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Winter Soldier

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by Claire Fowler
In a recent Observer article, Nick Fraser of BBC’s Storyville discusses whether documentary truly has the power to effect change in the world. This is a fairly tall order for film, but if any could address current attitudes towards war, then it is perhaps Winter Soldier, screening at the ICA from the 8th May.

In 1971, one month after the notorious My Lai massacre, an anonymous filmmaking collective documented a meeting of 100 Vietnam veterans who had gathered in a Detroit hotel room to recount their experiences of combat. The men had responded to a call that went out from VVAW (Vietnam Veterans Against War) to veterans all over the country saying 'everyone is talking about the war that you know from the inside. If you want to have anything to say about it, come to Detroit and tell it like you saw it.' Largely ignored by the press at the time, the documentary team and members of the public witnessed a mass confessional, as over 100 men testified to the horrors and crimes they had both witnessed, and participated in during the Vietnam war.

Winter Soldier is that documentary, one which has been almost completely neglected in its home country for nearly 30 years. An unflinching black and white film portrait of a shockingly handsome, long-haired generation of American men of all ethnicities as they endlessly recount horrific crimes against other humans, mostly civilians. Crimes that are almost beyond comprehension, and that would have been beyond comprehension, had those committing them and colluding in them not had the strength to come forward and talk in an attempt to stop the war.
And talking is what makes this film unbearable, yet powerful. It never stops, unrelenting in its course of confession, from descriptions of children stoned to death, to women raped, entire villages burnt down, individuals horrifically mutilated. Yet it is those who talk, those we see admitting to these horrors that are most shocking. Softly spoken youthful hippies with beards, one or two large afros, soft curls, warm nervous smiles, slightly lost eyes, all reciting one hideous, brutal atrocity after another. As one of these softly spoken men, Scott Camil, a former Marine scout and forward artillery observer, recounted "If I had to go into a village and kill 150 people just to make sure there was no one there to kill me when I walked out, that's what I did."

Many of the men repeat the same phrases, echoing the informal ‘Standard Operating Procedures’ that encouraged each soldier to dehumanize the Vietnamese population to such an extent that they would collect ears as trophies, and have competitions whereby the most ears collected would receive a beer. When asked if a person killed had been a VC or a civilian, the standard, chuckling reply was apparently “ He’s a VC, I know that because he’s dead.” To the men, these were not Vietnamese people, but ‘Gooks’, and less than human. Some of those talking stumble over their words, haunted by the realization that they had been encouraged to behave like animals by their own government in order to sustain a war that became by default of such behaviour, increasingly and violently focused against a population of innocent people.

The contemporary importance of this time capsule hits home hard, and hardly needs expounding upon. The power of propaganda, lack of accountability within the military, dehumanization of the enemy, lack of training, deliberate confusion between SOP and torture, racism and sexism: all issues that continually resound in the current press.

Shocking that an anti war statement made 37 years ago, is equally, if not more relevant, to us today. This film must be seen.
Made by Winterfilm Collective, US 1972, 96 mins

Winter Soldier is out now at the ICA. For details see DFGDocs/Events.

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