- 2 days ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00:00Helicopters are phenomenal machines you could float in the air you can be like God
00:00:30I flew below 500 feet above 500 feet was a kill zone you better be below 200 feet the lower the better
00:00:43my job was to get shot at my job was drawing me fire I was a duck a decoy I got shot at a lot
00:00:54I engaged enemy a lot you're screaming as loud as you can to try to cover up the sound of the incoming
00:01:08bullets because when they pass by your ear you can hear the popping sound you don't hear the gunshot
00:01:15flying that a 50 caliber just opened up when shooting a half inch piece of lead flying at you
00:01:20and the aircraft was a bang you're flying you're 90 degrees the other way and you're you're shooting
00:01:28yourself down because the rotor blades are in 20 and you're trying to keep the gun from jamming
00:01:32because you're running around like this if you're gun jams you're done
00:01:44Vietnam was the first real helicopter war helicopter pilots flew more than 36 million sorties their
00:01:54crews scattered propaganda leaflets over the enemy and poured lethal fire into their positions
00:02:01carried troops and supplies and artillery into battle and lifted the wounded off the battlefield so
00:02:10swiftly that most reached a field hospital within 15 minutes
00:02:22Ron Farisi a policeman's son from the swamp poodle neighborhood of North Philadelphia got to Vietnam in November of 1967
00:02:31he was a crew chief in the scout helicopter with the first air cavalry flying out of landing zone two bits in the central highlands
00:02:40one day after returning from a combat mission he was approached by a journalist
00:02:48and there was this uh it was a beautiful woman you know round-eyed woman statuesque round-eyed woman with nice hair
00:02:57nice hair and she looked pretty wow she said can I ask you a couple questions what was it like out there how does it feel that a 50 caliber just opened up shooting a half inch piece of lead at you
00:03:12when it's hard to describe it's shitty
00:03:21I mean isn't it isn't it apparent what it's like
00:03:25you want to know what it's like you want to know what it's like go look at it go out there go see the bodies
00:03:32I was ready to whack her I wanted to blast her I was ready to ball you want to know what it's like boom there it is I'll give it to you right now
00:03:41you want to feel it you want to see it I'll give it to you that's what you want is that what you want
00:03:46I don't want to tell you what it's like because I don't want to remember it that's the insanity that it brings out
00:04:16the enemy has been defeated in battle after battle he continues to hope that america's will to persevere can be broken
00:04:32well he is wrong
00:04:371968 would prove to be a watershed year in the history of the vietnam war and the united states
00:04:49as the year began there were 485 600 american troops in vietnam and american leaders promised that victory
00:05:00was finally in sight that there really was light at the end of the tunnel
00:05:11but then north vietnam would mount a massive offensive that would result in a terrible defeat for them
00:05:18that in the long run would turn out to have been a still greater victory
00:05:23america itself would be convulsed by assassinations and battles in the streets over the war and civil rights
00:05:35an american president a master politician used to getting things done would continue to find himself
00:05:42besieged by problems he could not solve
00:05:45robert kennedy the brother of the slain president who had escalated american presence in vietnam
00:05:55wrote an editorial that year that seemed to speak for many
00:06:01mere anarchy is loosed upon the world he said quoting the poet william butler yates
00:06:07things fall apart the center cannot hold
00:06:29general westmoreland when you said that you'd never been more encouraged in the four years that you've
00:06:34been in vietnam some critics on the other hand have never been more discouraged i wonder if you could
00:06:40detail one or two or three things that cause you to be so encouraged i could quote a number of meaningful
00:06:47statistics such as the roads that are being opened increasing number of enemy that have been killed
00:06:54and other statistical information which suggests that we are making progress and we are winning
00:07:02and i find an attitude of confidence and growing optimism it prevails all over the country
00:07:10and to me this is the most significant evidence i can give you that constant real progress is being made
00:07:16and to me
00:07:26on the evening of january 1 1968 ho chi minh broadcast a poem over radio hanoi
00:07:34Communist commanders took this to mean that the ultimate battle, the general offensive
00:07:48and general uprising they had been planning for months, was imminent.
00:07:55Party First Secretary Lei Zhuan, who had insisted on the offensive and had purged those opposed,
00:08:02believed it would finally bring about an end to the war.
00:08:07Viet Cong units supported by North Vietnamese troops were to simultaneously attack cities
00:08:13and bases all over the South.
00:08:17Lei Zhuan promised those troops that when the fighting started, the people of South Vietnam
00:08:22would rise up and overthrow the Saigon government, just as the Vietnamese had risen up against
00:08:28the Japanese in August of 1945.
00:08:33With Saigon defeated, the Americans would have no choice but to withdraw from Vietnam.
00:08:41The surprise attacks would begin at the end of the month, at the start of the Lunar New
00:08:46Year celebration called Tet.
00:08:48The Viet Cong were already infiltrating scores of cities and towns.
00:09:09Tens of thousands of North Vietnamese troops were now in place in South Vietnam.
00:09:15Tens of smuggled Chinese and Soviet-made weapons had been spirited towards intended targets
00:09:22in sampans and flower carts and false bottom trucks, and then buried in paddy fields and garbage
00:09:29dumps and cemeteries until the moment came for them to be retrieved.
00:09:34The Viet Cong, the U.S.
00:09:54More than 10,000 American military and civilian intelligence officers were at work in South Vietnam.
00:10:11And here and there, hints of what was to come filtered up the chain of command.
00:10:19Enemy units were moving around in inexplicable ways,
00:10:22captured enemy reports described coming attacks on different cities.
00:10:27Eleven agents were caught in the city of Quinyon,
00:10:31carrying pre-recorded tapes calling on the local people to rise up against the Saigon government.
00:10:38All of these things were saying to us, something's going to happen, but we don't know exactly what.
00:10:44General Westmoreland thought he knew.
00:10:48I believe that the enemy will attempt a country-wide show of strength just prior to Tet, he cabled Washington,
00:10:56with Que Son being the main event.
00:10:59Some 30,000 North Vietnamese troops had gathered near Que Son, the westernmost strongpoint below the DMZ,
00:11:08that was being held by just 6,000 Marines.
00:11:12Westmoreland believed North Vietnam wanted to isolate and annihilate the U.S. forces there, just as the Viet Minh had done to the French at the NBN Phu 14 years earlier.
00:11:25Enemy attacks elsewhere, Westmoreland was sure, would only be a diversion.
00:11:31One American general, Frederick C. Wyand, was not so sure.
