A deployment of 101st Airborne Division (nicknamed the "Screaming Eagles") troops are welcomed. An unknown civilian reviews troops.

VIETNAM VETERAN 'S MEMORIAL.

MISC. VIETNAM WAR FOOTAGE

VIETNAM WOMEN'S MEMORIAL unveiling of statue, female veteran interviewed, Clinton lays wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, unveils small model of women's memorial

French Admiral Jean Decoux lays wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers in Haiphong, Vietnam

00:00:00:00 [Body of Unknown Soldier Vietnam War arrives Andrews Air Force Base]-- :08 coffin carried by soldiers off plane/ :14 coffin carried/ :19 MS plane, soldiers at attention/ :14 coffin, so ...

INTERVIEW CONTINUES: David Susskind The war is thought to have been a class war in a sense that people in colleges generally didn't go. Blue color, men went and blacks and minority groups went. Now, though, the Army Defense Department says the actual statistic was about 12.8 of the men who served 2,000,000.9 2,900,000 people served Americans in Vietnam, and 7500 women 2.9 million men and 7500 women. The army says that Marine Corps and everybody says that only 12.8% were blacks, Lawrence Smith that's not true. It's 22% of the population population will go black and hispanics. Also Indian Chinese, you know, other ethnic groups David Susskind that what percentage do you think were black or otherwise? Lawrence Smith 22% Well, black fought in the Vietnam David Susskind Well, that happens to be the statistic that they represent in the national census. But nobody sat down do you think it's so we want Lawrence Smith Well if you look on the fton line, you will see it. You look on the front line you will see the blacks there Thomas Leckinger Take a look at the statistic Yeah, you can say 22% What you really need to look at is how many of those guys were Combat Roll that bush infantry. It's gonna jump up to 30 or 40%. That's David Susskind on the line living and dying Thomas Brinson As their role and function combat as their direct mission David Susskind Did you see many college kids white college kids? Thomas Leckinger I had a couple of lieutenants who were ROTC lieutenants infantry that came. ROTC college for 4 years came through, I would suspect in my platoon of 25 or 26, we may be the entire time I was there. Two or three college graduates, the great some of them had college and had left got bored, got themselves drafted. But the greater majority more high school well, an awful lot of for some reason, I don't know why. But my company wound up in an awful lot of Southerners. A lot of people from Tennessee on south down in there, now southerners are patriotic, the Thomas Brinson I don't know about patriotic again, it's not so much a matter of black white, but it's really class. It's really low economic blue collar. David Susskind Did You see any upper middle class upper Thomas Brinson in your in your career officers? Yeah. And in my platoon, I had to turn 45 men. And I would say that, out of that 45, I had about 10 blacks and probably about eight or nine Hispanic Hispanics. The rest were blue collar I had that I can recall one or two college graduates either out of out of 45. Thomas Leckinger The interesting thing is, they keep quoting a statistic and they try to come down and I don't know what everybody else is experiencing. But I was in late. I was in 1970. And again, up in the jungles and stuff and everybody, you know, try sometimes to classify this as a race thing. Yeah. Where they're not there was none. Absolutely none. When I was there, David Susskind How much drug use was there Lawrence Smith I didn't see none. Because we're too busy fighting. We had no time be high Thomas Leckinger I suspect that that's certainly my experience. John Catterson And you didn't didn't mess with those kinds of substances when your your life depended on everybody else. I mean, there was there was a significant amount of beer when you were in a rear area. And you could go out you got a beer ration two beers, they were warm. You could compile that David Susskind How was the food, John Catterson but for the most part is dependent on whatever you have. You're out to sea rations, the original packages of food that you cooked over heat pellets they gave you. Thomas Leckinger I think the best I saw was maybe a couple of guys doing a joint back in the rear. But that was it. I mean David Susskind nobody on the firing line, nobody in the woods. Thomas Leckinger Absolutely not Thomas Brinson not not in in the real forward combat areas. And again, when I was in the rear Eric cocoate, earlier in an urban area on the coastline, most of the time, and there was some drug involvement there was we had a classic store, which was a liquor store that was well stocked we had cases upon cases of beer. We had we had company parties, they when the American army moved in Vietnam, we moved the American society into Vietnam. And for for most of the soldiers that were over there, they had in their base camps in their fire support camps. full supplies David Susskind You said in my office, but not to me to somebody on the staff that you could identify the the men in your platoon that would survive that would live. Did you say? How could you tell who would be who would and who would die? Thomas Brinson I don't know. Our sixth sense, a intuition and intuition. John Catterson I had had a feeling the day I was wounded. And I was I just had that feeling Thomas Brinson and you never knew though, David, you never know. And it was such a you know, the third truck would go by and three trucks go by and the fourth truck would get blown out. Yeah. And it was purely a war stance and circomstance Lawrence Smith You could feel the tension Thomas Leckinger You didn't know Sometimes if there was there were people that just weren't comfortable is an infantryman out there and stuff. And you knew that sooner or later into the Unknown Speaker Who the hell could be comfortable out there John Catterson you just got to a point where you could adapt to your surroundings. Exactly. Human can adapt. Yeah. David Susskind And you can tell that, you know, in in World War Two, the war I had you we rehearse so much invasions. We just rehearsed. And you didn't. we'd rehearse for months and landing Marines on islands. And then we always rehearse in Hawaii or Saipem or something. Then you will almost hoping for the battle. You know, you were so bored. Yeah. Did you guys get bored? Thomas Brinson Oh yeah it was there many, many. Thomas Leckinger We mentioned that. Before that there was a lot of times over there. You'd be. We never had any rehearsals. I mean, basically we were we set ourselves up as bait. You'd go walking through the jungle until somebody shot at you and then you've got your fire. But many times you're walking around with 80 pound rucksack on your back. You got a 23 pound machine gun, you got ammo hanging all over you. It's hotter than hell. You're tired, you're going up and down. Leeches, mosquitos I mean, basically say, Man, I need to rest and the company is moving. You're moving with it and sooner. I can remember thinking 19 years old can remember thinking Oh God, I wish we get in a firefight. So I get a chance to take a break currently Oh, John Catterson jump up or down and shoot at somebody and then you Thomas Leckinger Get your labor portion of it. I John Catterson think that's what they describe as being 30 