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Army Signal OCS - Video Collection

     Know Your Enemy      

A movie prepared by our side but based on video shot by their side! With barely a nod to the irony involved, the producers of this video created a movie designed to help US soldiers in Vietnam know their enemy... by showing them propaganda films produced by the enemy. Yes, really. Only in the 60's you are saying? That's what we thought too. Running a scant 18:23 minutes in length, the movie is entitled Know Your Enemy, and makes an effort to explain who the Viet Cong were, how they worked, and what one should expect when one came up against them in combat. Interestingly, the footage used to underscore the message came from captured video produced by the COSVN (CŎS-vĭn) itself... or as we would have called them: Charlie.

For those of you who have forgotten, COSVN stands for the Central Office for South Vietnam, and was the American name given to what the communists called the Văn phòng Trung ương Cục miền Nam. Originally planned by North Vietnam as being the command organization assigned to oversee the communist effort in the southern half of the country, its purpose was to manage and coordinate all Viet Cong activities in South Vietnam. Naturally, among those activities was the task given to Charlie to win the hearts and minds of the locals... not unlike the same task that we were given. In carrying out their job however, Charlie depended on a series of propaganda movies, which were used to help explain to the illiterate among the southern population what the Viet Cong and NVA cause was all about.

The pictures used in the attached video were produced by COSVN, and were used both for that purpose as well as to train new recruits. After being captured by our side, we used them to train our own soldiers about the Viet Cong, and how to fight them.

Please note, the audio on this video is less than perfect... but then again, what would you expect? How that war was fought was less than perfect too...

 -- Length 00:18:23 minutes --



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