All that for one elusive Charlie...
"'You know you never defeated us on the battlefield,' said the American colonel. The North Vietnamese colonel pondered this remark a moment. 'That may be so,' he replied, 'but it is also irrelevant.'"
—Colonel Harry G. Summers Jr. and Colonel Tu, April 1975, described in the book "On Strategy."
The Indo-Chinese conflicts were the most controversial and divisive... conflicts that the Anglosphere has ever been a part of, and are perhaps only second to Algeria in the Francosphere. Many South Asian countries (plus Australia and New Zealand) took part alongside the nationalist South Vietnamese, against the Soviet- and Chinese-backed North Vietnamese and the National Liberation Front for South Vietnam (better known as the Viet Cong) a communist South Vietnamese armed insurgent force. But first, some complicated history.
Vietnam and most of the rest of Indochina was a colony of France from the 1880s onwards. During
World War II Indochina was occupied by the Japanese military, which became a critical event in the history of nationalism in various Asian countries, since it proved that a) the Western colonizers could be defeated in war by non-Western ones, and b) non-Western colonizers could be just as bad as Western ones, meaning that if they were to be free from oppression, independence was the only real option. Japan allowed Vichy France to continue administration of the country during occupation, while at the same time fostering Vietnamese nationalism in the country, which manifested when the French were ousted March 11, 1945. A Vietnamese communist/nationalist group called the Việt Minh, who since 1941 had opposed the French and later the Japanese as well, seized the opportunity to declare independence of Vietnam as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam with its capital in Hanoi on the very day that World War II ended: September 2, 1945.
But the French were not through with Vietnam and attempted to reassert some control over Indochina once again, now that World War II was over and the Japanese had left. French, British and Indian forces were able to restore French control by the end of September. France sponsored the creation of a French-associated government in Saigon called the State of Vietnam, which was rival to to the Việt Minh who led the Democratic Republic in attempting to claim authority over the whole country. The State of Vietnam was led by former emperor Bảo Đại, who had abdicated his throne August 25, 1945. The French fought the Việt Minh in the First Indochina War (December 19, 1946 - August 1, 1954), with other Indochinese left-wing nationalist (Pathet Lao, Khmer Issarak, United Issarak Front) groups entering the fight alongside the Việt Minh, and against France and its puppet governments.
The result was the humiliating defeat of the French and them retreating from Vietnam. After the Geneva Accords, Vietnam was partitioned into two countries: the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), and the State of Vietnam (South Vietnam), which became the Republic of Vietnam after a 1955 referendum, amidst claims of widespread electoral fraud. There was to be a reunification of Vietnam under a form of government determined by this referendum, but the American government made sure that referendum never occurred, since they believed that the Vietnamese would favor communism if the issue was put to a vote, contrary to American political interests. The United States replaced the French as political/military backing for the South Vietnamese regime after the French withdrawal, while the North Vietnamese regime was backed by the Soviet Union, People's Republic of China, and North Korea.
South Vietnam President Ngô Đình Diệm's increasingly repressive dictatorship saw the rise of the Viet Cong (officially the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, accused of being an arm of the Vietnam People's Army), which terrorized South Vietnam in the latter half of the Fifties. On November 2, 1963, President Ngô was assassinated.
American involvement was initially in the form of equipment, money and "advisors", but by the 1960s, these "advisors" were many thousands. Foreign countries began actively fighting on both sides of the conflict (most on the side of South Vietnam). American ships were supposedly attacked by North Vietnamese ones in 1964
* the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which, to this day, does not have an official version of what happened. Sailors claimed they were attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on two separate days, but the details were so widely varied that Johnson himself said "They might have been shooting at flying fish out there".
, and so President Lyndon Johnson ordered a massive military presence in Vietnam to "protect the freedom" of South-East Asia (i.e. get rid of the Communists). In strictly legal terms, the United States didn't enter a war, as Congress never wrote a declaration of war; the entire conflict was essentially an executive order. If you go into any U.S.-government-funded library, you'll likely have to search under "Vietnam Conflict".
The Korean Conflict and
the Overseas Contingency Operation are likewise not officially wars.
