Although such research requires many, many hours of often bleary-eyed study of pages of pages of records written in military shorthand, I can\u2019t recommend it enough for anyone, writers and other creatives especially, who wants to glean the life of a combat grunt in that war.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n One of my favorite discoveries was an article in from <\/span>The Bayonet<\/span><\/i>, 18 August 1969 (vol. 1, no. 12), the newsletter of the 198<\/span>th<\/span> Brigade, O\u2019Brien\u2019s battalion\u2019s higher command. Sgt. Alfred Anthony Jr. wrote \u201cHamlets Watch Flicks\u201d:<\/span><\/p>\n Kuong My\u2014One time the show was so exciting a Montagnard shot an arrow through the movie screen.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Things were more routine in the small village [of] Kuong My four miles west of Chu Lai recently when the American Division\u2019s mobile audio visual team, working with the 198<\/span>th<\/span> Brigade, was showing its nightly movie.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n But for candles and a kerosene lantern the village was dark. The children filed in and out of a sombre [sic] cement home buying sodas and rice animal crackers from a girl called Susie.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Capt. William D. Hyde (Merced, Calif.) and 1<\/span>st<\/span> Lt. James Porter (Washington, Mo.), 1<\/span>st<\/span> Bn., 6<\/span>th<\/span> Inf. civil affairs officers, had brought the team to this small hamlet, as they do 20-to-29 days out of the month to one isolated location or another.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u201cThe purpose is to bring information on recent government changes,\u201d said Capt. Hyde. \u201cThe people in most of the villages in the brigade\u2019s OZ have no means of keeping informed\u2014they don\u2019t get newspapers.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cDuring the election,\u201d added LT. Porter, \u201cwe showed films where the candidates spoke their views directly to the people\u2014it was a big help.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n For many villages, the American movie team is their only link with the outside.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n The backbone of the 7<\/span>th<\/span> PSYOPS Bn.\u2019s Det. 3 team is an ingenious three-quarter-ton truck with its familiar \u201cSnoopy on his doghouse\u201d painted along the sides. The audio-visual container on the back houses its own generator, portable screen, projector and film library.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n In Kuong My, during the reel changes the Americans got shouts of \u201cBatman! Superman!\u201d from the children swarming around the truck, while the village elders sat raptly in front of the screen, interested in current news features about their country.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThese movies are all in Vietnamese,\u201d said 1<\/span>st<\/span> Lt. Homer T. Hodge (Paramount, Calif.), team leader. \u201cBut a lot of times we show westerns, and as long as they\u2019ve got good action we\u2019ve got a good audience.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u201cPart of our job here is just to provide entertainment,\u201d Capt. Hyde interjected. \u201cIt\u2019s not propaganda\u2014we just show the films and hope they enjoy them. Everywhere we\u2019ve been we\u2019ve found enthusiastic audiences.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIn the mountains in a Montagnard village we found the most enthusiasm ever,\u201d said Lt. Porter. \u201cWe were showing a cowboy and Indian flick, and the tribesman actually thought the movie was real. They got so caught up in it that in a scene where the Indians were charging toward the audience two men got up an put crossbow arrows through the screen.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n But when the show\u2019s over the village square takes on an atmosphere strangely reminiscent of an old, familiar movie house. The crows thins out and files between the dark houses to the outer reaches of the village, and Kuong My goes to bed\u2014a little better informed.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n This in a war in which U.S. soldiers dubbed anything outside the wire <\/span>Indian Country<\/span><\/i> and Vietnamese guides <\/span>Kit Carson scouts<\/span><\/i>, in the war Michael Herr in <\/span>Dispatches<\/span><\/i> said \u201cwas where the Trail of Tears was headed all along.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n That issue of <\/span>The Bayonet<\/span><\/i> also featured a mimeographed photo of \u201cTelevision and motion picture star Sarang the tiger\u201d posing with the bikini-clad \u201cAugust calendar girl Marilyn Oliver.\u201d <\/span>Apocalypse Now<\/span><\/i> tried to bring it all together by dressing its entertain-the-troops dancing playmate trio in skimpy cavalry, cowboy, and Indian costumes, but in this case the true story, those Montagnard crossbowmen firing at images of actors who resembled them more than either did the soldiers, is better than the fiction.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.thehistoryreader.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Apocalypse_Now_poster-198x300.jpg\")
One of the joys in conducting research for <\/span>Peace is a Shy Thing: The Life and Art of Tim O\u2019Brien<\/span><\/i> (St. Martin\u2019s Press, May 2025) was doing a deep dive into unit documents from O\u2019Brien\u2019s thirteen months as an infantryman in Vi\u1ec7t Nam. As a former combat platoon leader, I took particular pleasure in assembling a map of his battalion\u2019s area of operations from adjoining military mapsheets and\u2014using the battalion\u2019s daily logs to find dates, times, and grid coordinates\u2014plotting his platoon\u2019s and company\u2019s movements throughout Qu\u1ea3ng Ng\u00e3i province.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n