00:11:37He was able to persuade Westmoreland to let him pull half his troops back from the Cambodian border,
00:11:43to take up defensive positions outside Saigon, just in case.
00:11:49This is an underground bunker at Que Son, one of the few cement havens left from the earlier days of the war,
00:11:54when the special forces held its base.
00:11:56It is dark, dark, dreary.
00:11:59Feel something in the air, about the build-up.
00:12:04I don't know, you can almost feel them working around you at night.
00:12:09Who?
00:12:10The NBA.
00:12:12On January 21st, the North Vietnamese began shelling Khe Sanh.
00:12:20We!
00:12:21We!
00:12:22We!
00:12:23We!
00:12:24We!
00:12:25We!
00:12:26We!
00:12:27We!
00:12:28We!
00:12:29We!
00:12:30We!
00:12:31We!
00:12:32We!
00:12:33We!
00:12:34We!
00:12:35We!
00:12:36We!
00:12:37We!
00:12:38We!
00:12:39We!
00:12:40We!
00:12:41We!
00:12:42We!
00:12:43We!
00:12:44We!
00:12:45We!
00:12:46We!
00:12:47We!
00:12:48We!
00:12:49We!
00:12:50We!
00:12:51We!
00:12:52We!
00:12:53We!
00:12:54We!
00:12:55We!
00:12:56We!
00:12:57We!
00:12:58We!
00:12:59We!
00:13:00We!
00:13:01We!
00:13:02We!
00:13:03We!
00:13:04We!
00:13:05We!
00:13:06We!
00:13:07We!
00:13:08We!
00:13:09We!
00:13:10We!
00:13:11When he learned of the attack on Kaysan,
00:13:30Lyndon Johnson made the Joint Chiefs sign a pledge
00:13:33that the base would never fall.
00:13:35I don't want any damn Din Bin Fu, he said.
00:13:39The president had a scale model of the battlefield
00:13:43installed in the White House
00:13:44so that he could follow the fighting there hour by hour.
00:13:52But Westmoreland's and Johnson's basic assumption was wrong.
00:13:58Kaysan was the sideshow.
00:14:00The attacks on cities and towns
00:14:03that were about to begin throughout South Vietnam
00:14:06would be the main event.
00:14:09But First Secretary Lei's one's basic assumptions
00:14:16were about to be tested, too.
00:14:20For the coming offensive to succeed,
00:14:22the South Vietnamese army, the ARVN,
00:14:25would have to collapse
00:14:27and the people of the South
00:14:29would have to join the revolution.
00:14:31All our thinking was focused on finishing off the enemy,
00:14:47one North Vietnamese general remembered.
00:14:49We were intoxicated by that thought.
00:14:53We were intoxicated by that thought.
00:14:54All our thinking was focused on finishing off the enemy,
00:14:59one North Vietnamese general remembered.
00:15:02We were intoxicated by that thought.
00:15:05Okay, we've got our three wounded GI,
00:15:19I don't even have to go back to the river.
00:15:32Okay, we've got our three wounded GIs on board.
00:15:36At least one of them has hit pretty bad.
00:15:39Medic's got a busy few minutes ahead of him before we get back.
00:15:45As the date for the Tet Offensive approached,
00:15:48the war continued for the hundreds of thousands of Americans in country.
00:15:56I did see the reality of war.
00:15:59A real education for a young doctor.
00:16:05The war seemed to be going very well from our point of view.
00:16:11The war seemed to be going just fine, thank you.
00:16:15Captain Hal Kushner was a 26-year-old recent graduate of medical school from Danville, Virginia.
00:16:24The father of a three-year-old girl with another baby on the way.
00:16:27He had volunteered to serve in Vietnam and became a flight surgeon with the 1st Air Cavalry.
00:16:37And I was supposed to give a lecture on the dangers of night flying, ironically, and I did.
00:16:43We had terrible weather that night.
00:16:46And it was dark, and it was rainy, and it was windy.
00:16:48As we were flying, I saw that we had drifted west of the highway.
00:16:54And I knew that was wrong.
00:16:57In the fog and rain, Kushner's helicopter slammed into a mountain.
00:17:02And the next thing I knew, I was hanging upside down in a burning helicopter.
00:17:11Major Porcello was dead.
00:17:14I just jumped away from the helicopter, and it just went whoosh, and it just burned up.
00:17:19There was an M60 machine gun on the helicopter, and the rounds cooking off, and it was exploding.
00:17:28And one or several of the rounds went through my shoulder, my left shoulder.
00:17:34On the ground, I saw Warrant Officer Bedworth, and he was hurt very badly.
00:17:41I took some branches and splinted his leg.
00:17:47So the rule is, you wait with the aircraft until you get rescued.
00:17:53And we just sat there.
00:17:55So we waited one day.
00:17:58We waited two days.
00:18:00We had no food or water.
00:18:02On the morning of the third day, Bedworth died.
00:18:06And he just slipped away.
00:18:08It was very, very sad.
00:18:12And I thought that my best choice was to leave the aircraft and try to go down the mountain.
00:18:19It took the wounded Kushner four hours to stagger down the hill.
00:18:24When he finally reached level ground, he looked back up and saw two American helicopters hovering above the crash site.
00:18:32Their pilots did not see him.
00:18:36And I saw this peasant working in a rice paddy.
00:18:40And he saw me, and I had captain's bars, and a Caduceus, a medical symbol on my collar.
00:18:46And he said, Die Wee Boxee, Die Wee Boxee, Captain Doctor.
00:18:57He took me about another mile to a little hooch, a little house, and he sat me down on the front of it.
00:19:05And he brought out a can of condensed milk.
00:19:09And as I was eating this stuff, and it was just the best stuff I've ever eaten in my whole life,
00:19:15I hear another person say, Die Wee Boxee, Die Wee Boxee, surrender, no kill.
00:19:21There was a squad of Viet Cong there, and I put my one arm up, and he shot me with an M2 carbine.
00:19:31And I think he was more nervous than I was.
00:19:35And he shot me right where the M60 had shot me.
00:19:38And he went right through my neck and came out the back.
00:19:41And they tied my arms very tightly in commo wire.
00:19:44He went through my wallet, and he took my Geneva Convention card, which was white with a red cross, and he tore it up.
00:19:53And he said, in English, No POW, Criminal, Criminal.
00:20:01So then they took my boots, and we started marching.
00:20:06And then we walked for a month.
00:20:0930 days, almost always at night.