Despite winning every major battle, the Americans never seemed to make much progress in the war. Eventually, as the war dragged on and graphic new reports appeared on TV, the war grew increasingly unpopular among Americans at home. In a last ditch effort, Nixon ordered massive bombing campaigns, but they did not have much effect. As the prolonged jungle war became impossible to win and too unpopular for the United States to continue, American forces withdrew and South Vietnamese government forces quickly crumbled against the National Liberation Front and the North's Vietnam People's Army. The war ended April 30, 1975 with the National Liberation Front rolling into Saigon, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people, and forming the new South Vietnamese government, which unified with North Vietnam the following year. It should be noted, however, that
some sources state that America had effectively won the war by that point, as the bombing raids issued by Nixon had actually sealed the coffin on North Vietnam, and the only reason why the South Vietnamese lost and was overwhelmed is because certain members of Congress deliberately held back relief aid efforts to the South Vietnamese.
It was a very popular area for war films from the late '70s to the early '90s. American films may show the war from an exclusively American perspective. Many American films are opposed to the war, with
John Wayne's
The Green Berets being the only real exception.
Expect a bunch of drugged-up draftees (which wasn't actually the case for everyone, since 2/3s of the American soldiers were volunteers, including three future major party US presidential nominees) who will shoot anyone who looks South-East Asian, whether they are the enemy, their own side, or civilians. Also expect an emphasis on American casualties, even though 5,000,000 civilians died compared to 58,000 American soldiers. Expect incompetent officers, stuffed-up academy cadets being "fragged" (killed with grenades) by their own soldiers, various wanton atrocities, and even
Catch-22 explanations about "having to destroy the village in order to save it".
According to
Hollywood, Vietnam Veterans tend to be old
* obviously
Truth in Television; the youngest men subject to the Vietnam draft were born in 1952, and most veterans are up to a decade older
, grizzled, and broken from their experience. But in
reality, things are more complicated. Many people believed they were doing their patriotic duty to stop the Communist Menace
TM, especially in the early years of the war. It wasn't until 1968 that public opinion, or at least media opinion, started turning against the war in large numbers, although the majority of civilians nonetheless felt that regardless of whether they liked it, they should vote for the war to continue.
National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam insurgents (known as Vietcong — a derogatory term meaning "Vietnamese Communist", VC, Victor Charlie, or just Charlie) and NVA soldiers don't feature very much, except as sources of weapons fire, evil torturers, punji trap layers or occasionally corpses. But of course, all of these are reversed in
their war movies.
Expect much use of napalm, because it smells like the victory the Americans allegedly never got. It's worth noting, however, the North Vietnamese forces never won a major battle themselves — in the Tet Offensive, a military campaign by the Viet Cong, the VC actually took so many losses they played no further major part in the war. Their secret is in part that no matter what the Americans threw at them, the North Vietnamese took the blows willingly as part of the price to pay for the cause and
just kept coming; they wanted to win more than the Americans wanted them to lose. This is the only way insurgencies are ever resolved.
This is also the first American war (the French first used them to great effect in Algeria) to feature helicopters as a weapon and primary transport; in
Korea they were very small, and limited to recon and light medical evacuation. The UH-1 Huey, with both side doors open, flying low over the canopy of a jungle with a grizzled soldier manning the door gun is one of the war's most enduring images.
Someone
will use the word "klick" at some point, meaning a kilometre.
The Hollywood-Approved Soundtrack
TM to the Vietnam War is
Creedence Clearwater Revival. "Fortunate Son" is the most popular, but "Who'll Stop the Rain," "Run Through the Jungle," "Have You Ever Seen The Rain," and "Suzie Q" will also show up. One has to wonder what CCR's legacy would be without Vietnam-Era films.
The Rolling Stones and The Doors will also occasionally play. In terms of other songs, expect "Gloria" and
Jimi Hendrix's version of "All Along the Watchtower" to play somewhere. If it's a protest movie, also expect "Ohio" by Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young,
Garfunkel, Oates, and Cher. The song is about four students that were killed by the National Guard during an anti-Vietnam War protest on the campus of Kent State in Ohio, and is the go-to song to highlight how divisive the war was back in America. On the other hand, if you see choppers, expect
Ride of the Valkyries, because you're probably watching
Apocalypse Now or something making a
homage to it.
