War Stories: A Vietnam Soldier's Experience

Video Description

The Vietnam War changed America and many of those who fought in it forever. Vietnam Vet David Bowman published a book describing what happened to him as a young soldier titled The Vietnam Experience. He also contributed to Dear America - Letters Home from Vietnam (the book and DVD) and to The Fifty Greatest Letters from America's Wars featuring his and others' letters home. Bowman served as an infantryman from September 1967 through September 1968, with Company B, 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, and 1st Cavalry Division (Airborne)—the highest-decorated unit in the Vietnam War. When he returned home, he joined the San Francisco police in the late 1960s as a street cop with a beat. I got the chance to interview David Bowman in 1989 as part of my 1990 television series on the 1960s. my team and I interviewed more than 200 individuals and ask each to describe what he witnessed and what effect it had on them. Bowman's experience was quite unique because after his time as a warrior in Vietnam, he took a job in San Francisco during the late 1960s when there was tension in America evidenced in San Francisco and Berkeley and Oakland by constant protests against the war and other forms of rebellion. He describes the similarities between protecting his base in Vietnam and protecting the police department facility in Golden Gate Park. He describes hippie families and confronting political radicals. He remembers a time when radicals planted a bomb that killed several of his colleagues. Of course every story is unique and my channel presents various experiences at that time for and against the Vietnam War and what the American government was doing and saying. I appreciate David not only for his service as a soldier and as a police officer but for his ability to articulate his experiences with such intensity. If this interview has meaning for you, please click the super thanks button on the right side below the video screen and support my efforts to present more clips from my personal archive. Thank you David Hoffman filmmaker