more news today violence is once again fled up. these are the images cold world has been seeing from the streets of canada. china operation through the day.

of the. in some petersburg oh she's available in hotels a story an. ambassador. hotel troppo soto a true school toto. still dostoevsky. in a sea of polish ski business. there

it's time now for the headlines. starts tackling russia's football's greatest prize to host the two thousand and eighteen world cup the prospect of holding the tournament is not just a matter of prestige a great motivator for the future of football stars to train harder. it's. israel. from gaza strip to palestinians the thousands of jewish people living in the west bank a repeat of. the heatwave has endangered thousands of lives the elderly suffer the most but doctors who work around the clock to save lives casualties a hope to avoid the weather conditions so extreme. those weather headlines next hour special report on the recollections of veterans of the vietnam wall.

so the vietnam province klavan forte was a u.s. marine in the one nine hundred sixty s. against vietnamese communist guerrillas today former recalled the time when they could only look at one another through the cross as we got better and better at it but still never as good as the b. . at the means that camouflage about hiding out using the jungle for their advantage the course of the war shifted when the soviet union sent anti-aircraft missile systems and ministry specialists to vietnam in his first action targeting u.s. aircraft nicholai kolesnik broke down for almost. the first rockets reached the targets in exploded then the second and the third i can still picture these glowing skies that many of the local fighters trained by soviet missile specialists later rose to the highest ranks of the vietnamese army and we were so good at disguising soviet missiles with tree branches that american pilots could see nothing but thick forest

that wanted fifty eight thousand u.s. army servicemen and over a million vietnamese soldiers dying full how of the wars veterans fed sins what do they now think about thirty five years old. hanoi the capital of vietnam six am morning exercises in the city's main square the mostly in the center is the resting place of the vietnamese communist leader who team in the movement for the country's independence the vietnamese managed to i was there french colonizers but the united states was seriously concerned with a new state of mind in line with communists and they were willing to use force to prevent that from happening. i signed up to join the military because i thought that it was my duty that it was something that i could do to help my country i believed my government that it was necessary for americans to

come to vietnam to help you by. but now he lives in vietnam south with his girlfriend he first came here with a u.s. marine unit not long after his eighteenth birthday now only a few faded photos with his friends remind him of that period in his life. this was my best friend. his name was richard. this would have been about one nine hundred sixty seven. by the one nine hundred sixty s. vietnam had been divided into two parts with the border with the seventeenth parallel communists led by control of the north washington back politicians were of the helm in the south at its peak in the late sixty's the us supported them with more than half a million troops. quickly even thinks the most realistic portrait of the war is francis ford coppola's film apocalypse now.

in vietnam u.s. troops stop short of nothing in a bid to achieve their objectives. they burned the jungle that served as a hideouts of vietnamese. but they also used a chemical weapon called agent orange to smoke them out of the forest. i just assumed that my government was right and that we needed to be here but after a few months in the country i started to change my mind and i started to doubt that we were doing a good job. but i couldn't do anything about it i still. couldn't just leave. the mccomb river delta new trees. destroyed the forest nearly forty years ago.

but the chemical weapon has had a sting effect on the people. in many villages there are many with. these people. but the effects were passed to them genetically many years after their parents happened to be in the agent zone. these children live in a special village near hanoi they are under the constant care of doctors and psychologists . has been here for more than ten years she only visits her parents during the holidays. to. primary school. and to play with friends. to be a doctor when she grows up so that she can treat children with. chemical weapons. many are still hard to diagnose american soldiers as well as civilians felt the effects of agent orange.

and she died when she was six months old. and one of the first questions were asked me. so they knew. but they still spray. side all over the country. nine hundred sixty five. asks the u.s.s. often. around the same time defense units hold massive training exercises. constantly.

defense force during the exercises he. getting ready to go to a far away country to take part in. it before was sent to vietnam we get strict orders not to tell anybody we're going to distant places. what that place was. the defense missile system was to be tested for the first time in history in vietnam conditions. had a crew. i know this. i felt it's all over and checked at times. the first soviet rocket specialists going to vietnam in april one nine hundred sixty five here they were officially called military advisors they organized

a crash course training the vietnamese to copy how teams did their work. and. the vietnamese were generally not very tall rather short actually. it was hard for them to load their rocket launcher around. so when one of us was enough to load the launcher two or three vietnamese had to do it. was one of vietnamese colleagues he served in the army throughout the war when he was discharged from the vietnamese air defense force he held the rank of major general today he's a frequent visitor to todays a defense units he tells young servicemen how vietnamese fighters learn to handle. and how they use the rocket systems in real life fighting it. at first they thought a launcher crew will take eight months to learn the system. a war was on our towns are being bombed so we had to hurry. we learn the makeup of the hardware down to

the last bolt in a matter of two and a half months. the enemy is still equipped with soviet military hardware and it's still in working order despite its advanced age engraved inscriptions in russian and kept intact as a sign of respect but let's not let you know. that . most of the units. included men from small villages where people had never even seen so much as a simple radio set but still they quickly learned the a.b.c. defense and even invented some tactical tricks of their own.