00:20:15And my feet were just lacerated.
00:20:19I didn't think I could possibly survive.
00:20:22I was just waiting for a while.
00:20:23And I saw the mountain was one of those.
00:20:25Throughout the country where the people came from,
00:20:27and came to the country where the people came from.
00:20:28I knew I could probably do anything more.
00:20:29A little bit longer.
00:20:30There was no such thing for this country.
00:20:31We were all trying to do something.
00:20:32I had to do something for this since then.
00:20:33And so, I was coming from the country.
00:20:35I was coming from the country.
00:20:37I was really interested in the country.
00:20:39And I was thinking in a way that the people were selling.
00:20:40And they all were sending me to my father.
00:20:42But someone was trying to do something and do something.
00:20:45I was trying to do my best.
00:20:46But I knew that it was easy.
00:20:47I could have to do something that.
00:20:49And they were trying to do something else.
00:20:50So I was trying to try to make it.
00:20:51By January 30th, an informal 36-hour truce for Tet was in effect.
00:21:00Thousands of Arvin troops had gone home for the holiday.
00:21:06The enemy had not.
00:21:09They all ate the Tet.
00:21:14There was a Tet, a chicken, and a chicken.
00:21:19The Tet was very delicious and happy.
00:21:24After the night, we went back to Sài Gòn.
00:21:29We went back to the west of Sài Gòn.
00:21:34That same day, Marine Corporal Roger Harris was scheduled to fly out of Vietnam.
00:21:42His 13-month tour was over.
00:21:46But he and his unit were still hunkered down under constant shelling at Camp Carroll,
00:21:52just south of the DMZ.
00:21:56Once I had my orders, I said goodbye to all my friends.
00:22:01Then I went over to the landing zone.
00:22:04So when the helicopters come in, I put the body bags on the helicopter.
00:22:10And I got on with the bodies.
00:22:14We landed in Dong Ha, which was Division Headquarters.
00:22:17And when we got about 200 meters from the airstrip,
00:22:21the airstrip started getting hit.
00:22:26I'm just thinking personally that God realizes that he made a mistake
00:22:30because some of the guys that got killed that were with me
00:22:33were good Christians that never had sex, didn't swear, you know.
00:22:37And, you know, I've been this sinner.
00:22:40And I'm thinking God realized he made a mistake.
00:22:43He killed the Christians, and I got away.
00:22:46And so now death is following me.
00:22:49And they told us that in another hour or so a plane was going to come in.
00:22:53When it came in, then the artillery started coming in.
00:22:56You know, we jumped on and took off.
00:23:01And it landed in the night.
00:23:03And then the sun came up and went to the airstrip,
00:23:05and we boarded airplanes, and we were sitting there.
00:23:08Everybody's giving each other pounds, just like I'm slapping fire.
00:23:12We made it.
00:23:14And then all of a sudden,
00:23:17the airstrip starts getting hit.
00:23:21And the artillery's coming in.
00:23:24And I'm thinking,
00:23:26it's all coming after me.
00:23:28It's all about me.
00:23:30You know, God doesn't want me to make it out of here.
00:23:35In the early morning hours of January 31st, 1968,
00:23:4184,000 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops
00:23:45attacked 36 of South Vietnam's 44 provincial capitals,
00:23:50dozens of American and Arvin military bases,
00:23:54and the six largest cities in the country,
00:23:57including Hue, Da Nang, and Saigon.
00:24:02Their goal, their commanders told them,
00:24:04was to crack the sky and shake the earth.
00:24:08In Saigon, General Westmoreland mistook the first explosions
00:24:24as holiday firecrackers.
00:24:26His deputy commander, General Creighton W. Abrams,
00:24:33was asleep, and his aides did not bother to wake him.
00:24:38Not a single top commander was present at Pentagon East,
00:24:42the sprawling MACV headquarters at Tan Sanut Air Base
00:24:46on the outskirts of Saigon,
00:24:48when mortars and rockets began cratering the runways.
00:24:52What the hell are you?
00:24:55What the hell are you?
00:24:56What the challenge is?
00:24:57What is the best is to shoot down to Tan Sanut Air Base.
00:25:00When I go to Tan Sanut Air Base,
00:25:04it's the sun to start to shine.
00:25:07According to the cooperation,
00:25:09the car will be connected to me,
00:25:11but there is no car.
00:25:15Viet Cong soldiers spread out to attack specific targets in and around the capital.
00:25:40The war had come to the streets of Saigon.
00:25:45Had General Wyand not insisted on stationing troops around the city, Saigon itself would
00:25:52have been in far greater danger.
00:25:58We heard gunfire, and our first reaction was, must be another coup d'etat.
00:26:06And then we heard that the Viet Cong had attacked Saigon and was still attacking.
00:26:12It came as a total shock because we always thought Saigon was safe, the safest place in
00:26:19all of South Vietnam.
00:26:22One Viet Cong squad made it all the way to the presidential palace, but was stopped by
00:26:32South Vietnamese tanks.
00:26:37The survivors holed up in a building across the street and were shot by Arvin troops and
00:26:43American MPs.
00:26:49All over Saigon, nothing was going according to plan.
00:26:56Viet Cong units were taking heavy losses from U.S. troops and determined South Vietnamese forces.
00:27:02Well, that's right, what's right?
00:27:21I was like, oh my god, my god, my god, my god, my god, my god, my god.
00:27:51This is the main Vietnamese language radio station in Saigon.
00:28:05Right now there are an undisclosed number of VC inside occupying the station.
00:28:10The Viet Cong managed to seize South Vietnam's national radio station
00:28:15and prepared to broadcast a taped message from Ho Chi Minh,
00:28:19calling upon the people to rise up.
00:28:23But a technician radioed to the transmitting tower to cut them off
00:28:28and broadcast Viennese waltzes and Beatles songs instead.
00:28:35This is not dying. This is not dying.
00:28:50But listen to the colors of your dreams.
00:28:57It is not living here. It is not living here.
00:29:05The Saigon suburb of Vien Hoa was under attack too.
00:29:20Enemy forces were assaulting both the airbase there and Long Binh,
00:29:25the largest American installation in Vietnam.
00:29:28There were VCs moving on the house, moving everywhere.
00:29:37A lot of shooting, a lot of confusion going on.
00:29:40And we were shooting out the window and my wife was reloading.
00:29:46When we ran out of ammunition, we would slide the magazine down the tiles
00:29:53and she was down there at the other end, filling them up and sliding them back.
