Vietnam '67 | Frontline Footage Captures Conflict Up Close (1967) | Archive Documentary

You don't hear these men talk about fighting for freedom in Vietnam. You do hear them, for all their courage, talk about the chances of getting out alive. We're making steady progress, week by week, month by month. We've got a long ways to go, but progress is definitely being made. The only nationwide organization is the Army, and this makes the military ticket of Generals Kew and Key the hot favorite to win the election. A lot of your opponents have been accusing the military of rigging the election. Do you think this is a fair charge? Where? Who? All these charges are not true. This year, the Viet Cong have killed 350 pacification workers. The desertion rate is high, and only half of Vietnam's 14,000 villages are under the control of Marshal Key's government. Do you see Vietnam as a bottomless pit for American troops? I think additional forces are desired. However, I don't consider it a bottomless pit by any means. Without question, the war is not stalemated. We're making steady progress, week by week, month by month. Needless to say, we've got a long ways to go, but progress is definitely being made. Do you see Vietnam as a bottomless pit for American troops? I think additional forces are desired. However, I don't consider it a bottomless pit by any means. You've been here nearly four years now. How have your ideas of the war changed? There have been many optimistic statements, and it looks like a long, hard pull now. How have your ideas of the war changed? Well, this is a very complex subject to discuss in a few small words. Needless to say, I've learned a great deal in the almost four years that I've been here, at least it'll be four years in January next. The nature of guerrilla warfare, the tactics and techniques of the communist war of national liberation, all of which has been directed from Hanoi, have taught us many lessons. The situation, I would say, is more complex than I thought was the case four years ago. But I must say, during the last three and a half years that I've been here, we've had some very low points, and I think the lowest point was in the spring of 1965, at which time our president made the very courageous decision to commit American forces. Since that time, things have been looking up, and they're looking up more and more every day. Do you think the war can be won and not just not lost? Well, of course, our strategy in the South is a defensive one, because it is our national policy not to enlarge the war. So we are necessarily on the strategic defensive in the South. Now, fortunately, we do have an offensive strategy, and that is an air strategy to the North. Now, the enemy, on the other hand, has an offensive ground strategy. He is moving troops, materiel, ammunition, and quantity to the South in order to exercise his control over the people and hopefully dominate the South Vietnamese and subvert the government to the form that is desired by Hanoi. Now, our offensive strategy, however, has forced them to an air defensive in the South. And this has resulted in the necessity by the enemy of diverting large resources and men and materials to provide a defense against our air efforts and to maintain his lines of communication, which are being pounded by our air efforts. Can you state how long the whole thing is going to be now? It's impossible. Five, 10, 20 years? I feel it will go on perhaps for some time. At least we must be prepared physically and psychologically. Do you think that without more troops, the war can be won? I think there are sufficient men in Vietnam now not to lose the war, but if we could reinforce our present forces, I think we would accelerate our progress. Kon Tien is the closest American position to North Vietnam. It's an isolated outpost surrounded by territory favorable to the North Vietnamese or the Viet Cong guerrillas. A small hill, searingly hot, chokingly dusty, which commands the surrounding countryside and overlooks the so-called Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, which divides North from South Vietnam. The view from Kon Tien of the Demilitarized Zone, but as any marine or pilot will tell you, it's not demilitarized anymore these days. For up here, a different sort of war is being waged from that in the rest of South Vietnam. Down in the South, it's a guerrilla war, a war of hit-and-run tactics and small operations. Up here, two regular armies are facing each other. America's crack troops, 70,000 US Marines are strung along the border of the DMZ facing the North Vietnamese Army, whose supply lines are short up here and whose equipment is good. The Americans along the Demilitarized Zone are dangerously thin on the ground, as I found out when I went out on a marine operation into the DMZ. It was only the second time the Americans had ventured into what was formerly no man's land. I traveled on a supply convoy to one of the marine units operating inside the zone. The North Vietnamese had been using the DMZ to infiltrate troops into the South and also to harass American positions with artillery fire. The aim of the marine operation was, according to one general, to show that the southern half of the DMZ is ours to go in any way we want at any time. Another officer described the operation as a quiet stroll into the DMZ. They were soon proved wrong. The marine battalion in the