Customer Reviews

Vietnam War With Walter Cronkite

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These three DVDs are actually the news clips appeared on CBS during the 60s' and 70s'. They are very worth buying if you want to know how the war appeared on TVs of the American families. Many scenes are touching, deeply moving and difficult to find elsewhere. For those who are younger than 40 like me, these DVDs can tell us what has really happened during the Vietnam War (though only from the eyes of western reporters).

Im surprised not more has been said or written about this fantastic piece on the vietnam war. The footage and stories from the reporters in Nam were simply mesmerizing.

Basically there are several stories by reporters including a teenage looking dan rather. Walter cronkite is the host from a studio although he is on location sometimes...the stories are rarely seen footage...I've been watchign vietnam documentaries for years and until I saw this dvd I had never seen some of the footage shown...actual firefights and interviews with soldiers in the bush...its captivating....

I liked the story about the sequence with the vc sniper, also the rebellion by charlie company after the good lieut. leaves and is replaced by a more gung ho one...the company refuses to follow orders and go down a road because they know its set up for an ambush....great drama.

The story about the taking of a hill is another one....great footage and details about going up a hill and getting ambushed by snipers and then hit by their own artillery...

this DVD set is really well done and footage that you've rarely seen before....not in PBS, letters home from vietnam, or anything else....many hours of nam...you'll feel like you're actually in the bush for once...

I used portions of the DVD in a course I taught on the "History of Television". Many of the segments are the closest thing that you can come to recreating for students today what was meant by the often used phrase "living room war" or "television war"...of how television affected Americans' perception of the war and the power that the visual image had in emotionally affecting viewers. Many of my college students were profoundly affected themselves in viewing images from those CBS news reports--such as the report on "enemy body counts", where a helicopter airlifts a netload of Vietnamese corpses or a segment where we learn of young Americans who eventually died in the process of claiming and relinquishing nameless hills. The students experienced first-hand a sense of what it was like in the 1960s/1970s to turn on your television and have to deal with war and death, and the cognitive dissonance the nearly 40-year-old images created in their minds.

When deciding on a good Vietnam documentary I knew I wanted something extensive and with plenty of first hand accounts. This brought me to this DVD and the PBS Television History of Vietnam DVD. After reading the reviews of the PBS version I was dismayed to see that there were things left out from the original production and decided on the Cronkite set. With all that said, I'm not sure how much of the PBS series duplicates the footage on this series, nor do I know if this series includes parts that were left out of the PBS series. I never saw the PBS series so I cannot comment on a comparison between the PBS set and this one. It would certainly be something I'd like to know, so if anyone has seen both and would like to comment, please do.

So, in looking at this documentary on its own, I can say without hesitation that it was immensely entertaining and informative. What you are getting is about 12 hours of CBS news footage. Some of it has narration by Cronkite to bring the viewer into the scene and frame a specific topic or event, but the majority of footage is simply the news broadcasts of the day as they were shown back then. The set is divided into 11 different parts. These episodes follow a loose chronology beginning with The French falling at Dien Bien Phu and going all the way up to the fall of Saigon. However, the episodes are more thematic and therefore jump around in time.

The stories selected for the DVD are engrossing. I didn't find myself bored for one instant during the entire length of the documentary. I also appreciate the large amount of human interest stories included. Things might have gotten dull for me if they showed 12 hours of combat footage. This is especially true for a war like Vietnam where the combat footage consisted mostly of soldiers firing into the jungle at an unseen enemy. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of great combat footage. It is some of the other types of stories I enjoyed most. For example, there is a story about an area in South Vietnam where the military brings its trash, basically a landfill in Vietnam. Vietnam peasants converge on the trash like vultures searching for any scrap they can find. One sergeant is responsible for chasing away the Vietnamese who descend on the daily trash disposals. Right away you can see the futility of this task. As soon as he chases away one group another is rummaging through another part of the trash pile. When interviewing the sergeant his disdain for the Vietnamese is clear as he refers to them as "less than human." He is obviously a man who is not happy with his current assignment. Things take a turn for the worse when some Vietnamese are wounded by a not quite spent concussion grenade which goes off in a pile of trash.

One entire segment of the documentary was devoted to the city of Saigon. It was quite interesting to see the strange dichotomy between the US forces and the native Vietnamese in the city of Saigon.

I'd also like to comment on the episode on Tet. I found it extremely well done. There was extensive coverage of Khe Sanh on this episode as well. The footage of soldiers at Khe Sanh playing guitar and singing amongst all the chaos around them is priceless.

