A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam

by Neil Sheehan

  Her parents raised her to mirror their values of family and church and country, and she never questioned anything. Her Grandmother Allen had a particular effect on her. They seemed to have much in common. Whenever Jess’s mother, a small, pale woman, visited the Aliens in Rochester or came to the lake cottage for a few weeks in the summer, Mary Jane wanted to spend every moment she could with her grandmother. Grandmother Allen taught her to sew well, and to knit and crochet, and she told Mary Jane stories about her own younger years. Two of her ten children had died in infancy during an influenza epidemic. Grandfather Allen had then died when Jess Allen was still a boy. There had not been much money, and Grandmother Allen had had to struggle to raise her surviving children. She was proud of what she had accomplished, of how well Jess and his seven brothers and sisters had turned out. A woman should take pride in being a mother, she said. Even though the man might be the provider, raising the family was ultimately the woman’s responsibility. In a time of trouble, a woman should sacrifice for her children, holding them firmly to her and nurturing them into adulthood. If a woman fulfilled her duty to her family, she would also be fulfilling her duty to God and her country, for without the family, the church and the nation could not exist, Mary Jane’s grandmother said.

  Mary Jane had been keeping a hope chest for the marriage she dreamed of even before she met John. She started it as soon as she began working part-time in the picture-frame and toy departments at Sibley’s. She bought tablecloths and napkins and pretty ashtrays and other knickknacks. Her mother never objected to the purchases, because Mary Jane had innate good taste. Most of her friends also kept hope chests. After she met John the question of the man was settled. Except for her high school graduation in June 1944, when she went to the prom with a boy who had been a childhood friend, she dated no one during the year and nearly four months until she saw John again. It was romantic to be in love with a serviceman who was fighting, or was preparing to fight, this war for the salvation of the world. Hardly a week passed without the photo of a “war bride” in the society sections of the Rochester newspapers. Mary Jane’s graduation ceremony at West High School was in keeping with this spirit. One of the boys read his essay, “What I Am Fighting For,” and a girl read hers, “Hands Across the Sea.” Another young woman sang a solo entitled “British Children’s Prayer.”

  At the classification center in Nashville, Vann had been lucky enough to be selected for pilot training, despite slightly higher scores on the aptitude tests for bombardier and navigator. He passed the winter, spring, and summer of 1944 shifting through the South from one stage of flight training to another—to Primary School at Bainbridge, Georgia, where he survived his initial flying test, a solo after eight to ten hours of instruction; to a faster trainer aircraft, his first formation flying, and instrument training in the simulated cockpits of the Link Trainers at the Basic School at Maxwell Field, Alabama; finally to the thrill of Advanced Flying School at Dorr Field, Florida.

  His exuberance and the love of freedom in flight that had drawn him to aviation in the first place then denied him his dream of becoming a pilot. He flew a trainer through some forbidden stunt maneuvers one day in early August. He was punished by dismissal from the school. The language of bureaucracy hid the precise nature of his sin. His record said only: “Eliminated from further Pilot training due to Flying Deficiency.” He was crestfallen by the penalty for his foolishness and fibbed to his worshipful youngest brother, Gene, saying that the flight surgeons had found a spot on a lung from a childhood case of tuberculosis. (He told Mary Jane the truth years later.) His instructors noted his ability and exemplary behavior most of the time (he had been nominated for the Good Conduct Medal at Maxwell Field) and recommended him for Navigation School at San Marcos Army Air Field in Texas. He was transferred there in October, graduated in late January 1945, and was awarded his navigator’s wings and the gold bars of a second lieutenant in mid-February.

  He sent Mary Jane a photograph of himself in his new officer’s uniform, with a short, tight-fitting tunic called the “Ike jacket” because General Eisenhower liked to wear it. The quickie studio where he had the photograph taken had a canvas backdrop painted in sea and clouds. He crushed in his cap at the sides for a rakish aviator effect, put a hand on his hip, and stared off at destiny to the left of the camera. “So help me Hon,” he wrote on the back, “The guy that took this (at a 2 bit carnival)—made me stand like this—looking off into the wild blue yonder—and Lord alone knows for what.”

