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SUPPLEMENT: Movies - "Boys in Company C'

By VVAW

RELIVING VIETNAM

The Boys in Company C is a very good movie about the Vietnam War. It's filled with scenes that most vets will recognize, remember and relate to. It's a kind of enlisted man's MASH (movie version), laced with humor and showing some of the episodes that raised questions about the nature of the war for those who fought it--the lust for body count, the senseless patrols, the incredible notion that wiping out the Vietnamese people was the best way to "save" them.

This is the first actual Vietnam War movie in over ten years. While there have been many TV shows depicting crazy vets (dopers, psychopaths, criminals) and the recent movie Heroes which dealt with a returned-home vet, the only other movie which focused on the war itself was John Wayne's Green Berets, a feeble failure in its attempt to whip up some kind of mass enthusiasm for the war. People should take the opportunity to see Boys in Company C because it presents a mainly accurate view of the war and captures some of the reality of Vietnam.

The film begins by introducing its five main characters just as they are entering Marine bootcamp. (It's worth noting that the film covers a lot and compresses a lot of experiences into only tow hours so cannot develop many of its themes very fully.) There's Alvin Foster, the narrator from the Midwest; Washington, a ghetto Black; Billy Ray Pike, the "all American" boy with a slight drug problem; Fazio, a latter-day Fonz from Brooklyn; and Bisbee the basic hippy drafted into the Marines.

The film follows them through basic in what has to be the most realistic account of that ordeal ever filmed, complete with accurate language. It's hilarious--and true. Often when vets reminisce about basic we recall the funny things about it, but with a grim undertone (how many people we went through basic with didn't come back from 'Nam?) Both the funniness and firmness are in the movie, including a good through simple approach to discrimination against Blacks in the military. While there are few Blacks and other minorities in Company C--hardly an accurate reflection of the high percentage of minorities in front-line companies--the movie gets at the important truth of how national differences tended to disappear in actual combat situations where it made little difference if the man covering your ass during a firefight was Black or white or Latin, or if the medic who patched you up was a different color.

But the crux of the film takes place in Vietnam. Many scenes hit home about the nature of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Particularly striking is a scene in which Company C led by a captain who you hope will soon be fragged goes on patrol.

The captain is looking to please his superiors with a high body count. In the process he kills off several soldiers. After taking fire and returning it, he orders several GIs to find the VC bodies. When they can't find any, he assumes they escaped to a nearby town via a tunnel. He calls in artillery to level the town ( which always provided the opportunity to count every civilian body in the town and boost the body count). Sickened by this, the Black GI confronts the captain. The captain responds that "It's an enemy town." "They're not the enemy," the GI says; "You are."

This is the best single line in the film. Forcefully, it shows how many GIs, confronted with an actual situation, had the sudden shock of basic understanding about the nature of the war, and who, on a perceptual level, was a friend and who was the enemy. It took a little longer and, in some cases, repeated experiences such as this, to begin to understand that the real enemy wasn't mainly the captains or even the colonels, but the corporate system and its bosses which sent us off to defend and expand their profits overseas.

The movie portrays many of the other situations we had to confront, situations which were at odds with our supposed reason for being in Vietnam and which, in the long run, helped us gain some kind of understanding of the war. The corrupt Vietnamese district chiefs; the misinformation from G-2 (Intelligence); the affection we had for the Vietnamese people we came in contact with off the battlefield; the hatred we had for some of the officers. Problems common to the American GI--the black market, drugs, even the clap--are dealt with in a simple but good way in the film. The preview audience where we viewed the movie cheered each time one such problem was resolved.

The film isn't perfect. As in MASH the filmmakers opt for symbolism that is too simple--contact sports. In MASH it was the famous football game; in Company C it's soccer. Suddenly, the stark reality of the war turns into a soccer game where men fight men, one team wins and one loses. The audience turns into a cheering section for the Americans against their Vietnamese opponents and much of the complexity of the situation as many of us saw it in Vietnam is glossed over.

In fact, of course, war is not just a "game." It is an extension of politics. Early in the film one of the characters raises the point that there is a civil war going on in Vietnam--that's a little closer to the point but the political context is lost during the soccer game. The war was a war of liberation, a war to give the Vietnamese people the right to self-determination without outside--U.S.--interference. When we look worth dying for if necessary. For many Americans, however, there was a conflict between the two.

Why? The burnings of villages, indiscriminate bombings, free fire zones where anything or anyone who moved was "enemy," and massacres such as My Lai were not just the results of mad company commanders but were part of the necessary over-all strategy of the U.S. rulers. They had not other choice in their attempts to defeat a politically directed and motivated force. For the individual GI, however, confronting these incidents after having been trained about the "rightness" of the U.S. "cause," the result was questions about what he was doing there--and finally the sense that all he wanted to do was get out alive, that "winning" the war was not something he was about to give up his life for.

Overall The Boys in Company C is a good movie. During its couple of hours, the vets become familiar buddies. It's easy to remember incidents in the field, in basic--and some of the questions that the war raised. Vets should see the film and bring their families and friends. And they should be prepared to relive some of those times which we can never erase from our memories, times which have become more and more important as we draw lessons from them which expose the nature of the system, see some of the ways to fight against it, and come to a better understanding of who in fact the real enemy is.