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VFW Magazine Feb 2004

Season still open on Vietnam vets - Now hear this: brief news items of interest to veterans and their families
In total contrast to Time's Person of the Year, veterans of the Vietnam War are still Hollywood's all-purpose villains. Instead of praise, they are vilified in Tinsel Town. TNT's Word of Honor, which aired in December, came up with a preposterous plot where a 1st Cavalry Division infantry squad in February 1972 massacres the French medical staff of a Red Cross hospital near Hue.

The producers managed to dredge up every negative stereotype about Vietnam, including My Lai, drugs, rape, suicide, violent rage, long hair, mutiny and mayhem. One of their own described the men in his unit as "neanderthals washed up as the dregs of society for the Army." The unit's CO was called a "disgrace and dishonor to the Army" by a current day officer.

Their defense for committing this "crime against humanity" was temporary insanity: The men did not believe in the war and had "lost their minds for their country" for one day, according to Hollywood's skewed script.

In a like-minded manner, newspapers have emphasized a 1967 atrocity. Headlines screamed: "Rogue GIs Unleashed Wave of Terror in Central Highlands," "Elite U.S. Unit Killed Hundreds of Vietnamese Civilians," "Slaughter in Vietnam Reported" and "Vietnam War Atrocities Weren't Punished." A New York Times story appeared Dec. 28.

On the upside, B.G. "Jug" Burkett, author of the 1998 book Stolen Valor, was recognized for countering such disparaging stories. He received the Army's Distinguished Civilian Service Award from former President George H.W. Bush at the Bush Library in College Station, Texas. "The people who served in Vietnam are the finest troops we ever produced," Burkett said.

VFW Magazine
March 2003

A `long way home' for the truth about Vietnam veterans: for two Vietnam veteran film producers, the quest to convey the facts about vets of that war has become their personal crusade. But those in the "mainstream" media are determined to perpetuate the negative stereotypes - award-winning documentary television series deals with the Vietnam War
Susan Katz Keating
Shortly after receiving a prestigious international award last year for producing a documentary television series, three Colorado-based filmmakers thought that our nation was finally ready to hear their message about the Vietnam War and its veterans.

"For too long, America has been given a distorted view about Vietnam" says director Calvin Crane, whose four-part series, The Long Way Home Project, takes particular aim against negative misconceptions about Vietnam veterans. "We wanted to cut through the myth and the fantasy, and tell the truth after all these years."

Winning the highest award for a documentary television series at the 2002 Houston International Film Festival seemed like a turning point. "The award gave credibility," Crane says. "We thought, `This is great. Now we can get the message out.'"

Instead, Crane and his two Flickers Films partners--producer Christel Crane and executive producer Robert Martinez--encountered consistent rejection from television media buyers.

"Over and over again, the media gatekeepers told us the series was too positive," Martinez says, "They said we didn't have balance."

Imbalance of another type prompted the trio to produce their series.

Successful Vet the Norm

Martinez and Crane, who both served in Vietnam, came home from the war to a country that denigrated their service. Crane's wife, Christel, saw that same denigration applied to her father, also a Vietnam veteran.

As the years progressed, Martinez and the Cranes inwardly seethed as cultural views about Vietnam veterans solidified around a negative stereotype.

In society's eyes, the Vietnam veteran became a homeless misfit, so deeply scarred by his wartime experience that he could not lead a happy, productive life. Worse yet, society imagined the Vietnam veteran as a violent psychotic in the mold of Rambo, Sylvester Stallone's characterization of a deranged Vietnam veteran who turns his explosive rage on society.

Vietnam vets have long complained of the offensive misrepresentations.

"It's an insult to good people," says Brad Bradshaw, a Fairfax County, Va. magistrate who served as a navigator on board an AC-130 gunship over Vietnam. "To make us out as crazed animals--that's just wrong."

Veterans also have long known the truth about their own.

Jan Scruggs, founder of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., points but that Vietnam veterans are among the most successful members of society. Their ranks include FBI Director Robert Mueller; AOL founder James Kimsey; and E*Trade CEO Christos Cotsakos.

"Veterans have succeeded in areas ranging from law enforcement to the clergy," Scruggs says. "The successful veteran is the norm." And yet, he adds: "The image of the troubled Vietnam vet pervades American popular culture."

In 1999, Calvin and Christel Crane--fed up by still another television show depicting negative views of the Vietnam veteran--decided to take action.

"We knew that someone had to speak the truth," says Crane. "So we decided to do it." On his first tour in Vietnam in 1968, Crane served as a photographer with the 4th Psychological Operations Group. Throughout 1969 until May 1970, he was a photojournalist assigned to MACV.

