Assignment in Vietnam BBC 1969

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Vietnam at war for 20 years beneath the familiar images of battles and horror a people struggle on with the day-to-day tasks that don't sell newspapers the wearying business of simple survival three journalists assigned to cover the war talk about this other Vietnam the Vietnam that doesn't make the headlines mark Frankland in Saigon dick West and the Mekong Delta and with the American forces Peter Arnett when the United States gets out of here which it makes that doing soon the war is not gonna be over the Vietnamese are going to continue to fight it between themselves but it'll be a battle between the Vietnamese that's probably how it should have been in the first place [Music] Arnett a New Zealander works for Associated Press he came to Vietnam six years ago and has won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting of the war the new journalist covering this new kind of war different the old-timers we're more realistic than the patriotic it seems to me that the older journalists don't seem to understand that this war is different [Music] just look down there there's no front lines you see islands of security and a communist see those base camps could be wagon trains drawn up in circles to fight off the Indians this isn't the Wild West and there's no world war two or curry this is a david-and-goliath struggle and the innocent civilians they're caught in the middle reporters have been more aware of their suffering probably than any previous war and not only because they're they're hurting badly it's because this is basically a political war and you can't win that only with guns [Music] think [Music] [Music] yeah how could anybody live through that yeah no you got so much firepower and all of the the the Jets and the armed helicopters and the artillery and everything else we get thrown at them you know and you get the feeling one galley you know there's a newcomer I I sit here and I see all this stuff going on 500 meters in front of me how could anybody live through that Annette likes to see and question for himself he reckons to spend a fortnight each month in the field we don't go around just popping villages and what I mean by this just find a village and then arbitrarily take it under fire and burn it to the ground in fact it's quite rare that this ever happens when you get up there how do you tell who's friendly and who's the enemy on the ground how do you know you're not killing innocent people well simply by the uniform and by the weapon that he carries mainly and by the fact that usually shoots at you real fast I usually takes care of the whole problem you have been to Vietnam two years now what do you feel about the American objectives here we have this great number of American soldiers in Vietnam and we've lost so many people so many people that that's such a commitment to us to me personally if we must leave Vietnam tomorrow I think that my 21 months in country we're completely lost just a complete waste what he's asking for is a continuation of the internal non-productive open-ended American commitment Vietnam an infantry patrol waits for the helicopters the company commander is kept in harimoto from Hawaii it is said that this is the first war in which the infantry supports the air and artillery and not the other way round as in previous Wars [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] this place these people staying around will go ahead and work the wooden Lassie [Music] the war now is bogged down in stalemate means days of endlessly patrolling deep jungles across hot paddy fields and the American soldiers out there they hardly ever see the people who are shooting at them America has enough troops in Vietnam to prevent the other side winning but unfortunately it hasn't got enough to beat them and that's where the stalemate lies the ordinary GI doesn't know much about Vietnam and it's not his fault usually the only Vietnamese he sees are the ones he's killed he's sent here as a soldier he's sent here to do a job that's to kill the other side of a kill charlie and that's about it even when he does get out when say he gets to Saigon for a little fun for some human companionship he sees the worst side of the country and he'll get fleeced in the first few hours but bad girls are Saigon a tough they're the toughest in Asia have you had any major context recently yes we're working on a similar operation to this one just a normal eco fight working into the jungle area as we got into the area for about the distance of 3 to 400 meters ran into what I consider to have been an enemy ambush in other words they were waiting there waiting for us to come on in as soon as we've got any close to close enough to then they sprung there and that's how close was that it's about 20 meters 20 meters this is a seductive war for reporters I must admit that there is danger out there but it's tempting you can spend the morning and a helicopter watching the battle and fall below you you can walk with the troops and yet in the afternoon you can return to Saigon and write your story and dine at a fine restaurant I can always leave a battle and return to Saigon but those guys they have to stay out there [Music] [Music] unlike most journalists in Saigon Arnett has his wife and family with slugging around the field a lot of GIS have said to me you've been here six years how can you stand it but let's face it I can hitch a ride in a helicopter and a couple of hours I can be in a very different Vietnam [Music] regiment 1st Marine Division during the operation 53 enemy were killed 856 suspects were detained US casualties were 9 killed 46 wounded of whom 32 were evacuated this is the daily Saigon briefing we call it the five o'clock follies which gives a good idea what most of us feel about it we get a very different view of the war in the field than is told here this is one of the reasons why there's been such