Hiya! I know next to nothing about the Indochina Wars (1st Indochina War: 1946 - 1954, Vietnam: 1955 - 1975) except little tidbits that I've picked up from pop culture; The depiction of The Simpsons "Principal Skinner" in the Vietnam War, Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, Robert Zemeckis's Forrest Gump & Oliver Stone's "Vietnam War trilogy"; Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July & Heaven & Earth.
In the trailer for Platoon (which unfortunately I've yet to watch), the narrator says the following:
In 1967, Olivier Stone was a combat infantryman in Vietnam, during his tour he received a bronze star for gallantry. Ten years later in Hollywood he was picking up a Oscar for the screenplay of Midnight Express. Now he has another story to tell a movie that grew out of his own experience...
So the narrator seems to big up Stone obviously due to trying to sell the film to potential viewers but obviously Stone fought in Vietnam so how reliable is he?
Wikipedia says that in Stone's Platoon, We see Charlie Sheen's character "Chris Taylor" drop out of college and enlist in the US Army volunteering to go to Vietnam however Taylor quickly becomes disillusioned by what he sees there. Obviously this disillusionment would be pretty commonplace for many Soldiers enlisting in various Wars. Was there any difference however in the disillusionment we see Sheen's Taylor experience (and I assume many Vietnam Veterans) to that of other veterans? (WWI, WWII, Korean war, Falklands war vets etc) especially considering how soon the Vietnam war commenced after the first Indochina war & after WWII. Did America’s involvement in the First Indochina War as a support for South Vietnam affect how it participated in the Vietnam war?
During the first half of the Vietnam war (1955 - 1965), American segregation for the most part was still in full swing, How did that affect Black & Mixed-race Americans enlisting in the war? And if those Americans came home early (due to injury or PTSD) when the civil rights movement was in full swing would they have been treated any different from the regular black & mixed-race civilians or White soldiers that had the same ailments?
Thank you for any help :)
I would argue that Oliver Stone is reliable in as much as depicting his own particular experiences. Those familiar with his work are of course familiar with his own criticism of American foreign policy during the Cold War (best expressed in his documentary series The Untold History of the United States) which one can presume has a basis in his experience in the Vietnam War. In Platoon, Stone is very critical of the Vietnam War and makes a point to show acts that would be deemed as war crimes and so on. However, I would not deem this inaccurate or exaggerated. Hearing and reading interviews with Oliver Stone, I found myself recognizing much of what he said he experienced and how he perceived South Vietnamese civilians with that of other veterans and of scholarly work on the topic. A movie is a movie and should not be taken as a reliable source, but Oliver Stone's own account of the Vietnam War is reliable, if only to portray his side of the story. One shouldn't take the story of one veteran and generalize it.
Obviously this disillusionment would be pretty commonplace for many Soldiers enlisting in various Wars. Was there any difference however in the disillusionment we see Sheen's Taylor experience (and I assume many Vietnam Veterans) to that of other veterans?
Yes and no. There are some shared characteristics of disillusionment with previous and future wars, in particular when it comes to the nature of war, mates being killed and so on. These are things that one encounter in accounts of veterans throughout the 20th century (and earlier). You seem to know this as well, so I will move on what the difference could be.
One thing many veterans write about is how alien Vietnam as a country, culture and people was to them. You have to understand that most veterans knew very little of Vietnam before being sent there and had little to no understanding of the culture and the people of the country (beyond the dehumanizing caricatures of their enemies that they became familiar through basic training). Many couldn't understand why they were sent to help a people that appeared to be indifferent about their presence. Oliver Stone himself, for example, describes them as "mute". There was a tremendous language barrier which only alienated the soldiers even more and then there were the classical anxieties, fears and stress of being on the end of guerrilla warfare.
As opposed to conventional warfare in which facing uniformed soldiers in open battle is common, the Vietnam War was for the most part characterized by engagements lasting a few minutes at most and in which the ordinary soldier did not see much more than the muzzle flash of an assault rifle. Death and dismemberment more commonly came in the form of mines or snipers, ways in which the soldier was unable to fight back. These majority of these engagements were all initiated by the enemy which made the soldier feel less and less in control.
We can therefore see that disillusionment in the Vietnam War came from from other sources than just political insight into the conflict: cultural and social alienation and the nature of counterinsurgency warfare only added on to the disillusionment some already felt due to the lack of clear purpose in the war.