The following war photos were taken by ace war photographer Henry Hyuet. His father was French, his mother Vietnamese. He was omnipresent during the Vietnam war. His pictures shaped public opinion in the US. He worked first for the UPI, then for the AP. He was killed in 1971 when the US helicopter on which he was aboard was shot down by the Vietcong.
We did a fine job there. If it happened in World War II, they still would be telling stories about it. But it happened in Vietnam, so nobody knows about it. They don't even tell recruits about it today. Marines don't talk about Vietnam. We lost. They never talk about losing. So it's just wiped out, all of that's off the slate, it doesn't count. It makes you a little bitter.
John Muir, in Al Santoli, Everything We Had: An Oral History of the Vietnam War, 1981.
One reason the Kennedy and Johnson administrations failed to take an orderly, rational approach to the basic questions underlying Vietnam was the staggering variety and complexity of other issues we faced. Simply put, we faced a blizzard of problems, there were only twenty-four hours in a day, and we often did not have time to think straight.
Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect, 1995
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This tired US soldier symbolises the state of the US during the Vietnam war
VIETNAM QUOTES
No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.
--Richard M. Nixon, 1985
The war was won on both sides: by the Vietnamese on the ground, by the Americans in the electronic mental space. And if the one side won an ideological and political victory, the other made Apocalypse Now and that has gone right around the world.
--Jean Baudrillard, 1986
America has made no reparation to the Vietnamese, nothing. We are the richest people in the world and they are among the poorest. We savaged them, though they had never hurt us, and we cannot find it in our hearts, our honor, to give them help--because the government of Vietnam is Communist. And perhaps because they won.
--Martha Gellhorn, 1986
VIETNAM QUOTES
No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.
--Richard M. Nixon, 1985
The war was won on both sides: by the Vietnamese on the ground, by the Americans in the electronic mental space. And if the one side won an ideological and political victory, the other made Apocalypse Now and that has gone right around the world.
--Jean Baudrillard, 1986
America has made no reparation to the Vietnamese, nothing. We are the richest people in the world and they are among the poorest. We savaged them, though they had never hurt us, and we cannot find it in our hearts, our honor, to give them help--because the government of Vietnam is Communist. And perhaps because they won.
--Martha Gellhorn, 1986
Last tributes to those who died fighting
I was proud of the youths who opposed the war in Vietnam because they were my babies.
--Benjamin Spock, 1988
All the wrong people remember Vietnam. I think all the people who remember it should forget it, and all the people who forgot it should remember it.
--Michael Herr, 1989
I was proud of the youths who opposed the war in Vietnam because they were my babies.
--Benjamin Spock, 1988
All the wrong people remember Vietnam. I think all the people who remember it should forget it, and all the people who forgot it should remember it.
--Michael Herr, 1989
1965. US soldiers on a twelve day patrol wade through a river as it rains. Life was tough, to say the least.
Some people just wanted to blow it all to hell, animal, vegetable and mineral. They wanted a Vietnam they could fit into their car ashtrays.
Michael Herr, Dispatches, 1977
Some people just wanted to blow it all to hell, animal, vegetable and mineral. They wanted a Vietnam they could fit into their car ashtrays.
Michael Herr, Dispatches, 1977
We did a fine job there. If it happened in World War II, they still would be telling stories about it. But it happened in Vietnam, so nobody knows about it. They don't even tell recruits about it today. Marines don't talk about Vietnam. We lost. They never talk about losing. So it's just wiped out, all of that's off the slate, it doesn't count. It makes you a little bitter.
John Muir, in Al Santoli, Everything We Had: An Oral History of the Vietnam War, 1981.
One reason the Kennedy and Johnson administrations failed to take an orderly, rational approach to the basic questions underlying Vietnam was the staggering variety and complexity of other issues we faced. Simply put, we faced a blizzard of problems, there were only twenty-four hours in a day, and we often did not have time to think straight.
Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect, 1995
Getting sleep any which one can. Sleep is a luxury during war.
Wounded US soldiers
1965. A medic comforts a wounded soldier
A sombre officer kneels beside his dead man
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