a rift between the military authorities and the press this opposing view of what is happening become so bad over the years that I often wondered which side we were on most professional soldiers here are Hawks they want to fight the water victory but 90% of the guys are draftees they don't want to be here I really don't know what we're fighting for and nobody knows that and it's a different kind of feeling like when you're back in the States they make it sound different no well they make it sound like like it's really bad through everything he's been you know they make it sound like like the many- the airplane you're gonna step in and whine I'm there you go you know that's not true have you had any friends killed over here oh yes I had a couple of friends killed 90 this month I was looking at two being that fight but it was really terrible what do you see they Vietnamese people they ever meet any oh yeah we're not allowed to buy coats from them you know stuff like that they sell it to us and we don't really mind Byron I can tell us that the codes they put acid in and they try to kill you these people on trying to do anything because they make the guys ever talk about the news about the possibility of a withdrawal about America's getting out well you see over here we don't I mean we listen you know to the radio and listen to them tell us that they're gonna pull aside but they all seem to be any action like when we see the airplanes loading then we don't stay we're going back okay meanwhile all we think about is the time let time go by [Music] the Americans won out of Vietnam the war is costing too much blood too much money and a lot of money is spent needlessly [Music] one division base camp has six swimming pools - massage parlors and - steam baths this is something that soldiers and other wars didn't have and many critics believe that the soldier today doesn't need this sort of thing he's got too many comforts and the worst aspect of it is that it's not the man who's doing the fighting that's benefiting from all this well what we're trying to do with the Holiday Inn is give them in something they can identify with the stateside in that snack bar you could buy anything that you could buy back in the United States you know drive-in type restaurant hamburgers hotdogs soda pop milkshakes french fried potatoes can you get kimba's for breakfast negative to that I've noticed in some other base area is a popular facility there's a steam bath and massage parlors well right now we're still under construction but we are going to put our steam baths a massage right back behind the snack bar you've got to realize we are out in a forward zone we are one of the most westernmost outpost in this war we're only what 13 kilometers from the Cambodian border next to that we have going up our tailor shop merchants from Hong Kong come in they'll measure you up for a suit I think usually takes about five fittings to get the suit exactly right we also have a swimming pool we filter that water everyday it's clean in addition to that if the man requests anything in particular he wants ice cream we get him ice cream if he wants to take a swim in the pool with the female we have nurses over here that it generally have more than obliging we have the Red Cross donut dollies who will come by and they'll take a dip in the pool with the guys too they have a real good time get away from the war for a while and just plain relax which is what they need most I bet they enjoy it we know the Americans realize that the problem of Vietnam is the problem of the people the other war if any Goods going to come out of this war it'll be in this area whether it was euphemistically called pacification ask her this is nosebleed just at night okay where's Mae PCs ball please all right give the baby one of these every six hours washes cut his hair shorter and wash it good with that soap twice a day [Music] last time about the same thing last time you know they have a man came up right on here but this evening you know you don't know okay you don't know my forbidden asking me fees oh hell is I'm tomato yo by me by 73 years you think I saw him last the officer shoot [Music] dimetapp and some a pieces okay pops as long as an ox fillings like these it is my personal belief that the Americans underestimated those they were fighting and misjudged the effectiveness of the other side's political propaganda there's been many pacification programs in Vietnam and yet looking in retrospect they just don't seem to have made it do you have any any new ideas and new angles to use I don't think they're a really new ideas but I think we've learned from some of the mistakes we have made in the past sometimes we've tried to do too much now we're not trying to do things so much for the Vietnamese as to help them do things for themselves it's a two-pronged approach while the fighting is going on around us regular forces are attempting to keep out the main forces of the enemy Vietnamese forces civic action teams like mine attempt to build while the fighting is going on elsewhere do you think that in a millon that American military people coming out here and jeeps can do this can they make the approach to the population through the language barrier and the cultural barrier I think so because we attempt to stay out as much as we can out of the cultural area certainly I mean American I'm not a Vietnamese I'm not inside of Vietnamese as skin I don't think or feel the way he does so when I attempt to deal with these people I don't attempt to do it from my standpoint I try as much as possible to see it from theirs you give these people things little gifts of cash and little presents isn't there a danger of creating a biga mentality amongst the Vietnamese I don't really think so it depends very much on watching him we use small gifts sort of as a means of getting our foot in the building back in we finish our meal today I'll leave for the lady who owns this restaurant