00:29:58Viet Cong commandos managed to slip through the wire at Long Binh
00:30:03and blow up a huge ammunition dump.
00:30:08A mushroom cloud rose above the airfield, so vast that some of the Americans thought there had been a nuclear explosion.
00:30:16The blast blew off the door of Brady's building.
00:30:22They went up against the wire in Long Binh and paid a frightful price.
00:30:28They were just layers of bodies. The Americans just cut them down.
00:30:38Hi, this is Johnny Carson. As you know, this is usual starting time for The Tonight Show.
00:30:42But because of the critical war situation in Vietnam, especially around Saigon,
00:30:47NBC, for the next 15 minutes, is going to bring you a special news program via satellite.
00:30:52Just after midnight their time, a band of Viet Cong raiders blew up a power installation
00:30:57and attacked two police stations in Saigon.
00:30:59It all amounts to the most ambitious series of communist attacks yet mounted,
00:31:03spreading violence into at least ten provincial capitals,
00:31:06plus American air bases and civilian installations stretching the entire length of the country.
00:31:12None had greater psychological impact than the assault on the American embassy in Saigon.
00:31:17In the first few hours of the fighting, 19 specially trained commandos
00:31:25had blasted their way into the sprawling compound of the United States Embassy.
00:31:32There's a rush. They're rushing the embassy.
00:31:37That's fire coming from the other side of the street now.
00:31:39Outside the embassy.
00:31:41They're exchanging across the street. You can see the tracer bullets going past.
00:31:44That's outside the embassy.
00:31:48This is Waco. Roger.
00:31:54Can you get in the gates now? The gate's open and can you take a force in there and clean out that embassy light now?
00:32:00Move!
00:32:05Push the floor!
00:32:08Mario!
00:32:09Mario! Mario! Mario! Mario!
00:32:12Apparently, the Viet Cong are trapped in the basement of this side building.
00:32:22An incredible situation.
00:32:30Heavy firing, incoming and outgoing.
00:32:33John North, ABC News, at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.
00:32:38All of the intruders were eventually killed or captured.
00:32:44What a sight.
00:32:46A small frog hopping through a pool of blood that's issuing from the hair of a Viet Cong
00:32:54lying on the green grassy lawn of the U.S. Embassy.
00:33:00An American Marine and four Army MPs were killed at the Embassy.
00:33:07General, how would you assess yesterday's activities and today's?
00:33:11What is the enemy doing?
00:33:13What is the enemy doing?
00:33:15Are these major attacks?
00:33:16That's EOD setting off a couple of years.
00:33:20What is the enemy doing?
00:33:22What is the enemy doing?
00:33:23Are these major attacks?
00:33:24That's EOD setting off a couple of M79 duds, I believe.
00:33:32The enemy very deceitfully has taken advantage of the Tet Truce in order to create maximum consternation.
00:33:45In my opinion, this is diversionary.
00:34:04Early wire service dispatches reported incorrectly that the Viet Cong had made it inside the Embassy itself.
00:34:12Embassy ID cards were found on some of the Viet Cong.
00:34:16And the first television footage did little to reassure the American public.
00:34:22Saigon's secure right now?
00:34:24Saigon's secure, as far as I know.
00:34:26There's no more fighting in the street.
00:34:28There may be some on the outskirts, too.
00:34:30I'm not sure.
00:34:31I don't know if they're secure enough.
00:34:34No.
00:34:35Saigon was far from secure.
00:34:38обязательно!
00:34:49Chop got up here.
00:34:54Stop!
00:34:55I'm not sure you did.
00:35:00I'll pass it over.
00:35:04Viet Cong assassination squads, some guided by North Vietnamese spies, moved through the
00:35:16streets with orders to kill what they called blood enemies of the people, bureaucrats, intelligence
00:35:26officers, Arvin commanders, and ordinary soldiers home on leave, and their families.
00:35:35I went home to visit my parents, and I found them kind of huddled in their house.
00:35:41The doors shut, the windows shut, very dark.
00:35:45They were very afraid because our house was located near a slum, and we always assumed
00:35:51that there were a lot of Viet Cong agents living among the poor, where they could hide very
00:35:57easily, and that they were going to come out and look for government officials, military
00:36:04personnel to kill.
00:36:08So my parents were very afraid.
00:36:21So the very famous military military team was kicked at Princeقتor, which prosecuted
00:36:42with Chinese military soldiers.
00:36:48On the second day of the fighting, a Viet Cong agent named Nguyen Van Lem was brought before Nguyen Ngoc Luan, the head of the South Vietnamese National Police.
00:37:01As an AP photographer and an NBC cameraman watched, Luan ordered another officer to shoot the captive.
00:37:09When he hesitated, Luan did the job himself.
00:37:13Luan said, I executed you. He draw his call of 45 and put him there.
00:37:28The chief of South Vietnam's National Police Force, Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Luan, was waiting for us.
00:37:43Good morning, Mr. President.
00:37:57Hi, Jack.
00:37:59We need guidance this morning, sir.
00:38:01Guidance? Is that all you want?
00:38:04Yes, sir.
00:38:04No quotation?
00:38:06That's right.
00:38:06No attribution? No connection?
00:38:08That's right.
00:38:08Give it absolutely none.
00:38:10Absolutely none.
00:38:11Your press is lying like drunken sailors every day.
00:38:15First thing I woke up this morning was trying to figure out after seeing CBS, watching the networks, reading the morning papers,
00:38:24was how can we win, possibly win, and survive as a nation and have to fight the press's lies.
00:38:30Yes, sir.
00:38:30I'm trying to protect my country, and they're all whipping me.
00:38:33Not a son of a bitch said a word about Ho Chi Man.
00:38:36They talk about us bombing.
00:38:38Yet these sons of bitches come in and bomb our embassy, and 19 of them try to raid on them.
00:38:43All 19 get killed.
00:38:45And yet they blame the embassy.
00:38:48I don't understand it.
00:38:50We think we've killed 20,000.
00:38:51We think we've lost 400.
00:38:53We think that, of course, it's bad to lose anybody, any one of the 400.
00:38:58But we think that the good Lord has been so good to us that it is a major, dramatic victory.
00:39:05And I think, what would have happened if I'd lost 20,000 and they'd lost 400?
00:39:09I ask you that.
00:39:10Oh, it's been terrible.
00:39:12It appears that a mortar or a rocket shell came in, and all this blood on my pants, and I guess I'm hit.