  John telephoned long-distance in April. He had been granted a short leave in the course of being transferred to Lincoln, Nebraska, and he was coming to see her for the first time since the Christmas Eve dinner. He hitched plane rides from one airfield to another and arrived in Rochester on April 12, 1945. Mary Jane remembered the date because it was the day Franklin Roosevelt died and Harry Truman became president. They went downtown to a jewelry store and he bought her an engagement ring. He didn’t propose marriage, and she did not mention it prior to getting the ring. It was just assumed between them that they would be married.

  Mary Allen forced them to agree to wait two years. The Aliens liked their glimpse of the young man, but they wanted to see more before he took their daughter. Mary Allen’s concern with family also made her wish to learn whether his family were her kind of people. She was anxious as well to have her daughter obtain a better education than she had, to have at least two years of college before marrying. After her high school graduation in 1944 Mary Jane had attended Miss McCarthy’s Business School to learn typing and shorthand and had since been working as a secretary. Her mother had set aside money for her to enter the University of Rochester in the fall of 1945.

  For the first time in her life, Mary Jane became rebellious. John called that summer from New Mexico, where he had been sent for three months of specialized radar navigation training on the B-29 Superfortress, the four-engine monarch of the World War II bombers, and invited her to come down on a train for a visit. She accepted without obtaining her parents’ permission. They were away on a trip and difficult to reach. She persuaded her older sister, Doris, to act as her chaperon. John arranged for the two girls to stay at a guest house on the air base and found a date for Doris. Both girls had a grand time swimming at the pool and going to parties. In August she pressured her mother into announcing the engagement. The Rochester Times-Union carried the notice in its evening edition of Saturday, August 18, 1945, with a studio portrait of Mary Jane.

  NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

  Frank Vann, John Paul’s stepfather, did the cooking; he tried to make the monotonous fried potatoes and biscuits as tasty as possible. Young Johnny in Frank Vann’s hat, Frank Junior, Dorothy Lee, little Gene in his big brother’s Boy Scout hat as cowboy gear.

  Courtesy Dorothy Lee Cadorette.

  Gene was the victim of the vitamin-deficient diet. Rickets bowed his legs grotesquely. The surgeons at a charity hospital broke his legs to set them straight and he wore a body cast for eight months.

  Courtesy Dorothy Lee Cadorette.

  John Paul Vann’s mother, Myrtle Lee Tripp, in her self-indulgent finery. “I’m Myrtle and there’s not another one in the world like me. I love myself,” said her sister Mollie in summing up Myrtle’s character.

  Courtesy Dorothy Lee Cadorette.

  His father, Johnny Spry, in a moment of brief prosperity before his bootleg whiskey still was raided. Myrtle named the boy John Paul after him.

  Courtesy John Paul Spry, Jr.

  ESCAPE TO FERRUM

  A rich Norfolk oyster dealer outfitted him in sport coat and slacks and wrote a check for a scholarship at Ferrum Training School and Junior College in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

  Courtesy Dorothy Lee Cadorette.

  A happy Johnny Vann in The Beacon, the Ferrum yearbook for the class of 1943:“Intelligent, clear-eyed—of such as he, / Shall Freedom’s young apostles be.”

  Courtesy The Parker Studio,

  Roanoke, Virgin
ia.

  Attired as the knight of the air he wanted to be in a photo he sent to Mary Jane and signed, “Love, Johnny.”

  Courtesy Mary Jane Vann.

  Myrtle and Frank Vann came to visit him at a processing center in Nashville, Tennessee, before he went on to flight training. Myrtle wore her gray-squirrel coat.

  Courtesy Dorothy Lee Cadorette.

  The eve of the wedding: John Vann between Myrtle and Mary Jane.

  Courtesy Mary Jane Vann.

  THE AIR CORPS AND A GIRL

  Lt. John Paul Vann and Mary Jane Allen on their wedding day, October 6,1945.

  Courtesy Mary Jane Vann.

