Vietnam War historian breaks down 8 Vietnam War scenes in movies and television
Military history professor Bill Allison rates Vietnam War movies, such as "Apocalypse Now," for realism.
Allison breaks down battle tactics used by the United States military; Viet Cong, or VC; and People's Army of Vietnam, or PAVN; during the Vietnam War, such as the use of helicopters and napalm in "Apocalypse Now" (1979), starring Marlon Brando; and the use of tunnels and firepower in "We Were Soldiers" (2002), starring Mel Gibson. He looks at the realism of urban and jungle warfare, such as the battle of Huế during the Tet Offensive in "Full Metal Jacket" (1987) and "Platoon" (1986), featuring Willem Dafoe, Charlie Sheen, and Johnny Depp. Allison also looks at the portrayal of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, or ARVN, in "Mùi Cỏ Cháy" ("The Scent of Burning Grass") (2012) and "The Green Berets" (1968), starring John Wayne. Additionally, he discusses the tragedies and aftermath of the Vietnam War, connecting the Mỹ Lai massacre to the civilian deaths in "Born on the Fourth of July" (1989), with Tom Cruise, and talking about the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue in "Rambo: First Blood Part II" (1985), starring Sylvester Stallone.
Allison is a professor of military history at Georgia Southern University. He has written several books about the Vietnam War, including "My Lai: An American Atrocity in the Vietnam War." He is also a Vietnam battlefield tour guide with the UK company The Cultural Experience.
You can find out more about Bill here:
https://www.profbillallison.com/
You can check out Bill's podcast, "Military Historians Are People, Too!" here:
https://www.mhptpodcast.com/
Allison breaks down battle tactics used by the United States military; Viet Cong, or VC; and People's Army of Vietnam, or PAVN; during the Vietnam War, such as the use of helicopters and napalm in "Apocalypse Now" (1979), starring Marlon Brando; and the use of tunnels and firepower in "We Were Soldiers" (2002), starring Mel Gibson. He looks at the realism of urban and jungle warfare, such as the battle of Huế during the Tet Offensive in "Full Metal Jacket" (1987) and "Platoon" (1986), featuring Willem Dafoe, Charlie Sheen, and Johnny Depp. Allison also looks at the portrayal of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, or ARVN, in "Mùi Cỏ Cháy" ("The Scent of Burning Grass") (2012) and "The Green Berets" (1968), starring John Wayne. Additionally, he discusses the tragedies and aftermath of the Vietnam War, connecting the Mỹ Lai massacre to the civilian deaths in "Born on the Fourth of July" (1989), with Tom Cruise, and talking about the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue in "Rambo: First Blood Part II" (1985), starring Sylvester Stallone.
Allison is a professor of military history at Georgia Southern University. He has written several books about the Vietnam War, including "My Lai: An American Atrocity in the Vietnam War." He is also a Vietnam battlefield tour guide with the UK company The Cultural Experience.
You can find out more about Bill here:
https://www.profbillallison.com/
You can check out Bill's podcast, "Military Historians Are People, Too!" here:
https://www.mhptpodcast.com/
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TechTranscript
00:00 [GUNFIRE]
00:04 You got John Rambo coming in on this mission
00:06 to rescue these American POWs who are probably listed as MIA.
00:12 There's no evidence at all that there were any Americans still
00:16 held after the war, none.
00:18 My name is Bill Allison.
00:19 I'm professor of history at Georgia Southern University.
00:22 I've been a battlefield tour guide in Vietnam,
00:24 and I've written several books on the Vietnam War,
00:26 including one on My Lai.
00:28 Today, we'll be looking at some Vietnam War movies
00:30 and judge how real they are.
00:32 [GUNFIRE]
00:36 Spotted a large weapon down below.
00:38 We're going to go down and check it out.
00:40 All that's pretty accurate.
00:42 The helicopters themselves, or the UH-1 Hueys,
00:45 as well as the helicopter in the scene, the smaller helicopter,
00:49 that's a Loach.
00:50 So Vietnam is quite rightly known as the helicopter war.
00:54 Helicopters were used throughout the entire conflict.
00:57 That's actually Filipino pilots.
01:01 They borrowed those helicopters from the Filipino army
01:04 to use for this scene.
