YOUR TOUR IN VIETNAM

Vietnam. Before long, you'll know [music] it well. You'll see its waterlogged delta country, the fertile patties of its plains, the [music] vine choked jungles and the towering deep shadowed rainforests, the high rugged mountain country. You'll come to know the people. [music] The sights and sounds of busy [music] cities. The culture of a civilization [music] which has its roots deep in the distant past, but its eyes on the future. [music] You'll see the remote villages and hamlets. [music] People and ways of life, now strange and distant, will become as familiar as any other place where you've lived and worked. With the people and for the people of this small nation, Americans in uniform have done much, [music] and none of it has been easy. [music] Like those who have gone before you, you'll experience much that [music] is worth remembering. In the next few minutes, let's take an advanced look at some of what you may see, do, experience, [music] learn, and accomplish during your tour in Vietnam. [music] Whether you arrive by air or by sea, when you step onto the soil of Vietnam, you [music] won't be alone. You're in good company, and plenty of it. Americans are in Vietnam in great numbers, and for a reason. These people need help and our commitment is to give it. These scenes [music] of destruction by the enemy or ones like them are common. All too common. As individuals and as members of the team, you will be doing something about it. Maybe you'll work on the deck of a carrier or off from it. [music] or maybe in the jungles or mountains or rice patties or on any one of a million rivers and waterways or in the air above them. Wherever your particular job takes you, you'll be part of the allied team that's working to [music] get the job done. >> [music] >> And the job has many faces as buried as the faces of the people [music] you'll be helping in their fight against communist aggression. You'll be part of a fighting force the [music] likes of which the world has never seen. Fastmoving, hard-hitting, professional, American forces have mastered a whole new dimension of mobility, [music] flexibility, firepower, and you'll help bring it to bear on the enemy where he lives. [music] When it seems that there just is no way, you'll find a way. And along that way, you'll learn the practical vital importance of the individual to the team and of the team to success in any undertaking. You'll become part of a fighting force that has taken the initiative, gone into the enemy's sanctuaries, his remote strongholds to drive him from areas he had considered all his own. You'll use new techniques, tactics, and means of mobility, but you'll also add refinements to methods of attack perfected by your fathers fighting another enemy in the South Pacific. In South Vietnam, there is now virtually no place the enemy can go where you cannot follow. [music] The enemy has already discovered that he is faced with a determination and persistence he may not have expected from men fighting for someone else's freedom. [music] With your ability to react instantly in this war where instant reaction [music] is a must, you'll be able to bring your force to bear when and where it is most needed on short notice. Even an enemy whose stock in trade is the ability to fade away into the hills or jungles will often look up to find you on your way in. At each time, your arrival will underscore the declaration your presence in Vietnam makes that the price the enemy pays for aggression is high. You may find yourselves [music] in villages which have lived in fear and in greater poverty than ever because of Vietkong demands on their supplies of food and manpower. When the enemy has already pulled out, you will make certain of it. And where you find his hidden stores of stolen rice, you'll take steps to get it back to our South Vietnamese friends. Whatever your service, you'll know the deep bond of comradeship that grows between men who share danger and hardship and an ideal. It's not something you can talk a lot about, but it's there. Chances are you'll hear the word team used a lot. [music] And chances are you'll come to understand better than ever before what it means because you'll be the men who carve roads through the jungle to carry supplies or build bridges to carry the convoys to where they're needed. or create airfields out of the raw earth so that the mountainous problem called logistics can be solved. Or you'll be the men who deliver the goods, the food, the equipment, the supplies, the weapons, the ammunition, the combat troops themselves, sometimes by air. Sometimes churning along through the dust or mud, whatever special they've got going that day. >> [music] >> You'll man harbor facilities to rival some of the major ports of the world. [music] And you'll keep those facilities working around the clock. [bell] From the largest operations to the small ones, you'll do the million in one jobs that all go together to [music] make the overall job possible. And you'll come to understand that there just are no unimportant assignments. Whatever you do, wherever you do it, whether in combat or in support of combat, lives can depend on whether you do it right. You'll know that and you'll do it right. And it's all part of whatever success the [music] Allied team has gained in Vietnam. It may be that as part of the Navy or Air Force team, you will [music] rarely set foot on the actual soil of Vietnam. Yet, you'll [music] be a vital part of the ground fighting. Night or day, your answer [music] to a call from some advancing unit ashore will bellow across the water. Pinpoint fire to clear the way for troops with their