Doug was the subject of a feature film about grizzlies and Vietnam, Peacock’s War, which premiered on PBS Nature, and won the grand prizes at the Telluride Mountainfilm and the Snowbird film festivals.
Doug served in Vietnam as a Green Beret medic, trying to preserve life on the edge of the battlefield. He came home an emotional and spiritual wreck. Running for refuge to the last islands of uninhabited wilderness in the American West, Peacock discovered a fellow creature who had also been driven back to the same mountain sanctuary, among the tarns and granite peaks. This was the endangered grizzly bear. Living on the hunting grounds of this beast--a beautiful, playful, intelligent, fiercely dangerous animal--led Peacock back to a sense of his own humanity, and humility before nature.
This film was also the first of a long line of "veterans in nature" productions, featuring traumatized vets (mostly from recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan), often fly fishing or rafting down rivers. In 1980, the American Psychiatric Association added Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to its classification of Mental Disorders. Before 1980, when Doug was shooting the grizzly footage for Peacock's War, this kind of war sickness didn't even have a name. This pioneering film of war and wilderness shares more in common with Hemingway's "The Big Two Hearted River" than it does contemporary productions. "Peacock's War" has been proclaimed a classic and remains so today.
Doug Peacock will share this film with any veterans or PTSD group and, if appropriate, will present the film himself.
Purchase a copy of Peacock's War
$19.95 + $5.00 shipping and handling (PayPal).
Runtime: 60 minutes, Copyright: 1987
Stream Peacock's War
Vimeo ($3.99)
Awards and Festivals
Best of Festival, MountainFilm Festival, Telluride
Grand Prize, Adventure Film Festival, Snow Bird
Red Ribbon, American Film & Video Festival
Silver Apple, National Educational Film Festival
People's Choice Award, Banff Festival of Mountain Films
Grand Prize, Adventure Film Festival
Honorable Mention, San Francisco International Film Festival
National PBS Broadcast
Moondance International Film Festival
Taos Mountain Film Festival