“Turning Point: The Vietnam War” opens with Brooklyn-born Scott Camil telling his piece of the American story. Camil says his stepfather was involved in the John Birch Society and hammered into him that his job would be to stop communism in any way he could. For Camil, that meant enlisting in the military to be deployed in Vietnam.
Dehumanization was central to basic training, Camil remembers, and he illustrates that by singing a few bars of a song they sang as they jogged. “I’m gonna go to Vietnam/I’m gonna kill some Viet Cong,” he half sings. Camil’s lips start quivering after this line, and he fights back tears as he haltingly finishes. “With a knife or with a gun/ Either way, it will be fun.”