01:05 [GUNFIRE]
01:12 Now, you might wonder why they're attacking this village.
01:16 It's supposedly a VC stronghold.
01:18 VC, the Viet Cong.
01:20 Why do they have to get it over this village into the river?
01:23 Why can't they just go up the coast?
01:25 If you've not seen the film, there's a river patrol boat.
01:27 They need to get on the Nung River.
01:29 Problem there is the tidal flow is not
01:31 deep enough for the boat to actually get
01:33 across the sandbars.
01:35 And that actually is real.
01:36 That's a problem.
01:37 [GUNFIRE]
01:43 Playing Valkyries just kind of blew your mind, right?
01:47 Is that real?
01:48 Probably less so.
01:50 In at least one case, I know Winston Groom,
01:52 a veteran who did Psy Ops.
01:54 He remembered flying around at night playing
01:58 Vietnamese funeral music to try to freak out the VC.
02:02 Was it effective?
02:03 I would think not.
02:04 And I think part of that is making an assumption
02:07 about the Vietnamese, that they're not as smart,
02:10 that they would be fallible to superstition and things
02:13 like that.
02:13 [GUNFIRE]
02:19 OK, there's Napalm at work.
02:21 Napalm is ubiquitous in the Vietnam War.
02:24 It's very common.
02:25 It actually is derived from World War II.
02:28 Give you a point of comparison, probably about 30,000 tons
02:31 of napalm was used in Korea.
02:33 Almost 400,000 tons of napalm was dropped in Vietnam.
02:37 So it's highly flammable.
02:38 It's kind of like a gelatinous substance.
02:41 So if it gets on you and burning, it sticks to you.
02:45 Most people don't survive it.
02:46 But it's designed to destroy cover.
02:49 And if enemy are in there, then from your perspective
02:53 of using it, all the better, which is pretty horrific.
02:55 It's a horrific weapon.
02:57 [EXPLOSION]
02:59 I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
03:01 Napalm does smell.
03:03 Obviously, with everything that's in it,
03:05 it's going to have a very gasoline-y, petroleum-like
03:08 smell.
03:08 So it has a very distinct odor to it, for sure.
03:12 Now, there's Robert Duvall as Colonel Kilgore,
03:14 probably one of the most iconic characters in any Vietnam film.
03:19 He is based on a guy named--
03:20 in part by a guy named John Stockton,
03:22 who was the commander of the unit that's
03:25 depicted here, the 9th Cav of the 1st Cavalry Division.
03:28 As far as it being a piece of film, I'd give it a 10.
03:31 In reality, it's a little ludicrous on a lot of levels.
03:36 So I'm guessing probably about a 5.
03:38 [MUSIC PLAYING]
03:41 [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
03:46 The PAVN, also known as the NVA, the North Vietnamese Army.
03:50 So it's the People's Army of Vietnam.
03:52 The PAVN getting ready, I think that's pretty accurate.
03:55 What this scene is depicting is the January 1, 1968,
03:59 attack on fire support base Burt,
04:02 which is near the Cambodian border.
04:03 It's part of the 25th Infantry Division's area of operations.
04:07 Oliver Stone, the director of platoon,
04:09 was in the 25th Infantry Division
04:11 and was involved in these engagements.
04:13 So that weapon they put in the--
04:15 lodged in the tree there, it's, in essence,
04:17 a marker for the VC and PAVN guys to know where they're at.
04:21 So if they have to go back, they'll
04:23 see that marker in the tree.
04:25 They'll have a waypoint.
04:26 [MUSIC PLAYING]
04:29 This is an outer defensive perimeter.
04:36 And they've got trip wires set up for flares to go out.
04:40 And that tells you somebody's out there.
04:42 [GUNFIRE]
04:45 There.
04:48 OK, what Charlie Sheen just did there was fire the claymore.
04:51 So you've got these claymore mines wired out
04:54 along the perimeter.
04:55 So when the enemy comes through, they're explosive.
04:57 And they shoot out a bunch of shrapnel.
04:59 It's a clicker.
05:01 And so you try to bang it so that it will fire.
05:05 So the bunkers that you see Charlie Sheen in and others,
05:09 if you had the time to cut down a couple of trees
05:11 and put some logs on top of you, that's
05:13 a good defensive position to be in.
