I read, and remember to this day, Micheal Herr’s “Dispatches” which was part of the basis for “Apocalypse Now”.
My problem with Platoon is that it was advertised as “The Most Real Account of Fighting in ‘Nam”, which may have been true (at the time, we’d had Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter) but it all seems very contrived.
And since we’ve seen what Oliver Stone is capable of, I just wanted to know what real vets thought... then and now.
Michael Herr wrote much of Captain Willard’s narration in A.N. The scene at the Do Lung Bridge where a soldier named Roach kills a sniper with a mortar was taken from Dispatches.
Herr’s vision of Vietnam was a psychadelic rock and roll fueled acid trip.