Word: cong
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Robert Russell Garwood, 33, the last American P.O.W. to come home from Viet Nam. Instead of a hero's welcome, he was greeted on his return by a volley of accusations by other ex-P.O.W.s that he was actually a deserter who had willingly helped the Viet Cong beat and interrogate American prisoners. Last week the Marine Corps asked its naval superiors to conduct a formal investigation of the charges, which Garwood denies...
...enlisted in the Marines. Two years later, Garwood went to Viet Nam with the Third Marine Division, which was based in Danang. On Sept. 28, 1965, he disappeared while driving a Jeep. He was not seen by another American soldier until March 1968, when the Viet Cong herded several captured GIs into a Viet Cong prison camp in the mountains near the Laotian border. "He was on the other side, no question about it," says former Army Staff Sergeant David Harker, who was imprisoned in the camp for 16 months and is now a probation officer in Lynchburg...
Harker recalls that one night, half a dozen hungry prisoners angered their guards, including Garwood, by butchering and preparing to cook a cat. They were forced to stand at attention until a prisoner named Russ told the Viet Cong that he had killed the cat. The Vietnamese guards then beat and kicked him. Says Harker: "Bob Garwood came up to us and said we were all going to have to pay for what happened to Russ. Bob blamed us for what had happened. He hit me one time in the ribs, but hurt my feelings more than anything else...
...conflict between Communist neighbors had a disillusioning impact on some leftist European intellectuals. In an article for Milan's Corriere della Sera, Journalist Giuliano Zincone recalled how he had marched in protest against the American presence in Viet Nam and had contributed money to the Viet Cong. China was "on the side of Viet Nam, like Che, united in the struggle." But then came Peking's turmoil: the masses attacking the Gang of Four, the resurgence of the old "capitalist reader," Teng. By invading Cambodia, Viet Nam betrayed its principles. "Now the circle has closed," Zincone wrote. "Gentle China...
Perhaps Cimino's boldest move is the use of Russian roulette as a recurrent image. The game that we first see as a Viet Cong torture later shows up as a sport conducted by wagering South Vietnamese in smoky Saigon back rooms. Besides serving as an expressionistic picture of the capital's profiteers, the roulette game becomes a metaphor for a war that blurred the lines between bravery and cruelty, friends and enemies, sanity and madness. Unfortunately, other conceits in The Deer Hunter damage the film. A first-hour wedding ceremony, designed to establish the tribal rites...