Because this was both an insurgency and a conventional war, you can also set air combat stories here. The F-4 Phantom II, the MiG-17 and the MiG-21 feature heavily here, with the war also seeing major use of the S-25/SA-2 "Guideline" SAM (although the bulk of shoot-down were due to conventional AAA fire).
If the work involves secret operations, expect to become familiar with MAC-V SOG (Military Assistance Command-Vietnam, Special Operations Group, later Studies and Observations Group) and Project Phoenix (an assassination campaign aimed at killing civilians that supported the NVA). Both were black ops run by the CIA, and kept very secret since the Phoenix Program was illegal in international law, and the Studies and Observations Group really didn't just study and observe.
The Vietnam War has also provided the backstory for a number of other works of fiction, including
The A-Team,
Airwolf,
Magnum, P.I.,
Rambo,
Taxi Driver,
The Bourne Series and
Jon Sable Freelance. Leo McGarry in
The West Wing was a Vietnam vet.
In fact, any grizzled action hero during
The Eighties has a fair chance of being a Vietnam veteran — it became such a common source of angst that some movie reviewers took to abbreviating it to "Vietvet."
Compare
Holiday In Cambodia.
For Vietnam the country, click
here.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- The Sankei Newspaper comic strip version of Astro Boy had a Time Travel plot that involved Astro being captured by arms dealers who tried to sell him to one or more of the participants in the war. After he escapes he tries to save a small village from being bombed by the US military. This is probably the darkest storyline in Astro's long career & possibly one of the darkest in Osamu Tezuka's as well. Not only was this one of the few times Astro actually kills humans beings, blowing up several tanks & bombers, but it's all in vain, as more show up the next day & kill everybody anyway, with Astro running out of energy & sinking to the bottom of the Mekong river, where he remains until The Nineties.
- Dutch from Black Lagoon is a Vietnam veteran. Also, Yallow Flag, the Bad Guy Bar the cast go to was built by South Vietnamese refugees.
- The Vietnam War features into the backstories of several characters inAnime/Blood+. David and Akihiro Okamura both had parents in the jungle, while Saya, Haji and Karl fought one another there.
- The manga Cat Shit One, a.k.a. Apocalypse Meow; The Vietnam War WITH FUNNY ANIMALS!!
- In the original Cyborg 009 manga, the protagonists attempted to stop their enemy, the evil Black Ghost organization's War for Fun and Profit plans to escalating the war in order to sell advanced weapons & mass-produced Super Soldier versions of the titular character to both sides. In the newer anime, settled several decades later in time, this was changed to the fictional country in Darkest Africa that was the homeland of 008.
- The relatively obscure manga series Dien Bien Phu (named after the decisive battle in the war of independence) is set in the Vietnam War. While focusing on Americans (with the main character being a Japanese-American photographer), it also includes Vietnamese civilians and insurgents, including a mysterious but deadly hot fighter chick.
Comic Books
- Check out the no-holds-barred Punisher miniseries "Born" (I'm not kidding!) for a taste of what Vietnam was meant to be like. Garth Ennis throws every single criticism there is in the books, and then some
- Captain Atom was the leader of an American special ops unit in the Vietnam War before the experiment that gave him his powers.
- The war is used as a plot device in one story of Hellblazer called "When Johnny Comes Marching Home".
- Iron Man's original Super Hero Origin story involved Tony Stark being injured and captured in Vietnam, while demonstrating a new weapons system developed for the Americans to use in the war.
- Jon Sable Freelance: Jon served in Vietnam (as a clerk/typist) before the events that led to him becoming a mercenary. One story arc involved him returning to Vietnam in search of missing POWs.
- In Ms Tree, Mike Sr., Roger and Dan's brother Victor all served in the same unit in Vietnam. In "To Live and Die and Vietnam", Michael, Roger and Dan travel to Vietnam in search of Victor's remains.
- Marvel had The 'Nam, a series that was originally intended to be a seven year Myth Arc of soldiers trying to do their duty through the major years of the United States' involvement in Vietnam.