boots in the mud miles from where your long gray gun muzzles speak their peace. You'll know the well-ordered chaos of the flight deck. And right [music] there, loading a rocket into a jet or directing [music] traffic onto the steam catapult or overseeing it all through the slanted windows of control or jockeying the aircraft itself [music] as launch acceleration slams you back in your seat. Right there, you're part and parcel of the action ashore. >> [music] >> Call for an air strike. A 100 different forward air controllers get this order on any given day. If you add 10 bucks for every time you will answer such a call, you could go home in your own jet. Heat. Heat. Still, there's a lot to be said for just getting that jet that belongs to Uncle back in one piece. Flying light, [music] rocket tubes and wing shackles and gun magazines empty. Of course, not all of the enemy's activity is in the jungles and patties. You'll keep watch over a lot of salt water traveled by an awful lot of boats. [music] >> [music] >> They don't all mean trouble, but you can't be sure until you check them out. You'll do it a h 100 times a thousand. Another part of the overall job. And like all the other parts, important. You'll learn to combine waterborne and land operations in places like the Delta country where it can be hard to be sure which is which. Navy assault craft, army troops. You'll be part of that team, showing the enemy yet again that no place is inaccessible, that there is no remoteness, no hideout where he can build strength free of the knowledge that at any time you may appear. Before [music] the Americans came, enemy [music] forces could gather in such places, stockpile supplies, rest, train men, and not worry much about visitors. Not anymore. You'll plow through the mud when that's what it takes. But that's not all it takes because part of the battlefield is up there where the air gets thin and at the lower altitudes where it sometimes gets thick with flack and SAM missiles. You'll know in time what it's like to take off for your [music] 100th mission heading for some final rail head or depot. [music] and you'll sit [music] and watch them take up the aircraft you've worked on and hope it'll work out all right again. Especially this time [music] Maybe you'll fly in one of the big [music] jet tankers that make it possible for tactical jets to reach targets far beyond their normal fuel range. Flying rock steady in the lower stratosphere [music] while your customers take their turns at the fuel pump. Question. How do you refuel a jet in flight from another jet in flight? Answered [music] very carefully. [music] You'll remember what it was like. The high route [music] where they can't reach you from the ground. Then the approach [music] to the target. Here they can reach you. They sure try. Then the target itself. Railroad, bridge, highway. The few moments that are so rushed it seems like you got plenty of time for everything. Or maybe you do your damage from higher up in the [music] big 52s that deliver a couple of carloads at a time. But whichever way you fly, it'll be your job to get there and back again. [music] >> [music] >> You'll go where it is and you'll see what it's about and you'll hear it expressed with simple clarity. >> It's the kind of deal like everybody says, "Yeah, I'm waving a flag, but I'm not." But at the same time, you know, where are you going to uh where you going to stop it at? You know, where's where's communism? Are you going to wait alert in uh the Philippines or in Australia or San Francisco or De Mo, Iowa? You know, you stop it here or wait till somewhere later on. And I don't think most of the people think about that. And like me, you know what? What happens? You know, if uh if I get shot down, too mean, they never get me. Anyway, the contrails you'll leave in the sky over Vietnam are no half-hazard [music] pattern. The coordination of your striking power is as controlled as the moves at a chess match. In fact, your job may well be in the ground coordination, control, and communication support that makes tactical air action work. >> [bell] [music] >> You may be a part of the team that mans one of the major ground control centers, or one of those who take a completely staffed and equipped control center [music] up into the sky to direct the action from there. [music] Maybe you'll be one of the pinpoint boys flying one of those stump jumpers down in among the hilltops, marking the spot with smoke for the guys upstairs to home in on. Heat. Hey, Heat. [music] Or maybe you'll be part of the vast communications operation on the ground. One of some 20,000 men involved in making sure the word gets to where it needs to be immediately, if [music] not sooner. Relaying messages with the most extensive communications facilities ever assembled in a combat theater. passing the essential facts from the unit in the field, providing instantaneous contact from where the action is to where the decisions must be made as to what the next move is. Your job might even be to help with the [music] operation of equipment which reaches into space itself to blaze a trail for instant communications halfway around the Earth. satellite communications facilities which bounce a signal off a relay station in orbit and right into the huge white catcher mitts in the United States. This space age stuff too is part of the teamwork [music] you'll be putting into action in Vietnam. In all these ways and more, you'll be putting your [music] skill and determination up against forces that, but for you, would long since have meant the death of a free nation. But you'll also [music] be doing a lot more than just