00:39:22Well, this is the streets of Saigon, and that's where the war is now.
00:39:29Howard Tuckner, NBC News.
00:39:31The American press focused almost entirely on the fighting in Saigon.
00:39:41But the Tet Offensive was happening almost everywhere.
00:39:46Most assaults were being quickly beaten back by ARVN and American forces.
00:39:52Everywhere, the enemy was suffering terrible losses.
00:39:56There was a fire in front of us.
00:40:17We went to Thanh, Quang Tri.
00:40:20We were killed in one day.
00:40:24We were killed in 600, and we were killed in 300.
00:40:30We were killed in about 100.
00:40:34When I told you, the government,
00:40:37we were killed.
00:40:40It was horrible.
00:40:42The Americans called in massive air and artillery firepower
00:40:49to dislodge a Viet Cong regiment
00:40:52from the city of Ben Tre in the Mekong Delta.
00:40:56Afterwards, a reporter quoted an American major as having said,
00:41:01it became necessary to destroy the town to save it.
00:41:07Right now, the Navy and the Army boats
00:41:12that also bring supplies up the Perfume River
00:41:15are having to undergo heavy small arms and mortar fire
00:41:18as they turn the bend of the river here around Quay itself.
00:41:22And the landing zone on this, the south side of the river,
00:41:24has been under almost constant mortar and small arms fire.
00:41:28And today, at any rate, Quay is cut off.
00:41:31The longest, bloodiest battle of the Tet Offensive
00:41:38was being fought in the streets
00:41:40of one of the country's loveliest cities,
00:41:43the former imperial capital, Wade.
00:41:46The Perfume River divided way in two.
00:42:07The enemy, North Vietnamese regulars and Viet Cong guerrillas,
00:42:12had taken over both sides of the city.
00:42:15Only the American advisors compound on the south bank
00:42:19and the first Arvin division headquarters
00:42:22within the thick-walled citadel on the north side,
00:42:25held out against them.
00:42:27Don't fall.
00:42:28Don't fall.
00:42:54Marine Corporal Bill Earhart was at the end of his tour and was preparing to go home.
00:43:11But when his company was ordered to relieve the besieged American compound in way, he
00:43:16chose to go with his comrades.
00:43:20I had spent 12 months in Vietnam looking for somebody to shoot at.
00:43:24And there was nobody there.
00:43:27And then all of a sudden, it seemed like here's every NVA in the world trying to kill me and
00:43:35my pals.
00:43:36It was an entirely different kind of fight.
00:43:50Earhart and his unit endured a bloody ambush, finally fought their way through to the MACV
00:43:56compound, and then began days of brutal block-by-block battle to retake the surrounding neighborhoods.
00:44:05Every house became a battlefield.
00:44:12It was exhilarating, Earhart remembered.
00:44:22I was scared, utterly witless, but it was the greatest adrenaline high I'd ever experienced.
00:44:29It was ugly, ugly fighting.
00:44:35You literally have to clear houses, a room at a time, a floor at a time, a house at a time.
00:44:41And then you go to the next one.
00:44:43And then you go to the next one.
00:44:47I did not shoot everything.
00:44:49I was shocked when they were able to shoot me.
00:44:52So I had to shoot them up.
00:44:54I was able to shoot them up.
00:44:59I was not very close.
00:45:03I had to shoot 3 meters.
00:45:07When I was on the shoot, I had to shoot them up.
00:45:12Then I had to shoot them up.
00:45:14I'm going to go to the hospital.
00:45:19I'm going to go to the hospital.
00:45:44by a B-40 rocket, I was utterly stone deaf.
00:45:53Under any other circumstances, I would have been evacuated,
00:45:56but I could see, I could walk, and I could shoot.
00:46:01So I stayed.
00:46:14The fighting continued.
00:46:31The fighting continued.
00:46:40We had to blow our way through every wall
00:46:42of every house one Marine remembered.
00:46:46It's a shame we had to damage such a beautiful city.
00:46:53Of course, all these civilians
00:46:54have been herded into the university.
00:46:58They had all gone there to get the hell away
00:47:00from having grenades thrown in their living rooms.
00:47:03And one of the guys comes in and says,
00:47:06I found this girl who will fuck us all for sea rations.
00:47:12And I'm thinking, wait, we're in the middle of this big battle.
00:47:16And I'm going to go and, but I'm 19 years old
00:47:21and my buddies are going to, and I just,
00:47:25I demonstrated to myself how little courage I actually had.
00:47:31I've lived with it ever since.
00:47:32But I, I, I did it because I wasn't going to say,
00:47:37you guys, we shouldn't do something like this.
00:47:42Even more than the killings,
00:47:46the thing I think I'm most ashamed of,
00:47:49when I think back on the time I spent there,
00:47:52I think it's because my mother's a woman.
00:47:59My wife's a woman.
00:48:01My daughter's a woman.
00:48:10Somebody gets shot.
00:48:13Not a good thing.
00:48:14You see somebody running away.
00:48:17Could have been a VC.
00:48:19Could have been a VC.
00:48:21That woman.
00:48:24Nah.
00:48:27I had every opportunity to say no.
00:48:33The next day, in the midst of still another firefight,
00:48:37a lieutenant in a jeep pulled up in front of the building
00:48:40from which Earhart and five fellow Marines
00:48:43were firing at the enemy.
00:48:45Come on, Earhart, he shouted.
00:48:48Chopper's on the LZ right now.
00:48:51You want to go home or not?
00:48:55From the helicopter that lifted him up
00:48:57and away from the ruined, smoking city,
00:49:00he could see a farmer and his water buffalo
00:49:03working a flooded field
00:49:04and women in conical hats carrying twin baskets
00:49:08hurrying along between the paddies
00:49:11as if there were no war.
00:49:13Back in way, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops
00:49:22now found themselves trapped inside the city.
00:49:26and they had to find a good way okay.
00:49:27To find a good way out of the building,
00:49:28they went back to the building,
00:49:28and they left the mountain to lock the box,
00:49:31and the other animal was their way away.
00:49:32And they had to find a good way out of the building.
00:49:33They had to find the way out of the building,
00:49:34so we didn't have to find a good way out of the building.
00:49:39It would take two weeks for the Marines to fight their way across the river to support
00:49:53the Arvin, who had stubbornly kept the enemy from overwhelming their division headquarters
00:49:59in the citadel.
00:50:04What's the hardest part of it?
00:50:23Not knowing where they are, that's the worst thing.