- Frank Castle aka The Punisher was a Vietnam veteran with the special forces before he became a vigilante. Mentioned often in the MAX-series, as well as in the above mentioned mini series "Born," marking one of the turning points for Castle.
- Flynn "Flyin'" Ryan from Steelgrip Starkey And The All-Purpose Power Tool was taken prisoner in the Vietnam war. He sports a scarred "R" in his forehead from an act of unified defiance when he and his fellow prisoners were ordered to make an anti-American propaganda video.
- In the background of the Watchmen comic, the Vietnam War ended with a decisive American victory. This was due to the godlike super-being Doctor Manhattan showing up at the request of Richard Nixon and transmuting all the jungles into poison gas, forcing the insurgents to surrender or face complete genocide.
Film
- Across The Universe
- Air America
- Apocalypse Now - possibly the Trope Codifier
- Don't Cry, It's Only Thunder
- Full Metal Jacket
- Oliver Stone's Vietnam trilogy:
- Platoon
- Born On The Fourth Of July
- Heaven & Earth
- Good Morning Vietnam
- The Deer Hunter
- Hamburger Hill
- Casualties of War
- We Were Soldiers
- John Woo's Heroes Shed No Tears and Bullet in the Head
- Go Tell the Spartans
- The Boys in Company C
- Bat*21
- The Hanoi Hilton
- Flight Of The Intruder.
- A Bright Shining Lie, adapted from Neil Sheehan's nonfiction book
- Who'll Stop the Rain aka Dog Soldiers
- Coming Home (about a paralytic Vietnam vet returning to civil life)
- Part of Forrest Gump
- Portions of American Gangster
- The film-within-a-film Tropic Thunder features a cast of dim-witted actors (including Robert Downey Jr. as a very dedicated white actor who plays a black character via surgery), which is The Film of the Book. However, the author never went to Vietnam.
- Rambo: First Blood Part II, which is about John Rambo going back into Vietnam to rescue American POW-MIAs who had been left behind.
- Uncommon Valor and the Chuck Norris film Missing in Action had similar plots to the above.
- The Odd Angry Shot about Australian soldiers in Vietnam.
- The John Wayne movie The Green Berets. Its unabashedly pro-war tone and such technical and narrative goofs as having the sun set in the East in the final scene make this an example of 'Nam Narm for many.
- The film Coming Home deals with an injured Vietnam vet's attempts to re-enter civilian life after the war.
- Big Wednesday involves the attempts of a close-knit group of California surfers to avoid fighting in the war.
- The Killing Fields deals with the Cambodian civil war that erupted in the wake of the Vietnam conflict.
- Originally intended to be mentioned in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies. Bond was warned that if he was caught scuba-diving in Vietnamese waters, he could provoke another war with Vietnam - 'only this time, we might win.' The US military requested the line be censored from the film.
- Taking Woodstock (referenced many times)
- Referenced in Three Seasons: one of the characters is a former GI who comes back to Vietnam looking for the daughter he had with a local prostitute during his tour of duty.
- The War, starring Kevin Costner, and if This Troper remembers correctly, Eli Wood's first film.
- At end of American Graffiti the Where Are They Now stated that Terry became missing in action in Vietnam. In More American Graffiti it is revealed he faked his own death and went AWOL.
- R-Point, a 2004 South Korean horror film, centering on a squad South Korean troops in the war.
- For the Boys (1991) was the saga of a singing-and-dancing comedy team (played by Bette Midler and James Caan) whose partnership originated in USO shows in World War II. During this war, they perform at a base where her son is one of the soldiers. Right after she wins over the jeering, rowdy crowd with "In My Life", the enemy attacks with an airstrike and admist the carnage, her son dies in her arms. Since her partner was partially responsible for inspiring him to join the Army in the first place, she blames him for the tragedy, and the climax (set in what was then the present) hinges on whether or not they can reconcile in time for a televised reunion.
- The Fog of War provides first-person commentary on the Conflict from Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who along with Presidents Johnson and Nixon was seen by anti-war protesters as a face of The Establishment. Among other things, he states that the U.S. saw themselves as liberators, saving South Vietnam from Communism. The Vietnamese saw the U.S. as another in a long line of invaders.
Literature
- George R. R. Martin's The Armageddon Rag features a main character who was anti-Vietnam, and got married to avoid the draft. One of his friends was less lucky.
