Return With Honor

Released 1998
Directed by Freida Lee Mock, Terry Sanders
Reviewed February 13, 2002

This documentary tells the horrifying story of what American prisoners of war endured during the Vietnam war, and the film concentrates on the approximately 500 pilots who were shot down and captured. The tone of the film is rather matter-of-fact with the pilots describing their ordeals and how they were able to survive the isolation and torture for up to eight years. I'm always amazed how well human beings can adapt to whatever is thrown at them, and in this case the men relied heavily upon each other. There's no way they could've made it alone, but together they were able to find the strength. The interesting part is they did it despite the fact the Vietnamese kept them in total isolation. They weren't allowed to see or communicate with other, but they devised a brilliant solution. They used a matrix of 25 letters (they dropped 'k') and tapped conversations to each other on the concrete walls. They also had an ingeniously simple way to ask each other whether it was safe to "talk." They tapped the first five notes of "Shave and a Haircut." If it was safe, the American pilot would tap the other two notes. Thirty years later the pilots delighted in the fact that the Vietnamese never cracked that simple code in all the years they used it. It was a small victory, but it was a vital one.

One of the biggest surprises in the film is the archival footage shot and provided by the North Vietnamese. They shot high quality film of themselves shooting down the U.S. planes, and they basically kept a video diary of the pilots. I had no idea this third-world country's film capacity was so sophisticated in the 1960's. Even more amazing is how they willingly opened their film archive to Freida Lee Mock and Terry Sanders, who said they had access to everything. You'd think they would have destroyed certain footage or not allowed it to be seen (especially by Americans), and I'm guessing that had to be the case with the torture footage because we never see any. That means they either didn't film the torture sessions, or they hid or destroyed the footage. I'd have to believe the latter, since it seems they filmed everything else. Still, I was surprised at what they allowed us to see.

To me the biggest surprise of all was how early the North Vietnamese Minister of Propaganda had a game plan for winning the war. Early in the war he had a discussion with one of the pilots about how there was no way they could beat the U.S. militarily. That meant they had to win the war with propaganda, and he told the pilot they would win it on the streets of New York. The North Vietnamese were much more sophisticated than I ever suspected, and it's a little sickening to realize how easily they manipulated the American people. Our media and the hippies seemed to ignore the torture and atrocities committed by the enemy so they could concentrate on mistakes and atrocities committed by our own men. I had no idea the North Vietnamese were savvy enough about our country to map this strategy right from the beginning of the war.

It's interesting to compare what happened in Vietnam to what's happening today. The military had their hands tied behind their backs in Vietnam by the politicians, which caused hundreds of planes to be shot down unnecessarily. Apparently, we may have learned something, because we completely obliterated Iraq and Afghanistan in two different wars without losing a single plane in combat. In fact, I don't think we lost any soldiers in combat in either war. We lost some to accidents, friendly fire, a prison uprising, and one scud that hit a barracks in Iraq, but I don't believe we lost a single soldier in combat. These overwhelming victories were nothing short of phenomenal, however we must keep reminding ourselves of the lesson we learned in Vietnam. We can't afford to go in half-assed or restricted by politics--we have to go in with everything we have with no restrictions or we'll continue to have debacles like Vietnam and, more recently, Somalia.

Reviewed by Bill Alward Home
 
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