for example they camouflaged bulky soviet anti aircraft missile systems so effectively that even that soviet instructors took home some valuable lessons. learned to become a former soviet rockets was. the place for them as usual it was near the high tree after the coming. american pilots most of thought it was thick forest. more time films give an idea of what soviet rockets in vietnamese camouflage looked like command posts as well as launches were disguised. we see general. entering a makeshift command post it was from here that he controlled rocket launches twenty five of them hit the american bombers. while the rocket specialist spent a good deal of time trying to figure out american tactics that american pilots drop metal paper from their aircraft to distort radar pictures. and we did learn to tell

genuine targets from fake once. the very first battle in which soviet anti-aircraft missile systems took part was crammed with success. three american. music treat came less than a month later three rockets destroyed for want to go. kolesnik was in command of the launcher that brought them down. we see all three rockets exploding one after another there is a flip each time the best of the sky is a glare the american planes fall to pieces and glide to the ground like smoldering

pieces of wood. lead soviet and vietnamese servicemen manning rocket launches destroyed a total of more than eight hundred u.s. aircraft and helicopters during the whole afterwards fragments gathered from across the country were taken to vietnam's capital hanoi today they are exhibits at the national museum of the armed forces. peace is a giant created from the twisted components of downed. cultures that so much i was about to fit into a class in the form of a real man because i was full ization is a fact of everyday life but how is globalization changed when it comes to benefits from it. the united states of america is waging war within its own army. kill no advantage it is on no one side.

and human losses are quite significant. is it possible to win the war against sexual assault in the us armed forces sex in the army on r g. each year nikolai kolesnik the former commander of a crew of soviet rocket specialists visits a restaurant in moscow to meet with vietnamese war veterans. they marked the anniversary of his crew's first victory. after that battle a table was laid for soviet specialists but the menu was film modest. and the food was somewhat exotic we've never eaten anything like that before if tasted and looked like nothing we knew or so we often asked the vietnamese to tell us about the food we were eating. the russians from vietnamese soldiers in the

field will pull however they received additional supplies from local peasants ed defense units would normally stationed close to villages. is ninety five years old both of her sons were guerrillas they lost their lives fighting in what was then south vietnam. she joined fellow villages in the north to help the launch a crew who took part in the first battle. i remember exactly how it happened. the acrobats wings fell to the ground on the house next to mine. when death to see their remains. today there is a thick jungle where joint soviet vietnamese crews for their first bout. there's no trace left of the rocket systems camouflaged with tree leaves which were once stationed here through. soviet specialist guided rockets towards their

targets as we looked. we were overjoyed to know that all the targets had been here and that was our first victory. as pilots have to change their tactics assumes soviet anti aircraft missile systems . in an attempt to evade soviet rockets they had to fly into low well to shoot. the found made them easy prey for the vietnamese women who served us and. you have gone through so many different emotional turns in the process of making your mission accomplished and by the time you return to base. you are totally exhausted and probably. pilots

pete peterson was downed over north vietnam in september one thousand nine hundred sixty six he returned home after seven years in captivity nearly a quarter of a century later after official relations between the two states were finally restored peterson became the first us ambassador to vietnam today he lives with more than just memories of the. probably somewhere back. part of somewhere. at least in my memory. the truth lies in the center of the capital. there is a monument among its banks with the names of american pilots who were shot down among them is united states senator john mccain written in vietnam. one of those who took part of the mccain prisoner patrol. on july twenty ninth one thousand nine hundred sixty seven he was on duty near the lake.

right there. and headed for the parachute by boat. this picture shows members of a vietnamese militia units lifting mccain out of the lake. among them. understand how he felt. his face showed that he was. john mccain mistakenly thought that he would be killed instead he was immediately given first aid. he spoke in an interview for french television from his hospital.

