Now streaming for free on: PBS


Some stayed. Some went. All fought.

In October 1967, history turned a corner. In a jungle, a Viet Cong ambush nearly wiped out an American battalion, prompting some in power to question whether the war might be unwinnable. On a campus in Wisconsin, a student protest against the war spiraled out of control, marking the first time that a campus anti-war demonstration had turned violent. Based on the book, "They Marched into Sunlight" by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Maraniss, this moving American Experience film examines the critical events that took place in the turbulent fall of 1967. The emotionally wrenching parallel stories are told by the people whose lives were irrevocably changed by what happened--American and Viet Cong soldiers, relatives of men killed in battle, protesting students, police officers, and university faculty and administrators. Collectively, their words speak to the heartbreak caused by the war and the stark division it wrought on the home front.