05:15 [GUNFIRE]
05:20 You had a command bunker, which the guy runs into with
05:23 a grenade, blows it up, right?
05:25 I'm like, good luck with that.
05:26 One, you've got to know where it's at.
05:29 Two, you've got to be able to see it.
05:31 It's dark, except for the flashing
05:33 of different explosions and stuff,
05:35 which means you're going to have trouble maintaining your night
05:37 vision.
05:38 So that probably more likely could
05:41 have been hit by mortars or something
05:44 like that from the enemy.
05:46 Drop everything you've got left on my pod.
05:49 We are cutting control, Charlie.
05:53 OK, this is a really desperate act,
05:55 to call everything remaining, everything up in the air.
05:59 The problem with that is you're going
06:02 to kill a lot of your own guys.
06:04 And how often that happened in Vietnam, very rarely.
06:07 So a fire support base is actually--
06:10 it's a small post, but it's very well organized,
06:13 very well defended.
06:15 What's depicted here is not that.
06:17 And so the VC are hitting it before it's well defended.
06:23 And the actual battle, I'm not sure
06:24 that's actually that realistic.
06:27 If you watch the scene in its totality,
06:32 I'd have to give it a six, maybe.
06:35 As far as the actual real battle,
06:37 I think it's a little overplayed.
06:46 Tunnels were kind of the go-to fortification, especially
06:50 for the Viet Cong.
06:51 But for the Pavan, that part, I don't know.
06:55 I could see where they would have entrenched bunkers,
06:58 probably.
06:59 But to spend the time to dig an entire complex like was
07:04 depicted in the scene seems to me a bit of a stretch.
07:08 VC would do that because the VC usually are locally based,
07:12 not moving around as much.
07:14 They have an operating area, and they're going out.
07:16 Pavan, they're moving around.
07:17 So this is where we're really infatuated with the helicopter
07:28 as a way to bring lots of troops into an area
07:31 that otherwise you can't really get to.
07:34 And the idea is an element of surprise,
07:36 although a bunch of helicopters coming at you
07:39 isn't really surprising because you can hear them
07:41 from a long way off.
07:42 So this is depicting the November 1965
07:45 Battle of the Yaodring Valley.
07:46 This is really the first time where
07:48 American forces face off against the People's
07:52 Army of Vietnam, the Pavan, like in Tet-a-Tet, right?
07:57 This is part of Americanizing the war,
07:59 that the Johnson administration, the Pentagon, MACV,
08:03 Military Assistance Command Vietnam,
08:05 determined that the ARVN, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam,
08:09 is not quite ready to fight on its own.
08:11 [GUNFIRE]
08:16 This is a Pavan operation.
08:17 Those were clearly Viet Cong.
08:19 They had the hat, the conical hat, the black--
08:22 right?
08:23 [HORN BLARING]
08:25 [GUNFIRE]
08:31 OK, so the way the Pavan reacts, it
08:34 seems like there's just mass wave assault.
08:37 And that's actually kind of accurate.
08:38 The Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 against the French,
08:42 General Giap just ordered wave after wave
08:46 of these costly assaults.
08:49 I mean, they won the battle.
08:50 They defeated the French, but at great cost.
08:53 And Giap was criticized for this.
08:55 But this kind of stays in the doctrine, if you will,
08:59 for the Pavan.
09:01 This is how you do things.
09:02 And in this scene, part of the tactic
09:05 is to get as close to the Americans
09:09 or to your enemy as possible.
09:11 So if you can get close and hug your enemy as quick as
09:13 possible, that makes it much more difficult
09:16 to call in the airstrikes.
09:18 But they're learning.
09:19 This is early.
09:20 You're talking 1965 here.
09:22 So I don't think the Pavan is fully
09:25 appreciative of the capability of American air power,
09:30 how quickly it can respond.
09:31 Broken arrow!
09:33 Broken arrow!
09:35 I-- 1, 5, 0.
09:39 OK, broken arrow.
09:40 For a lot of us, if we heard broken arrow, we would say,
09:43 well, how more lost a nuclear weapon?
09:45 What's going on there?
