Individual VLP Blog #1

         The Vietnam War left the United States, to its core, deeply divided. Whether politically or militarily, navigating this war also left five Presidential administrations divided as well. As part of the introduction to public history course I am taking this semester, we are assigned as our major project for the semester to create storyboards and videos for the Veterans Legacy Project. For this week, as some preliminary work, we were asked to watch the Ken Burns documentary entitled The Vietnam War. We were also instructed to read Tim O’Brien’s book The Things They Carried.

         Generally speaking, Ken Burn’s The Vietnam War, through an episodic style, examines on a broad level what happened during the war, while also discussing the main political actors (Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Truman, Eisenhower, Ho Chi Minh, and Ngo Dinh Diem), the roots of the war, and the misunderstandings that drove it. The fires of the war indeed seemed to be fueled by miscommunication, misunderstanding, and seemingly a desire to save face by attempting to stamp out a former ally in the form of Ho Chi Minh. Consequently, the Red Scare of Communism would eventually grip the United States and cause fear in the hearts and minds of many Americans. These were some of the things that struck me about the documentary.

         In Tim O’Brien’s book The Things They Carried, a major tie that binds this book together is, as the title suggests, the things they carried. However, I think the one thing that struck me the most was the photos and letters that First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried with him of the woman he hoped to be with and loved so dearly, Martha. This struck me because we are all told in the many history classes we take throughout our lives about the letters and photos that soldiers who served in Vietnam would frequently carry, received from their loved ones, just like lieutenant Cross in O’Brien’s book. Personally, I think it could be a very interesting perspective for a VLP documentary video to take. I think that if any of the veterans who have not passed away still have the pictures and letters they carried, perhaps they could read some of the letters and in the video we could show them with the letters and photos that they carried, while also discussing how these letters and photos impacted the war for them personally. It seems to me that it is important to show a different side of the war – the connections these servicemen had, who they loved, who they lived for. I am very interested in this topic for this reason also. Perhaps we will not be doing this but I think it might be an enlightening concept. From this project I hope to gain a better and deeper understanding about the war itself, as well as about the veterans also. I hope to learn more about the video making process too.

Bibliography

Burns, Ken, and Lynn Novick, dir. The Vietnam War. Arlington, VA: PBS, 2017.

O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York, NY: Mariner Books, 1990.