The Anderson Platoon

Here's possibly the best documentary ever made on the American phase of the Vietnam War: La Section Anderson / The Anderson Platoon (1967), by Pierre Schoendoerffer. It won an Oscar for the best documentary in 1968. This is archival footage of the original broadcast. The host speaking in French at the beginning retells about how Pierre Schoendoerffer reported on and survived the battle of Dien Bien Phu but had all his film footage confiscated by the Viet Minh when he was captured. So the idea came up of sending him back to Vietnam to do the documentary he always wanted to complete, this time accompanying US forces. He and his cameraman and sound guy spent 6 weeks with the Anderson platoon:



Full English language version (scroll down):

https://medicinthegreentime.com/the-anderson-platoon/

The picture quality is not as good, but the various other English versions I found on-line were edited, redubbed, etc.

Thanks for adding this, it is a lost treasure no doubt.

I love the irony of the Sunday service happening with the artillery banging away in the background.

I watched this a long time ago, but probably forgotten all the good stuff.  I'll have to give it another watch.

I could write the same thing FlyinSquirrel did. At one time I had a VHS of it.

Tom

Whoops - loaded the wrong link: the French version is now on-line. The picture quality is better than any of the English versions on-line.