You know you are in for something powerful when the first words onscreen in J.M. Harper’s “Soul Patrol” tell us that all the Super 8 footage we are about to see was shot by Vietnam veterans who carried their cameras with them during the war, while still in their teens. Playing at the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center starting on August 29, the film, which won the directing award for U.S. documentaries at the Sundance Film Festival, digs deep into a heretofore overlooked chapter of our country’s history.
“Soul Patrol,” based on Ed Emanuel’s book of the same title, drops us into the heart of a special airborne command unit, the surviving members of which are gathering for the final time. They belonged to the ultra-elite force the “Lurps,” consisting of several hundred men who fought in six-man reconnaissance teams — one of which was known as Soul Patrol, so named because it was the only one made up entirely of Black members. Emanuel says to his brothers-in-arms during the on-camera gathering, “After 50 years of running away from my service in Vietnam, I felt that maybe there’s a chance I could reunite our team, and hopefully, this final reunion would help me. I could free myself from these demons and questions and bad memories that I have. I’m asking you to pour your heart out and tell your story so people will know what we experienced.”
We hear from the now older men as the film unfolds, each speaking of their experiences, providing a kaleidoscopic view augmented by ample Super 8 footage, the men’s old photographs, archival imagery, and skillful re-enactments, all woven seamlessly together into a haunting tale of the cost of war to those who fought it.
While “Soul Patrol” brings home the intense danger the soldiers faced, it makes clear they were fighting on another front, including against the overt racism they faced within military ranks. The documentary highlights the internal crises of young Black soldiers fighting for a country embroiled in civil rights turmoil and domestic antiwar movements back home, including many Black leaders in the U.S. speaking out against sending Black men off to fight.
We hear Martin Luther King Jr. proclaiming, “We were taking the Black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8,000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia, which they had not found in Southwest Georgia or East Harlem. And to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the population.”
The film stresses that unearthing and preserving these buried histories is vital to preventing the active erasure of Black military contributions. Onscreen, Jesse Lewis — a soldier who later went back as a reporter — notes that while Blacks made up 11 to 12 percent of the general population, the percentage went up to 23 or more in Vietnam, and that Black soldiers were wounded or killed at a higher rate than their white comrades.
The cost of the war to these men, who we see were truly just boys at the time, is intense. “My job was to kill as many people as I could and make a difference,” one says. As we watch them in their fatigues gathering all their weaponry to carry in what will be a 150-pound rucksack, another of the men explains the need to be ruthless because the enemy is “out there to die or to kill you.”
The intensity of the team’s time in Vietnam is amplified emotionally by their experiences upon returning home. Like many Vietnam vets, they were met with hostility from those who were vehemently antiwar, and there were the psychological wounds they all carried, which they speak achingly about. Many note that for decades, they didn’t talk about having served. All seem to have buried the pain, and for some, it surfaced as violent, dangerous rage. In a brief segment, the wives of the soldiers share the ongoing pain they witness in their husbands, with one stating, “Vietnam, it’s not over yet.”
At its heart, though, “Soul Patrol” is about the intensely deep bonds these men developed with one another, and the unbreakable, lifesaving trust they had while operating high-risk, deep-reconnaissance missions behind enemy lines. We see it continually in the photographs and footage from their time in Vietnam, as well as in the moments they share during the final reunion, which allows these brave veterans to confront decades of hidden pain and find solace.
“Soul Patrol” is playing at the M.V. Film Center starting August 29. For tickets and more information, visit mvfilmsociety.com. The film’s director, Jason Harper, will join via Zoom for the Q and A at the August 29, 7:30 pm showing.
