Starts Sept 17 on PBS.

Big fan of Burns' Civil War and Baseball documentaries.

10 part, 18 hours.

Jazz is underrated in my opinion. I'm looking forward to this, though I admit I haven't watched his documentary on WWII, so I can't speak to the quality of his more recent work.

After spending my last 4.5 years working in Da Nang I can not wait to watch this!!!

Pretty even-handed so far. Not exactly breaking new ground.

What a waste that damn war was.

Hope it gets better. Episode 1 was meh.

OldArmy71 said:

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Pretty even-handed so far. Not exactly breaking new ground.

What a waste that damn war was.

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Yes a terrible waste of young lives. My dad was a veteran (USMC) and had seen plenty on Tarawa, Saipan, and Tinian and he was very much against the Vietnam war and didn't want me to fight over there. My lottery number was 12 but they stopped the draft and brought the troops home.

Agree with you on the first episode.

Part 2: Riding the tiger

Started at 7pm

First episode was good. I think the series is going to be very intense. I'm glad Burns made the film, but I'm afraid it may still be too soon.

High expectations and not disappointed with the first two episodes.

Apparently the episodes are also being aired in Vietnam and in that same podcast the women who directed it alongside Ken Burns said it was causing a lot of introspection in a place where that is uncommon. Would be interesting to hear what the Vietnamese think.

BQ_90 said:

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Aggies Revenge said:

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AGnCS said:

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Quote:

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What a waste that damn war was.

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The French should have just granted them independence and let them go.

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France's economy was wrecked by WWII to the point they viewed renewed colonization as the only way to regain wealth and pull them out of debt. Throw in a bit of pride issues of no longer being a premier world power. Old habits die hard.

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Also it was said in first episode that Charles de Gaulle threaten to align with Russia if US didn't let France re establish their colonies

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De Gaulle wanted to reestablish France as a unifying European power that would mitigate the influence of the two new super powers. He knew he could only do that by playing them off of each other. He did not realize how little political and economic clout he had with Stalin.

AGnCS said:

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Quote:

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What a waste that damn war was.

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The French should have just granted them independence and let them go.

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They should have let them go in 1919.

from Episode 2:

From the French perspective it would be hard to let go considering how key SEA had been in WW2, all those rubber plantations were strategic assets.

Dr. Watson said:

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Jazz is underrated in my opinion. I'm looking forward to this, though I admit I haven't watched his documentary on WWII, so I can't speak to the quality of his more recent work.

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I'd like Jazz more if he'd spent more than one episode on anything after 1957. But at least we got four episodes on big band jazz in the early 40s...

If you aren't familiar with his newer stuff, check out his series on the Roosevelts. Superb

Not sure if I can keep watching. Just so depressing.

I was born June 1965 and didn't pat attention to the war.
I feel sorry for you guys who were sucked into this horrible conflict by worthless politicians

Good episode tonight. Pretty amazing who Joseph Galloway crossed paths with between Beckwith and Moore. Galloway was born and raised in Refugio.

GeorgePlimpton said:

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Dr. Watson said:

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Jazz is underrated in my opinion. I'm looking forward to this, though I admit I haven't watched his documentary on WWII, so I can't speak to the quality of his more recent work.

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I'd like Jazz more if he'd spent more than one episode on anything after 1957. But at least we got four episodes on big band jazz in the early 40s...

If you aren't familiar with his newer stuff, check out his series on the Roosevelts. Superb

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True, that did bother me a lot.

