American Experience (TV Series) Two Days in October (2005) User Reviews

An interesting way to look at the Vietnam War.

[planktonrules · 9/10 · 22 April 2012]

This episode of "The American Experience" uses a very unusual manner to look at the Vietnam War. Instead of a traditional method, it explores two different events on opposite sides of the world that occurred during a two day period in October, 1967. One was an ambush and massacre of American troops in Vietnam--marking a significant defeat for our troops. The other was a student protest at the University of Wisconsin that turned very violent. Both together marked significant events that pushed the American public against the war, as up until then the anti-war voices had been a significant minority. Now, following these events, the momentum started moving in the other direction--questioning why we were there in the first place.

Within the show, there were several fascinating portions. One was focusing on an army wife who came to hate Vietnam and how this broke up their marriage. Another was interviewing not just American vets, but Viet Cong vets who had taken part in the battle. It was also pretty wild listening to some of the Madison Wisconsin cops today who STILL sound as if they were doing the right thing in beating the student protesters. All in all, a VERY compelling and well-crafted episode and one that is not just a rehash of facts in the standard manner.

Unintented Consequences.

[rmax304823 · 7/10 · 6 October 2016]

It opens with statements from several participants in the Vietnam War -- from captain on down to "private." And it includes statements from relatives, some of the statements endorsing values that now seem curious.

One wife, a beautiful and intelligent woman, describes her marriage to Terry Allen, an Army Lt. Col. in El Paso. There was never any doubt about the war as far as she was concerned. We would go there, whip the enemy and liberate the civilians. She wished her husband would be sent to Vietnam and see combat because it would probably lead to a promotion. Yet, one is a function of his or her milieu. When everybody around you thinks that way, so do you. It's not at all odd except from the perspective of forty-nine years. From that distance, a lot of things we've done seem curious.

Maybe, somewhere along the line, it ought to be mentioned that in 1967 the war was truly warming up and the troops tended to be a few patriots and a lot of draftees, especially those from lesser socioeconomic backgrounds, including minorities. Those who didn't want to go and who had assets could avoid the draft. Going to college earned you a student deferment. A friendly doctor could excuse you for a minor ailment, a sore back, a bone spur, a spell of depression, a Rhodes Scholarship.

By 1967 there were about half a million men in Vietnam and General Westmoreland was being urged by Congress to ask for one hundred thousand more. I should also mention that my remarks here have been influenced by David Halberstam's history, "The Best and the Brightest." This is no place to review the varying strategies used in the war but during this period the general idea was to fight a battle of attrition against the Viet Cong and the NVA. Kill as many as possible. That's when "body counts" became a measure of success. Our leaders wanted pitched battles in which we could deploy our superior technology and boost the body count, but the enemy rarely obliged. We hadn't learned how to fight an asymmetric war. We still haven't. The pressure for more enemy bodies mounted.

Meanwhile, at home, Allen's wife has been watching television news and realizes that something is desperately wrong. She finds her role as a single mother raising three children challenging and questions her goals and those of her absent husband. She begins divorce proceedings. Allen's unit was among those pressured. His predecessor had been fired for not being aggressive enough, which reduced Allen to flying around in a small helicopter urging his men below to start moving faster, while they struggled with full field packs through mud, mangrove, and jungle. Under such pressure, Allen decides on a frontal attack against a fortified position with two companies. The VC have divined his intentions. Allen has 160 men and the enemy has 1,400. The Americans are ambushed, one company nearly wiped out and the other decimated. Allen is shot through the head and dies holding a photo of his three girls.

Back at the ranch, the students at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, are protesting the war and by the hundreds they occupy a large building, sit down, and prepare themselves for arrest. They don't ALL sit down. On the steps are far more students howling and demanding an end to the war. The president of UWM can do nothing to stop it. He calls the police -- mostly working-class men from the other side of the tracks with traditional values -- and requests that the Madison Police Department "clear the building" without saying how. The police believe they know how, and they set about their task.

The two narratives are parallel and both end in defeat, but the media portrays both as victories. In Vietnam, an enemy attack (which was never planned or intended) is stopped by the victorious American First Infantry Division. In Madison, there were agitators brought in to provoke violence among the "long-haired greasy kids". Order is restored and everything is hunky dory as far as the public is concerned, although the participants know better.

I'll have to end this comment, but let me do so with two observations. One is that I attended some anti-war protests on or near the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. Several hundreds students were loosely ringed in by uniformed police. I found the behavior of the students non-productive, even offensive. Ending a pointless war fought by the less well off is one thing. Giving the finger to the police observers and calling them "pigs" to their faces leads nowhere. Powerful social movements are prone to achieving functional autonomy. That is, the original goal is lost sight of and the important thing becomes the power and defiance of the group itself.

Another observation is that whirling around and indiscriminately busting heads with riot batons is no way to clear a room. It's not only unprofessional, it's counter productive. I learned some crowd-control tactics from corrections officers at Chicago's Statesville prison. You don't attack the group willy nilly. You form a coordinated pattern that drives the protesters outside, step by step, using the batons as threats, busting very few heads, if any at all. The natural impulse is to corner the protesters, leaving them no escape because you don't want them to "get away" -- but that completely loses sight of the goal, which is to disperse the crowd, not destroy it. A bit more maturity in the students and a lot more training in the police force could have avoided the bloody encounter entirely.

This is a powerful documentary. We no longer talk much about the Vietnam War. It's fading from our collective consciousness. And it's useful to be reminded once in a while of what can happen if you act without thinking of the consequences.

Personal and impacting recollections of two key events in how America of the time viewed Vietnam

[bob the moo · 13 August 2007]

October 1967 a Viet Cong ambush nearly wiped out an entire American battalion. It caused some in power to question whether the war could ever be won. In Wisconsin, a campus antiwar demonstration spiralled out of control and into violence. These two separate events on two different days in October saw the country split politically and the pressure on an unpopular war continue to mount.

Although it is accredited as part of a series of films in the "American Experience", in the UK BBC4 screened this episode as a standalone documentary as part of a season of films looking at modern America from a variety of angles. This documentary was one of the more impacting film in this season as it looks back at two moments in modern American history that marked a sort of intellectual turning point in the Vietnam war. The first half of the film follows the ambush in Vietnam and it produces an consistent stream of emotionally but matter-of-fact recollections that eloquently sum up the loss and pain of that day.

The second half is about the protest in Wisconsin which marked the first time that such an event had turned so violent. I knew little of this event and I found it fascinating to hear from both sides and to see the footage from the day. This side of the film is lessened to some degree by the fact that we now have regular violent clashes between heavily equipped police squads and protesters and the link to the wider political climate of the time was not made as well as I would have liked. Understandably the strongest aspect of the film is the recollection and footage from the war itself around the ambush. The contributions from this is made up of sturdy old men and I respected the way that they were able to talk about the events but all of them have a point where they do break.

The film is very well put together and I liked the heavy use of archive footage blended with well-selected contributions. I didn't like the musical score – it is not obtrusive because it isn't used that much but it does tend to drift in at times to try and evoke emotion, which it didn't need to do. Fortunately it isn't used that often.

Overall then an interesting and impacting documentary about these two separate events. Those looking for a strong link to the wider political climate of the time (suggested by the title cards) may be disappointed because instead it is a much more personal film involving those actually involved in the events but this is not a weakness of the film, because it is strong from start to finish.