A group of Atlanta veterans has produced a documentary film to counter what it calls “decades of misinformation” about U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
Featuring commentary by historians and those who served, “Truths and Myths of the Vietnam War” examines the treatment of returning veterans, media coverage, the antiwar movement and humanitarian acts by U.S. troops – and challenges the predominant view that the war was unwinnable.
“None of us had any experience making a film, writing a script or any of this,” says Jim Dickson, secretary of the Atlanta Vietnam Veterans Business Association (AVVBA) Foundation.
“It was something we believed in strongly, though, and put our hearts into …. We’d seen things written (about the Vietnam War) and movies and so forth, and thought, ‘Gee, that isn’t really the way it was.’ We knew there was a strong need for it.”
On March 29 – National Vietnam War Veterans Day – the documentary was screened at the National Infantry Museum in Columbus, Ga. “Truth and Myths of the Vietnam War” has also aired twice on public television in Georgia and once in South Carolina, boosting AVVBA’s hopes to get it on the air in every state.
The biggest audience, however, has been online, where the 47-minute film can be watched or downloaded at AVVBA’s YouTube channel. So far, it’s topped 476,000 views and received nearly 1,600 comments, mostly positive.
“I would say the primary response we’ve been getting is, ‘Thank you,’” says David Naglieri, the Emmy Award-winning filmmaker who steered “Truth and Myths of the Vietnam War” from paper to screen.
Among the emails he’s received are messages from sons and daughters of Vietnam veterans “who saw their dads suffer because of the scarlet letter imprinted on them due to their service,” and widows wanting to thank Naglieri and the film team for “presenting a different narrative, something you don’t hear about or read about in school.”
Actor Sam Elliott introduces the film, noting that “we owe it to these veterans to hear what they have to say” about the war in which they served – about 2.7 million Americans during 16 years of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. More than 58,000 were killed; some 300,000 were wounded.
Only three in 10 Vietnam veterans are living today, the last of a generation of warriors that President Ronald Reagan, in 1981, said “fought as bravely and as well as any Americans in our history. They came home without a victory not because they’d been defeated, but because they’d been denied permission to win.”
James Robbins, dean of academics at the Institute of World Politics and author of “This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive,” says Reagan’s words reflect the feelings of most Vietnam veterans, nearly 90% of whom say they’re proud of their service. Yet they’re concerned that much of what has reported or presented in films and schools and universities about the war “is neither factual nor complete,” he says.
That includes “unprecedented humanitarian acts” by U.S. troops, according to retired Army Maj. Gen. Patrick Brady, who received the Medal of Honor in 1969 for risking his life to evacuate 51 seriously wounded men in four separate missions and using three different UH-1H helicopters.
As an example, Brady points to the 54th Medical Detachment, a helicopter ambulance unit that evacuated 21,435 patients, including 8,904 civilians and 531 enemy soldiers, in a period of 10 months. Beyond that, between 1964 and 1970, civilian action missions by the 5th Special Forces Group alone built 1,003 schools, 398 medical clinics, 6,436 wells, 1,939 kilometers of road, 670 bridges and 129 churches.
“I’ve often said humanitarianism was our great victory in that war,” Brady says.
“We often hear that this is something that’s long overdue,” says Dickson, a member of American Legion Post 201 in Alpharetta, Ga. “We don’t want to make one penny on it. We consider the film our enduring legacy for future generations.”
He adds, “This isn’t about what we each did. This is about what we all did, and to try to tell that there was a purpose to our service – that it was for a noble cause, an important cause.”