zone was savagely ambushed by the North Vietnamese regulars and our supply convoy soon became a relief column. Reinforcements were sent to the area to try to relieve the ambush battalion. The North Vietnamese, who know the area inside out, had let the Marines walk in the zone a whole day without engaging them and had, as always, picked their own time and place to hit them. Our relief column could hear the battle raging but couldn't advance since the North Vietnamese had cut the road. Outmaneuvered on the ground, the Marines had to call for airstrikes to avoid being wiped out. While officials back in Saigon were playing down the battle, a few of the ambushed managed to break out in a column of tanks piled with the pathetic debris of the dead and wounded Marines. Some of the wounded who had got out were evacuated by helicopter in the rear but some in the ambush couldn't be got out and died from their wounds. This was not the quiet stroll into the DMZ that had been forecast. In case a do-or-die relief effort was necessary, more Marines were brought up as dusk fell. You don't hear these men talk about fighting for freedom in Vietnam. You do hear them, for all their courage, talk about the chances of getting out alive after 13 months of this kind of war. This night though, they didn't have to tempt fate. After the punishing airstrikes of the day came the artillery barrage of the night. The North Vietnamese constantly pounded, retreated into the scrub and woods to fight another day at another time and place of their own choosing. Next morning, the ambush battalion came out of the demilitarized zone back to South Vietnam. In Saigon, the figures were being arranged in the best light possible. They said enemy dead were 55 confirmed but they could be higher. The Marines casualty toll, at least 35 dead, 178 wounded. Their quiet stroll in the DMZ was over. Voting is the right of the whole people, proclaims the election poster under the shadow of the military memorial in the center of Saigon. And the shadow of the military looms large over South Vietnam's election. There has been no elected government since the fall of the dictator Diem in 1963. For the past two years, the generals have governed the country. Now under American pressure, they've agreed to elections for a president and a 60-man senate. But in Saigon, you find little enthusiasm for the contest. Few think it will bring victory or peace any closer. The war-weary capital long since gave up politics for more profitable pleasures. There are no parties in Vietnam but there are 11 candidates for the presidency, each with a symbol so that voters who can't read can identify them easily. The only nationwide organization is the Army and this makes the military ticket of Generals Thieu and Khi the hot favorite to win the election. General Thieu, the present head of state, is the Army's candidate for president. He won their vote over the younger, more flamboyant General Khi, the present prime minister. For two years, the man at the Vietnam controls has been the 36-year-old Air Force pilot Nguyen Cao Khi. In his habitual black flying suit and lilac scarf, he's hogged the headlines. But for many Vietnamese, he's too flashy, too westernized, too young. Under pressure from the generals, he's had to step down in this election to run in the vice president slot. But no one expects he'll be prepared to stay number two after the election. Khi and Thieu have hardly bothered to campaign with the other presidential candidates. Claiming that they were too busy governing the country, they've simply used their official trips like this one of Khi's to open a new union headquarters to campaign on the side. Khi's civilian opponents have charged that the Army are being used to rig the election for the generals. They allege that local military governors and police have been intimidating opposition party workers. Khi's answer is that orders have been given to keep the elections honest and that anyway, he doesn't need to rig the election since the military will win. After the campaign was a few days old, many Americans began to criticize Khi and Thieu's conduct of the election, many of them in the naive belief that it would be just like one in America. After the union meeting, on his campaign plane, Khi answered the American criticisms. Back in the state, some senators, congressmen, they cannot imagine or they cannot accept the idea that the military in this country love freedom more than they love freedom in their country. They cannot understand it. But a lot of your opponents can't understand it either because they've been accusing the military of rigging the election, of intimidating electors through their people in the provinces. Do you think this is a fair charge? What province? Where? Who? All these charges are not true. Even one person are true. Why I have to give order to the police to put pressure on the people? Why? Do you think you'll win anyway, Prime Minister? Yes, sir. While Khi was all confidence, his civilian opponents, who have complained that the government is hampering their electioneering, were faced with a pitifully small crowd at Nha Trang, 200 miles northeast of Saigon. Mr Xu, why is this crowd so small for the opposition candidates? Thank you very much for your question. It is our question too when we arrive here, because with a province with a population of 300,000 and with a big city like Nha Trang