Any Ags enjoyed watching the Ken Burns Vietnam documentary, too? I liked the theme of the documentary- that is how our divide as a country can be traced DIRECTLY back to that conflict.

Any history of Vietnam protests on campus?

He's pretty political these days. I've read a lot of negative reviews of his 'take' on this.

I think it's an important part of the process, but I'd say those divisions were more exacerbated by the Civil Rights Movement.

I did find it an excellent documentary. His inclusion of North Vietnamese sources put an interesting spin on the subject.

Almost zero protests at A&M. That was a time when the Corps would have dealt with such nonsense, and the University would have let them.

I'll beat this dead horse, but thought for sure OP was gonna mention this:

I remember it being very well done and very difficult to watch the whole thing. I have no direct connection to that war and doubt I could watch it if I did.

As has already been said, it includes the interviews with the other side, both abroad and domestic. It includes protesters, some who even apologized for saying some terrible things to soldiers. It does a good job of showing positive and negative aspects of all parties. It had an interview with an NVA soldier who greatly respected the way American soldiers would go to great lengths to recover their fallen comrades.

I thought it was much better than his WW2 documentary and maybe only second or third to the Civil War and Country Music. My only gripe is the implication that the war was never winnable. I think it was, especially after Tet, but politically we lost the will and thus the war. The real lesson from Vietnam is, if you are not in a war to win it, stay out.

BQ78 said:

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I thought it was much better than his WW2 documentary and maybe only second or third to the Civil War and Country Music. My only gripe is the implication that the war was never winnable. I think it was, especially after Tet, but politically we lost the will and thus the war. The real lesson from Vietnam is, if you are not in a war to win it, stay out.

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Except we never had the will to win it from the start. JFK and McNamara goal was never to win it. Same with LBJ. They wanted status quo with 2 countries. We fought it like it was Korea. South VN was never a functioning country with a govt that had popular support.

It was shown to Washington early on that we could not win it unless we committed totally, McNamara ignored the military and proceeded with "limited" war BS. That lie carried on until the end.

I'm not sure we've learned any lessons from VN. Not when you look at the disaster Afghanistan was and Iraq

Agree and unfortunately the lesson is probably not learned today, even though it was obvious.

His Baseball series was terrific as well, if that's your cup of tea.

Big baseball fan but I was disappointed with that one, felt like he was saying if it didn't happen in Gotham, it wasn't very important.

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McNamara ignored the military

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The military itself had a lot of responsibility for the disaster that was Vietnam. It was shocking to me that an officer as senior as Hal Moore would be critical of the Army (senior officers, as a rule, always support their Service).

My dad who served in Vietnam was also very critical. He pointed out that the Army's custom of sending officers over for only 1-year tours, of which only 6 months would be in a combat assignment, guaranteed that the ranks would always have inexperienced and incompetent officers. The primary reason for that practice was merely to ensure that as many officers as possible had the "combat experience" check mark on their resumes.

In most wars, we get rid of the peace-time generals at the outset and replace them with combat generals. The Army did not do that in Vietnam but instead allowed the bureaucratic peace time generals to try to fight the war.

My granddad, who was also a retired Army officer, once told me during the Vietnam war that the statement that it was impossible to win a guerilla war was false. The U.S. Army had fought and won at least two guerilla wars. One was against the western Plains Indians in the U.S. and the other was against the Philippine insurgents between the two World Wars. We won both by pursuing the insurgents relentlessly, killing men, women and children and not allowing them to stop and resupply, also destroying their sources of food and supplies. My granddad said that such wars are not necessarily moral but are winnable. The US Army never pushed to fight such a war against the North Vietnamese and Vietcong.

Jabin said:

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McNamara ignored the military

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The military itself had a lot of responsibility for the disaster that was Vietnam. It was shocking to me that an officer as senior as Hal Moore would be critical of the Army (senior officers, as a rule, always support their Service).

My dad who served in Vietnam was also very critical. He pointed out that the Army's custom of sending officers over for only 1-year tours, of which only 6 months would be in a combat assignment, guaranteed that the ranks would always have inexperienced and incompetent officers. The primary reason for that practice was merely to ensure that as many officers as possible had the "combat experience" check mark on their resumes.

In most wars, we get rid of the peace-time generals at the outset and replace them with combat generals. The Army did not do that in Vietnam but instead allowed the bureaucratic peace time generals to try to fight the war.

My granddad, who was also a retired Army officer, once told me during the Vietnam war that the statement that it was impossible to win a guerilla war was false. The U.S. Army had fought and won at least two guerilla wars. One was against the western Plains Indians in the U.S. and the other was against the Philippine insurgents between the two World Wars. We won both by pursuing the insurgents relentlessly, killing men, women and children and not allowing them to stop and resupply, also destroying their sources of food and supplies. My granddad said that such wars are not necessarily moral but are winnable. The US Army never pushed to fight such a war against the North Vietnamese and Vietcong.

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they where never at the table, McNamara only had military people around him that would agree with him. they minimized any input the Joint Chiefs had with Kennedy and LBJ so that McNamara was the only one to have his message go to the POTUS.

To McNamara the war was bean counting, X missions, X body count = winning the war. Didn't matte what was going on, didn't matter how bad the RVN troops where or how bad the govt of SVN was, it was going to be spun by him that we where winning.

The minute any military person disagreed with McNamara they where removed or their influence was diminished.

again, winning was never on the table, there wasn't a definition of winning the war. Status quo is what they wanted. McNamara core belief was to only fight a limited war no matter if it worked or not.

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In most wars, we get rid of the peace-time generals at the outset and replace them with combat generals. The Army did not do that in Vietnam but instead allowed the bureaucratic peace time generals to try to fight the war.