combating the enemy. You'll see the face of need. It's not hard to find in this part of [music] the world, and you'll work to help meet that need, working with representatives of Vietnam's government. Step [music] by step, a village at a time, you will move toward bringing security to villages and hamlets that have known nothing but trouble since their senior citizens were children. Pacification means just that. [music] It means clearing hamlets and villages of VC terrorists. It is the creation of long-term security and the establishment of an active local [music] government. Free movement from one village to the next means a new and better social, political, and economic life [music] for the people of Vietnam. [music] You'll see the return of people to their homes, to their fields, with the assurance of their government [music] that they will have a new beginning, a new freedom from terror, a chance to enjoy the harvest of their own labor. [music] into remote villages and hamlets. You'll take more than hope. You'll take your skill, [music] your knowledge of medicine, and perhaps most important of all, your desire to really help. People who may never have seen a doctor before will watch your competent hands at work and learn to trust. They'll learn, too, [music] the basic points of personal hygiene. If you don't have kids of your own yet, when the time comes, you'll be an expert on a Saturday night bath. [music] Giving a bath seems like such a little thing, but you'll learn that the little [music] things, the genuine human things, can make a big difference to people. At the huge port facilities, you'll handle more than ammunition and copter [music] parts. You'll see the tangible evidence that there are plenty of people who care. And you'll pass that evidence along to wherever the need is great. [music] Whatever there is to give, there is a need for it. When people have [music] nothing, even the smallest gift has great meaning. It may be you'll get together with guys of your own unit to sponsor a nursery, [music] a place for kids to be clean and safe and watched over and have a party once in a while. [music] >> [music] >> Civic action takes in a lot of things. We mentioned earlier the program of returning [music] rice stolen by the Vietkong to our South Vietnamese friends. You'll lend a hand in that. Just plain hard work. But knowing how badly that rice is needed, [music] maybe that'll make the work go easier. You may never see the faces of the people those bags of rice go [music] to except in your mind's eye. Then again, your particular operation chow time may well be a face to face thing. If so, you'll have good company. An awful lot of you will look at the face of hunger and be glad you could do something about it right then and there. And this is the idea that you will help to get across that you were here to help do something [music] about the problems. It's doubly convincing because so often you will do it all on your own. >> [music] >> Maybe what you will remember about civic action is working alongside Vietnamese servicemen and [music] villagers to build a schoolhouse or a merrygoround for an orphanage playground [music] or spending off duty hours sawing and hammering and painting to help the people of some village [music] provide themselves with a church. This is the kind of thing you'll [music] do in hundreds of locations and you'll leave behind more than can be weighed in scales or measured with a slide rule. You'll also work directly with your [music] counterparts in Vietnamese military, an adviser and ally as well as a friend. [music] And your role as adviser is one whose importance will remain long after you personally have returned [music] home. In fact, one day your work as adviser will quite possibly have been a major factor in [music] giving the Vietnamese the practical know-how to continue to build the strength of freedom in their nation. For your part, you'll gain an understanding of a people and a culture far different from your own. [music] And in the process, you'll make friends. Quite apart from the importance of this to the overall effort. And it is plenty important. It will give you a broader outlook, an added dimension of experience that will benefit [music] you all your life. >> [music] >> You'll see a lot that you will not soon forget. [music] You'll see the future, the potential for the future in the faces of the children. [music] in their [music] energy, their eagerness for life, [music] their hunger to learn. >> Ready? One again. Okay. >> 1 2 3 4 5 >> You'll see them cry, but you'll make them laugh. >> [music] [music] >> And all along you'll stick at your job, [music] never losing sight of how much is still to be done. In [music] every corner of Vietnam, in every service, in every kind of duty assignment, you'll learn something about the price [music] and the pricelessness of freedom. [music] You'll see and face the fact that never changes, that freedom takes defending, and free men have the responsibilities that [music] go with freedom. So that these people [music] may exercise these responsibilities. Each one of you is serving. That they may have the right to choose their own destiny. Each one of you is sacrificing. History will have to record what you will gain. But now, today, as you begin your tour in Vietnam, you can do so with the knowledge that you'll be a part of an effort [music] to give an entire people a chance to move toward a future of their own in freedom. Each of you has [music] a right to feel a sense of individual worth, a greater awareness of your own value as a free man and as a [music] citizen. Good luck and God bless you all. >> [music] >> Woo!