- Robert Mason's autobiography Chickenhawk tells of his time as a UH-1 pilot in Vietnam.
- Run Between the Raindrops (aka Citadel) a novel by Vietnam veteran turned Hollywood actor/advisor Dale Dye, and inspired by his own experiences in the Battle for Hue.
- Just about anything written by O'Brien, but most notably The Things They Carried.
- The Executioner. Vigilante Mack Bolan was a Vietnam veteran (the series of action novels was started in 1969) and later Gold Eagle publications had origin stories set during that era.
- In Country, a Bobbie Ann Mason novel later adapted to film.
- Over The Wall, a children's book by John H. Ritter in which overwhelming Vietnam guilt haunts every major character in the book. There's also an incest plot involving the loose cannon main character and his Soapbox Sadie cousin, in case the book might have seemed too juvenile for its audience.
- The Quiet American is about Vietnam before American intervention.
- In the novel (and film) Firefox, Michael Gant is a Vietnam veteran hired by British intelligence (with US help) to steal a Soviet superfighter. He suffers from flashbacks. At really inconvenient moments.
- The Forever War: Vietnam. In space.
- The eponymous story in Stephen King's Hearts In Atlantis covered the college protest angle of Vietnam, while "Blind Willie" and "Why We're In Vietnam" covered two soldiers' lives after the war.
- Flight Of The Intruder, also adapted as a film, involving A-6 Intruder strike fighters.
- Forgotten Honor, by Eric Poole, is the biography of Sgt. Leslie Sabo, who was killed on Mother's Day 1970 and recommended for the Medal of Honor, after which the Army lost his paperwork for 30 years.
- John Clark's background in Tom Clancy's work. Detailed in Without Remorse. He was a member of 3rd SOG, a SEAL before they were public, and participated in the Phoenix Program. Includes the Tom Clancy staple Strawman Political liberal in the form of an America-hating drug addict who got a government job just to have secrets to sell to the Soviets.
- We Were Soldiers Once...And Young, the inspiration for the Randall Wallace-Mel Gibson film We Were Soldiers, and the follow-on We Are Soldiers Still; both were co-authored by Harold Moore, the most well-known American commander in the battle depicted, and Joe Galloway, a reporter who covered the fighting from the thick of the action.
- Some Kind Of Hero James Kirkwood's tragicomic novel about a Vietnam veteran and his time as a P.O.W. and his adventures after his release. Good book.
- In The Guardians, Jake Hawkins fought in the war and died there, though he was murdered by a nosferatu enjoying the chaos of war.
- The John Le Carre novel "The Honourable Schoolboy" is set in the closing weeks of the war.
- "Devil's Guard," by George Robert Elford, is about a former Waffen SS (he fought guerrillas) and his old Nazi buddies fighting in the French Foreign Legion.
Live Action TV
Music
- Billy Joel's "Goodnight Saigon".
- The song and video of Alice in Chains' "Rooster"
- German Thrash Metal act Sodom derived lots of inspiration from its mainman's Tom Angelripper's fascination with the Vietnam conflict. As a German teenager in the 70s Tom was quite used to the sight of US military personnel (stationed in German NATO bases), in the songs and albums devoted to the topic the band manages to denounce the many horrors of the conflict while also expressing understanding and a kind of human piety for the soldiers having to navigate that hell. The album Agent Orange is the best-selling German thrash metal platter ever.
- Their 2001 album M-16 is an another take on the subject.
- "Big Time in the Jungle" by Old Crow Medicine Show is the story of a young man from "Utah, Alabama" (no, it doesn't make any sense) who gets duped into volunteering to serve in Vietnam. He dies, apparently from Friendly Fire.
- Sabaton Sabatons songs "Purple Heart" and "Into the fire" are about the horrors of the Vietnam war.
- Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA, which despite some Misaimed Fandom is quite ironic with the whole "born in the USA" thing.
- Jimi Hendrix's song "Machine Gun" is about the war, although it's more about the horrific nature of war in general.
- His iconic cover of "The Star Spangled Banner" is also recognized as an anti Vietnam message as well, since the song features heavily manipulated feedback and guitar noise that horrifically evokes the sounds of an air raid.
