Customer Reviews

Combat Vietnam: To Hell and Beyond

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This documentary was OK at best. Entire session is from a (pre 1969) notion that we were winning all battles with nearly no casualties. Was refreshing thought to hear something about the war with an antiseptic point of view (like the US Govt's back then). Also was very much like the old WWII news reels...I even think they used the same narrator:) Was not what I was expecting, If you are craving a more true to life coverage of the Vietnam war, I would recommend saving up your money and paying the extra for the "...10 thousand day war" series also available here.

This 3 hour documentary is exceedingly good value for money. Although the picture and sound quality are varied (I'm sure some episodes were taken from magnetic masters), the content was surprisingly refreshing in a Vietnam documentary sense. That is, this documentary seemed to have been coupled together from Military newsreel archives from the actual Vietnam conflict (pre 69, I think), and was deviod of the usual retrospective look at the war. Listening to the voice-overs, the war was already won - by the US. Some fill-in sections (to keep each episode to the 30 minute mark) was in some cases filled with un-narrated segments, but rather than adding sound effects, they had someone on a synthesizer making a pretty corn-ball "score" (for lack of a more accurate term describing the embarassing sounds that accompanied the images in this case). Fortunately, these segments were pretty far between. From a military equipment perspective, I actually learnt a few things from it. For starters, they showed the Marines amphibous APC, one which had a brief shot in Coppola's "Apocalypse Now", which I had previously thought was not hardware used in Vietnam. Definitely a worthy purchase for Vietnam era miliraty buffs.

Should have red previous reviews. It's only fragments of very interestings films. But you will never see the scene in depth. It's almost a 60's American propaganda. Type of movies they used to recruit in colleges or universities. Only a one side view of the war.

While the commentary and the music were a little dull, I liked the fact that it was all real footage. It was broken down into different categories and painted a vivid picture of the style of warfare used at the time..

I picked up this set ages ago and am fascinated by it. Not because it's "good", but because it presents the alternate side of the usual story of Vietnam: The jingoistic, military industrial complex side of the coin. Gone are the humanist concerns for the battlefield participants, the innocent indigenous personnel, and the traditional objectivity that one might hope for from a "documentary". By contrast what is being documented here is how the US government packaged and sold the Vietnam conflict to its population with the same kind of enthusiasm that Kellogg's sells corn flakes. This is one of the strangest presentations of history I have ever seen, ceaselessly upbeat, focused on victory, and completely devoid of even one shred of human decency.

AND I LOVE IT!! It's so refreshing to put this on and throw off the yoke of 30 years of Liberalist revisionism, constantly painting our military's involvement in 'Nam as some kind of humiliating defeat. The fact is that it wasn't and with a very few examples to the contrary we won practically every engagement we undertook. This collection is part of that mentality, speaking in glowing terms of the heroism of our soldiers, the devastating, unstoppable might of our mechanized juggernaut of destruction, and the destruction that we served out indiscriminately to our enemy & friend alike.

See, war is about breaking things and killing people. It's dirty, nasty, horrifying, and the only thing good that can possibly come from it is it's ending. The feeling I get watching these propaganda films is that it should have been over fairly quickly if certain unforseen events hadn't turned public sentiment against the military's freedom to wage war as they saw fit. Here is a vision of the Vietnam conflict where the war was WINNABLE, which flies in the face of everything we've ever been taught about the conflict by Hollywood, our social studies teachers, PBS & the History Channel. It's as contrary to anything someone like Walter Cronkite could have tried to spin it, and yet up until 1968 or so this is exactly the same tune he himself was singing.

You can sort of picture these short reelers playing in a theater between features, with the smug, self-satisfied white males in the audience sitting back in their seats, lighting up a fresh cigarette, and puffing along approvingly as they heard of the heroism of the 4th Infantry Division, saw first hand the might of American air power bringing the North Vietnamese Army to their knees at Khe Sanh, marveled at heroic Marines leaping into the rice paddies with their machine guns blazing or the 1st Air Cavalry advancing across LZ X-Ray at the Ia Drang Valley. If your estimation of the conflict was based upon what you saw here you'd be hard pressed to comprehend how we ended up "losing" in the end.

That's why I refer to it as marvelous propaganda, and on that plane of consideration should be viewed with a kind of quiet awe you usually reserve for things like seeing the Hoover Dam in person: You can't believe what you're really seeing, to a degree, and the upbeat enthusiasm of the narration will leave you puzzled for days. Yes yes, it's all probably inaccurate and insensitive and hateful and even a little bigoted, but dammit this is America at war we are talking about. It isn't going to be a Care Bear commercial and it might be useful for some to understand why our culture was so polarized by the experience then as opposed to now. Now we are sort of expected to look upon it with cynicism and distrust, but in 1967 Vietnam was shaping up to be another triumph in the American war machine. This DVD collection helps you understand why people were so confused when it didn't turn out that way.