A young combat cinematographer films grunts in Vietnam. He is seriously wounded at the battle of Khe Sanh.
President Lyndon Johnson extols the bravery of the young men who are fighting communist in Southeast Asia.Our protagonist, a young soldier from North Carolina, aces his training at Fort Monmouth and is assigned to DASPO in South Vietnam filming reports on how American grunts were holding up in the hostile environment of the Vietnam Battlefield.—Walt Hefner
Shooting Grunts is not your grandfather's documentary. Eschewing the use of talking heads and pages of sleepinducing narration, the filmmakers have employed a personal perspective style of narration wherein the narratorbecomes a storyteller and his narration becomes a dramatic performance.
No attempt is made to tell the complete Vietnam story in 82 minutes, but to show an intimate 18 month snap shot - late 1966 to early 1968 - of US fighting men, especially the lowly grunts who survived the elephant grass of'in country' while confronting the communist enemy in a dog eat dog battle for survival.
Framing the grunt story is the personal story of a young man from North Carolina who drops out of college, joinsthe service, aces his military training and winds up in Vietnam as a member of an elite MoPic combat groupwhich reported back to the Pentagon. His first assignment attaches him to a unit with a large number of new guys,with his job being to film how the younger men, or grunts, were holding up in a hostile environment and consequently learning that the FNGS were holding their own on the battlefields and in the Cu Chi tunnels.
In a detailed flashback to the battle of la Drang, we come face to face with the price paid by both Vietnameseand American forces when they engage in a fight to the finish.
Our story teller films his last battle at Khe Sanh where he is seriously wounded. In a life saving operation,military doctors amputate his leg. Parental Warning: Uncensored films of an actual Walter Reed battlefield amputation are shown.
When we next see him, he is an old man seated in a wheelchair concluding his interview about Vietnam Warexperiences. Resentful of lack of support by his government and folks on the home front, he still expressesa 'gung ho' attitude and when asked 'if you had it to do over, would you volunteer again"? His reply is a simple''You bet your sweet ass I would".
An epilogue follows, showing outcome of the war and the returning home of American troops, with statementby former Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger summing up the underlying message of Shooting Grunts- "We should never again ask our men to serve in a war that we do not intend to win ".