09:47 Because that's what the code word is for, some incident
09:50 with a nuclear weapon.
09:52 Broken arrow may have been the code word
09:55 for that particular operation.
09:57 If they were in danger of being overrun,
09:59 what happens when you call broken arrow,
10:01 all air assets in the area, whatever's up there,
10:04 is supposed to converge on your position
10:07 and drop on the coordinates that you give.
10:10 And that's what happens here.
10:12 And that's real.
10:14 But it's not how more going broken arrow, broken arrow.
10:17 According to the book, it was the forward air controller.
10:21 Minor inaccuracy.
10:22 But Mel Gibson has to be the hero, right?
10:24 So there's your napalm.
10:31 And in one of these attacks, it is true
10:34 that the napalm was dropped so close to Moore's perimeter
10:38 that a couple of American soldiers
10:39 were actually burned in the napalm attack and killed.
10:43 I know a lot of people who really like this film
10:46 because it's dramatic, and if they've read the book,
10:49 especially.
10:50 But it just fails on a lot of levels, I think.
10:56 I'd give it a five.
10:59 I got their segment.
11:00 Can we see them?
11:02 They got rifles.
11:03 Can you see the rifles?
11:04 [GUNFIRE]
11:07 Freeze!
11:07 Fire!
11:08 This is a bad situation.
11:10 We've totally lost command and control here.
11:12 He didn't want them to fire, but someone started
11:14 firing the lieutenant there.
11:16 He's clearly lost it because he's
11:17 seeing things that aren't there.
11:19 So he's seeing VC running around,
11:23 and he can see their SKSs or AK-47s.
11:26 Tom Cruise's character is looking and going,
11:29 I don't really see that.
11:30 You've got bad leadership at the top.
11:34 Guy makes a bad assumption.
11:36 Then you have lack of command and control discipline
11:39 over your own troops.
11:40 This is not outside the realm of possibility.
11:43 [INAUDIBLE]
11:46 We didn't do this, did we?
11:49 Oh, Jesus Christ.
11:52 This just shows how things can go wrong,
11:55 and a lot of civilians get hurt and killed.
11:57 So if this village had been a VC stronghold
12:00 and there had been actual Viet Cong in there,
12:02 clearly identifiable and everything,
12:05 no doubt they would have fired into the village
12:08 and then swept into the village.
12:10 This is not so much like a search and destroy mission.
12:13 It's more of a sweep and clear.
12:15 Search and destroy, which is a pretty common tactic
12:19 for the Americans in the Vietnam War,
12:21 is basically go out, try to find the enemy,
12:24 make contact with the enemy, then call in firepower
12:28 to destroy them, literally kill them.
12:30 But when you do things like this in the scene
12:32 and you kill a bunch of innocents,
12:35 that sets you back a lot with the local population.
12:37 But there were instances where villages
12:40 were attacked innocently.
12:42 So for example, the My Lai massacre,
12:44 which occurred in March of 1968 when
12:48 a company of American troops as part of Task Force Barker
12:52 went into the Son My village complex,
12:55 and specifically My Lai itself,
12:58 expecting to find an entire battalion of Viet Cong,
13:02 and they get in there and there's no
13:04 48th Local Force Battalion.
13:07 It's not there.
13:08 The villagers are there, but they're so amped up
13:12 that some immediately assume that they're all VC.
13:15 By the end of the day, between My Lai
13:17 and a couple other places in that area,
13:20 well over 500 men, women, and children were killed.
13:24 But My Lai is a rarity, it's an exception.
13:25 I'd give it an eight.
13:27 It shows just how a couple of bad decisions
13:31 or happenstance can cause a tragedy in war.
13:36 And unfortunately, war is all about tragedies happening.
13:42 (guns firing)
13:44 So the setup here is you got John Rambo
13:50 coming in on this mission to rescue these American POWs
13:53 who are probably listed as MIA, the war's over,
13:57 and there's still Americans being held
14:00 by the nasty Vietnamese, right?
14:02 There's no evidence at all that there were any Americans
14:06 still held after the war, none.
14:08 But after the war, there became a cottage industry
14:11 in Vietnam, and especially in Thailand,
14:14 of selling false information to families
14:17 who had people listed as missing.
