I bought the boxed, 10-disc series seven years ago --- and finally removed the protective plastic at the beginning of April 2025. My participation as an Ambassador of Patriotism with the Cole Land Transportation Museum - where I sit with a small group of middle school students for a 45-minute interview about my time in the Navy - would be starting in a month. I wanted to see and hear again the reason I created this blog in the first place. It did not disappoint.
I was especially interested in all that Tim O'Brien contributed. I thought that he read from his magnificent novel, The Things They Carried, in the beginning of episode 7, when in fact it was in the final episode where he provided a voiceover to a "where are they now" at the end of episode 10. So much for total recall. I did recall something else: during my research phase, the webmaster for the chopper unit of the crash I detailed sent me a link to a Wiki called "Vietnam Veterans for Factual History", https://wiki.vvfh.org/index.php/Main_Page. I post it here for you, the reader, to see another opinion of the value and veracity of the documentary.
Contained in the Wiki is the complete episode-by-episode annotated transcript for the entire series. The pages can be found on this page. What follows is a portion of Tim's contribution, edited from the transcripts to remove timestamps, etc.
TIM O’BRIEN: For me, I’d always thought of courage as charging enemy bunkers or standing up under fire. But just to walk, day after day from village to village and through the paddies and up into the mountains, just to get up in the morning and look out at the land and think, “In a few minutes I’ll be walking out there and will my corpse be there, over there? Will I lose a leg out there?” Just to walk felt incredibly brave. I would sometimes look at my legs as I walked, thinking, how am I doing this?
TIM O'BRIEN: I grew up in a small farming community in southern Minnesota called Worthington. Small-town America-- at least my small town--had great virtues. It was a safe place to grow up. There was Little League baseball in the summer, and there was hockey in the winter. Everybody knows everyone else's business and their faults and what's happening in their marriages and where the kids have gone wrong. It was full of the Kiwanis boys and the Elks Club and the country club set and the kind of chatty housewives and the holier-than-thou ministers. I remember the day my draft notice arrived. It was a summer afternoon, maybe June of '68. And I remember taking that envelope into the house and putting it on the kitchen table where my mom and dad were having lunch. And they didn't even read it. They just looked at it and knew what it was. And the silence of that lunch--I didn't speak, my mom didn't speak, my dad didn't speak--was just that piece of paper lying at the center of the table. It was enough to make me cry to this day, not for myself, but for my mom and dad, who both of them had been in the Navy during World War II, had believed in service to one's country and all those values.
TIM O'BRIEN: On the one hand I did think the war was less than righteous. On the other hand, I love my country. And I valued my life in a small town and my friends and family. And so, the summer of '68, I wrestled with what to do, was for me, at least, more torturous and devastating and emotionally painful than anything that happened in Vietnam. In the end I just capitulated. And one day I got on a bus with other recent graduates, and we went over to Sioux Falls about 60 miles away, and raised our hands and got in the Army. But it wasn't a decision, it was a forfeiture of a decision. It was letting my body go, turning a switch in my conscience, just turning it off, so it wouldn't be barking at me saying, "You're doing a bad and evil and stupid and unpatriotic thing."
TIM O'BRIEN: Do you go off and kill people if you're not pretty sure it's right? And if your nation isn't pretty sure it's right? If there isn't some consensus, do you do that? I was at Fort Lewis, Washington, and Canada was, what, a 90-minute bus ride away. I wrote my mom and dad and asked for money. I asked for my passport. And they sent them to me with, again, no questions. Like, "What do you want the passport for?" They just sent it. And I kept all this stuff stashed, including civilian clothes stashed in my footlocker, thinking maybe I'll... maybe I'll do it. It was this kind of "maybe" thing going on all throughout this training as Vietnam got closer and closer and closer. What prevented me from doing it? I think it was pretty simple and stupid. It was a fear of embarrassment, a fear of ridicule and humiliation. What my girlfriend would have thought of me and the people in the Gobbler Cafe in downtown Worthington. The Kiwanis boys and the country club boys and that small town I grew up in, the things they'd say about me. "What a coward and what a sissy for going to Canada." And I would imagine my mom and dad overhearing something like that. I couldn't summon the courage to say no to those nameless, faceless people who really, in essence, this was the United States of America. And I couldn't say no to them. And I had to live with it now for, you know, 40 years. That's a long time to live with a failure of conscience and a failure of nerve. And the nightmare of Vietnam for me is not the bombs and the bullets. (voice breaking): It's that failure of nerve that I so regret.
The documentary, but mostly the inclusion of Tim O'Brien and his reading from his novel, is the reason I sit here at all, trying to inform you, inspire you, dare I say educate you about the value of watching this documentary. It is NOT easy to watch, but back in the mid-60s, it was on the nightly news, minus the amazing soundtrack that accompanies the documentary. The individuals they selected to to provide perspective, from both "our" side and "their" side, take you to the heart of the conflict. The footage and stills that comprise the visual background are nothing short of mind-boggling, and at times mind-numbing. Without reservation, however, it was 18 hours well-spent, both in 2017 and now.
The boxed set included extras, found on disc 1 and disc 10. The former group was some of the background to the making of the series, which took 10 years to complete. The second group was something else. There was a segment about the Long Binh Post, where in 1969, over 60,000 troops were stationed. You can find a Wikipedia page for the Post if you want more details.
Leading off the second group is a look into the lasting effects of being a soldier at war in the 21st century. One of the major contributors throughout the series is a councilor of damaged veterans, veterans from Vietnam as well as veterans from the Gulf Wars and Afghanistan. PTSD was not a thing yet when I finished my tour of duty, but it is now, and it was in full view during the session that was filmed and included with the series. As Yoda might have said, "Heart wrenching, it was."
I Tim O'Brien's 2019 book, Dad's Maybe Book, there is a short chapter titled "Home School", where he refers to a letter he'd received, now long-lost to a gust of wind one wintry night in Chicago. I will never compare my Vietnam experience to the men who fought the war on the ground, in the jungles and mountains; but I must say that all of us who came home, carrying the memories of those days as we must, were condensed into the lost letter that Tim still carries in his mind and in his heart.
I look forward to hearing from you, and I promise to check for comments at least twice a week. Please be patient.
©2025 John Robin Swanson
