Vietnam War

Saad Bhutta

U.S. History II

Profess: Clark

12 May 2005

Platoon

Platoon is a story of a soldier’s perspective of the Vietnam War. The movie is for the most part told out of the eyes of members of one platoon of the 25th Infantry Division. It is a movie dedicated to all of the people who fought in the Vietnam War.

In the movie, Chris Taylor is a young man from a wealthy family, but while in college, chooses to help his country and do his duty in the Vietnam War. He is sent to Vietnam gets put in the 25th Infantry Division. Chris first has some rough times while over there. He gets bitten by ants while traveling through the jungle, and gets blamed for falling asleep while he was on watch. The North Vietnamese tried and were unsuccessful at ambushing them. However, it was not Chris’s fault (It was a soldier named Junior who fell asleep). Chris starts to miss home after some of these events happen. After being put on light duty, he gets mixed up in what some of the other soldiers were doing to deal with their depression - drugs and alcohol. He also meets some nice people such as King and Big Harold in the process.

The Platoon soon sets out again, patrolling the jungle. They discover a Vietnamese bunker complex and soon after discover something else: Manny, one of their soldiers is missing. The soldiers go through all of the fortified area, and two of them set off a mine. Lieutenant Wolfe then gets word to move his men to a nearby village, which was thought to have Vietnamese soldiers in hiding. On their way, they discover Manny dead, tied to a tree. The soldiers then made their way to the village where they take out their frustrations on the people and their belongings. Chris goes off on a Vietnamese couple that hid from him. Bunny urges Chris to kill him and later, Bunny himself kills the poor Vietnamese man. Meanwhile, Barnes has a talk with the headman of the village about the weapons the platoon has found. Barnes kills the man’s wife and threatens to kill his daughter in order to get him to talk. Elias then breaks up the episode and punches Barnes. In the end, the soldiers burn the village and take the villagers with them. Chris doesn’t think that it is fair and intervenes with some of the soldiers trying to rape a poor village girl. He says, “She isn’t an animal.”

Back at the base camp, the men discuss Barnes' behavior. Elias goes to a lieutenant and tells him of the affair. The lieutenant then tells them that if people were killed for no reason, he would take it up in court. Again, the men are patrolling through the jungle and the Vietnamese attack them. This time the casualties are a little more than in the previous battles. Chris gets his first true kill and gets excited about it. Elias devises a plan and scopes out the enemy position. Barnes goes to get him after Wolfe tells them to get out of the area because they were going to bomb it. Elias runs through the woods and finally finds Barnes. Barnes gives him an evil look and then shoots him. He goes to tell Chris and the men with him to evacuate and tells them that he found Elias dead, “about a hundred yards back.” Chris reluctantly believes him and the men are loaded on to helicopters to get out of the area. As they lift off, Chris sees Elias running away from