Soldier’s Bones

In 1971, 27-year-old Newsweek reporter Alec Shimkin discovers a secret US-led military campaign in Vietnam. The story is about to reveal war crimes on an immense scale, undeniably Pullitzer-worthy material. But the Scoop never got the exposure it deserved: though published in Newsweek, Shimkin’s findings were tucked away in a small sidebar, far from the front-page attention they warrented. Soon after, he went missing-in-action in Vietnam. What story did we truly miss? 
 
Shimkin’s discovery was Operation Speedy Express, a campaign that may have involved war crimes on a scale that makes the infamous My Lai massacre pale by comparison. Yet almost no one knows the full truth, because Alec himself vanished before he could bring it to light. 
 
In the trail of Alec’s quest and his childhood obsession for war, the documentary Soldier’s Bones, directed by Kasper Verkaik, searches for the deadly echo of Speedy Express in the Mekong Delta.