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This started with Vietnam and with the exception of Schwarzkopf (which was due to serendipity), they have continued this stupidity.

Great catch!

RIP to all the brave Aggies who faced the communists in that war.

It was an excellent documentary, and I think it was fair on both sides but leaned toward being anti war. But let's face it, the Vietnam War was a mistake and terrible for the country.

Regarding protests during the war on the A&M campus the only thing I witnessed was when my brother was at Final Review in 1972 some non regs drove by in a convertible and yelled the Corps sucked and spewed some anti war rhetoric.

I have heard of protest at A&M in the 60's, but they weren't anit war. When President Rudder decided to integrate and open the school to women and African Americans, one night students burned an effigy of him outside the president's house. It woke his wife and scared her half to death. She woke her husband up to tell him what was going on and he rolled over and went back to sleep. Apparently, some rabble rousing by students was nothing compared to what he faced in wwii.

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one night students burned an effigy of him outside the president's house

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Sounds like a fairy tale. I'm sure you have a link or a reference to confirm that story?

I can listen to John Musgrave talk about the war over and over again.

CanyonAg77 said:

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one night students burned an effigy of him outside the president's house

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Sounds like a fairy tale. I'm sure you have a link or a reference to confirm that story?

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I DO! For your fairytale reading pleasure:
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/texas-sports-nation/college/article/At-Texas-A-M-no-bigger-icon-than-Earl-Rudder-13950377.php
(But, sometimes, not always, it asks for a subscription)

Paywall

Try again tomorrow, it seems to allow me behind the paywall one time per day, but only long enough to quickly get through it. Or , since it was written by Brent Z and he is on Texags, he will stop by and confirm.

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it was written by Brent Z

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You're not helping your case.

CanyonAg77 said:

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it was written by Brent Z

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You're not helping your case.

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is that how this conversation is going to go; i post information, you ask for a source, i provide a source, you provide drive-by comments demeaning source? that makes things pretty easy for you, you do not have to provide any real content all the while demanding more sources and info from me.

Give me a source i can read

CanyonAg77 said:

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Give me a source i can read

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https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/bitstream/handle/1969.1/196620/THORSON-FINALTHESIS-2020.pdf?sequence=1
PDF page 31. Author cites a book co-written by Mrs. Rudder. Book is at Cushing Library and says it is not available for check out. Unless you want to call me, Brent Z., this author, and Mrs. Rudder liars, I consider this matter closed.

I was on campus in the Corps 1967-1971 so I look forward to reading this thesis.

My initial impression is that it is quite poorly written in terms of grammar.

Could she not find an editor?



I finished skimming it. I find no particular reason to doubt the Rudder effigy story.

There are some details about life on campus and in the Corps that the author of this thesis clearly does not understand or gets wrong, but the Rudder story in question is apparently a story told by Mrs. Rudder and is thus not subject to the interpretation of the young woman who wrote the thesis.

It touches on something I found interesting and that is that you do not hear about near the amount of controversy of racial integration at A&M as you did about other southern campuses during the same time period. The author theorizes that racial integration was not a challenge to A&M culture, but gender integration was.
Did any of that ring true in your time on campus?

All I can do is respond from my own experience and memory, and you know how that goes. I certainly do not mean to speak for anyone else but me.

I grew up longing to go to A&M because of its special culture: all male, all military. I saw great value in the uniqueness of the Corps.

I also grew up in the deep South and was very aware of the issues with integration and Civil Rights. I went to segregated schools. The first time I went to school with a black person was at A&M.

At A&M, I never heard or saw anything racist in any way. (I did know a Hispanic guy who had been pretty badly teased about his heritage when San Jacinto day came along, but that was before I was on campus.)

The commander of the band when I was a fish was Henry Cisneros. When I was a sophomore, the commander of the Corps was Hector Gutierrez. When I was a junior, a black man commanded one of the battalions.

As far as I was concerned, the issue of race just never came up. (I would imagine that black and Hispanic students at the time would have a different view.) None of us sat around talking about the issue of integration.



On the other hand, I was crushed when, in my early teens, the Corps was made non-compulsory and women were admitted.

Still, when I arrived on campus, it was pretty spartan: about a third of the undergraduate students were in the Corps and there were almost no single women.

That changed as my tenure at A&M continued. More and more single women; fewer and fewer in the Corps.

My buddies and I loved women and hated our isolation from them, but paradoxically, we also disliked their increasing presence on campus.

Not too long ago one of my friends reminded me that a number of us, during some late-night bull session no doubt, had made an informal pledge to quit giving money to A&M if women were ever admitted to the Corps.

I can also remember snarling at some women who tried to join the bootline at halftime of one of the football games.

That embarrasses me now.

So yes, in my limited experience I would say that co-education was a much larger issue on campus than integration.

Great post, thank you for sharing your story!

Great story about Earl Rudder, thanks for sharing.
Here are two screenshots of the anecdote of the burning effigy.

BQ78 said:

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Big baseball fan but I was disappointed with that one, felt like he was saying if it didn't happen in Gotham, it wasn't very important.

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I have a similar complaint about his country music documentary. It was absolutely excellent BUT I think he gave Johnny Cash far too much of the spotlight and treated him as if he were THE incontrovertible GOAT.
I'm not arguing that he's not a giant in the history of the genre and recognize his contributions to the culture, but he got entirely too much of the spotlight.

He does that a lot. I got really upset over his Jazz documentary because he relied almost entirely on Winton Marsalis who idolizes Duke Ellington and the Big Band era. The most interesting and creative jazz came from the late 40s onward, but you'd never guess it because Marsalis didn't really care for it.

Ken Burns has very good documentaries.

Although I'm not speaking about any recent ones. I've heard some conflicting comments about those, but I would have to see them for myself.

But the guy has become a loon toon.