Philip D. Brown

Richmond County Daily Journal

A feature-length documentary depicting the experiences soldiers face during before, during and after wartime will be previewed at Cole Auditorium on Sept. 26 before its national release.

The noon event is free to the public, and there is no registration required.

“The Good Soldier,” was produced by an award-winning team of filmmakers and includes the stories of five combat veterans from World War II, Vietnam, the Gulf War and the Iraqi War.

Local Vietnam veteran and activist Perry Parks, who served as a Chief Warrant Officer and Army helicopter pilot during his three tours of duty in Vietnam, is one of the five.

“I want people to understand first and foremost this film is not anti-war,” Parks said. “If you’re going to commit troops to war, you need to understand what will happen, not what might happen, but what will happen — because every war produces human suffering.”

Parks pointed out many who purport to support the troops of foreign wars have no idea of the hardships and mental anguish many of those troops endure.

The film’s official release will come at the Hamptons International Film Festival which runs from October 8-12. However the producers are allowing the five veterans to preview the documentary in their hometowns.

Parks said all five veterans featured in the film have indicated they will attend, as have the filmmakers.

“The Good Soldier” follows the story from when Parks enlisted in the Army, his three tours in Southeast Asia and his assimilation back into society following the traumatic experiences he went through.

Parks was awarded 32 medals for his distinguished service, but it was during his second tour he began to question the validity of troop involvement in Vietnamese affairs.

He would eventually join the peace movement he’d once thought ridiculous.

In the movie, Parks describes killing civilians from his helicopter gunship, and trying to cope with his actions by just looking at the buildings he was blowing up rather than thinking about the men, women and children inside the buildings.

He said he came to a stark personal realization at the control panel during one flight when he could see numerous muzzle flashes from the treeline he was flying over.

“That’s when I realized you could die here,” he said.

“A young person who is considering a life in the military needs to know that it is not just the job, the education, the travel —  the glorious parts they show you.”

Parks says at another point in the movie. “Your real bare bones job is to go out and kill people. Every man is an infantryman. Every soldier’s priority is to conduct the war.”

Lexy Lovell and Michael Uys are the husband and wife team that wrote, directed and produced the film.

Their previous release of “Riding the Rails” garnered national attention, amassing the Peabody Award, the L.A. Film Critics Award for Best Documentary and the Directors Guild of America Award for Best Director.

The film was the story of teenagers who traveled America during the Great Depression, and had more than 7 million viewers for a Public Broadcasting Service showing.

They describe “The Good Soldier as a pro-troop, anti-war alternative vision of what war means to those who carry it out.

“We like making films that are really about what we call history from the bottom-up,” Uys said of their presentation style. “It’s not from the point of view of the generals or the presidents; it’s really from the point of view of the people who lived through the experiences. That is true of both films.”

He said they were intrigued by the stories of the veterans because their perspective changed throughout their time at war.

“We’re interested in the transformation that happened with some of these guys,” Uys said. “They were not protesting college students or anything; they were people who had really been there and believed in what they were doing. Also, they had not been drafted; they had signed up willingly.”

Some of the atrocities and acts of war described in this film may be upsetting to small children, so apply parental discretion.