Media spin worked on the American psyche in many ways to turn them increasingly against America's involvement in the war.  As I mentioned above, the news stories coming out of Nam that year would lead one to believe we were getting our butts kicked all over the place.  And it mattered little that the real truth was quite the opposite.  But any reports there were of military victories were far overshadowed by stories focusing on the tragic, inevitable by-products of war.  I am not suggesting that these things should be totally ignored.  They were a very real part of the story.   But it seemed to me, the stories, and especially the visual media that were published during that time were consistently carefully chosen for maximum shock value for the American viewer.  Images of burned-out villages and Napalm-charred corpses that were paraded on American TV screens on the evening news did little to garner support for the war.  As much as could be done with pictures and video, they brought the very real horrors of war home to the viewing public, during the family dinner hour. 

The images that came out of that war were powerful persuaders indeed!  And  the opponents of our involvement in Vietnam knew how to use them to maximum effect.  Who could possibly view the sight of a dead baby, killed by a stray bullet, a child with a missing leg, lost to a land mine, or the charred, unrecognizable remains of an innocent peasant farmer, a once living, breathing human being, and argue that it is a good, or even a neccessary thing?  Were there innocents killed in the Vietnam War?   Yes, there most certainly were.  There were those killed by mines and booby traps, set by the VC.  There were those who were simply in the wrong place when a fire fight broke out and became victims of a stray bullet, seeking a target of flesh.  And it is tragically true, Napalm and carpet bombing, the very weapons that saved so many American lives, also took the lives of more than a few innocent Vietnamese civilians, along with those of the VC and NVA.  Was it therefore an evil war, and were our motivations for being there also evil?  They most certainly were NOT! 

War is never a neat and pretty game.  It is always brutal, ugly and deadly serious!  As we would find out, the hero doesn't always win, and the innocents are not always saved.  But the radicals at home, with the all too willing help of the media, succeeded in their campaign to vilify us, and to portray the Vietnam War as one unique in brutality and carnage toward the civilian population - an "evil war" as they called it.  But the truth is, in any war, there are always innocents caught in the middle.  The war in Vietnam was not at all unique in that respect.  During the Allied bombing of the German city of Dresden late in World War II, tens of thousands of innocent, helpless German civilians died horrible, fiery deaths.  Among them, of course, were many women and children.  Yet there were no protest marches in the streets of America back then.  And the media focused on the brave men fighting on our side and the sacrifices they were making and the risks they were taking to win the war for us.  It was understood that in war, even innocent people die.  And as for the war in the Pacific, when Bill Leary, a Japanese linguist, wrote his memoirs, he had some things to say about the civilian casualties that were incurred there in the Battle for Okinawa.

His memories of what happened there on Okinawa were not at all unlike the kinds of things that happened in Vietnam, and his are words to which every Vietnam veteran can relate in a very personal way.  Once having seen it, who could ever forget the Pulitzer winning photo of terrified little 9 year old Kim Phouc, fleeing her devastated village?  Who could forget the image of her scrawny naked frame, the pained expression with mouth agape, tears streaming down her anguished childish face, and her flesh burning with American Napalm?  I never will forget it!  It haunts me to this very day!  If there is a single picture that epitomizes the tragedy of that war, this one surely is it.  I can scarce contain the sorrow it sometimes dredges from the depths of my soul when I see it unexpectedly.  The napalm was mistakenly dropped on the village of  Trang Bang by a South Vietnamese pilot.  But it was, after all, American supplied napalm that wreaked the destruction. 

When the story was first reported to the world, it was dutifully pointed out by the Associated Press news organization that no American forces were involved in the actions at Trang Bang. But as the anti war factions quickly seized on the story, that fact was conveniently left out of the retelling and was eventually forgotten altogether. Besides, visual images are always remembered long after the words of the accompanying story have been forgotten. It was images such as this that did much to turn Americans against their own military.  "Baby killers! Baby killers!" they chanted - as if it were intentional on our part!  Those who were shouting such epithets back home had no understanding at all of what it was like over there and what was in our hearts.  God help us and them, we loved those children!  Their tears were ours! Their suffering was ours!

The incident at Trang Bang took place in 1972, more than three years after my return Stateside.  Yet I took what happened there very personally.  No matter where I was at the time, the war was inescapable.  It had become an integral part of me, because I had been a part of it.  To this day, many veterans of that war, myself included, feel somehow personally guilty, not for what happened at Trang Bang, but because we collectively failed to accomplish the good that we had set out to do.  And rightly or wrongly, on some level we feel responsible for the ultimate fate of those whom we failed to save, especially the children - most especially the children!  But we were there, at least in our minds, to bring these people freedom and a piece of the "American Dream", for which they longed.  It was the only good reason for us to be there.  They who had lived for so long in abject poverty, amid death and war and hunger and disease deserved something better.  We were striving desperately to bring them that!  But images such as these carried far more weight with the American public than any explanation, however eloquent, or any motive, however pure.  Exacerbated by such images, the disunity at home ultimately doomed our noble effort to failure.  And in the end, it seemed we had succeeded only in bringing the Vietnamese people more death and destruction.  How tragic it all was!