ABATTBQ87 said:

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I was born June 1965 and didn't pat attention to the war.
I feel sorry for you guys who were sucked into this horrible conflict by worthless politicians

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I was in kindergarten at the time of the 1964 elections,was in Jr. High when the Paris peace talks were held, and was a sophomore in high school when Saigon fell, so I very much grew up watching all of this unfold on TV. I had an older brother who graduated high school in 69 and was either drafted or enlisted (can't remember which). He likely would have been sent over to VN but he came down with pneumonia 3 times during Basic and was eventually given a medical discharge (given his somewhat lousy health, he shouldn't have been inducted to begin with. He died in his 40s of some obscure neuromuscular disorder). He managed to earn a Marksman badge, at least (which really impressed me). Of course my parents were part of the Greatest Generation and very Establishment (and at the time, so was I, which caused no small amount of discord between myself and my brother). Not only was I watching the "Vietnam conflict" unfold on the Huntley & Brinkley Report (and later the CBS News with Walter Cronkite), I was also watching it unfold around the nightly dinner table in some truly awesome arguments between my father (WWII Army vet) & brother (soon to be cannon fodder) over what we were doing in SE Asia.

FWIW, just seeing and hearing McNamara in this documentary makes my skin crawl.

My memories ..... watching the war on the news, taking my uncle to Love Field when he left to go over seas, making him goody boxes and cassette tapes for him, and then going to pick him up at Love Field when he came home.

He kitted my brother and I out with ALICE gear and real steel pots with camo for Christmas presents. Was the baddest "soldiers" on the block playing war.

I do have some first-hand accounts of Vietnam era memories my grandparents lived in Mineral Wells and Fort Wolters was the helicopter training facility for the Vietnam Pilots and I remember going to my grandparents every Sunday and watch those helicopters flying around Mineral Wells

I was born in Nov '59 so this was part of my childhood, although it was difficult to understand at the time. I had a second cousin in the Navy that I sent letters to. I just remember my parents being pro-war and hating the protestors. They also hated LBJ, which seems kind of ironic in retrospect.

This has been hard to watch. A Army recruiter lived down the street from my family. He visited with me about the WO program (helos) one summer between semesters. My lottery number was 105. I went Marines PLC to stay in school. Growing up in East Texas all I knew was what Network TV said or the Chronicle or Morning News wrote. Obviously being at A&M, I was a hawk or thought I was. Took a class where the prof spoke about the futility of the war. Thought he was a liberal radical commie at the time.

The war had a profound effect on me, all my life. My older sister's best friend fiance was a Green Beret that went MIA. They found his body in Laos months later. I remember Johnny coming over to our house to visit. Of course, there were others.

I watched the nightly news with my Dad (WWII Veteran). He was shot in the war, and never talked about it. I still have a .32 he took off a Nazi soldier. When I turned 12 in 1969, I started throwing morning papers. Every day, folding 200 papers, I saw the body counts on the front page, headlines and stories. Later on, I tried to quit school and volunteer, the parents wouldn't sign off.

Later on, I met VN Vets, worked with one that was a chopper decoy pilot. Still talk to him now, he's 69 years old. In the 90's, two of my neighbors were VN Vets, both at Hamburger Hill. Greg was a medivac pilot,....got drunk one night and told me shooting his own guys with his .45 because they were hanging off the rails, he couldn't lift off due to the weight.

Jesse said he went in the Army at age 16, lied about his age. Said he got shot 5 times at the Hill, and killed every "gook" he could. He was on 9 different kinds of meds, and just glad to be alive.

This summer, sadly, I learned a friend, Wayne, age 66, had died two years ago from Agent Orange/cancer. He was a Green Beret.

I didn't have to go, it was stopped by the time it was my time to go.

This PBS series is tough to watch, I find myself getting up and going outside for awhile, then coming back inside. I'm not sure if I will continue. At times, I get upset about how our guys were treated, make no mistake,...we lost over 58,000 over there.

Was just a child during the height of the war. I remember watching the news every night and could never understand why we were at war with guerillas or how they could even shoot guns

Like everything Ken Burns does, this is fantastic. What a freaking disaster. I've always despised LBJ but this just adds to my disgust with him...can we start tearing down his statues? I kid I kid....they should stay up so every one can understand what a POS he really was.

claym711 said:

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This film makes LBJ and his entire administration look quite terrible.

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I honestly believe LBJ was the one man my Dad would have killed with his bare hands, given the chance. LBJ and Agent Orange finished what Nam couldn't in 2004.