Still: Soldier's Bones - Kasper Verkaik

It’s over 50 years since US journalist Alec Shimkin, a reporter for Newsweek, went missing in action in Vietnam. He and a colleague were ambushed by enemy forces in July 1972. Shimkin is still officially listed as “unaccounted for,” but Kasper Verkaik’s new feature Soldier’s Bones** (produced by Frank van den Engel at Zeppers Film & TV and premiering in Movies That Matter) reveals that the location where he died has been identified repeatedly to US officials by the North Vietnamese soldier who buried him.

Shimkin was a remarkable young reporter but his achievements still remain unsung. He was 27 at the time of his death. His research laid bare the scandal behind the US army’s 1968/69 ‘Operation Speedy Express,’ in which the film estimates the final body count was 30,539, many thousands of them unarmed Vietnamese civilians. The true story of the massacre has never been told properly. Newsweek suppressed it at the time, under intense government pressure.

Now, Verkaik has combed through the evidence and provided a definitive account, not just of its subject’s life and untimely death but of what really happened during Speedy Express.

The North Vietnamese soldiers who killed Shimkin discovered he was an unarmed journalist. They wanted the Americans to exhume him and take his remains home. In Vietnamese culture, it is considered very important for the deceased to have a final resting place. Otherwise, their souls will be left to be wander.

Verkaik believes that the reason the US authorities within the MIA (Missing in Action) organisation haven’t tried harder to establish the circumstances of Shimkin’s death is that there is still lingering resentment over his sympathy toward the North Vietnamese communists. “They have this list of names. They know where he is. They have known this for a long, long time but they refuse to act…they actually went further than that. They decided not to tell his family. Because of the story of Speedy Express, my impression is they see him as somebody not worth excavating.”

The filmmaker acknowledges he is an unlikely person to be telling this tale. After all, he is Dutch, not American.

“I am absolutely not the person you would expect to do that,” he says, but adds that his fascination with the Vietnam war started when he was only 10-years-old. 

“I knew all along when I started making films that I would, at some point, have to address this particular topic.”

Many of the other films Verkaik has made, such as Dear Oprah (2008), Daddy Doll (2012) and Plaza Man (2014), have also had US themes. The Vietnam war has long intrigued him. He wanted to understand how the US, a nation with a hugely powerful army, had “manoeuvred itself  into a war it could never win.”

The director also realised “there was so much more to find out about the Speedy Express story.” Over time, more and more documents had been declassified. As he buried himself in his research, Verkaik realised that Shimkin’s scoop “was way bigger” than even the journalist himself had known.

American director Lynn Novick, known for her work with the legendary Ken Burns, was one of Verkaik’s advisors on the project. She and Burns had made an eight-hour series on the Vietnam war.

“They wanted to devote an entire episode to Speedy Express…Lynn told me that this [Speedy Express] was one of the last untold stories of the war that could really give us insight into what the war was about.”

Burns and Novick had prepared the episode but one of their key interviewees, Kevin Buckley, the Newsweek Saigon bureau chief who had hired Shimkin, had had a stroke shortly before he was due to be interviewed. Buckley had worked very closely with Shimkin on the Speedy Express story. Without him, they didn’t feel they could continue.

Novick was happy that the Dutch director was picking up on the story she had not been able to tell.

During the making of the film, Verkaik grew close to Shimkin’s sister, Eleanor (who later became a psychiatrist and treated many Vietnam vets with PTSD).

“The first thing she said to me was that if you want to make a documentary about my brother, then I need to take you to Gettysburg because Gettysburg was where his fascination with war started,” the director recalls.

As a kid, Shimkin had played toy soldiers obsessively. One trait that made him such an exceptional war correspondent was his exhaustive knowledge of military strategy. Shimkin’s former journalist colleagues were also eager to help. They remember him as “an enigma,” a brilliant guy who looked thin and slightly nerdy and wore spectacles but who had “this insane knowledge” about the US army. “He was a goofball…but he was also brilliant.”

Verkaik met Buckley multiple times before his death. Buckley couldn’t answer questions because of his stroke but he and his wife showed the young filmmaker his archive. He had kept everything relating to Operation Speedy Express, the story he and Shimkin had never been allowed to tell properly. “For someone who couldn’t really speak any more, his anger was so palpable,” Verkaik notes. "Kevin Buckley fought so hard for Speedy's truth to be told."

The Vietnamese also supported the filmmaker. He visited the regions where the massacres took place, in the Mekong Delta, expecting that families would have moved away. In fact, survivors and relatives of those killed were still living there. They were keen to talk. “We spent a lot of time with them. We made food together…it became a very collective experience.”

Intriguingly, we hear Shimkin’s voice, narrating through his letters and diaries. “We decided to use something I have a very ambivalent relationship with, artificial intelligence, to learn his voice. We had 40 minutes of his voice in a recording…and I think we learned a lot about his character through his voice.”

Soldier’s Bones will be released in the Netherlands by Cinema Delicatessen in June. Before that, Movies That Matter will take it on tour across the Netherlands in May. The filmmakers are also in talks with a major broadcaster about the US rights.

Find out more about Movies that Matter here.

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*Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund
**Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund and Production Incentive