something like this it contains Vietnamese soap tobacco cigarette paper a spool of thread all of which by the way are produced here in Vietnam fish hooks needles a few buttons all of these are rather simple things but they're very useful they're very well accepted vacation under the many fancy names that's been known here has never worked and it never will work as long as the inefficiency in corruption continues at the highest government levels the problem of Vietnam is not poverty its social inequality for instance take the Mekong Delta one of the richest areas in Southeast Asia yet this is where the war began and personally I think this is where it's gonna wind this is an opinion shared by another journalist dick West this is me Cho a typical Delta city it's always a pleasant breeze from the MEK on this always a very interesting view over the river light even from this gimcracks hotel and even in this broken-down shoddy City [Music] this is the real battlefield the loyalty of six million people the Americans in the North Vietnamese play little part here in the Delta this is civil war between South Vietnamese as the peace talks dawdle on in Paris both sides are struggling for a bigger share of the Delta meaning more power more votes more wealth more rice and more little flags to stick on the map the battle is colossal a fertile rice country is fought with guns but even more with propaganda as both sides contest each province each district within each province each village within each district and even each hamlet within each village [Music] [Applause] the Delta people are very friendly very courteous they always offer you a cup of tea when you go and see them in their house they're very dignified and in a way you'd think there's a most pleasant place was the gravel place but every now and then something picks you up you'll soon you realize there is a war going on but first they told us this was a very secure village and by Delta standards it is but a great many people have been killed here and they don't always sleep easily at night and a great part of the village as we later found out is more or less control if not terrorized by the Vietcong [Music] [Music] the real strength of the VC comes from a tremendous hostility of the villagers towards the corruption of the central government in Saigon all of the provincial government the Vietcong appreciate where our strength lies and whenever they come into the village and hold a little meeting of a propaganda meeting always the beginning and the end of their address is a great tirade against the thieves of Saigon one of the teachers in this village said that only the children actually lived near the school actually went to the school because the ones who lived a long way away might find when they went back after school that their parents had evacuated the village altogether being bombed to be in a battle and that they joined the enormous legion of lost children in the Delta the result is that many parents who live a long way away from the school they keep their children at home make them do the traditional jobs like tending the fields or perhaps even looking after the younger children from the mouth numb welcomed by a movie if I might suggest this to him case mr. Chi that when he sends it into the province chief and the deputy for administration if they would go ahead in for lack of security along with the corruption explains the villagers lack of confidence in the government for John Dodson a local government man from Texas it's not always easy trying to persuade these villagers to put their faith in the government in Saigon the war keeper who has the animal husbandry subcommittee appointed the boar keeper it's the one you can do it you can talk could I ask them if what are their plans with the borer I mean what will their plans be have they formulated plans on how they're going to use the borer to upgrade the breed of hogs throughout the village John Dodson is very kind man a very capable man I'm sure he's a very good town manager in Texas but one begins to wonder and I think he begins to wonder what exactly is he doing here in Vietnam the phrases of town management subcommittees really don't mean very much to the villagers here request is a freelance writer on an assignment for The Sunday Times I like Arnett he's not tied to a deadline this allows him time to follow up what really interests him the quarter background story [Music] I always feel when I look at the popular force but I can sympathize with that character and the Graham Greene novel The Quiet American who is stuck out in a fort and he talks about himself and about the Vietnamese troops and he says with a return ticket courage becomes an intellectual exercise like a monk's flagellation how much can I stick those poor devils can't cut a plane home [Music] these popular force here in this footage there must've from the village they're here to protect their homes their family graves everything which is dear to them and they probably will fight most villagers are not so fortunate [Music] the popular force have a good time during the day they can loaf around then go for a party they can chat with their friends they can stroll around with a sprig of bougainvillea stuck in the end of their carbine but when night comes it's a different matter because in the night the Vietcong come into their own [Music] the villager in Vietnam is very much off the village he doesn't like to leave the village if his ancestors have been buried there his house is patch of land or something very important to him this is why so many Vietnamese are miserable when they're possibly deported from one village and resettle Dinh a new village which may have all the amenities and be even more fertile they don't like it some went away to fight this marine for 20 days in the battle play last year he was shot in the spine and invaded out now he's without a job several hundred men from this village had been killed in the war