History Ch. documentary on Vietnam War tonight @ 6PM
 

The series started last night. They are repeating the first couple episodes tonight and then continuing on.

The 6pm show has eye witness and film accounts of Rolling Thunder (Mel Gibson movie).

Great footage and stories.

I watched these / set to record the others.

really really good.

Is it really necessary to abbreviate the word "channel?" I realize that's kind of nitpicky, but for serious.

that show is intense

I watched a bunch of that last night too. Shit is brutal.

Weather today, HOT, Weather tonight HOT, Weather tomorrow HOT.

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I was in a hurry.

The Old Man hated having to put ice in his beer.

Is this the one they claim is in HD?

Yup

I think the point is the channel is an HD channel, so you are watching old footage that has been cleaned up a bit on an HD quality feed.

They don't claim anywhere I have seen that the actual footage is in HD but I imagine it is "high definition" compared to how it was viewed before.

Just like the WWII in HD series.

I have to say there is some pretty amazing stuff on there. Much more vivid video than anything I had watched previously.

yeah, some of the stats from Hill 875 were crazy.

Another about how they had planned to use the new air mobility command to drop in like 800 guys over the course of a few hourse, but then after they had dropped off like 200 dudes, the LZ was ambushed and they couldn't bring any more guys in for another day or so. and they were outnumbered something crazy like 8 to 1. I think it was part of Rolling Thunder if I'm remembering correctly.

and they flashed a stat that said something like the typical WWII vet saw probalby a total of 10 days of combat in a year; and the average Vietnam vet saw close to 240 days in a year.

I can't imagine.

I know. It's just a pet peeve of mine. 16:9 isn't automatically HD.

its actually been on the last two nights if you are talking about Vietnam HD. It is very cool.

I could watch those Vietnam and WWII series all day.

the Vietnam series is very eye opening for me. If I remember correctly, I don't think it was ever even covered in any of my HS classes. Or, if it was, it was so minimal I don't remember it.

i don't remember anything from school either during that time. just the nightly news.

i do remember the day it was announced we were pulling out of there. one girl was running around school screaming how happy she was that her brother was going to get to come home. he was in canada.
sec

Where did he get the ice?

I can vaguley remember Walter Cronkite giving nightly body counts.

an intersting bit I heard on one of the Vietnam HD shows was that unlike most wars that were about capturing/occupying territory/objectives, the Vietnam war (err. conflict) was strictly based on body count.

one example they gave was when the US pursed the VC to Hill 875 (not sure if this is 'hamburger hill' or not). After taking the hill, they stayed there for a while (few days, I can't remember), then just left. fFter suffering pretty significant losses 'taking' the hill if I recall, only to move away from it shortly thereafter. I think they were trying to prevent the VC from escapting into Laos and Cambodia; countries that had some sort of political agreement or something where the US couldn't pursue them if the VC made it into their country.

I'm a novice on the Vietnam war, so a lot of my comments etc were from memory after watching the shows. So, fee free to correct anything that's out of whack.

I see old people.

Where?!

Let Professor Turgeson give you a little background on the Vietnam War:

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:LOL: Classic

Sounds like me. I was flight crew member in the Navy as well on the P-3 Orion anti-submarine aircraft. (68-72) Wild times.

The current war has never been as unpopular as Vietnam mainly because of 9/11 and partially because people these days find it hard to give a shit about anything that doesn't directly effect them.

No draft, no direct effect for the most part.

That is a coincidence, where were you stationed? We had some P3s at NAS Aganna, as well as a C130 squadron, VQ1.

All good points

Stole it.

Thanks for posting this thread.

I watched it last night instead of the football. It brought back a lot of memories, and some of the stuff I learned just didn't matter back then.

It just doesn't seem like it was that long ago, but it is.

At that time, WWII and the Korean war seemed like ancient history to me, so I can understand why a lot of people now think of Nam being so long ago.

I was 9 in 69 when my dad's air guard unit deployed. Coming from a military family I remember the resentment from my mom/dad towards the protesters. Especially in the mid 70's when my sister turned into one of them.

Freaky time to grow up.

Thanks for your service men and women. Watching this documentary makes me mad that the vets were treated different by protestors when they got back.

The effort of the History Channel's Vietnam series is one of the best I've seen.

I say that because it helps people understand a conflict that has been, for the most part, been cursed, maligned and with misstated facts.

In the last part of '66 I was a 22 year old First Class Petty Officer with 4 years of Naval service; felt 10 foot tall and bulletproof. I volunteered to serve in the Navy's PBR (River Patrol Boat) that had begun operations in earlier that year.

The Mekong Delta has 4 major rivers and countless small canals. Charlie was mostly unchallenged as the ground troops were in other areas that weren't 90% water logged.

The Ham Loung was one of these rivers, totally in Charlie's control. Our first patrol, we went in in heavy numbers, Hueys overhead and Vietnam Air Force A6's buzzing by. Young, untested and pretty scared, we blasted everything that moved, or seemed to. It was called a "free fire zone" so everything that floated was considered VC. Nary a shot was returned by our challenge. It pumped up our bravado; we were the bad asses of the river and felt Charlie knew this.

Two days later, out they came. Our patrol started at 6 AM that day. Two boats one with me as Boat Captain moved 15 miles further up the Ham Loung. Spirits high, chest thrusted, calling Charlie out for his whipping, we got our wish.