with a population of at least 60,000 population, a crowd of 500 people is ridiculous. Is this government sabotage? Sure, it is government sabotage and I can denounce before the international opinion the determination of Mr Khiu and Mr Kee to sabotage this campaign. And you believe then the campaign is already turned into farce because of this sabotage? No, we continue to campaign, but we continue to denounce about their manoeuvre. And if they win, will you say it's a fix? They try to win and I will hand the press conference to denounce all of their manoeuvre, because we have now evidence about their instruction to the civil servant, to the policeman and cut of a real road development. Thank you. I have to go now. The whole presidential campaign is strictly arranged by the government. They provide the transport, the posters, the radio time and provide a timekeeper to make sure that no candidate talks longer than 15 minutes at each meeting. There's little hope for the candidate who tries to squeeze extra time. The civilian candidates opposing the generals are hardly an inspiring bunch. Most are middle-aged, middle-class conservatives. Anyone too radical was eliminated from the race by the government. Some have been in government before, like the chief civilian candidate, Tran Van Hung, who was a short-lived prime minister in 1965. Hung is the only civilian with any great following, but if elected, he would have to work with the generals who hold the real power in South Vietnam. In such circumstances, it's naive to think the country could have a Western-style democratic election. Few people doubt the generals will win the election. The only worry for them, and the Americans, is that the civilians, with their charges of a rigged election, will have discredited the whole exercise, and that when the results finally go up in Saigon on this board, South Vietnam will have a government that has won an election, but is no nearer to winning a war. South Vietnam's prime minister, Marshall Key, lights the torch at the passing out parade of 1,600 pacification workers at their training centre at Vung Tau, but the pacification programme, the battle to win the peasants to the government, has not burned brightly since the Viet Cong started their terror campaign eight years ago. This year, the South Vietnamese and Americans have launched a new drive to train more pacification workers and to try to give them some of the idealism and skills of their enemy, the Viet Cong. The prospects for these pacification graduates are hardly inviting. So far this year, the Viet Cong have killed 350 pacification workers, and only half of Vietnam's 14,000 villages are under the control of Marshall Key's government. There are 6,000 trainees at the Vung Tau training centre, and the aim is to get them to beat the Viet Cong at their own game. Their urge to educate the peasants by example, to organise their defence, and to root out corrupt village officials. Too often in the past, pacification workers have been regarded by the villagers as outsiders who would leave when the Viet Cong started trouble. Learn to do things the peasants' way to get their trust, the pacification workers are taught, whether it be agriculture or house building. And like the Viet Cong, the pacification workers wear the traditional peasant black pyjamas. For many trainees, pacification work is merely a way of dodging military service, and there's an added advantage that they're sent to work near their hometowns. Few are idealists, convinced that they're building fences against communism. 30,000 pacification workers are now in the field in Vietnam. Their target this year is to win back 1,100 villages from the Viet Cong. Some of the villages they're working on now have been supposedly pacified four or five times before. The Viet Cong have always come back. As one American official remarked, we're trying to carry out a revolution in the countryside, but the real revolutionaries are on the other side. The emphasis of the pacification program now is security. Villagers won't cooperate unless they're defended. In spite of their weapon training, pacification workers often show little taste for fighting the Viet Cong. The desertion rate among their 59-man teams in villages is high. Now, 315,000 Vietnamese troops and American advisors are being called in to help the pacification program. There have been similar, much-heralded schemes before. Strategic Hamleys, rural construction. They all failed. Revolutionary Development is the name of the new program. Its driving force is Major Bay, the training center's commandant. He admits the enemy of pacification is not so much the Viet Cong as corrupt South Vietnamese officials. We have the telling about the corruption now. We can say that most of the officials are corrupt because of the economic situation and the lack of responsibility spirit in our country. Most of the people don't have any responsibility because they feel that this war is the Americans' war, that is the government war, but not their own war. Not their problem, you mean? Not their problem. So now, in our program, we try to make them to participate in our program and to feel that that is their responsibility to solve the problem. A war-weary people, corrupt officials, a cunning enemy. These are the huge problems that face Vietnam's new pacification workers. No wonder their singing sounds a little forced.