I don't feel I can conclude my review without mentioning -for lack of a better term- the sheer balls that these reporters and crew had. You will see many familiar faces on the front lines including Cronkite himself, Dan Rather, and Morley Saefer, among others. Many of these TV crews were under fire just as the soldiers were and they seemed to brave any danger to get their story. At the end of the program Cronkite tells the viewers that in fact 8 colleagues at CBS were killed in Vietnam and 30 were injured while covering the war. Frankly, I'm surprised the numbers weren't higher. It's also interesting to watch how the reporters who spent a lot of time in Vietnam go from hawk to dove right in front of your eyes as the war drags on. Like the soldiers, these reporters were witnessing the quagmire of Vietnam first hand, and after a while they had no trouble expressing their disdain for the situation to the American public. This media coverage cannot be underestimated in the ultimate decision of Lyndon Johnson not to run for re-election. It is said that Johnson knew when he lost Cronkite he lost the American people as well. That's how powerful these stories were in shaping American opinion on the war.

Although it may be understood I feel I should mention that this documentary is not for the faint of heart. You see a lot of the horrors of The Vietnam War here. Yes, there are mangled and bloodied bodies including women and children. This was the reality of the war and this documentary pulls no punches in this regard.

Overall I don't hesitate in recommending this DVD for anyone interested in Vietnam. There are more highlights in these stories than I have space to recollect in this review, and besides, you should see them for yourself. Having been born the year before Saigon fell, I have no memory of these news casts as I was not alive of course. Seeing these stories brought me as close to Vietnam as I could hope to get without actually being there. This is no movie. It's the real thing, and these gutsy reporters did a great job of bringing the war into American living rooms. I'm glad I finally got to bring these broadcasts into my living room as well.

Like a lot of guys my age I'm obsessed with all things Vietnam. I was at the point where I honestly thought I'd seen every bit of film ever shot in Vietnam during the American involvement (65-72) and then from 72 to the fall of Saigon in 75. Then I stumbled across this gem.

Cronkite hosts this series and runs us through some classic news reports from back then. The reporting is unbiased and the comments from the troops is raw and from the gut.

I was about aged 4 when America stormed the beach at Da Nang, and we were getting the news reports in England. I remember that Vietnam took up a lot of time on the news broadcasts and, somewhere in my childhood brain I stored a lot of the information away. Watching these DVD's, I saw the same reports over again and even remembered some of the outcomes. I was instantly transferred back to the time.

The reporters in Vietnam asked tough questions. and were all guts. Out on patrol with the GI's, eating with them, living with them and just being a part of the group for the period of the report. Unlike what we saw in Iraq where reporters were "embedded" with specific units. Controversy over this arrangement has stemmed from the reporters being unable to remain neutral as they now identified with the unit and had formed friendships with the soldiers.

I've watched the siege of Hue so many times before but this DVD had new, unseen (for me) footage. They even showed some of the original news feeds routed via Japan at the time.
Vietnam is fascinating, from the politics that got USA into combat to the rout by the North Vietnamese that reunified the country. A true David and Goliath story. It's all in this collection.
Honestly, if you are into Vietnam then this one really is worth getting. It's unbiased, uncritical and unedited. Very worthy addition to your collection.

These are the evening news stories I grew up with. It's a great experience to see them again years later, with the perspective we have today. If you like this series you might also enjoy John Laurence's book about his years as a television reporter in Vietnam: "The Cat From Hue."

This DVD set is one of the better visual retrospectives available on the Vietnam War, as it provides a strong human interest angle and not just coverage of the military and political issues. This series has excellent footage going back to the origins of the War in the 1950s and continuing up to the frantic last days during the evacuation in 1975. The combat footage is real time, as many well-known correspondents and producers today began their careers in this war. Say what you will about Dan Rather, but he and his cohorts had a lot of guts to bring in some of those stories, unarmed and sometimes under direct fire from the enemy. The honest portrayal of the suffering of villagers, a corrupt South Vietnamese government, and the evolution of many GIs from hawk to disillusioned short-timer are all covered here. The reports are often so stark in their honesty that after Vietnam, the US military vowed to never again allow the media such open access to their combat areas. We talk of "embedded reporters" now, but it is a joke compared to Vietnam. There are numerous candid interviews here that depict the best and worst of the American military, courageous soldiers as well as those who disobeyed orders. As a former Army infantryman who came in at the end of this era, I see nothing here that is in conflict with what I experienced. Many of these reports will be useful for history teachers (as I am) and their students, most of whom now have little appreciation for what the Vietnam War was like. Over 12 hours of programs that feature numerous correspondent reports, plus interviews with 3 typical heroes of this period, make this an outstanding value as a DVD collection on the Vietnam War.

