This week marks the fiftieth anniversary of the United States' withdrawal from Vietnam. It marked the end of a fifteen-year war that resulted in the deaths of three million Vietnamese and fifty-eight thousand Americans. An atrocity we've seen in dozens of films and series. Fiction has served to shape the image of that conflict, in many cases to honor and give meaning to all the lives lost in that pointless conflict. Apple TV+ is now attempting to take a more honest look at it with a six-part documentary series. More than in any other war, television followed American soldiers so closely in the midst of battle that the amount of surviving footage is enormous. And much of that footage has been recovered to track down individuals who are seen and ask them to explain their experience. The stories are devastating, and the narrative approach of alternating archival footage with the current account of the protagonists, sixty or fifty years later, is very striking. "I plunged my machete into his neck, and it was done. Afterward, I felt empowered. I was angry at God and everyone for putting me in that situation. To make me feel good. That's how I realized I'd gone crazy," says one veteran. "I was awarded thirteen kills that day. Everyone told me I was a hero, but I didn't feel like one," says another after liberating the US embassy in Saigon. "The army teaches you how to kill, but it doesn't teach you how to think after you've killed someone. And I felt so sorry for having shot someone," says yet another. It's moving to see the vividness of the trauma despite the passing of decades. Also revisited, in a more secondary light, is the testimony of the Vietnamese people and those outside the army who had to intervene in the conflict under unusual circumstances.