seconds of sheer terror followed by hours and day of Thomas Brinson hours of boredom and drudgery David Susskind You know how many men were killed in Vietnam? Almost 58,692. And the wounded must have been 300,300. I think about 287,000. And you always thought every day every night that you might be one of those, you could be statistics John Catterson I don't know, I I guess I thought at the time, I was immortal. I got I carried that with me a lot. I never thought I would be killed in Vietnam. There were a lot of people in my platoon who I thought, as Tom has said, weren't going to make it. I can remember the day before we left Vietnam, we were in California at El Toro the the Air Force, the Marine Corps Air Station in California. And we were calling home. And I had a friend who called his home, got off the phone and he was crying. And he said to me, I'm not coming back to Vietnam. And I'll never forget that he didn't. His name is on the wall in Washington. And in fact, he went to accompany David Susskind the monument with the names of the 57,692 men. John Catterson He was part of a company within my battalion and their their position was overrun, and my company moved into his area and we evacuated bodies and one of the bodies I evacuated and found was his body. And I've just never forgotten that. He told me he wasn't coming back and he didn't come back, Thomas Leckinger which says immortality. Lawrence Smith I don't know about immortality. I had constant fear. When I was there. I think we were such non combat a lot of times that the fear was tremendous. You just couldn't be John Catterson It wasn't any John Wayne, Going in there thinking I was bulletproof. But I but I would just walk out Lawrence Smith No od Murphy. no, John Wayne, was the other guy. John Catterson That's right. It always seemed like it was the other guy. And then we got to a point where you just you could feel if something was going to happen. You could recognize a bullet being fired 100 yards away as being friendly fire or hostile fire. You knew the cyclical way, the enemy machine guns. You knew that it was David Susskind No the war was gruesome. Horrific. Thomas Brinson Yeah. And any war is David Susskind Did you come back thinking you've done God's work that the communists have been stuck there? John Catterson Yes. I have a long time. I did. Did you really try for a long time? Thomas Brinson I came back I was, I flew back I happen to fly back into the great px land in the sky on the day that Martin Luther King was shot. David Susskind you came home that day. Thomas Brinson That day, I flew into Washington, DC, and locked out the Washington monument at the Capitol and Washington burning. And I said, Wait a minute, what says that was 15,000 miles over there? My country was in flames as the country that I had left that day. That day that Martin Luther King was was yes, yes. Yes. And and I came home with such a sense of what did I go there and, quote fighte, And I didn't do much fighting I had very, very little active actual combat in the area that I was and I said, What is it all about? And and I said in your office that I came back feeling that my service to country was somehow tainted? David Susskind Did you feel that Thomas Leckinger I was shot and that's why I'm I want to talk to John a little bit about this because our experience was basically the same we went to an evacuation hospital Vietnam, Japan and then St. Albans here in New York City. As did Larry. And I think that's where really where it came home to me I had again at that point seen some people hurt some people killed but not a lot. And when I went to Japan and just saw ward after ward after ward after ward with hundreds of guys who had lost limbs last legs quadric you know quality amps and stuff like that I just wasn't quite ready for us to come by me that just did me and I'm convinced today that some of the reasons that I've not had some of the difficulties of the Vietnam veterans experience is because of the decompression I had in hospital I spent seven months in hospital and I'm convinced that that helps yeah, here we there obviously Vietnam and and Anchorage and down to Walter Reed. I think that helped a lot you know, as opposed to the guys who were going to get up on scan you know, one day we're in London the next day they were in San Francisco 48 hours in the jungle firefight to in a concoction. There's no way your body can ever adjust. Make that kind of adjustment. David Susskind Do you think you did God's work. Do you think you stopped the communists? Or was it a rotten war between North and South Vietnam Thomas Brinson Not one square inch to Honolulu much less to San Francisco today. Thomas Leckinger I just I never gave it a thought. I mean, they said here's your machine gun Knock yourself out this guy's gonna try to kill you. You got to get him first. I never gave any thought at all to the political aspects of national aspects of it David Susskind You think the war now. I always thought the war was fall obscene immoral. I'm think you you feel that war was worth fighting? Thomas Leckinger Absolutely. not David Susskind was it worth one man's death, one man with an eye gone are leg gone? Thomas Leckinger no, it's probably the greatest tragedy that this country has ever Thomas Brinson And David is that the country does not want to deal with that. Our society does not want to listen to our experiences, and to learn from them David Susskind maybe you ough to go and talk to President Reagan and Secretary of State. Thomas Leckinger How do you say exactly? You know, you made the point when we're invading the terror to people, you cannot explain to people how, what it feels like to be laying there and getting shot knowing that 18 year old 19 years old, you're gonna die? How do you explain it to somebody like Reagan or Schultz or a few of these people? And say to him, do you understand what you're doing? You understand where you're bringing this country to David Susskind I don't think Reagan served in World War Two. Thomas Brinson I don't I don't think he I don't know. I think he David Susskind I think he may have done a little us. So I saw be funny in a nightclub. Thomas Brinson Again, David. It's it's the it's a real trying to define the uses of American power. And what is there to fight for our country. There's a it's a film that smothering dreams that has the opening of it. If you were to see this man with the whites of his eyes, and the blood gushing gurgling from him, and you would say, to belie the method of dying for one's country that was written by a need in the Iliad 2500 years ago, it's the same perpetuation of duty on a service, which yes, there is a need for but when they are actually coming in, and the back door, so to speak. And John Catterson 300 Men blown up blown up in a building in Beirut. Yes. And the President of the United States next day says we can't withdraw. We're looking I mean, words to the effect we need peace with honor. We need to wait to get out of Lebanon, we just can't withdraw. So we spent a few more lives thank God somebody came to their senses and got our Marines out of there David Susskind the pole said America is not ready to go to war. Do you think anything in sight at the moment that we sit here is no one is worth going to war about? Absolutely. Absolutely. Not. For you unanimous? Absolutely. I agree with you. Hold on. We'll be right back.

