# A child between soldiers' boots: the 1965 student poster for victory in Vietnam A 1965 poster distributed by the National Student Committee for Victory in Vietnam, of St. Louis, Missouri, prints one photograph of a small child standing among the legs of U.S. soldiers under the line "They're the reason we're in Vietnam." - Home - Archive - A child between soldiers' boots: the 1965 student poster for victory in Vietnam They're the reason we're in Vietnam A child between soldiers' boots: the 1965 student poster for victory in Vietnam A 1965 poster from the National Student Committee for Victory in Vietnam, St. Louis, pairs a child among soldiers with "They're the reason we're in ## Techniques named on the archive record Card stacking Date1965Made byNational Student Committee for Victory in Vietnam (St. Louis, Missouri)MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeJohnson AdministrationSourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceLibrary of Congress , retrieved October 2, 2026SourceU.S. publication without copyright notice; LoC: no known restrictions on publication Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records. Full record at propagandaarchive.org A 1965 poster distributed by the National Student Committee for Victory in Vietnam, of St. Louis, Missouri, prints one photograph of a small child standing among the legs of U.S. soldiers under the line "They're the reason we're in Vietnam." ## What is on it One photograph fills the sheet. A small child in sandals and a patterned shirt stands among the trouser legs and boots of American soldiers; another child is behind. The headline runs above, and the distributor's name and address run in small type below. THEY'RE THE REASON WE'RE IN VIETNAM Distributed By: National Student Committee For Victory In Vietnam 214 North Clay Avenue St. Louis, Missouri 63122 FRAME transcription. The distributor line is very small, and FRAME notes the street number and ZIP code may be off by a digit; a signature on the photograph is illegible. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. ## Who distributed it A private student group, the National Student Committee for Victory in Vietnam, with a St. Louis address. FRAME classes the source as openly identified. Nothing in the record ties it to federal money or direction. The Library of Congress holds the copy (item 2016648560), recorded as a U.S. publication without a copyright notice. The sheet says the committee distributed it; the record does not say who took the photograph, or where. ## How to read it FRAME tags it card stacking, and the stacking is by subtraction. The poster offers a single reason for a war, and the reason is a child. There is no place, date, number, treaty, or threat on it. Who would argue against protecting a child? That is the trick: the question the poster answers is not the question the country was debating, which was whether this war, fought this way, was the means to protect anyone. The same standard applies to the other side. Six years later the Committee to Help Unsell the War printed "Two more casualties of Viet Nam", a child beside a flag-draped coffin, and asked "Is it worth it?" Each poster uses a child to carry an argument the child cannot make. The record shows neither picture to be false, and neither is a reason by itself. What both sides got right was the method of publishing. A student committee in Missouri printed its view of the war under its own name and address, and nobody needed permission. The same committee's 1968 sheet of atrocity photographs, "Liberated by the Viet Cong", is on the archive. The period's other sheets, government and private, are gathered in US Vietnam War messaging, 1954–1975. ## Sources - FRAME object record, They're the reason we're in Vietnam, 1965. National Student Committee for Victory in Vietnam (St. Louis, Missouri). - Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, item 2016648560, retrieved by the archive 2 October 2026. Rights as recorded: U.S. publication without copyright notice; no known restrictions on publication. Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/nscvv-theyre-the-reason-were-in-vietnam-1965/