'The Vietnam War: A Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick' Episode Review: 'This Is What We Do (July 1967-December 1967)'

Episode Five: This Is What We Do (July 1967-December 1967)

Written by: Geoffrey C. Ward

Directed by: Ken Burns and Lynn Novick

American casualties and enemy body counts mount as Marines face deadly North Vietnamese ambushes and artillery south of the DMZ and Army units chase an elusive enemy in the Central Highlands. Hanoi lays plans for a massive surprise offensive, and the Johnson administration reassures the American public that victory is in sight. - from The Vietnam War's Episode List

On September 21, 2017, 300 Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) stations throughout the U.S. aired "This Is What We Do (July 1967-December 1967," the fifth part of directors Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's The Vietnam War. This 10-part epic series is an 18-hour look at "one of the most consequential, divisive, and controversial events in American history." Burns, Novick, and Florentine Films' array of producers, cinematographers, composers, researchers, and editors worked for 10 years on this monumental follow-up to the classic documentaries The Civil War, Baseball, The West, Prohibition, and The War. It features interviews of participants from all sides, including civilians and veterans from North and South Vietnam. (This explains why the series’ tagline is “There is no single truth in war.”)

Blu-ray set's cover art. (C) 2017 Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and Florentine Films

"You adapt to the atrocities of war. You adapt to killing and dying. After a while it doesn't bother you. Well, it doesn't bother you as much. When I first arrived in Vietnam, there were some interesting things that happened and I questioned some of the Marines. I was made to realize that this is war, and this is what we do. And after a while you embrace that. This is war. This is what we do." - Roger Harris, Private, U.S. Marine Corps

In the summer of 1967, the American phase of active military involvement in the Vietnam War is reaching a crescendo two years after the first combat troops arrived "in country." Despite evidence to the contrary, President Lyndon B. Johnson and his military commander in Vietnam, Army Gen. William C. Westmoreland tell the American public that the war is going well for the U.S. and its South Vietnamese allies. Although over 14,000 Americans have died in Southeast Asia so far, LBJ assures reporters on July 13 that "We are generally pleased with the progress we have made militarily. We are very sure that we are on the right track."

In Saigon, Westmoreland - or "Westy," as his friends and colleagues called him - gives equally sunny reports to the press. Westmoreland  denies that the war was now essentially a draw - "The statement that we are in a stalemate is complete fiction. It is completely unrealistic. During the past year tremendous progress has been made."

But in a war that, unlike the two World Wars or even Korea, had no discernible front lines or rear areas and where the capture and occupation of territory were not military objectives, how does one measure "progress"? Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) relied on a grisly statistic: body counts in which one counted the ratio of enemy troops killed to one's own.

Among the 500,000 Americans in South Vietnam - only 20% of whom served in front-line combat units - were Marines Roger Harris and John Musgrave. Harris was from Roxbury, Boston's predominantly black neighborhood and had joined the Marine Corps "because he wanted to be 'a gladiator,' a killer of his country's enemies." Musgrave was a white teenager from a segregated community in rural Missouri who, before he entered the service, had never hung out with Jews, blacks, or Latinos.

Even though they were in two different battalions, Harris and Musgrave served in the Third Marine Division, which was stationed in the northernmost military region of South Vietnam - I Corps. Both Marines saw combat against the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) regular troops, enduring constant shelling by enemy rockets and accurate artillery fire. They also got up-close-and-personal with the enemy in what Musgrave describes succinctly as "brawls."

"For the Marines in northern I Corps in the Third Marine Division in the summer of 1967, we called the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) the 'Dead Marine Zone,'" Musgrave says in the present-day interview.

Though "This Is What We Do (July 1967-December 1967)" discusses the war's effects on domestic politics, the anti-war movement. and the power struggles in Hanoi and Saigon that will shape the future of the conflict, the episode focuses on the brutal nature of combat on the ground. 

In this episode, viewers learn how frustrating it was for the Americans to fight a war where they fought for the same pieces of "real estate" over and over with no other goal but to get large body counts. "This Is What We Do" also reminds the viewer that the enemy often used American soldiers' bad habits to gain an advantage. In one vignette, a North Vietnamese veteran reveals that NVA troops would follow the trail of cigarette butts left on the ground and use that to find a suitable ambush site - then attack the hapless Marines or GIs.

I've watched my fair share of movies (Platoon, Apocalypse Now) and documentaries (Vietnam: A Television History, Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War) about this conflict, and they are all worth seeing. But Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and co-producer Sarah Botstein have brought the Vietnam conflict back into America's living rooms with an intimacy and sense of tragic loss unlike no other film project about the nation's "lost crusade" in Southeast Asia.

In The Vietnam War, Ward, Burns and Novack labored for 10 years to tell a multifaceted story with multiple points of view (American, North and South Vietnamese, civilian and military) in a moving and informative way
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Their endeavor is made possible by the skills of principal cinematographer Buddy Squires; editors Tricia Reidy, Paul Barnes, Erik Ewers, and Craig Mellish; composers Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and David Cieri (The Roosevelts: An Intimate History). Together with narrator Peter Coyote, the Florentine Films team make "This Is What We Do" a fascinating - and heart-breaking - window into one of America's most tragic periods.