The Inside Story of 'Vietnam: The War That Changed America'

Did they need one?

They were fantastic. They knew the war, the enemy, the terrain. I didn't know anything. I couldn't lead them unless I had their trust. Mainly high-school dropouts, they didn’t care about my Oxford degree. What mattered was whether I would get them killed for nothing. These were salt-of-the-earth American kids, not privileged, but willing to fight and die for their country and each other. If I had to go to war again, I would want exactly the men in my platoon.I learned more from them than I did at Oxford. My radio man, Jeff Harrison, is in the show too, and he’s very dramatic describing these things.

A few weeks later, in the middle of the night, you got orders to chase four to eight Vietcong who’d shelled your base, then fled. What did you do?

There were no casualties, no harm. We were supposed to leave our safe defensive perimeter, cross the river — dangerous even in daylight. The chances of us getting ambushed, killed, drowned are high. The chances of us catching them are zero. So we thought, "OK, we'll do that mission, but tomorrow when it's light, we’ll just get on the radios and do a simulated mission." It’s like making a movie.

When you were a Newsweek editor, you kept a grenade on your desk. Do you still identify as a Marine?

I do. The Marine Corps Foundation film award is named the William Broyles Award. I'm super proud to have served with Jeff and all those guys. We need leaders worthy of the sacrifice and service of the men and women who dedicate themselves to being in the armed forces.

In your worst moment in Vietnam, you saw a sign in the heavens. What was it?

During the monsoons, stuck on a mountaintop and feeling hopeless, I thought, “I’m going to die here. All my Oxford friends are at Goldman Sachs or law firms or professors.” I saw a shooting star. Turns out it was Apollo 13, the moon mission that inspired one of the works I’m most proud of [Ron Howard’s nine-Oscar-nominated 1995 film Apollo 13]. At that moment, America was mired in the mud of Vietnam, yet reaching for the stars. We were doing both. That duality — our failures and triumphs — is America’s story.

When you got back home, you didn’t get a hero’s welcome, right?

You came home to find everything has moved on without you. Castaway [the 2000 Tom Hanks film] was my coming-home-from-war movie — except Vietnam is never mentioned. It’s more universal. You go off, survive something transformative, and return to a world that hasn’t changed, where no one seems particularly interested in what you’ve been through. You can’t talk about it. You’re isolated, like Tom Hanks’ character, sitting alone in his room.

PTSD—Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder—was coined to describe what we faced. So much effort is poured into turning civilians into warriors, but almost none goes into turning warriors back into civilians. From Afghanistan to Vietnam, more veterans have died by suicide at home than in combat. That’s the harsh truth. These are spiritual wounds you get as a warrior, and if you don't figure out how to heal them, you pass them on to your families and to your kids.

What can help them heal?

I just watched this extraordinary documentary, From Shock to Awe, about Afghan veterans trying to deal with PTSD. They ended up doing ayahuasca and MDMA therapies. Texas Governor Rick Perry has been pushing for MDMA for veterans because he knows it works. I was devastated when the FDA did not approve the MDMA for veterans.

Did your return to Vietnam 15 years after the war help you heal?

These two Vietcong veterans were walking down the road, and we just started talking to them. He was a commander, and her husband had been killed in March 1970 — where I was patrolling. I realized that, oh my God, my platoon very likely was who killed her husband. I said, “I'm so sorry.” She looked at me and said, “That was during the war. The war is over.” And she invited me to her little house, and there was an altar there with pictures of her husband. We had tea, and I thought, would I be able to forgive like that? And would I be able to forgive myself the way that she forgave me?

In my own healing, I've done psychedelic therapy as well. And that woman came to me in one of my psychedelic experiences and forgave me again. You think, “Oh, wow, if we just could see each other as human beings.”

What will this Vietnam documentary accomplish?

I hope that it will inspire people in our generation, but also remind people who are younger to please, let's work to get the leaders who will not waste the sacrifice and service of Americans who want to serve their country.