I don’t watch Vietnam war movies. Been there, done that. Caught about 20 minutes of “Platoon”, while sitting in a bar waiting for a friend. TOTAL, ABSOLUTE, and COMPLETE, BULLSH*T. SO WAS “FIRST BLOOD”. Almost. I saw the entire film (after it had been out for a dozen, or more years, at a friend’s house). The film caught my interest until after the escape from the jail, when it became a comic book. One stupidity after another...(Rambo’s Col. Whositz, wears an SF crest on his brand new misshapen beret which ONLY enlisted men wore on their berets, instead of the Eagle of a “FULL BIRD” Col. that he should have worn on the flasher of his beret. NOT ONE PERSON INVOLVED IN THE MAKING OF THAT FILM SAID TO ANYONE IN CHARGE, “OOPS, EXCUSE ME BUT...”. ‘CAUSE THEY WERE ALL HOLLYWOOD AND NOBODY KNEW.)
But one part, ONE PART ONLY, touched me, and made my tears just flow. ONLY ONE PART WAS REAL. That’s the scene where
Rambo tells his Col. that all the vets only wanted their country to love them like we loved our country. It’s been over 50 years for me now, and I’m crying just writing this very real truth.
That’s the ONLY TRUTH in that film.
EVERYTHING ELSE IS HOLLYWOOD BULLSH*IT. EVERYTHING!
Keep the Faith.
Nice write, brother. I did a couple VN tours in armored cav and air cav and have seen most of the films. As to accuracy, mostly crap. Except maybe the rain in Platoon was spot-on. The air cavalry destruction of the village in Apocalypse Now, including the Robert Duvall attitude was more than a little realistic. Of all the war movies, the most accurately disturbing was the opener of Saving Private Ryan. Maybe the closest to PTSD I’ve been since retiring. That’s what the smallest firefight is like, all that destruction and noise and hardly ever seeing the enemy.
BTW, that photo of Stallone? That potato sack fit and form wasn’t the proper field jacket of the era, either. You’d think they could have found one of the early cool ones. I gave one of my originals to my daughter and she made it look terrific. One of the formless ones I just found yesterday while cleaning out my garage. So uncool none of my kids wanted it.
TYFYS
You didn’t like his survival knife? I forced my dad to buy me one when I was a kid.
It works as an action film.
that all the vets only wanted their country to love them like we loved our country
A very eloquent and I believe correct statement. A career army officer I know of tracked one of his sons down in a commune in Oregon circa 1970 to see if he was a doper or not. The man told the communards as they gathered for their evening meal about that in response to some jackass calling him a murderer. He said he was trained to kill the enemies of his country and this fellow should tw=ell his ideas to his elected representatives to who the soldier served in faithful obedience to the Constitution and that vets only sought the respect due them for serving faithfully thier country. Apparently one could hear the proverbial pin drop. The commune leader then speaks up and says ‘That settles it, the colonel is sleeping with Barb tonight (she was the commune uber babe). Her comment was something like ‘As though that wasn’t going to happen’. The colonel who had recently finished a bruising divorce figured ‘oh why the hell not’. Barb was indeed all that and some more and the next morning asked him straight up, ‘you want me to tag along. I’ll follow you to Viet Nam if you just say the word. Colonel’s remark later was ‘damndest thing, that is the last thing I was ever expecting’.
I lost count of the movies/shows about Vietnam infantry combat and the yelling I did at the TV from the outright fakery.
I will give credit to Hal Moore and Galloway on the movie "We were Soldiers" for the realism and some reduction of hollywierdness in the typical combat movie. It showed that having the actual commander and journalist in the combat giving the movie producer the truth of what happened to have the movie portray more realistically what was happening.
Burkett in his book 'Stolen Valor' really opened some eyes. I was proud to be in the same unit, the 199th Light Infantry 4th Btn 12th Inf that First Lieutenant Burkett was a platoon leader in.