MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (AP) — In time for Veterans Day, the Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum has opened its renovated Vietnam War exhibit featuring a rare river patrol boat, vintage helicopters, high-tech sound effects and holograms simulating what it was like to fight in the jungles of Southeast Asia 50 years ago.
The Vietnam Experience, a larger 2.5 acre exhibit that opened Saturday, immerses visitors in the sights and sounds of war, amid a soundtrack of thudding helicopter engines, chattering machine guns and the cries of jungle creatures.
The exhibit on high ground near the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown on Charleston Harbor recreates a river base that supported the so-called Brown Water Navy of boats that patrolled Vietnam’s rivers as well as a Marine Corps fire base.
The exhibit with its bunkers, mess hall and other buildings, created with $400,000 in cash and tens of thousands more in-kind contributions, is part of a $5 million effort to upgrade exhibits at Patriots Point.
“We want to honor Vietnam Veterans during the 50th anniversary of the war,” said Mac Burdette, the museum’s executive director. “At the same time we want people to feel like they felt this was really cool and we learned something and we were emotionally connected and inspired.”
Highlights of the Vietnam Experience:
River Patrol Boat
- A refurbished MK1 River Patrol Boat, one of only two of its kind thought to still be in existence, sits in a small lagoon. It was refurbished last year with the $30,000 cost provided in donated supplies and labor.
“I haven’t seen a Vietnam exhibit put together this good ever. You can tell they put their soul into this,” said Mike Williams, whose father, the late James Elliott Williams of South Carolina, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his gallantry aboard a river patrol boat in 1966.
Animals Redux
- A music video features Vietnam vets lip-synching “We’ve Gotta Get Out of This Place,” the tune recorded by the British group The Animals in 1965 and which became an unofficial anthem for those fighting in Vietnam with its lyrics “We’ve gotta get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do.” Other 60’s music, from actual radio show tapes of the era, is piped into the mess hall.
Inside the Bunker
- In a darkened bunker piled high with sandbags visitors can see a newly produced video showing a firefight as it might have occurred when the 1968 Tet offensive began.
Other Displays
- Also on display are three different types of helicopters, a howitzer, an ambulance and a 50 caliber machine gun installed at the top of an observation tower.
What’s Not on Display is the Healing
- The museum is working with the nearby Johnson VA Medical Center with Vietnam veterans still suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Burdette said.
Chauncey Clark of Mount Pleasant, who flew helicopters in Vietnam and volunteers at Patriots Point, said an immersion program exposes patients to what they may have experienced in the war for a time. He said coming see the artifacts from the war seems to help such patients.
“What I like is there is finally some celebration of the guys who fought over there,” said Dick West, a Vietnam vet and volunteer who is also from Mount Pleasant. “When we came home people looked at me like I was dirt. I knew people didn’t like the war but I didn’t know they didn’t like us.”
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