the casualties of probably not as high as in most villages they're still so enormous that the women outnumber the men by about two to one one doesn't hear much about the war in the Delta although a great deal of the fighting is going on here the main reason is that the Americans and to a certain extent the European coverage of the war is mostly interested in where Americans are fighting Americans are white we identify with them the Vietnamese getting killed is not so emotive she was married to a popular force soldier in this village who was ambushed one day and kill by the Vietcong for about a year she lived on his salary which amounted to about three or four pounds a month since then she's had to cope for herself like all the other 80 widows in this village she has very little prospect of marrying again because there are so many spare women in the village that only a very poor man indeed would marry a widow rather than a virgin which is what most Vietnamese men want [Music] a great hope in life is to see her children get a very good education we'll go on to meet or Saigon and she will follow them but she said that really she'd prefer to stay in the village because this is where she was born and this is where she hopes to die she's a schoolteacher she earns about five pounds a month which is about 1/10 what she'd get in Saigon if she worked as a hostess in a bar she doesn't have to go out of life but it's had some unpleasant moments about two years ago in this very safe village the Vietcong surrounded this house from three sides and opened up with machine guns her father was shot to a bloody mess in the middle of the room both sides use terrorism an American in this province who certainly should know said they had several agencies whose job was to go into VC Hamlet's and murder people he called it eliminating the VC infrastructure these revolutionary development currencies that call or an imitation of what the Communists first did in the Delta the Communists and trained agitators into the villages trying to get the villagers to enroll behind them and then about five years ago the Saigon government decided it was time that they got in on this so they train their own Carter's they Dec them out in black pajamas just as the Communists had done and they even used the word revolutionary because the Americans kept telling them that revolution was a very necessary thing although they made it clear it mustn't be a communist revolution [Music] [Applause] [Music] well this is being going on some years now and every time you come back to the Delta is the same old program that always has a different name first it was the revolutionary development program then the pacification and development program then just the pacification program and now this year it's the accelerated pacification program the acceleration is more wish than hope because two years ago the government claimed 72 percent of this province as governed controlled and this year only 52 percent so it's a kind of acceleration but nobody quite knows in which direction the great phrase do here everywhere from the Americans and indeed from the Vietnamese who learnt it from the Americans isn't motivation they want the villagers to be motivated now translated into normal English this means faithful for the government eager brave confident and in general on the right side but unfortunately for the sake of the Saigon government the Vietcong - won't they villagers be motivated though they probably don't use the same word and with the result that the villagers themselves refused to stand up and be counted for either side they keep their political views and when either side comes in with its team of Rd cadres or from the other side its team of communist cadres they smile at them maybe listen to their songs and watch their dances and they go off and think their own thought [Music] [Music] this woman's husband left home in 1954 and his thoughtful gong to an orphan Vietnam [Music] she may herself be a VC but it's not the sort of question you ask in a village because you never know who's gonna be listening [Music] possibly she doesn't want to commit herself if she said she was a VC she'd risk going to prison or maybe worse if she said she wasn't a VC she might get in trouble with the VC in a village like this you never know whose side people are on their VC agents in the popular force and similarly there are people in the VC districts who report back to the various this is mostly a Catholic village therefore anti-communist but this woman who's a Buddhist as three children have gone to join the Vietcong only one daughter stayed with her it's one of the village chiefs told us in a Vietnamese proverb in any big granary a few grains of rice will slip through the cracks on the floor and feed the rats but in the Delta as a whole it's more than a few grains of rice who've gone to join the VC the Viet Cong morale is excellent I was told by a Pan American advisor in this province it's difficult to explain this because the Vietcong in this Delta area a constantly pounded by b-52 bombs by artillery sometimes by napalm how do they keep their string well maybe it's just because of this that it's a reaction against bombing against continual artillery strikes which often hit innocent homes but Delta is such a highly populated area that any bomb or any shell is just as likely to hit an innocent civilian as it is to hit a Vietcong this woman has a shrapnel wound from a stray shell nobody knows or indeed even cares from which side it came you turn about you can't um there are no doctors outside the big towns and this village is very lucky to have a trained male nurse the Americans do their best to avoid unnecessary casualties they have a genuine concern not to hurt the sloped heads or slopes as they call the Vietnamese that accidents will happen [Music] [Applause] the Wars going on all the time all around but the village is sketchy seem to notice it very often when I've been