  FAMILY DAYS

  The halcyon time in Osaka, Japan, before the outbreak of the Korean War, with Patricia, their first-born, and John Allen on his mother’s lap.

  Courtesy Mary Jane Vann.

  West Germany in the mid-1950s: Tommy listening to his father during a bicycle excursion along a dirt road through a forest. Tow-headed Jesse at left, John Allen behind Tommy, blond boy beside him is the child of a family friend.

  CourtesyMary Jane Vann.

  VIETNAM: THE FIRST YEAR

  Vann and Cao, August 1962. “The best U. S.-Vietnamese team for fighting Communists.” Courtesy Mary Jane Vann.

  Capt. Thuong, the Cambodian who commanded the Rangers and who wielded a Bowie knife. John Paul Vann Papers.

  Col. Daniel Boone Porter in civvies. John Paul Vann Papers.

  Dick Ziegler’s war diary opened to facing pages on the battle.

  Top: Planning an earlier operation: Ziegler, standing; Maj. Essex, left; Lt. Col. Bui Dinh Dam, center; Capt. Linh, 7th Division operations officer, right. Center: The paratroops are dropped too late and in the wrong place. Bottom: An A-26 Invader hitting Bac hamlet with napalm.

  THE BATTLE OF AP BAC

  Ziegler’s sketch map of the battle. Bac is at the place where he has penned the number 3 in a circle. Courtesy Lt. Col. Richard Ziegler, U. S. A. (Ret).

  Jim Scanlon and Ly Tong Ba on top of Ba’s M-113 APC during an operation prior to the battle. Courtesy Lt. Col. James Scanlon, U. S. A. (Ret).

  Downed helicopters: the two H-21s stand forlornly in the paddy field in front of Bac. The crashed Huey is behind to the left. Courtesy Lt. Col. James Scanlon, U.S.A. (Ret.).

  David Halberstam of The New York Times fording a stream, or, “Knee-deep in the Big Muddy,” as he later put it. Horst Faas /Associated Press.

  Lt. Gen. Victor “Brute” Krulak of the Marine Corps became a rarity among the American military leaders. He learned to think like the men in Hanoi. U. P. I./Bettmann Newsphotos.

  Paul Harkins, right, takes Gen. Earle Wheeler in hand when Wheeler is sent out after Ap Bac to investigate Harkins’s direction of the war. U. S. Army.

  BACK IN VIETNAM

  Hau Nghia Province, 1965: Doug Ramsey, the cheerful, lanky Westerner who was the perfect assistant and partner for Vann in this most insecure of provinces west of Saigon after Vann’s return to Vietnam. Mert Perry.

  Dan Ellsberg, right, who replaced Ramsey as Vann’s companion in the field after Ramsey was captured by the Viet Cong. Vann, showing Ellsberg Hau Nghia, has stopped to talk to the local Vietnamese official at left. John Paul Vann Papers.

  John Vann with Gen. Fred Weyand, the friend who was to help Vann get his stars and who saved Saigon during the Communist Tet Offensive, at Weyand’s headquarters at Long Binh. Dick Swanson, Life Magazine, © Time, Inc.

  The author, then a correspondent for The New York Times, talking to Brig. Gen. Du Quoc Dong, commander of the ARVN Airborne Division, during the fighting in Da Nang between two factions on the Saigon side. Paul Avery.

  JOHN VANN TAKES COMMAND

  May 15,1971

  The civilian general of the mountains of the Highlands and the rice deltas of the Central Coast with his staff at II Corps headquarters at Pleiku. To Vann’s left is his chief of staff, Col. Joseph Pizzi; to Vann’s right is his military deputy, Brig. Gen. George Wear. U. S. Army.

  John Vann, in the golf jacket he wore to ward off the chill of flying in his helicopter, at the command post of an ARVN airborne brigade battling the North Vietnamese Army for control of Rocket Ridge between Tan Canh and Kontum. Matt Franjóla.

  John Vann strides through Bong Son town in a vain effort to encourage the defenders as it and the rest of northern Binh Dinh Province on the coast collapse before the Communist forces. Matt Franjóla.

