The Depiction of Vietnam War in Forrest Gump

Chapter 3: How realistic was the Vietnam war in the movie?

One major event that happened in the movie was the Vietnam war, after graduating, Forrest volunteered for the United States Army, where he befriended former shrimp fisherman Benjamin Buford "Bubba" Blue, and they agreed to go into the shrimping business together once they end their service. Once they had arrived in Vietnam, they are assigned to First Lieutenant Dan Taylor. One day while on patrol their platoon is ambushed. Forrest carried several wounded soldiers to safety including Lieutenant Dan and his friend Bubba, but Bubba was severely wounded and died shortly thereafter. Forrest himself is also wounded in the buttocks and Lieutenant Dan, who has had both of his legs amputated

History, and many soldiers didn’t even know what they were fighting for. However, the movie was correct when they mentioned the heavy rains in Vietnam. There were indeed lots of ambushes too, like the one in the film that Forrest Gump is a part of. The word “humping” is mentioned in the movie, and this was actually a very common word that was used in the war, and meant “to walk or march”. Forrest Gump alone in one ambush had to save about 8 of his fellow soldiers because of injuries. Since there were a lot of ambushes and fights, it’s easy to see how easily the death rate could rise. Also a lot of people received the medal of Honour for fighting for the United stated in the Vietnam war, and so did Forrest. I personally think they did a great job in making these scenes, because it really shows a few things that were really part of the war and although they did let the war appear as not so serious, I do not think that this is really a bad thing because the movie’s purpose isn’t to show how serious the war was, it just a small part compared to the whole

As you can see on the picture on the right, the shirt was just a basic shirt with two chest pockets on both the left and the right side, and just above the right chest pocket is sais “U.S ARMY” in yellow letters. The shirt was supposed to be worn tucked into the trousers. The legs of the trousers are pretty wide, and they have pockets which can be closed with buttons. The soldiers also had to wear black boots with laces, and they had to types of caps, one was for when they were fighting and the other was for when they weren’t. when they were fighting the wore a steel, round helmet , this helmet had varies colours of green. The other cap was a baseball style cap and just had an olive green colour like the rest of the uniform.

The uniform that Forrest and the other soldiers wear in the move are pretty much the same, except for the fact that these uniforms do not say “U.S ARMY”. But the trousers, boots and the caps that they wear are really realistic and look actually exactly the same as the real uniforms. So I think the movie makers did a great job in recreating the