- Although it's originally a Bob Dylan song, Hendrix's cover of "All Along The Watchtower" is pretty ubiquitously known as the theme song to Vietnam.
- Orange Crush by R.E.M. Probably.
- Australian rock group Cold Chisel's "Khe Sanh", which is about a Vietnam veteran suffering from PTSD.
- "Wild Irish Rose" by George Jones is a about a homeless, alcoholic Vietnam vet.
- Also by The Possum: "50,000 Names" is about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
- "More Than A Name On The Wall" by The Statler Brothers.
- "Still in Saigon", by the Charlie Daniels Band, is about a Vietnam veteran finding he can't truly go back home.
- "19" by Paul Hardcastle was a huge hit when it came out in 1985.
- "Sam Stone (The Great Society Conflict Veteran's Blues)" by John Prine.
Tabletop Games
- The ridiculously lethal RPG Recon is set in the Vietnam War, and is a great way for a group to play a really, really short game, because I assure you, nobody will be left alive by the third encounter.
Theater
Video Games
- Battlefield Vietnam from the Battlefield Series is a team-based First-Person Shooter set in Vietnam. It brought some important things to the combat model established in the WWII-set Battlefield1942, notably the rise of the helicopter, boat combat on inland waterways, jet aircraft, and jungle fighting. Competitive Balance concerns kept it from accurately simulating asymmetric warfare. Despite not having very high sales numbers, the industry smelled a trend, and a wave of Follow the Leader games set in 'Nam arrived, most of them shovelware; but, unlike the still-ongoing endless parade of WWII shooters, this trend fizzled when everyone remembered that almost no one actually liked this war. It is fondly remembered for the ability to blast period appropriate music whenever you were in a vehicle. If you hopped into a helicopter, you could start playing Ride of the Valkyries and other players could hear you coming.
- The Vietnam expansion pack for Bad Company 2 has been very well received.
- Vietcong series of First-Person Shooter, quite notorious for its high difficulty, managed to capture the atmosphere of Vietnam War. The game is notable for quite realistic portrayal of hardened soldiers and their environment as well as for including less popular themes, such as supporting the Montagnard tribes and urban combat during the Tet Offensive. With helicopters, plethora of military tropes and music from the '60s added for good measure.
- Shellshock: 'Nam 67 portrayed several elements of the war, from torture and butchery to going into towns and visiting hookers.
- Call of Duty: Black Ops has missions that take place during the Battle of Khe Sanh and the Tet Offensive, as well as a Death from Above segment over the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
- The first expansion for Magicka is Magicka: Vietnam. Since Magicka is a humorous send-up of the high-fantasy genre, the expansion's tagline of "You didn't see this coming, did you?" is pretty accurate.
- Red Alert 3 Paradox, being the deconstructive Game Mod that it is, has the Vietnam War in its Cold War setting.
- Despite his various back stories being retconned (just trust me, too long to list here), one constant fact that stays true throughout the Metal Gear series is that Big Boss served in the Vietnam War, for three different parts of the US Army, no less. Big Boss's involvement in Vietnam started first as part of a top secret mission in the early 1960s which isn't given much detail on what it was about, then as a Military Adviser assessing the progress of the war in its early days, and then as an actual commander in the field. In addition, during the Big Boss section of the Metal Gear Solid saga (ie, Metal Gear Solid 3, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker), there were references to Vietnam throughout the story, namely in regards to weapons of the era and the war's relationship to the Quagmire of the Cold War as a whole. Peace Walker also implies that several of the soldiers within the Peace Sentinels had just gotten out of Vietnam, and some of their statements (when recruited into the Militaires Sans Frontieres) imply that they only served the Peace Sentinels/the MSF because they had nowhere else to go thanks in part to their being told down by the people.
Western Animation
- Principal Skinner is a Vietnam veteran.
- In the American Dad! episode "In Country...Club". Stan has his son Steve join him in participating in Vietnam War reenactment at the local golf club. Steve then gets post-traumatic stress disorder afterwards. Roger also mentioned the war with Stan saying, paraphrased, "I was in the Viet Cong, did I ever tell you about that? We won."
