Bravo!
I was lucky to catch a screening of the new independent film Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor, in Arlington, Virginia last week. I was by far the youngest member of the packed audience and trust me, I am no spring chicken. As far as I could tell from the unit emblazoned t-shirts and baseball caps, and the gasps of recognition when they spotted one of their own on the screen, the room was full of Marine Corps Vietnam Vets and their spouses.
The screening opened with a brief prayer from a Bravo Company veteran, the room completely silent after his powerful final line: “Thank you for bringing us home.” And though I was standing with the military folk of another generation, that prayer felt like every prayer I have heard as an Army spouse whose husband has been through three deployments—those are the words of every single miraculous return, and unspoken in those words are the memories of all the soldiers who did not come back.
It was this universal feel of Bravo! that kept me at the edge of my seat for nearly two hours. I listened to the Vets on the screen talking about mortar attacks, about their intense comradery, and if I closed my eyes, they could have been any newly returned soldier recounting tales from Iraq and Afghanistan. Betty Rodgers, who co-directed with her husband, announced before the screening that this was “everyone’s story, not just Bravo’s.” It was Betty (hurray for spouses!) who convinced Ken, a member of Bravo Company, to make the movie after he had been trying to “figure out how to tell this story for forty-four years.”
Bravo! recounts the siege of Khe Sahn, when the 26th Marine Regiment held out against a superior force of 20,000 North Vietnamese Army (NVA) for 77 days, from January 19 to March 31st. The film, with moving interviews and actual footage, traces the arrival, the siege, the ambush and massacre of members of Bravo Company, and the retaliation that the massacre prompted, spurring the Marines into an early morning offensive against the NVA that finally broke the siege, as well as the Marines’ return to America. The wartime photos and video of the day to day life of the young Marines, showing them washing their clothes, cooking in their hooch, reading books, clowning around, digging trenches, interspersed with interviews of their older selves, pieces together a startling close and personal view of the siege and its aftermath.
Like the best war reporting or storytelling, the words that open the film try to express the filmmakers quest for truth: “This is not a pro-war film. This is not an anti-war film. This is what happened.” One man, when asked why he joined the Marines, said, “I felt like we were doing what Kennedy asked of us, something for our country.” And another, still moved to tears by the harsh way he was welcomed home by war-protestors, “I want this country to love me as much as I love it.”
Betty Rodgers said, “We want the whole world to see this film” and I wholeheartedly agree. If you are interested in learning more about future screenings, would like to make a donation, become a sponsor or just help spread the world (the film still needs a distributor, etc), please contact Ken and Betty at 208-340-8889 or ken@bravotheproject.com.
The next screening is Saturday, September 8, 2012, at the West Roxbury Division Veterans Affairs, 1400 VFW Parkway, West Roxbury, MA, Time: 3:00 PM
For more about the men and women trying to bring Bravo! to the big screen: Bravo!The Project or http://bravotheproject.com/about/
To read Ken Rodgers’ blog about the Arlington screening: “Why I Fight” or http://bravotheproject.com/2012/09/04/why-i-fight/