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
--