14:19 And all those missing names
14:20 are listed in the New York Times.
14:22 They know who they are.
14:23 They know the units and everything.
14:25 They can create fake dog tags
14:26 and rust 'em up and everything.
14:28 And you'll pay $10,000 to somebody in Bangkok
14:32 who has this information on your loved one, right?
14:35 In the hope of.
14:36 Ross Perot got hung up in this, trying to rescue people.
14:39 Again, Chuck Norris made six films
14:41 about going back and rescuing these people.
14:44 We get our history from movies,
14:47 so we all come to believe that this is the case, right?
14:49 It's a tragic deal all the way around, I think.
14:52 (dramatic music)
14:54 (gunshots firing)
14:56 When this film comes out, you know,
14:57 a height of the Cold War,
14:58 you gotta have the Russians in there, right?
15:00 Now, would a Russian been out there at this prison?
15:03 Probably not.
15:04 Thousands of Russian and Chinese technical advisors,
15:08 military advisors, were in North Vietnam
15:11 throughout the whole conflict.
15:13 A lot of them were there to train, for example,
15:17 North Vietnamese anti-aircraft crews
15:19 to operate these Soviet and Chinese,
15:22 you know, fairly sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons.
15:25 But they also have, you know,
15:27 operational and strategic advisors.
15:29 So that's not uncommon at all.
15:30 I gotta like a guy who's muscled like that
15:32 and can operate an M660 with impunity
15:35 and kill pretty much everyone around him.
15:38 But as far as reality goes, zilch.
15:42 Gotta give it a zero.
15:44 (dramatic music)
15:51 Okay, let's set up this scene.
15:52 This is from "The Green Berets."
15:54 It was filmed in '66, '67, released in June of 1968.
15:58 So this is after the Tet Offensive,
16:00 after the New Hampshire primary,
16:02 after, you know, Martin Luther King's been assassinated,
16:05 Johnson's announced he's not gonna run again.
16:07 This is not the best time to release
16:09 the go-raw Vietnam film.
16:11 This is based on Robin Moore's novel
16:14 called "The Green Berets."
16:16 In this particular scene,
16:18 this Green Beret team is going to kidnap
16:20 this Pavan colonel or general.
16:24 But as far as units working together
16:26 like with the Green Berets, you know, maybe 1965, '66, '67,
16:31 there's probably more Americans working on their own.
16:35 There would always be an Arvin liaison with bigger units,
16:39 like probably at the battalion or regimental level,
16:42 certainly at the division level.
16:44 (dramatic music)
16:50 The game must've been engrossing
16:51 because they don't hear anybody else.
16:53 You've got six or seven guys coming through
16:55 with combat gear and combat boots on,
16:57 on a pier-and-beam wood floor
16:59 that apparently doesn't squeak,
17:01 and they're none the wiser.
17:02 It's just totally ludicrous.
17:04 (birds chirping)
17:08 And now we have to do this in dramatic fashion
17:13 and we have to repel off the second story
17:16 'cause apparently the guys playing Mahjong
17:18 still are not alerted that something's going on.
17:20 (birds chirping)
17:23 (gunshots)
17:25 Ah, everything goes according to plan.
17:30 So the tripwire, is that a common thing
17:33 for special forces to do?
17:35 I'd say no because you want to be able to get out of there
17:38 and get away quickly if you're on some sort of mission
17:41 anywhere close to like this one.
17:43 But even then, do you have time to do it?
17:46 That's more of a thing you set for a defensive position.
17:49 Can I have a rating of should never have been filmed
17:51 in the first place?
17:52 Zero, totally.
17:54 And I hate to do that
17:55 'cause part of me likes some John Wayne films,
17:57 but this one, ah, no.
18:00 (gunshots)
18:03 This scene is depicting the battle for Hue City,
18:09 which is part of the Great Tet Offensive in January 1968.
18:13 What you just saw with the tank going forward,
18:16 the Marines going behind the tank,
18:18 yeah, that's good policy.
18:20 But then you see all the firing, so it's been pre-sighted.
18:23 But what's funny to me is then the Marines get up
18:26 and immediately go into that area
18:28 where they just pre-sighted, pre-ranged, fired.