00:50:26Riding around and running the sewers and the gutters, anywhere.
00:50:29Be anywhere.
00:50:30Just hoping to stay alive from day to day.
00:50:32Most everybody just wants to go back home and go to school.
00:50:35That's about it.
00:50:36You lost any friends?
00:50:37Quite a few.
00:50:38We lost one the other day.
00:50:39Good buddy.
00:50:40Oh, thanks.
00:50:41Thanks, really.
00:50:42Thanks, everything.
00:50:43Thế như thế là rất ạc lẻ.
00:50:45Và giữa hai phế thì cũng giành dịch nhau.
00:50:48Vậy thì thương vong lợn.
00:50:51Mà trụ lại được 25-26 ngày đêm,
00:51:06Still alive!
00:51:36after 26 days of bitter bloody fighting the flag of south vietnam flew again above the citadel
00:51:51the surviving north vietnamese and vietcong were finally permitted by their commanders
00:51:56to pull out of the city some 6 000 civilians had died in the rubble
00:52:02of the city's 135 000 citizens 110 000 had lost their homes
00:52:14all that was left of way one reporter wrote was ruins divided by a river
00:52:23the biggest fact is that the stated purposes of the general uprising a military victory or
00:52:31psychological victory had failed the attack on the radio station started at 2 30 in the morning
00:52:40night after night for weeks american television screens had been filled with images of blood
00:52:47and violence and devastation the public had rarely seen before the enemy was nowhere
00:52:53but it was one photograph that for many people would come to define the ted offensive
00:53:06i remember he was wearing a checked shirt
00:53:10and the photographer had come up very close and had pressed his shutter just as the officer
00:53:19pulled his trigger so camera and gun went off together and you could see the man's head bulging at the
00:53:27side where the bullet was about to come out we were there face to face with this man who is dying right now
00:53:35dead it's a devastating thing to see and i think many americans begin to ask themselves are we supporting the
00:53:44wrong guys here and it sort of brings home i think to the dinner table or the breakfast table if you see
00:53:52it in the papers the brutality of this war and the fact that it looks like it's never going to end
00:53:58but what we know is the price that we pay for that picture it was a turning point
00:54:06because that put the gold americans to position and said hey look we want to spend money and the
00:54:13lives of our young people to protect such a system
00:54:25for a month hal kushner's captors had made him walk deeper and deeper into the central highlands
00:54:32always moving at night so that they would not be spotted from the air
00:54:38they took me to this place that i assume was a hospital it was just a series of caves but there
00:54:44were a lot of wounded lying around and this female nurse came out and inspected my wound and then
00:54:57she gave me a bamboo stick to bite on she laid me down and she gave me this bamboo stick to bite on and
00:55:03then she took this rifle cleaning rod and she heated it up in a fire until it was red hot and she took it
00:55:11and put it through my wound through and through and it really hurt it really really really hurt and then
00:55:19she put mercurochrome on the wound and she gave me an aspirin towel and i i thought what else can they do
00:55:30to me krishna would eventually arrive at a remote jungle camp joining a handful of other american prisoners
00:55:42and this vietnamese officer came to me and he spoke english and it was the first real english
00:55:46speaker that i had seen and he had a little reel-to-reel tape recorder battery-powered tape
00:55:52recorder and he asked me to make a message to my family to let them know that i was safe
00:55:58and i could do that if i would make a statement against the war
00:56:03and i told him with great bravado that i would rather die than make a statement against my country
00:56:09and he said to me uh you will find dying is very easy living will be the difficult thing living is the
00:56:22difficult thing
00:56:27in early march two weeks after way had finally been recaptured second lieutenant phil joya of the 82nd
00:56:34airborne division led his platoon along the perfume river looking for weapons that might have been
00:56:41buried by the retreating enemy joya's sergeant ruben torres saw something sticking up from the sandy soil
00:56:52it was an elbow
00:56:55so to us it seemed as though this was going to be a grave
00:56:59where the enemy had buried some of his own people on the withdrawal from way
00:57:03sergeant torres said you know sir i think we better start to dig here
00:57:09we found the first body and it was a woman she was wearing a white blouse and black trousers
00:57:18she had her hands tied behind her back and she'd been shot in the back of the head
00:57:23next to her was a child who had also been shot the next person coming up was another woman
00:57:29woman at that point it was clear that this this wasn't enemy north vietnamese or vietcong
00:57:36came in the back of the
00:57:49or vietnamese or vietnamese or vietnamese or vietnamese or youtube
00:57:54they will convince people of the military.
00:58:02Before they abandoned the city,
00:58:04the Communists had systematically executed at least 2,800 people
00:58:10they called hooligans and reactionaries.
00:58:15Hanoi would always deny that any innocent civilians had been killed.
00:58:24The mandate was to be direct to the government,
00:58:27or to the higher level.
00:58:29They killed the people who have been killed in the United States,
00:58:34and the United States,
00:58:36but also the people who have been killed.
00:58:39They became a criminal.
00:58:42That was a terrible thing in the war.
00:58:47I'm going to talk to you about this.
00:59:17President Johnson insisted that the Tet Offensive had been a devastating defeat for the Communists.
00:59:33Militarily, he was right.
00:59:36The basic assumptions on which the North Vietnamese mounted their offensive had all proved to be wrong.
00:59:44Hanoi's leaders had assumed the Arvin would crumble, that South Vietnamese soldiers would come over to their side.
00:59:53Instead, not a single unit defected.
00:59:59The civilian populace Hanoi expected to rise up may have been unhappy with their government,
01:00:05but they had little sympathy for Communism.
01:00:09And when the fighting began, they had hidden in their homes to escape the fury in the streets.
01:00:18I was told that when the Communists were gone, the people would come back.
01:00:26I think they were very serious.
01:00:31North Vietnamese General Va Win Zopp, who had opposed the offensive from the beginning,
01:00:38later remembered that Tet had been a costly lesson, paid for in blood and bone.
01:00:46I think that the U.S. Army has been the first-person military forces of Vietnam.
01:00:53That's a problem that has never happened.
01:00:56All the units, there is no one unit, there are no units, there are no units.
01:01:01There are no units.
01:01:02If there is a name, it's only a few people.
01:01:05Of the 84,000 enemy troops who are estimated to have taken part in the Tet Offensive, more
01:01:14than half, as many as 58,000 men and women, most of them Viet Cong, are thought to have
01:01:22been killed or wounded or captured.
01:01:27The American military command celebrated the Tet Offensive as a victory.
