Post World War II Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Post World War II - Essay Example The Killing Zone" (Grunt Space, 2004). From this list emerged another long list of Vietnam-inspired war movies and television series. And then, there's "We Were Soldiers Once and Young." This book inspired the movie directed by Randall Wallace and starring Mel Gibson. The book and the movie present unadulterated details about war, not from the point of view of historians, politicians, and wide-viewed bestselling authors but from the individuals who were there. Ferguson (2003) presented a detailed military and national background about the events that surrounded the la Drang memoir of Moore. The war in Vietnam was considered a "boil" during America's Cold War with the former USSR and China. While Vietnam was fresh from its independence from colonial France, a revolution erupted as the communists controlled northern Vietnam. The 1956 Geneva Accord paved for a national election which was marred by communist rebels called the Viet Cong. America per se was under turmoil at that time as President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, with a non-interventionist new president Lyndon Johnson. Nevertheless, Johnson sent troops, using airmobile warfare initiated with the 11th Air Assault Division renamed as the 1st Cavalry Division, 7th Battalion with the mission: to find and kill the enemy. Discussion: "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young" is a book written by retired Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore, battalion commander of the 1/7 Cavalry during the la Drang campaign, together with UPI war reporter Joseph L. Galloway. It was produced with intensive interviews among Vietnam war soldiers (survivors) and their families, loved ones, and all those who were directly involved and affected by the war. Moore wrote that every Hollywood movie had shown it the wrong way, which inspired him to write the book, "to make it right this time." While it is necessary to indicate political and global trends in presenting a part of history such as the United States' war with Vietnam, Gilbert (2004) acknowledged that "Light of another kind can be found in the examinations of the wars in Viet Nam provided by world literature and the world cinema," (p 14). This is indicative of the presence and essence of other details which are all contributory to historical facts that cannot be ignored altogether. Gilbert (2004) aptly placed it when he wrote "Viet Nam has greatly contributed to the human record of the strife-torn and oppressed. From the Western-influenced individualist style that emphasized the alienation of the self to the triumph of social realism that identified death on the battlefield as the highest form of self-realization, Vietnamese prose and poetry reflects the transition from a traditional to a colonial to a modern society that many people have made in the modern era." While the book