18:32 So if I was the bad guy, the enemy,
18:34 I would have fired again
18:35 while the Marines were all right there.
18:37 But they don't do that.
18:43 Now to be clear, this looks nothing like Hue City at all.
18:48 Hue City, there's no tall buildings like that.
18:50 It's very dense buildings.
18:53 There's not a lot of maneuver room.
18:55 But here it looks really open.
18:56 In part, this is because they filmed this
18:58 outside of London at Becton Gasworks.
19:01 The one thing they do get right,
19:03 because it's outside of London, it's overcast.
19:05 So during the battle for Hue,
19:08 it was overcast for most of the time,
19:10 which made it difficult to get air support in.
19:12 (air whooshing)
19:14 (guns firing)
19:17 Now if you notice at the very beginning there,
19:18 when the firing starts to come from the building,
19:21 it's not a single sniper.
19:23 It's several machine guns set up there.
19:26 A sniper would have fired a couple of shots
19:28 and got the heck out of there.
19:30 These guys are in place, so it's hard for them to move.
19:33 So that's why the Marines respond
19:35 with just blasting the area with fire, trying to hit 'em.
19:38 (guns firing)
19:41 All right, so there he is taking a picture.
19:43 It was not uncommon for soldiers to have nice cameras,
19:48 'cause they get R&R sometimes.
19:51 They can go to Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City, I should say now.
19:54 If they're officers, they can go to Hong Kong
19:57 or someplace like that.
19:59 And you could buy really nice cameras for not very much.
20:03 (guns firing)
20:06 And this would have been a Pavan.
20:10 This would have been a Pavan sniper.
20:11 The Pavan snipers are gonna go out to specific targets.
20:14 VC snipers tended to use the tactic
20:17 just to cause chaos and fear.
20:20 So you randomly hit somebody.
20:22 You see a guy on a radio headset talking on the radio,
20:25 that's probably an officer, you're an easy target.
20:28 The visual part of it, the setting of it,
20:30 is to me all wrong, other than the overcast skies.
20:34 That is realistic.
20:35 I don't know, I'd give it probably a six.
20:38 (guns firing)
20:40 I don't think he needs binoculars
20:45 to see that the enemy is approaching,
20:47 but it's a good touch.
20:48 The scene is really about the 1972 attack on Quang Tri.
20:53 So the Pavan have occupied Quang Tri City and the Citadel,
20:59 and the Arvin are trying to take it back.
21:07 And the Arvin, of course, they've got all the American stuff.
21:11 So their uniforms were American-styled.
21:13 That's spot on.
21:14 So you gotta remember, this is 1972,
21:16 following the Easter offensive.
21:18 So by that stage, even though the United States
21:21 is technically still in the war,
21:22 we're not doing a lot of combat activity at that point.
21:25 Most of our troops are out of Vietnam by then.
21:36 Equipment's good, they've got AK-47s, some RPGs there.
21:41 So the Pavan unit that's depicted here
21:43 is a basic infantry unit.
21:45 Yes, by this time in '72, they've got tanks.
21:49 They're a conventional force.
21:51 The only thing they don't really have a lot of is air.
21:54 You did see, initially, the forward artillery guy
21:59 calling in the artillery strikes, which didn't do anything,
22:03 but there's no depiction of him
22:05 asking for an adjustment of fire to hit,
22:08 which I think, in reality,
22:09 there would've been a fire adjustment
22:11 and they would've kept firing on those APCs
22:14 until they got really close to the Pavan perimeter there.
22:18 So that part of it, I think, is not accurate.
22:21 I like this movie.
22:22 Its production value is not great,
22:26 but the storyline and the period it's set in
22:29 and the way they depict soldiers and everything, I like it.
22:34 And this battle scene,
22:36 even though the Arvin guys are out there exposed and whatnot,
22:40 I gotta give it a six or seven, actually.
22:42 I kinda like this one.
22:44 So I have two favorite Vietnam films.
22:47 One is from the early '70s called "Go Tell the Spartans,"
22:51 and it's early in the war.
22:53 It's in the advisory phase,
22:54 and it's kinda foreshadowing the problems
22:58 that are going to arise.
23:01 The other one I like a lot
23:02 is actually "Good Morning Vietnam."
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