For Thursday's class, View Documentary Background on the War in Vietnam

BE SURE YOU ARE CAUGHT UP IN THE THINGS THEY CARRIED (i.e., through "Song Tra Bong"), and... Watch 30 min. + 15 min. + 15 min., as follows:

To better understand the political and military build-up to the war in Vietnam, watch the first 30 minutes of   "Run through the Jungle," the Vietnam War (1964-1976).

For a foot-soldier's perspective, see National Geographic Documentary:  "On Soldiering."  ((The first 15 minutes of "On Soldiering" feature author Tim O'Brien, who calls the Vietnam War "monotony punctuated by moments of sheer terror.")

For a vivid sense of Vietnam veterans' perspectives, intermixed with footage from the war itself, see the first 15 minutes of Public Broadcast System (PBS) "Vietnam Stories" documentary.  (2011)

The Vietnam War was the first war to be heavily covered by American television news.  Although it's heavily edited, some of this footage does show the tragic and gory aftermath of battles.  Although the documentaries do not show people getting killed in action, many of the scenes are action-packed, and it becomes easy to imagine how bad it was on the ground.

Sadly, as you will see -- just as we see in The Things They Carried -- many American soldiers were  seriously involved with drugs during the Vietnam War.  One high-ranking U.S. general in the National Geographic documentary estimates that "at least 40%" of the (500,000) men in Vietnam "experimented with, or got heavily involved with," drugs.  Heroin and marijuana were tragic, costly aspects of the jungle war in Southeast Asia.