01:01:32You know, they finally came at us and we blew them away, which was basically true.
01:01:37But the administration had been telling the American public for most of the end of 67 and
01:01:44for the first month of 1968 that the war was being won, that the NLF and the North Vietnamese
01:01:51were ground down to such an extent that we could see the end of the war, a victory.
01:01:57The Tet Offensive has forced our generals to reevaluate their efforts.
01:02:01So when Tet hit, it contradicted everything that the administration and the Saigon country
01:02:07team had been telling the American public through its journalists for the previous four or five
01:02:12months.
01:02:13John Lawrence, CBS News, Saigon.
01:02:18It broke the will of the United States to fight that war.
01:02:23It was such a shock that it stripped away the last vestiges of the fiction and fanciful
01:02:31interpretations that had led us down this primrose path into disaster.
01:02:36After that, nobody could be convinced.
01:02:39And then the most ferocious possible argument erupted inside the U.S. government because the
01:02:50hawks on the war were saying Tet was North Vietnam's last gasp.
01:02:58It was their last shot at winning the war, and they failed.
01:03:02We beat them, and that's the end of them.
01:03:07And we said, after all these years of war, if that's what they are able to do, we ought
01:03:14to learn some lesson about their commitment to this war as well and the cost to us.
01:03:21On March 10th, the New York Times reported that the army was requesting 206,000 additional
01:03:29troops for Vietnam.
01:03:30But if the United States had been winning the war, many Americans asked, if Tet had in fact
01:03:37been a disaster for the enemy, why were still more men needed?
01:03:44More and more members of the president's own party now felt free to express their doubts.
01:03:50Our enemy has finally shattered the mask of official illusion, Senator Robert Kennedy
01:03:56said.
01:03:57Unable to defeat him or break his will, we must actively seek a peaceful settlement.
01:04:05Walter Cronkite, the respected anchor of the CBS Evening News, had come home from covering
01:04:12the Tet Offensive, convinced victory was no longer possible.
01:04:16We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam
01:04:22and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest
01:04:27clouds.
01:04:28To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence,
01:04:34the optimists who have been wrong in the past.
01:04:37To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism.
01:04:43To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, if unsatisfactory, conclusion.
01:04:50But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be
01:04:56to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend
01:05:03democracy and did the best they could.
01:05:07This is Walter Cronkite, good morning.
01:05:10In 1966 and 67 and again in 68, most recently we hear the same hollow claims of progress and
01:05:18of advance toward victory.
01:05:20The fact is, however, as we know from events of recent weeks, events which one is almost
01:05:26saddened to report, that the NMA has become bolder than ever.
01:05:32On the evening of March 12th, President Johnson watched the returns come in from the New Hampshire
01:05:38Democratic presidential primary, where he was facing an unexpected challenge.
01:05:44The most recent poll had suggested he would beat Eugene McCarthy two to one, but Johnson
01:05:51won just 49.6 percent of the vote against 41.9 percent for his opponent, even though most
01:06:00of those who voted against the president actually wanted him to prosecute the war more vigorously.
01:06:09Johnson knew he was in trouble, and there was more to come.
01:06:15I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man.
01:06:19Just four days after the New Hampshire primary, Robert F. Kennedy declared his candidacy for
01:06:25the presidency, and polls suggested he was more popular than Lyndon Johnson.
01:06:32about what must be done, I run because it is now unmistakably clear that we can change
01:06:39these disastrous, divisive policies only by changing the men who are now making them.
01:06:46I think what we've got to do, too, is get out of the posture of just being the war candidate
01:07:02that McCarthy has put us in, and Bobby's putting us in, the kids are putting us in, and the papers
01:07:07are putting us in.
01:07:08We've got to come up with something.
01:07:09What it is, we're out to win, but we're not out to win the war.
01:07:15We're out to win the peace.
01:07:17That's right.
01:07:18And that's what we did.
01:07:19But our slogan could very well be, win the peace with honor.
01:07:23But we've got to have something new and fresh that goes in there along with a statement that
01:07:29we're going to win.
01:07:31Right.
01:07:32But we have to be very careful what it is we say we're going to win.
01:07:36That's right.
01:07:37They think, well, hell, that means we're just going to keep pouring men in until we win
01:07:41militarily.
01:07:42And that isn't what we're after, really.
01:07:45We're not going to get these, but we can neutralize the country the way it won't fall
01:07:52on me if we can go up or something.
01:07:57On March 26th, the Wise Men, a group of veteran cold warriors who had earlier urged the president
01:08:05to hold steady in Vietnam, now advised him to change course.
01:08:11Dean Acheson, Harry Truman's Secretary of State, spoke for the majority.
01:08:16We can no longer do the job we set out to do in the time we have left, he said.
01:08:23And we must begin to take steps to disengage.
01:08:27The president agreed to send just 13,500 more troops, not the 206,000 the generals had requested,
01:08:38and decided to recall William Westmoreland to Washington as chief of staff of the Army,
01:08:44replacing him with his deputy general Creighton W. Abrams.
01:08:48His face was a mask of exhaustion and defeat.
01:08:55It was very sad to see the man.
01:08:58He was broken by it.
01:09:03On March 30th, Gallup reported that 63% of the public disapproved of Johnson's handling of the war,
01:09:11the lowest point of his presidency.
01:09:16The following evening, March 31st, 1968, the president asked for time on all three networks.
01:09:26Good evening, my fellow Americans.
01:09:29Tonight I want to speak to you of peace in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.
01:09:36Johnson announced that he had decided to stop bombing the densely populated areas around Hanoi and Haiphong
01:09:45in the hope that North Vietnam would finally be willing to come to the negotiating table.
01:09:51Only the southern half of the country, the staging areas north of the DMZ, would continue to be targeted.
01:09:59Then he stunned the country and the world.
01:10:05I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes
01:10:16or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office, the presidency of your country.
01:10:28Accordingly, I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.
01:10:40I landed in California, taking a plane from California to Boston, and I'm feeling good because I survived and fought for my country.
01:10:53And I got off the plane at Logan and I stepped out there and I'm just happy to be home.
01:11:08And I had my uniform on and walked out to the curb and the cabs just kept going by me, kept going by me.
01:11:19And there was a state trooper that was standing there.
01:11:22And I didn't realize what was happening.
01:11:25And then he stepped in the street and he stopped the cab and he said,
01:11:28you have to take this man.
01:11:31You have to take this soldier.