he served most of his term in this prison. it's housed in a colonial era building today it's a museum but in the one nine hundred sixty s. imprisoned u.s. pilots jokingly called the prison the hanoi hilton. during the war. which the jails warden. his job was ideological work with inmates including john mccain. who had strongly held beliefs. mccain never agreed that american policy in vietnam was wrong but i had my own opinion he was a republican i was a communist the americans tried to establish their order the but we fought for freedom. five and

a half years later john mccain returned to the usa and continued to serve in the navy. but as a presidential candidate in two thousand and eight he used rhetoric that not knowing his background might have even being considered pacifist america is the greatest force for good in the history of the world my friends we have gone to all four corners of the earth and shed american blood in defense usually of somebody else's freedom and our own so we are peacemakers and we're peacekeepers. evidence of war crimes against vietnamese civilians started coming out while john mccain was still serving his prison sentence. a horrific massacre took place in the brutal community of my lai in one hundred sixty eight villages was suspected of helping the guerrillas will than four hundred people were murdered in

a matter of hours. reports concerning vast and other episodes critically undermined the morale among u.s. troops stationed in vietnam. there was a lot of drug abuse there was a lot of murder of american officers by american soldiers there were a lot of units who refuse orders to go out and buy they said no we're not going to fight. in the united states meanwhile the movement. against the war in vietnam was gathering steam. there were mass protests antiwar rallies and the famed march on the pentagon organized by peace activists. later many vietnam war veterans joined the protests themselves former fighters would drop the medals they'd been awarded in vietnam in front of the u.s. congress. before the war i always thought i wanted to win

a lot of medals i wanted to have a lot of decorations but afterwards i realized that they they don't mean anything they're not that important. i don't never kept the medal and never. i never did anything about it. is a district twenty kilometers from hoochie minh city formerly known as saigon x marine greg played in. a form of vietnamese guerrilla. nearly forty years ago they were bitter adversaries fighting each other below them lie two hundred fifty kilometers of underground tunnels vietnamese guerrillas would dig them around the clock covering over the fresh earth and disguising numerous entrances to caves . going down there i don't want to try.

even if the entrance to a tunnel was discovered it was hardly possible for most american soldiers to get inside but vietnam these guerrillas were able to crawl through even with rifles in their hands they would vanish into thin air after taking several shots from a camouflaged dug out during a raid made by the vietnamese guerrillas in the jungle a bullet fired by a sharpshooter narrowly missed greg klavan. on the one hand the jungle was very beautiful very exciting to watch and to be in but on the other hand it was very frightening knowing that any time. could attack the freedom fighters go in and weapons from north vietnam there was a whole system of secret supply routes locals called it the whole trail american forces to this effect surely if. with the help of the vietnamese

peasants the guerrillas how to restore the trail constantly. the traces which led to the jungle routes were fully hidden to misguide the enemy. each time we were on the. tracks with a tree branch six. december one thousand nine hundred seventy two the americans make a last ditch attempt to force north vietnam to surrender. operation linebacker two so the largest heavy bombers strikes since the second. into leaks of continuous raids u.s. aircraft dropped more than twenty thousand tons of explosives on towns in north vietnam. that combined power much thought of the atom bomb dropped on hiroshima in

one thousand four hundred five. just absolutely normal it's explosions and. at the same time i think it also persuaded. that. it was time. to. the city of hanoi the wreckage of one of thirty u.s. b. fifty two bombers is still. here are the consequences of the military operation linebacker two soon after that the us troops started to leave vietnam. mean often brings his grandchildren here when the war was over he served in the vietnamese army for a further twenty years retiring as a general now he writes his memoirs about how his battalion took part in resisting the last american air raid. happened right here. because

her lawyer was subjected to very heavy bombardment. and the wreckage of this aircraft is a good illustration of the defeat suffered by the united states here. unlike his vietnamese counterpart sergeant nicholai kolesnik decided against continuing his military career. after his return from vietnam nicholai left the armed forces to become an electrical engineer but he meets several times a year with his comrades in arms who served with him in vietnam. the former u.s. marine greg klavan returned to vietnam in one nine hundred eighty six he makes a living by giving private english lessons when he left vietnam off to being wounded in the war it never occurred to him that some day he might come back let alone share a table with vietnamese guerrillas so coming back and seeing vietnam's developing

people. getting jobs and going to school in a normal life made me feel better that we didn't completely destroy all of the. things that we. have gone through i wish that the people of the united states the people of vietnam and all nations always live in peace and understanding. since the end of five years ago many things in vietnam have changed in some can expected ways. one of the buildings of the u.s. in name to the hanoi hilton is now indeed a moat and the hotel. the u.s. flag is often seen side by side with the vietnamese flag on the facades of the joint ventures college undergraduates domes to modern pop music near

a monument to soviet leader lenin. but one thing remains the same. is guarded around the clock by the soldiers of the vietnamese army the army the guadalupe.