I'll always remember the sound of bullets whizzing by. I hadn't heard that before and looked up in instinct until I heard the muzzle pop just an instant later. I think we all froze for a second, then our training kicked in. We did several high speed runs strafing the shore. When the smoke cleared, one body lay halfway into the river.

From there, it went down hill fast. The first month, we lost 4 of the 6 boats in our squadron. A lot of sailors received their first of many PH's, some Bronze and a Silver were handed out.

I came away from that war a year later. I cannot recall any feeling of regret, but I no longer felt 10 foot tall. I was assigned overseas in Taiwan in 68-69. I never saw the problems it caused at home. Transferred to NAS Beeville, TX also gave little exposure to these issues (Texans will know why). But it did sour me on the youth of that period. I gave up shore duty and went back to sea for 13 months and wrangled an assignment to Naval Support Activities, Antarctica and spent a year at the South Pole.

All this isolation kept me pretty much insulated until the mid 70's when I left the Navy and returned to the states for good.

The last 4 decades have dealt harshly with that conflict, not to mention the many servicemen it destroyed when they felt abandoned.

It was in 1994 that if finally caught up with me. I shudder to think what I might have done had I not sought counseling. It was learning that 3 times as many vets have ended their lives at their own hands as those who lost their lives over there that finally cleared up my mind.

It isn't a mater of the morality of that war. There isn't such a thing as a moral war. My life changed forever 40+ years ago and like many 'Nam vets still feel as if our nation abandoned us.

Please remember this if you denigrate any young man or woman returning from Iraq or Afghanistan.

Thanks for posting that,

Anyone have a torrent?

I set the DVR to record all of them yesterday. I will check them out tomorrow night. Thanks for the heads up.

excellent show
 

My nephew is 10 years old. He was adopted from Viet-Nam at age 3. His parents have been very upfront with him about is heritage. In my opinion he will not remember any of his former life in the orphanage. Most of his classmates think he is Hispanic.

I told his folks I want to help if it becomes a problem when they study Viet Nam in school, but I don't know if they even teach that war. I recall only a few days on Korea and less than a week on World Wars1 and 2. Of course that was the late 60's and early 70's.

I am not sure what to tell the lad, maybe how it was on the news and how unpopular it became through the years.

Yeah Yeah... but do you have a torrent link?

good ole direct tv
 

I just this week entered the 21st century and now can record programs for future viewing. Good investment.

Thank you so much for doing what you did. Thank you for our freedom!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was just giving you a hard time on the first post. Didn't mean anything by it. After I posted I thought you might think I was taking a cheap shot at your nephew. I didn't mean it that way.

How many episodes are there?
I'd like to watch them in order but not sure of the order & how many there are.

3 episodes, 2 hours a piece, and the dates are in the description

Got the dvr set! Thanks!

finished watching the series last night.

what an incredible job by the History channel (or who ever made it). I learned a ton from it; and it wasn't all watered down/filtered like it usually is in school history books etc.

Seeing the guys they interviewed be completely fine and calm while talking about an incident, then suddenly they just start crying. I can't imagine the stuff they had to deal with/witness/perform etc.

Great series, hard to top it.

Watched 2 episodes so far. Very well done. :thumb:

I was too young to understand what was happening. But even as an adult I still can't understand how some in the public turned on the soldiers when they came home.

How did they blame joe soldier that was drafted for the war? Did they think the war existed because of these soldiers? They should have all went to jail instead of serve? What? It makes no sense to me. Is there or was there ever a justification given for the treatment of joe soldier when he returned home in that era?

Saw all 3 episodes last week and by far the best documentary on Nam to date:thumb: Footage never seen before and much of it from the soldiers themselves. Good stuff !!

Sure, the entitled infants who made up the baby boomer generation didn't like the war. That was their justification.

I don't see that as a valid point. This generation is much more "pussified" that that generation and noone is spitting on our soldiers returning home.

The use of professional actors' voices is really annoying. Also, it's a little silly to call 1964-1965 "The Beginning" when, I think, any legitimate Vietnam discussion needs to discuss the French, Ho Chi Minh, and the Treaty of Versailles. And no mention of Gulf of Tonkin's uncertainty? Watch The Fog of War before this is my recommendation.

You're wrong. There is no generation more pussified than the boomers. None more hypocritical either.

series' like this just put you in a trance of disbelief that shit like this has actually happened

That is said, or something to that effect about every generation at one point in time or another. It is always false.

Your parents thought and said the same thing about you. Their parents thought and said the same thing about them.

It's nothing more than an excuse to blame the negatives in society largely on the younger generation. Undeserved criticism.

I am watching this morning...

Undeserved criticism? Spitting on drafted returning soldiers when it happens so many times its no longer an individuals decision.

I was actually responding to your claim that the present younger generation is more "pussified" than the previous one.

And I'm saying that it is a false idea. Your parents said the same crap about you. Their parents said the same crap about them. How many "well in my day we used to walk to school in 4 ft of snow, uphill both ways...in sandals" do you have to hear before you realize it is just all a bunch of bullshit?

I tell life has almost come full circle for you now. You can check off becoming just like your parents on the life checklist. About the only thing left is kids through college, a grand kid or 2 and retirement a few years later. amirite?