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This clip shows an interview with Neil Davis about his experiences as an Australian combat cameraman during the Vietnam War. The clip opens with Davis stating that the South Vietnamese Army always did more of the fighting than the US troops. The clip cuts to footage of South Vietnamese soldiers in combat as Davis’s voice-over praises their fighting capabilities. Davis comments that the Americans were called ‘the elephants’ because they could be heard coming with their tanks, noise and heavy equipment. There is footage of young US soldiers being interviewed during combat.

Educational value points

• The Vietnam War was a contrast between the military might of US troops on the one hand and the lightly equipped Vietcong guerillas and North Vietnamese Army on the other. As reported by Neil Davis in this clip, the South Vietnamese soldiers did not have much respect for the US soldiers, calling them ‘elephants’ due to the sound they made moving through the jungle. More than 3 million US servicemen fought in the Vietnam War, which ended in the victory of North Vietnam.

• The Vietnam conflict (1954–75) stemmed from the war for Vietnamese independence from the colonial French, and then from 1959 became a civil war between communist-led North Vietnam and South Vietnam, supported by some democratic countries. The USA and Australia became involved in the Vietnam War in a bid to ‘contain’ communism in South-East Asia, viewing the defence of South Vietnam as a crucial part of the Cold War between the communist states of Russia and China and the democracies of the world.

• The Vietcong was the name of the guerilla force that, with the North Vietnamese Army, fought against South Vietnam. Vietcong personnel were mostly recruited in South Vietnam and received military aid and training from the North Vietnamese Army. They fought a guerilla war of ambush and sabotage and mostly controlled the countryside rather than the cities. They were referred to as ‘VC’ or ‘Charlie’ by Australian and US troops.

• Neil Davis (1934–85) was one of Australia’s most respected combat cameramen and war correspondents, filming and reporting on the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1975. His coverage of the Vietnam War was unusual in that he chose to film the War from a South Vietnamese rather than a US perspective and he was interested in the effects of war and combat on individuals. In 1985 he was killed while filming a coup in Bangkok, Thailand.

• The South Vietnamese Army, known as the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), fought against the North Vietnamese Army and the Vietcong during the Vietnam War from 1956 to the fall of Saigon in 1975. Neil Davis states in this clip that the South Vietnamese troops, rather than the US troops, bore the brunt of the conflict. There were 224,000 South Vietnamese troops killed in the War.

• This clip is taken from the film Frontline, a documentary by David Bradbury on Neil Davis’s 11-year experience covering the Vietnam War. The film was called Frontline because Davis chose to work in the front-line battle areas with the South Vietnamese Army as it was their War, about which they cared very much and which they fought on their own terms. He believed that the South Vietnamese were good fighters looked down upon by the USA and its allies and wrongly blamed for the losses experienced in the War.

• Media coverage of the Vietnam War was unrestricted, unlike that of the First and Second World Wars, where there was government censorship of war footage shown to the public. Television brought the horror of war into the living rooms of the USA and Australia, contributing to the War’s increasing unpopularity with the public, which led to increasingly large antiwar protests and the withdrawal of US and Australian troops from the conflict.

• The young US soldiers, mostly conscripts, who are interviewed in this clip are not sure why they are fighting. Many soldiers fought bravely and believed in the US cause in Vietnam, but many did not. In 1971 the Armed Forces Journal published a report stating that the morale, discipline and battle-worthiness of the US troops in Vietnam was very low. It reported that individual units had avoided or refused combat, troops were drug-ridden or dispirited and officers were being killed by their own troops.

This clip starts approximately 20 minutes into the documentary.

Cameraman Neil Davis is interviewed.
Neil The world at large generally believed that the Americans were doing most of the fighting. This wasn’t so. The South Vietnamese army always did more of the fighting. In fact, for all of those years during the Vietnam War that the Americans were committed, I can only remember three weeks in which more American soldiers were killed than South Vietnamese soldiers._

The clip cuts to footage of South Vietnamese soldiers in combat as Davis’s voiceover praises their fighting capabilities.
Neil I preferred to go with the South Vietnamese forces because it was their war. It meant a great deal to them, and they were fighting it on their own terms. I know it was fashionable for the Americans and the other allies to blame the South Vietnamese army for the losses in Vietnam over the years, but in fact they fought very well and the Vietcong acknowledged that. Americans, they used to call ‘the elephants’. They said they bumble around, you can hear them coming a mile off. They could smell them too, smell their shave cream and toothpaste and cigarettes and things like that.

Archival film: a tractor moving through the Vietnamese jungle, clearing the way for armed footsolidiers.
Neil It was like a travelling circus and Barnum and Bailey were on the way. You could see that. If you were a Vietcong, you could avoid them very easily. Americans were burdened down with about 70 pounds of equipment, plus very, very heavy flak jackets. That’s armoured-protected vests. And on one occasion, I suddenly heard an American yelling out in great fear, as he was, because his hand grenades he’d attached to his pack, his military pack on the back, some of them had loosed. The South Vietnamese and the Vietcong used to wear them here, where they could take them quickly and they could get to them if anything happened. He had them there and a twig went through the pin of the grenade, and he went on and pulled the pin out he had no hope to get to it. He was clawing about, trying to get to it, and of course it blew up and killed him.

Archival film: Soldiers shoot guns from behind a trench wall. Two soldiers are interviewed in the midst of the action.
Soldier Not knowing where they are, that’s the worst thing. Running around the sewers, the gutters, anywhere. Could be anywhere. Just hoping to stay alive day-to-day. I just want to go back home and go to school. That’s about it.
Neil Have you lost any friends?
Soldier Quite a few. We lost one the other day. Whole thing stinks, really.
Soldier 2 Awful sick of it. I’ll be so glad to go home. I don’t know. It’s just the worst area we’ve been in since I’ve been in Vietnam.
Neil Do you think it’s worth it?
Soldier 2 Yeah. I don’t know. They say we’re fighting for something. I don’t know.
A mortar explodes in the distance.