  Calling in the B-52s: John Vann telling U. S. military advisors in Kontum at the height of the siege of the town how he will defeat the NVA. At right is Brig. Gen. Nguyen Van Toan, the new ARVN II Corps commander, who had been instructed to listen to Vann. Matt Franjóla.

  Camp Holloway Airstrip, June 10,1972: John Vann’s casket is carried to a C-130 transport for the flight to Saigon. Matt Franjóla.

  DEATH OF A SOLDIER

  June 16,1972: In the Oval Office of the White House after the funeral at Arlington National Cemetery. Left to right: Aaron Frank Vann, Jr., Eugene Wallace Vann, Dorothy Lee Vann Cadorette, Jesse Vann, Thomas Vann, Peter Vann, Mary Jane Vann, President Richard Nixon, John Allen Vann, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, Secretary of State William Rogers. Official White House Photo.

  In September, John telephoned again. He was being assigned to a regular B-29 squadron at Smoky Hill Army Air Field near Salina, Kansas. Although Japan had surrendered on August 14, his term of service was being continued indefinitely because he had had no overseas duty. (Men were being discharged through a point system based on time overseas and in combat.) He could take two weeks of leave at the beginning of October and be in Rochester by October 3. They could be married as quickly as they could get a license and Mary Jane could return with him to Kansas, where they would live in an apartment near the base. Mary Jane said yes. She asked her mother if she would like to spend the money she had been saving for the university on a wedding. When her mother objected, Mary Jane announced that if her parents refused to let her marry John in Rochester, she was going to take the train to Kansas and marry him at the air base. She was eighteen now and no longer needed her parents’ permission. John was twenty-one. There wasn’t time to arrange a proper wedding by early October, her mother argued. They would have to make do, Mary Jane insisted. Her mother agreed because she had no choice. They set the wedding day for October 6 so that the ceremony could be held on the conventional Saturday afternoon when it would be convenient for their friends to attend. Mary Jane called John back and gave him the date. He’d be there in plenty of time, he said.

  John was so impressed by the wedding invitation printed in fancy Gothic type that he mailed Mary Jane a list of people who could not come but to whom he wanted invitations sent for pride’s sake. One was his rescuer, Garland Hopkins, who was serving as an Army chaplain in Southeast Asia at the time. John was to have only three people from his side at the wedding: Mollie; her older son, Joe Raby, whom he asked to be his best man; and Myrtle. He did not want to arouse the suspicions of the Aliens by not having anyone from his family. (He invented an excuse for Frank Vann, who stayed in Norfolk because of the usual shortage of money.)

  As Mollie remembered it, her nephew was blunt in his instructions to her: “I leave my mother in your hands, Aunt Mollie,” he said. “You keep her straightened up and don’t let her get drunk or anything like that.” He was afraid alcohol would stir the meanness in her. “She could get to talkin’ if she took too much,” Mollie recalled. “‘Well, you know, Vann is not his real name, you know.’ That was the sort of thing she might say.”

  Mollie kept Myrtle sober, but her vanity caused a small crisis. Myrtle took the train from Norfolk to New York and then drove to Rochester with Mollie and Joe Raby the day before the wedding. Mary Allen insisted that John’s mother and aunt stay at her house. John and Joe put up at a hotel. While Myrtle and Mollie were riding to the church the next afternoon with Mary Allen for the 4:30 ceremony, Myrtle discovered a run in her stocking. “I can’t go,” she said to Mollie. “I have a
run in my stockin’.”

  “You have to go,” Mollie replied. “We can’t get stockin’s now. Weddin’s take place. They go, you know. We’ve got to get there.”

  “Mollie, I am not goin’ in that church with a run in my stockin’,” Myrtle insisted.

  “No one will ever notice, because they’re so excited by the bride,” Mollie said. “They’re not lookin’ at you. They’re lookin’ at the bride.”

  Myrtle was adamant.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll get stockings somewhere, Mrs. Vann,” Mary Allen intervened. “We’ll get the stockings for you.”