That's the Way Soldiers Were in '65

Rating: Null/10 (20 April 2002)

I am very impressed by this movie. Soldiers of all ranks in '65 acted like soldiers: they followed their orders and looked after their comrades. They did so later in the war too. They talked in clichés: I recall my first night in Saigon in '66 being kept awake by some guy moaning, "I don't want to die. I don't want to die..." Just like a bad movie. But that's the way people really do talk. I am most impressed by the attention to detail in the combat sequences. Nothing is more annoying than seeing something wholly wrong in uniform or equipment in a war film that portrays itself as accurate. The advisors and those who bought the uniforms and equipment for this movie are to be congratulated on the Vietnam sequences. If I have one cavel with this movie it is in the Ft Benning sequences where money was saved and the research faulty. Unfortunately this was up front in the film and got it off to a bad start. Viz. Soldiers in the Foreign Legion from the rank of caporal-chef and up don't wear a white kepi; they wear black. Fatigues at Benning in '65 were starched solid; the film's fatigues dated from the '70's. The issue baseball hat of '65 (assuming they weren't still wearing the pillbox, the timing is close) came to a strange point; the type shown in the film is, again, '70's issue (unless bought off-post in Columbus). General Kinnard wouldn't have worn a blue infantryman's cord; that was a colonel's and below honor. I suspect any party at the O-Club would have been in Blues (required to be owned by all officers of the era), if not Whites -- a required uniform in '64 at Benning. Lieutenants and captains of the era would have been living in housing one step up from trailer courts in Columbus and not in colonels' housing on post next to their battalion commander. This all made for a bad start which was wholly compensated for in the combat sequences. A neat movie