National Geographic Channel Spotlights Brothers in War

Plucked from their homes, the young men of Charlie Company left their sheltered, innocent lives to become part of the first American unit to be permanently stationed in the Mekong Delta. Their mission: to patrol the Delta’s massive maze of waterways, dense jungles and rice paddies in order to seek out and destroy the 82,000 enemy soldiers who pervaded the region. Rifleman, 3rd Platoon, John Bradfield recalls, “The Red Cross gave us some pamphlets and things that dealt with our conscience, because we were actually going to have to kill to keep from being killed. That was just the reality of it.”
 
During their one-year deployment, these brave soldiers were confronted with both sides of death. They grieved for fallen comrades and the guilt of killing their enemy. Team leader in the 1st Platoon, John Sclimenti, explains, “When you’re in battle, your training takes over, your emotions are on auto-pilot. What’s tough for you is when the battle stops. When the battle stops, all of a sudden you start thinking.”

These men’s stories are raw, heartfelt and gut-wrenching. They talk about the horrors they experienced both in the heat of battle and in its bloody aftermath. Sclimenti remembers retrieving bodies after their largest and deadliest battle: “One of the things that struck me the most is that I would find a body and their helmet would be off their head and it would be laying beside them and there would be a picture of their girlfriend or their wife or their family inside their helmets. And that struck me because in my mind I was picking up a soldier, but then when I saw the helmet with the pictures inside, I was picking up a family member, a father, or a brother, or a son.”
 
Brothers in War sheds light on the many aspects of war that Vietnam soldiers faced. Aside from the casualties of battle and heroic acts of bravery in the field, the veterans featured in the film also recall some of the lighter moments that helped forge lifelong friendships. To this day, they still remember who got the best care packages, funny nicknames, the swimming pool back at base and even an instance where they used marijuana leaves as camouflage.
 
War in Vietnam for the men of Charlie Company was unlike anything they could have imagined. By the end of their yearlong combat tour, Charlie Company suffered 26 killed and 105 wounded — a total casualty rate of just over 80 percent. They were among the first U.S. servicemen to return home not to open arms, but to jeering, cursing protestors.
 
Today, the survivors of Charlie Company still get together regularly.