Truth as Casualty of War : Movie Myths Still Dog Vietnam Vets

After seeing Brian DePalma’s “Casualties of War,” I had a whimsical vision: The car in “Back to the Future” zooms up, plopping Brian into 1969 and a North Vietnamese Army infantry company.

DePalma treks along as the NVA slaughters teachers and mayors in four villages in South Vietnam, then watches as the squad leader bayonets the pregnant daughter of a village elder as punishment for building a school that uses Red Cross pencils, paper and meals.

Then things get tough. His regiment mounts a night attack on a battalion of the American 101st Airborne Division. On the way, they trip a “stay-behind” ambush, sprung by an American platoon lingering after other units have withdrawn. American howitzers strip the night jungle of leaves, branches and North Vietnamese lives. With only 571 men left of 1,200, DePalma lurches on.

At the perimeter of the 101st, a buddy tries to turn a claymore mine so it faces the Americans. Expecting this, the Americans have booby-trapped the claymore, so it spreads Brian’s friend over an acre of trees.

Brian, who loves violence and hopes to make bloody movies someday, is suddenly enveloped in blinding light and lifted 40 meters. Luckily, he lands in a mud hole. But 90% of his regiment lies dismembered around him--for the zone in front of the 101st had been set up as a target for B-52s.

Things turn bleak when Brian and the remains of his regiment recoup in a base camp near the Ho Chi Minh Trail. An American spotter plane notes their activity at water holes. Brian’s friends shoot down the plane, killing the pilot. Seconds later, eight F-4 Phantoms turn the NVA’s retreat into fire, earth and blood. An hour later, 16 Huey helicopters preceded by Cobra gunships rake the ground around Brian, and a company from the American 1st Infantry Division sweeps through the North Vietnamese complex, rooting through the tunnels.

Clad in rubber sandals and black pajamas, dirty and unshaven, Brian rushes forward shouting, “Friends! Friends! My home is L.A.! Here is my business card! Save me! Let’s do lunch!”

An American lieutenant says, “He’s nuts. Probably learned English at UCLA. Don’t shoot him. We’re supposed to take prisoners, not kill them. Give him some food.” The car appears and zooms him to 1989.

The fantasy has a point: Notwithstanding the false stereotypes that consistently crop up in Vietnam movies and color our popular understanding of the war, most American units in Vietnam were very competent in combat, their officers were not cynics and cowards, and the men were not morally blind. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were not invincible. American logistics gave our men top radio, helicopter and fire support. Women were not omnipresent in battle. And as with their fathers in World War II, a lot of vets still suffer, but most have been strengthened by their service and given much to their communities.

The greater battlefield slaughter was not of Americans or the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, but of the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong, culminating in the decimation of the Viet Cong in Tet of 1968.

Throughout the war, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong carried out a policy of terror on their own people. Atrocities by American soldiers were the exception. But in 1966, an Army squad kidnaped, raped and murdered a Vietnamese girl. The GIs were court-martialed and sentenced to Ft. Leavenworth. Using this true case, DePalma weaves battles and a fragging that never happened. In a film that is overwhelmingly fiction, DePalma elects, at every juncture where he has an artistic choice, to show Americans as remorseless, morally blind and barely competent soldiers led by unworthy officers.

After we went to see the film, my 12-year-old son asked, “Daddy, were you like that? Were your friends?”

I spoke out last week, calling for public awareness of the false stereotypes and for citizens to call the Vietnam Veterans of America, which has an educational program, for knowledge of what the war was about.

DePalma accuses me of being “politically motivated.” My motivation is the memory of men long dead in my West Point class of 1966. They were soldiers’ soldiers; many were killed saving their wounded men. They built havens for Vietnamese refugees. They wrote letters home about the moral tension of the war. My motivation is my son and his sister, who have a right to know the whole truth.

We living Vietnam vets will do OK. Of 3 million of us, 400,000 are hurting from the war, down from 600,000 a decade ago. We help our buddies. Most of us still give much to our country, like Fred Smith, who founded Federal Express, or Sens. Chuck Robb, Al Gore and Larry Pressler, Hollywood writers Bill Broyles and Steve Smith, and B.T. Collins, creator of the California Conservation Corps.

The dead cannot speak, save perhaps in the quiet of the California Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Sacramento, or the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. I wish they were here with us now.