walking through a Delta village and a very loud explosion of small-arms fire has sounded nearby I've jumped about a foot in B I dislike the Sun it's kind of noise very much and I've turned and said to some Vietnamese what was that and they just look up and say what was what I mean they simply hadn't even heard anything this is a safe village by Delta standards meaning that only about a third of it is controlled by the Vietcong at night for instance this old lady lives in one of the districts of the village that is not so safe [Music] she pays taxes to both sides the government in the day and to the Vietcong when they come in as they do every month to collect money or rice she gets used to it when the Vietcong knock on the door she has to open it very quickly they come in have a look around just to see there no men left in the house then they say good evening madam and leave but for her son-in-law it's not so easy he also lives in his house but only in the day he's a fairly rich man he's always refused to pay taxes the Vietcong so at five o'clock in the afternoon every day he and the other men in the village have to leave this part of the village this secure village and go to a more secure part of this secure village [Music] but the Chinese say what do we care who rules the land as long as we can flower fields in peace it's tempting to apply this saying to the mecha Hong Delta as well but in fact the peasants of this Delta a very political creature they began the war against the French in 1946 they began the war against the Saigon government on the end of the 1950's they fought very hard and on both sides there are hundreds of thousands of Catholics smaller religious sects were bitterly anti-communist there are hundreds of thousands of communists who are bent on gaining power absolute power but a revolutionaries and there are conservatives they all want peace everybody tells you they want peace but the point is do they want peace at any price the price of any kind of government in Saigon [Music] mark Frankland used to be the observers foreign correspondent in Moscow now for the last two years he's lived in Saigon wherever a Vietnamese lives whether it's in the towns or in the countryside there's been a little chance that he will see anything like real peace in the next few years you'll see this this is a war about how Vietnam should change whether it should move towards communism or I suppose you could call it capitalism and whichever way the country goes in the next few years there's bound to be just simply more confusion than more violence [Music] hundreds and thousands of peasants have come to Saigon over the past few years simply to escape from the war either they've wanted to get away from the increased American use of firepower in the countryside or from heavier Vietcong pressure on them and they now live in the worst slum areas of the town the irony is that last year the city didn't even provide them security from the war some hundreds of Vietcong managed to get into this part of the town in May and June and the only way the Americans then thought they could get rid of them was by bombing most of the houses and destroying a good deal of the area [Music] these refugees here are some of the victims of that fighting in fact that really not too badly off by refugee standards in Vietnam they've got electricity and not bad houses and running water but the most important thing about them is that like all the other peasants who've had become to Saigon is that they're losing their identity they've lost contact with everything that made life meaningful to them [Music] since the young man are fighting in the army on one side or another it's the women the the old man and sometimes even the young children who are being turned into a a new sort of proletariat for what is saigon main industry servicing the war [Music] [Music] but it certainly brought tremendous activity to the city the people who grow these vegetables to feed the workers in Saigon are certainly making big profits and so are other people as ingenious and skillful as they are [Music] [Music] [Music] yet it's still a quite artificial economy and when peace comes it could easily collapse unless the Americans choose to bail straight up which they probably will do and the best Vietnamese economists are certainly very worried by a situation where a country that once exported rice to the rest of the world is now having to import it from America just to feed Saigon naturally it's the children were most affected by the disruption that the wars caused the Vietnamese society [Music] the children in this hostel somehow got separated from their parents when the fighting came to their villages they drifted to Saigon got caught up by the police and luckily a catholic priest then selected them to live in his hostel and they go out from here every day to workers garage mechanics or newspaper sellers or shoeshine boys [Music] but of course they'll get no education if the war goes on they'll become soldiers and even if peace does come they'll lead a pretty ruthless sort of existence the old ways of life gone in the new ways unser [Music] the rich at least can buy their children a good education they can send our children to university abroad away from the war in the army and one day the children will come home they do come home there's degrees and diplomas and walk into the best jobs that Saigon has to offer but then they've got their special problems the father I know who 20 years ago thought nothing of sacrificing his youth to fighting with the Viet Minh against the French feels ashamed about giving in to this temptation but then what can he do he has no idea what's going to happen to Vietnam next year and his family is the one certain thing that he's got to live [Music] the contrast between rich and poor is an obvious enough one anywhere in Asia what disturbs Vietnamese much more I thinks the contrast between Vietnamese and Americans Saigon no one can