Episode 1

21 years old and weeks from shipping out to Vietnam, Tim O'Brien sits in a boat on the Rainy River. He’s close enough to Canada to swim across and dodge the draft altogether. But he’s more scared of doing that than of going to war.

Once there, he’s immediately confronted with the problems of killing and dying. And by the time the mud closes over his closest friend in the platoon, O'Brien is left with a question that will shape everything he writes afterwards: how do you tell the truth about a war, when the truth is the least believable part of it?

Adapted from Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, a landmark of American Vietnam War fiction and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. What’s true and what’s not true, only O’Brien and the rest of his platoon know, but this is one of the most visceral and honest depictions of life as a foot soldier in the US Army.

Story of America is a major collection of dramatisations of milestone American titles marking 250 years since the Declaration of Independence and the foundation of the United States.

The drama contains strong language, including sexual references and racially derogatory language reflecting attitudes of the period, as well as scenes of wartime death and violence.

Cast:

Tim O'Brien . . . . . Will Merrick
Kathleen . . . . . Mara Huf
'Rat' Kiley . . . . . Ashley Margolis
Kiowa . . . . . Arthur Boan
Jimmy Cross . . . . . Chris Lew Kum Hoi
Norman Bowker . . . . . Ian Dunnett Jnr.
Henry Dobbins . . . . . Will Hammond
Mitchell Sanders . . . . . Morgan Beale

Technical Producers . . . . . Keith Graham, Sam Dickinson
Production Co-ordinator . . . . . Ben Hollands
Sound Design . . . . . Peter Ringrose

Dramatist . . . . . Theo Toksvig-Stewart
Director . . . . . Toby Swift

A BBC Studios production.