01:11:33And the driver looked over at me and he said, I don't want to go to Roxbury.
01:11:37They don't see me as a soldier.
01:11:40You know, they see me as a nigga.
01:11:42You know, and I live in Roxbury.
01:11:44You know, I'm thinking, I'm a Marine.
01:11:47I'm a Marine.
01:11:48You know, I just fought for my country 13 months in combat zone.
01:11:52And I can't get a cab to get home.
01:11:56I have some very sad news for all of you.
01:11:59And I think sad news for all of our fellow citizens and people who love peace all over the world.
01:12:09And that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Mexico.
01:12:18In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States,
01:12:24it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are
01:12:29and what direction we want to move in.
01:12:33Over the next week, African Americans,
01:12:37grieving, frustrated, angry,
01:12:40poured into the streets of more than 100 towns and cities,
01:12:45including New York and Oakland,
01:12:48Newark and Nashville,
01:12:50Chicago and Cincinnati and Baltimore.
01:12:54And in Washington, D.C.,
01:12:56where fires came within two blocks of the White House.
01:13:03When they killed Dr. King, they just opened up the eyes of a lot of black people
01:13:07who were afraid to pick up guns.
01:13:09Now they will pick up those guns.
01:13:11We're living in a sick world.
01:13:13This racist society in which we live is that that really pulled the trigger.
01:13:19Violence breeds violence.
01:13:21Repression breeds retaliation.
01:13:24And only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our souls.
01:13:34Tens of thousands of National Guardsmen, regular Army troops and the Marines,
01:13:39including Roger Harris' stateside unit, were ordered to patrol American streets.
01:13:46And I was ready to go until I saw what they were giving out.
01:13:53I thought they were going to give us building clubs.
01:13:55I thought we were going to stand in front of buildings, you know, and protect, you know, businesses.
01:14:02And they were passing out flak jackets, helmets, M-16s with live ammunition.
01:14:07You know, the same things we had in Vietnam.
01:14:09And when I saw that, I said, I'm not going.
01:14:15I'm not going.
01:14:16I said, I got family in Washington, D.C.
01:14:19And my company commander said, get on the truck, Marine.
01:14:24I said, I'm not going.
01:14:31I didn't make sergeant because I refused to go.
01:14:3546 Americans died.
01:14:392,600 were injured.
01:14:4220,000 were arrested.
01:14:49Later that same month, anti-war students seized several buildings at Columbia University in Manhattan.
01:14:58The occupation lasted a week, the first time in American history that students forced a major university to shut down.
01:15:09Policemen eventually drove the demonstrators out of the buildings and sent more than 100 students to the hospital.
01:15:18The United States now appeared to be more divided than at any time since the Civil War.
01:15:26That spring, protesters also took to the streets of London, Paris, Berlin, Prague, Rio, Jakarta.
01:15:42The world seemed to be coming apart.
01:15:45President Johnson's partial bombing halt had had the desired effect.
01:16:14Hanoi agreed for the first time to talk with Washington.
01:16:19Negotiators began meeting at the Hotel Majestic in Paris.
01:16:25But the communists had now adopted a new double policy.
01:16:30They called it, Talking While Fighting, Fighting While Talking.
01:16:39On May 5th, they launched another offensive that Lays One hoped would somehow achieve what the Tet Offensive had not.
01:16:48The enemy hit 119 targets in what came to be called Mini Tet.
01:16:55There was new fighting in the streets of Saigon.
01:17:00Half the city was now leveled.
01:17:06But the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army failed again.
01:17:21They were still no closer to overthrowing the South Vietnamese government.
01:17:26And they had suffered some 36,000 more casualties.
01:17:30For the United States, May of 1968 proved the bloodiest month of the Vietnam War.
01:17:422,416 Americans lost their lives in places whose names Americans back home would have a hard time remembering.
01:17:54A total military victory is not within sight and is not around the corner.
01:18:12That in fact, it is probably beyond our grasp.
01:18:16For a time that spring, it looked as if Robert Kennedy might win the Democratic nomination for president.
01:18:25He pledged to bring the war to an end and seemed to embody the hope of bridging the growing gulf between black and white Americans.
01:18:37But in June, after defeating Eugene McCarthy in the California primary, he too was assassinated.
01:18:45People were stunned. People were scared.
01:19:08The people we'd look up to were being taken away from us.
01:19:13It definitely put those of us who were heading off on our own, on a path that felt uncertain.
01:19:26When Martin Luther King was assassinated and Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, they made a big, huge deal about that.
01:19:41And they said that was part of the struggle of the American people against their government and that there were riots in the streets.
01:19:51And the camp commander actually told us, you can kill ten of us to one of you, but your people will turn against this.
01:20:00And we will be here for ten years or twenty years or thirty years, as long as it takes.
01:20:07And unless you kill every one of us, we're going to win this war.
01:20:15And on July the fourth, we recognized it was July the fourth.
01:20:22And they would not let us sing patriotic songs.
01:20:26But sometimes we would softly sing at night.
01:20:33And we understood that despite different backgrounds, different socioeconomic backgrounds, different races, different religions, that we were Americans.
01:20:51The American people would be choosing new leadership that fall.
01:20:56And everyone seemed to agree, a British correspondent wrote, that whoever captures the presidency this November will be obliged to end the conflict within a matter of months.
01:21:08How this is to be done, or what concessions are to be made, is very much a matter of detail.
01:21:17Before those details were finally worked out, almost seven more years would pass.
01:21:23And 27,184 more Americans, and hundreds of thousands more Laotians, Cambodians, and Vietnamese, North and South, would have to die.
01:21:38We skipped the light fandango, turned cartwheels across the floor.
01:21:51I was feeling kind of seasick.
01:21:57The crowd called out for more.
01:22:00The room was humming harder.
01:22:10As the ceiling flew away.
01:22:16When we called out for more.
01:22:17When we called out for a longer dream.
01:22:19When we called out for a longer dream.
01:22:23The way to borrow the train.
01:22:25And so it was a later.
01:22:31As the military's tail.
01:22:43Let her face at first just go steep.
01:22:46Turn the whiter shade of fear.
01:22:53guitar solo
01:23:23guitar solo
01:23:53guitar solo
01:24:23guitar solo
Recommended
44:04
|
Up next
1:59:56
1:32:02
55:30
1:22:19
2:18
29:15
46:28
58:54
45:06
41:07
47:45
58:00
46:47
49:00
37:41
1:25:15
39:36
1:54:22
40:14
49:02
41:16