spend 24 hours in Saigon without seeing something this absolute old to call it Vietnamese who you don't hook and waggle your finger palm up turn your hand over palm down and open and cup all your fingers together they'll come quicker and happier palm or fingers up as an insult be nice and it's very hard always to blame the Americans when the GI goes shopping in the PX it's terribly not something for him to do this is natural it's for his wife to go shopping in the neighborhood supermarket but for many Vietnamese this is a display of wealth and privilege that arises very mixed feelings feelings of hatred envy and sometimes of course downright admiration this admiration sometimes expressed in the most obvious way imitation [Music] no less [Music] like woman [Music] boy [Music] Oh no less [Music] and it's really rather sad to see Vietnamese girls who are extraordinary beautiful paying a lot of money to have the eyes rounded and their noses straightened so that they can look more like Westerners [Music] Oh [Applause] [Music] good [Music] of course the more obvious the American influence becomes the greater the tendency to shout about Vietnamese national you do come across in the most unlikely places a real feeling of Vietnam and what it means for example in this television of putting on a little drama [Music] [Music] [Music] but Vietnamese traditions after so many years of colonial rule and civil war and fighting has been so better than corrupted that really a lot of Vietnamese find it very hard to admire them anymore and in these circumstances Vietnamese nationalism will often be rather more theatrical than real one thing I should say is they have Americans they have many good things that we have to learn about and they also have many bad things for example I have been in Japan and I have a lot of Japanese friend a and then that after the war now Japan a very model very modernized that's terrific but they still keep their Kustom Kulture they're all traditional as Japanese as an actress who works abroad as well as India now you must have special problems in planning your career can you look ahead do do you make plans for next year the year after well in Vietnam nothing can be planned because we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow we just live for this moment and you dream for years in the future for what to do in ten years from now tomorrow if he's coming to our country I will do this do that but this is just like a dream so it's not surprising that the most popular songwriter in Saigon today who feels passionately about the state of his country can rarely only write sad songs [Music] but also long low [Music] you don't go nuts though so I'm gonna do [Music] - Bing bong Conde my god one fine day you were my dad you don't wind up out of bed he conned out your side the thing you know Oh [Music] or I think it now Eli was the son of God [Music] like the Vietnamese themselves Saigon can be deceptively quiet days go by when you'd hardly know that there was a war going on in the country in the early morning when you hear the bombardment surround the city you could easily take them for the sound of thunder fifteen years ago Graham Greene was working in Saigon on the quiet America like everyone else he used to take his aperitif in the cafe of the Continental Hotel no one knew much about Vietnam then but the sadness and the hopelessness were already there but now all that has changed at any one time there are over 500 journalists in Vietnam and practically everybody in the world's got their own ideas of what the country is like yet no one's ever quite caught it's ambiguous attraction as well as grand dream for you probably can't understand Vietnam unless you at one time feel it's pulled the French were seduced by Vietnam for all the blood it cost them and men like mr. a Tavi the aptril of the hotel Royale in Saigon will probably never leave it look at him now purchased and quietly fatalistic you've never guessed that the terrible things that the French from the Vietnamese once did to each other do so the same as your father in determining maybe more men is why you see where you're from what the Parliament rules of the amana's Wellness Program souls who don't parade old scars in Vietnam life putting unbearable if you did it was here the racetrack a year ago that the Viet Cong set up one of their headquarters for the Tet attack but today the horses are running and the betting's quite as energetic as it ever was [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] but in spite of this resilience the scars are there all right the young people walking in the zoo on Sunday who composed an elegant enough but I don't suppose that if you asked anyone of them they'd be able to tell you with any certainty what the future was going to bring them and this sense of confusion is probably greater still today because everybody is talking about peace no one really has a very clear idea of what that peace is going to mean [Music] life goes on in Saigon because ordinary people just feel that they no longer can control the big events [Music] celebrate Tet the Vietnamese new year by buying as many flowers and many new things in from the fall [Music] but in a way the saddest thing about Vietnam is this feeling of helplessness I remember one of the wisest Vietnamese I've ever met saying that he thought North and South Vietnam alike to fighting [ __ ] goaded into combat by the communist and capitalist world certainly there's never been any shortage of people shouting advice of the Vietnamese and I sometimes wonder whether one of the two sides really must be beaten before the fighter can come to an end [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Richard Taylor

Views: 488,773

Rating: 4.6673322 out of 5

Keywords: Vietnam war, Richard Taylor, Mark Frankland, Dick West, Richard West, Peter Arnett

Id: 5vkM719-hNY

Length: 64min 56sec (3896 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 01 2019