Apocalypse Vietnam

WAR MUSEUM - PLANNING FOR THE NEXT EXHIBITION

I was watching a 3-part documentary on television yesterday evening. It had to do with the prosecution of the Vietnam War under Lyndon B Johnson and subsequently under Richard M Nixon. The film was titled Apocalypse Vietnam. It was a most suitable title.

Apocalypse Vietnam 

- where the average age of America's Vietnam draftees was 19. Many of them were not old enough to buy alcohol or even go into a bar in their home State. But here they were in one of the most terrible wars of all time. They had to grow up very quickly. 

The drums of war
Hanging in the ropes
Under the bellies of planes

Are filled with napalm

Ubiquitous cans of Budweiser beer
And cigarettes to shake out
Condoms for the use of our boys

Five types of VD

Folding money
For Vietnamese kids
Who find mines

Tools in the war against the VC

A farmer stands
In a paddy of rice
Two 'copters approaching

He suddenly runs
Why is he running?
The agent is orange.

Machine guns are rattling
The man disappears
He might have been the VC.

The president comes

To shake many hands
There's light at the end
Of the tunnel he says

And then he resigns
Himself to his failures
The next one's elected

And carnage soon spreads
To Laos, Cambodia
And Northern Vietnam

More bombers and bombs
Are saving more lives
Of our boys on the ground and so on