As an infantry dog handler, I was interested to see the story on Charlie, 2/7, since I was there and was on point that day. As a dog handler, I went out on log day and worked until the next log day. Our unit, 25th Scout Dog Platoon, worked with 2/7 and 1/7. Charlie 2/7 was everyones favorite. The guys were good and knew what they were doing. Delta Co was called "no DEROS Delta" (DEROS is the day you are scheduled to leave country). Alpha was filled with newbies my first time out with them. Not a good situation. I had good friends in Bravo, but Charlie was the best to be out with. Charlie Co had fewer casualties because they knew what they were doing, not because they refused to do anything. The medic they interviewed was the best.

I had read the Stars and Stripes version of what happened (I still have the article). It was a propaganda piece from the Army standpoint, this video was the same thing from a different perspective. Stars and Stripes was basically a story saying that the troops know what they are doing and won't accept faulty orders. This video presents the troops as more a group of kids in survivor mode and mostly against what they were doing. There were a lot of guys that fit that description (me included), but it is a generality and doesn't give the sense of commaraderie and sacrifice that existed. I walked point all the time and never questioned the guys behind me once. The camera crew stayed with the CP so they did not come out to the road until all the controversy was over. The pieced together a story that fit their perspective. Interestingly, the TV crew never mentioned the dog! I suspect it was because it didn't fit their story. We did know why they wanted us on that road. Battalion had ordered an arc light (B52 drop) and neglected to extract us. 3 clicks down the road was an opening big enough for a 7 bird pickup. That was the Bn Commander's salvation; it would take a couple of days to get 3 clicks breaking brush. Walking a road would get us there in less than an hour.Problem was, nobody in that area (Tay Ninh Province) walked roads or trails, not just Charlie Co. To do so was suicide.

When I walked out on the trail that day, there were fresh slick tracks (VC footprints) and an empty pack of Vietnamese cigs. My dog got about 20 feet and froze. He wouldn't move! He was an aggresive dog who loved contact and hated gooks. I knew something big was down that road. I told my shotgun that the dog won't move and neither will I. My shotgun sent the word back, "Dogman won't move, neither will we." To this day, I think the commander wanted to get us all killed so he wouldn't have to tell the Air Force to abort and admit he forgot his troops were there. Another point not mentioned by the camera team; the first helicopter out went down the road and received heavy fire about 200 meters from where we stopped. The rest of the extraction went the other way.

As for the rest of the DVD set, it does give a sense

This DVD set contains a compilation of news stories presented as history years after the fact by Walter Cronkite and his cronies at CBS News.

This series of 30-minute programs does provides an opportunity to see how the war was covered by CBS News. But Cronkite's introductions to the stories, produced about 15 years after their original broadcast, ignore history, making the series disingenuous and self serving.

For instance, in its segment on the 1968 Tet Offensive, CBS's original reporting that Tet was a US military disaster, soon followed by Cronkite's inappropriately influential pronouncement that the war could not be won, is unchallenged. Yet North Vietnamese General Vo Ngyuen Giap's lengthy interview with Stanley Karnow in the June 24, 1990, edition of the New York Times (easily available online at the Times Web site) tells an entirely different story from what is shown here.

Briefly summarizing, Giap said that the Viet Cong (a creation of Hanoi, he said) ceased to be a fighting force after Tet. The communists lost between 25,000 and 50,000 soldiers killed durnig Tet. They expected the South Vietnamese people to rise up and join them during the coordinated Tet attacks; the people didn't. But, upon seeing the US media's reporting of the Tet Offensive as a US defeat, Giap said, the North Vietnamese leaders realized that all they had to do was hold on to eventually prevail. And, Giap said, that is exactly what they did. (Besides the Giap interview, Peter Braestrup's two-volume Big Story: How the American press and television reported and interpreted the crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington (Westview special studies in communication) is a real eye-opener. It is also available in an abridged version.)

This CBS presentation covers none of this. The "first draft of history" is presented here as the final word leaving us with nothing more than a self-congratulatory rehash of CBS's original biased reporting.

This is a great look into the past at scenes of the Vietnam War we rarely see. A good visual experience of the past and of what our fathers and mothers endured. A great set that I recommend to all, and definately as a teaching tool in our schools and universities.

1LT Daniel Allen Hill