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Platoon is a 1986 American anti-war film written and directed by Oliver Stone

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March 1947: In an address to Congress, President Harry Truman states that the foreign policy of the United States is to assist any country whose stability is threatened by communism. The policy becomes known as the Truman Doctrine.

August 1949: The Soviet Union explodes its first atom bomb in a remote area of Kazakhstan, marking a tense turning point in the cold war with the United States.

January 1950: The People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union formally recognize the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam and both begin to supply economic and military aid to communist resistance fighters within the country.

June 1950: The United States, identifying the Viet Minh as a Communist threat, steps up military assistance to France for their operations against the Viet Minh.

July 1959: The first U.S. soldiers are killed in South Vietnam when guerrillas raid their living quarters near Saigon.

November 1963: President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. Lyndon B. Johnso becomes president.

March 1965: President Johnson launches a three-year campaign of sustained bombing of targets in North Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail in opretation rolling thunder. The same month, U.S. Marines land on beaches near Da Nang, South Vietnam as the first American combat troops to enter Vietnam.

July 1965: President Johnson calls for 50,000 more ground troops to be sent to Vietnam, increasing the draft to 35,000 each month.

1966: U.S. troop numbers in Vietnam rise to 400,000.

February 11-17, 1968: This week records the highest number of U.S. soldier deaths during the war, with 543 American deaths.

March 1968: President Johnson halts bombing in Vietnam north of the 20th parallel. Facing backlash about the war, Johnson announces he will not run for reelection.

People starts to fight the war in America and demonstrate against all of the meaningless deaths

1969-1972: The Nixon administration gradually reduces the number of U.S. forces in South Vietnam, placing more burden on the ground forces of South Vietnam’s ARVN as part of a strategy known as Vietnamization. U.S. troops in Vietnam are reduced from a peak of 549,000 in 1969 to 69,000 in 1972.

January 1975: President Ford rules out any further U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.

The War Dead: By the end of the war, more than 58,000 Americans lose their lives. Vietnam would later release estimates that 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters were killed, up to 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died and more than 2 million civilians were killed on both sides of the war.

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War in films tends to be painted with the brush of victory. Though war is often devastating and always ugly, but film narratives often emerges with a sense of glory that renders the whole thing worthwhile.

Platoon doesn’t fit that description. The Vietnam War was as much a domestic social and cultural conflict as it was an overseas battle, and Platoon tells a story at the heart of the lasting legacy of the war it depicts.

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The first letter is by Capt. Rodney R. Chastant.
Chastant writes about his mother and how she replies to his choice about extending his tour. He writes about how he was utterly confused about his desire to make his mother proud and his obligation to stay and help. He express in the letter that he feels important and needed in the war, because of his 11 month experience.

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The Ballad of the Green Berets - Barry Sadler and Robin Moore (1966):
- The song is about an american from the midwest who tells about different wars that America has been involved in. He describes how he has been taught to see war, russians etc. but slowly starts questioning the morality and importance of war in general - and the meaning of god being on ones side “was god on the side of judas?”.

Fortunate Son - Creedence Clearwater Revival/Forgety (1969)
- The song have a double meaning.  First, it was an anti-Vietnam War song, but it was also a working class anthem that showed the social class inequalities of those close to President Nixon and the middle class.  This indicates that rich children whose parents helped to start the Vietnam War cannot be drafter to the military, and are protected by wealth and privilege.  On the other hand, children like Fogerty are middle class and have a strong possibility of being drafted to the military to go to Vietnam's jungles and possibly die in an aimless war against an obstinate foe.

What's going on - Marvin Gaye (1971)
- It’s about the ones who are affected by a war - not only the ones who goes into it, but also the family is his. It says that is not fair to punish the soldiers in the war and wants to bring some understanding.

Born in the USA - Bruce Springsteen (1984)
- The song is about all the troubles, difficulty and problems that the Vietnam veterans came across when they returned to their home in America after the war that they fought. This song reveals the emotional scars that suffered the Vietnam veterans after the war. Bruce sang this song using a first- person narrative which creates a personal and political meaning to it.

War - Edwin Starr (1970)
- The song is about the Vietnam war, and how awful the war was. The song also describes how the war is unnecessary and only brings pain and suffering. It brings suffering

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The movie started a big debate about the Vietnam veterans. Especially about the conditions of the VA hospitals. In the movie the conditions of the VA hospital is portrayed as extremely terrible due to the federal budget cuts. Rats were roaming the floors and the equipment was too old to be useful. The doctors and nurses ignored the patients and abused drugs while at work. Sometimes patient was abandoned for several hours, laying in their own scarce.

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The second letter is about Robert Ransom who had a friend that died instead of him, because he stepped on a landmine.
Robert Ransom went through a "baptism by fire" which changed him.
Robert hated the Vietnamese people deeply, but he also had a ton of respect for them.

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More than twenty years after the end of the war, O’Brien’s daughter Kathleen asks O’Brien if he has ever killed anyone. She contends that he can’t help himself from obsessively writing war stories because he killed someone. O’Brien, however, insists that he has never killed anyone. Reflecting on his lie, O’Brien pretends Kathleen is an adult and imagines that he might tell her the entire story of My Khe.

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The movie was  easy to relate to, because we get a relationship with the main character.

The movie has focus on the lost ones, and the ones returning from Vietnam hurt.

In contrast to Platoon, we follow the young men before and after the war, which gives us, as viewers, another perspective on the Vietnam war.

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Kovics father, grandfather and John F Kennedy inspired him a lot as a young kid and as a teenager. Both his father and grandfather went to war, his grandfather during the first world war and his father during the second. JFK inspired him with his speech about american people and america. In the speech JFK stated “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. A lot of other young men who went into the Vietnam war also got inspired by their father, grandfather and so on.