The couple scoured documents from the National Archives and Records Administration and other sources, and gathered statistics that proved what they instinctively knew: The Vietnam veteran is a stable, valuable member of society.

(Such statistics were compiled by the Houston Vietnam Veterans Leadership Program and read into the Congressional Record on Oct. 1, 1982.)

The Cranes found that as of 1985, for example, eight of every 10 Vietnam veterans were married to their first spouse. Of that number, 90% had children. Also in 1985, 30% of Vietnam veterans had attended college, as compared to 24% of their non-military peers. In 1994, the unemployment rate for all men over age 18 was 6%; for Vietnam veterans, the rate was 3.9%.

The Cranes compiled other eye-opening statistics. For example, in contrast to the myth perpetuated by Platoon (Oliver Stone's 1987 film) that servicemen in Vietnam indulged in murderous, dope-fueled misdeeds, the vast majority behaved admirably. Nearly all--97%--were honorably discharged from the service. Today, 90% who saw heavy combat say they are proud to have served.

Additionally, the Cranes found, the Rambo-inspired myth of the Vietnam veteran as criminal is pure fiction. Numerous studies have concluded that a statistically insignificant number of Vietnam veterans landed in prison after returning home.

Assembling the Team

Freshly motivated to puncture the stereotypes, the Cranes loaded their film equipment into a van and set off with their three children and dog on a 13,000 mile trek to find other Vietnam veterans. The Cranes planned to film the veterans, and to show them as the successful, well-integrated men that they are.

Along the way, the couple met Colorado businessman Bob Martinez, a Vietnam veteran who was distraught that his daughter's school had presented as fact the discredited Platoon. Martinez realized: "If we don't tell the truth, it's never going to get told."

Martinez worked out of Pleiku with the 4th Psychological Operations Group, assisting U.S. and South Vietnamese units from October 1969 to September 1970.

Martinez sold his construction company to help finance the project, becoming Flickers Films executive producer.

While on their travels, the filmmakers also encountered Pulitzer Prize-nominated historian and author Lewis Sorley, who in turn offered to help. Sorley put the Cranes in touch with some of the most noted figures of the Vietnam War. Soon, the Cranes were conducting interviews with the likes of James R. Schlesinger, the former defense secretary; Charles S. Whitehouse, who served as the United States ambassador to Vietnam; and retired Lt. Gen. William J. McCaffrey, who was deputy-commanding general of the Army in Vietnam from 1970-72.

"Talking to these people was quite something, to someone who served in the Army as an E-6," Crane says.

The interviews also were somewhat providential, Martinez says. "These noteworthy, credible participants are the last living people who can give testimony on what happened."

Significantly, Ambassador Whitehouse died about one month after being filmed.

Crane and company compiled their valuable archival footage into the series of four episodes.

Opposition Insists on Anti-War Perspective

The first episode, Men versus Myth, addresses misconceptions about men who served in Vietnam. The second part, How We Won the War, shows battlefield victories that are commonly portrayed as defeats. How We Lost the War depicts the Left's wartime betrayal of America. The fourth episode, The New Diaspora, shows the struggles of the Vietnamese people who were left to deal with the aftermath of their country's defeat by Communist forces.

The series earned high praise from historians and veterans alike. Former Persian Gulf War commander, retired Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, agreed to appear on camera as a host in the beginning segment of each episode.

In his introduction, Schwarzkopf says: "The Long Way Home Project will give all viewers a powerful new perspective on the events that shaped that war and the men who fought it."

But media buyers simply did not agree. They wanted the perspective of the North Vietnamese and the American anti-war protestors--a perspective the filmmakers say has been well presented.

"They've had their say," Martinez says. "But we have another story that needs to get out to the American public."

Opposition to Man versus Myth has been pronounced. Major cable outlets--PBS, CNN, The History Channel, Discovery, Questar and MSNBC--have been approached with similar results. The terms "balance" and "tone" often arise. One producer rejected it because the video was "too flag-waving."

Still, progress is being made. In addition to winning awards, project producers have garnered appearances on various news programs. The American Enterprise Institute sponsored a screening last Veterans Day and Our American Heritage Education Foundation includes the video set in its package distributed in high schools.

Such public exposure will help resolve the memory of Vietnam, what Christel Crane terms "the lump under the carpet of American history."

Says Calvin Crane: "We must have an accurate understanding of our own history, particularly the history of why we fight wars." Otherwise, he adds: "We can't move forward."

And then?

"Our endeavors will fail"

To learn more about this project, contact: Calvin A. Crane, The Long Way Home Project, P.O. Box 664, Castle Rock, CO 80104; (800) 945-2478.

SUSAN K. KEATING is director of special projects for the Freedom Museum in Manassas, Va. She also is author of Prisoners of Hope: Exploiting the POW/MIA Myth in America (1994).