the democratic convention in chicago and riots.
and kent state.
And me going back to my home town and during summer jobs having older people tell me they should have cracked more heads in chicago, and shot some students at kent state. one of those killed there was a R.O.T.C. scholarship student.
And it makes me understand why i have been so cynical about government and politicians ever since. They Lie, and they can get you dead.
I did know about my lia i didn't know about another village being wiped out. I did not know a general ended up being tied up into that.
Then I got to thinking about kerry, who i dislike, talking at the paris peace talks about american troopes being baby killers. Hard to swallow he was telling the truth. Isolated incident, but still telling the truth.

in episode six there was a little bit on bobby kennedy. I was at a campaign speech he made in phoenix, outside at a shopping mall, summertime, hotter than all get out.
I actually was able to walk up to him and shake his hand. Small hand, and ice cold, which given the heat was odd.
I got a real premonition after that talking to my girlfriend, it was so odd i could walk right up to him and him hand being so cold.
few weeks later, he was assasinated in california.
i ofter wonder if he would have lived.

Another opinion: My dad's thoughts on the matter, early 70's......

My brother and I got lucky, especially my brother, the draft was winding down when he came of age, I missed it entire.

My father was on Okinawa with the 6th Marines, never could bring himself to speak about it. He loved this country, a typical combat vet of the Greatest Generation.

He told us that if our draft number ever came up for Vietnam he would drive us to Canada himself.

Dunno what my brother and I woulda actually done if called up, most likely, like prob'ly most young men back then, we would have gone into the military as ordered. At 18 we weren't really politically aware and becoming a lawbreaker as well as an exile wouldn't be something we were well equipped to face..

I was watching it tonight as my wife was on the phone with her best friend...a doctor born in Vietnam who came to America as a baby when her mom and dad fled at the end.

But anyway, that war could never be won. Oh, they could never beat us but there was no way for us to win it as long as the North had the will to fight. And there has never been a nation or a people with more will to fight who believed in their cause more than North Vietnam. The only way we could have won would have been to march in and take over the North and we could/would never do that because that would have meant a shooting war with the Chinese. We weren't willing to do that.

It was a colossal circle jerk from day one and it makes you hurt to see all that needless death and destruction.