c/u tilt up names on Vietnam Memorial with people passing - m/s people looking at Vietnam Memorial - c/u then zoom back to w/s of Arlington National Cemetery gravestones - m/w/s pan right of Arlington National Cemetery gravestones, m/c/u still of Arlington National Cemetery gravestones - m/s guard marching at Tomb of the Unknown Soldier - m/w/s of guard marching at Tomb of the Unknown Soldier - m/s then zoom back to w/s of two guards marching at Tomb of the Unknown Soldier - m/s two guards examining rifle very stylized - m/c/u John F Kennedy grave site - w/s and m/s of Iwo Jima Memorial - low m/w/s of Iwo Jima Memorial - dramatic w/s silhouette against setting sun of Iwo Jima Memorial - c/u low flag and faces of Iwo Jima Memorial - Washington DC - D.C.

MILITARY FILE TAPE OF AMERICAN SOLDIERS FIGHTING IN VIETNAM DURING VIETNAM WAR CIRCA 1970.

Unissued / unused footage - dates and locations may be unclear or unknown. <br/> <br/>Operation 'Camargue' - Indochina (now Vietnam). <br/> <br/>Several shots of soldiers advancing in the sand. Soldiers looking at an explosion far away. Machine guns in action. General view of the 'impacts'. Two men looking through field-glasses. Armoured units stopping. Men drinking. Several shots of units advancing in the sand. Tank tracks in sand.

VIETNAM VETERAN 'S MEMORIAL.

Unissued / unused footage - dates and locations may be unknown or unclear. <br/> <br/>Operation 'Claude' in Indochina (now Vietnam). <br/> <br/>General view of countryside in Indochina. Troops on horizon. Various shots, troops advancing over tall grass. M/S of troops wading through river. M/S of troops crouching in undergrowth. M/S of soldier wading through water. Ground to air shot of helicopter overhead. Several shots of Indochinese. <br/> <br/>L/S as amphibians enter water. M/Ss of people hiding in rushes surrendering to troops on amphibians. View from launch of ship on water.

AWOL

Soldier walks past explosion in the water in unknown location but possibly during the First Indochina War in Vietnam

Clinton unveils POW/MIA stamp at ceremony, CU of large stamp, Clinton speaks, trumpet player at service at Arlington ceremony, footage of Vietnam war, Senators McCain and (?) speak, Clinton places wreath at "Grave of unknown soldier".

00:00:00:00 [Reagan speech at ceremony for Unknown Soldier of Vietnam War at Capitol Rotunda]-- :14 SOT RR, cuts to audience [Shultz and others]/ :10 SOT RR MS of rotunda with flag-draped coffin/ ...

Ceremony on 9th Anniversary of V-E Day held in Paris soon after surrender of French military at Dien Bien Phu in Indochina (now Vietnam)

POLITICAL EVENTS IN WASHINGTON, DC

VIETNAM VETERAN 'S MEMORIAL.

Clinton unveils POW/MIA stamp at ceremony, CU of large stamp, Clinton speaks, trumpet player at service at Arlington ceremony, footage of Vietnam war, Senators McCain and (?) speak, Clinton places wreath at "Grave of unknown soldier".