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

by Neil Sheehan

  On the morning of June 7, 1972, two days after the last NVA soldier was killed inside Kontum, John Vann spoke to a group of recently arrived advisors assembled at his rear headquarters in Nhatrang. His talk was a periodic event called the Newcomers’ Briefing. He said he was “often struck by the widespread belief that South Vietnam had “suffered immeasurably” from an American war. “In point of fact … while South Vietnam is not worth what it has cost the United States in terms of U.S. values, in terms of South Vietnamese values these people are much further ahead today than they would have been either with peace and a non-Communist government or with peace and a Communist government… In 1962 the literacy rate was 15 percent. Today it’s over 80 percent.” The social revolution he had wanted to capture from the Communists in 1965 “has been achieved,” Vann said, “partly by design, but mostly by the accident of the war.” He spoke of miracle rice and irrigation equipment, of television sets and Honda motorcycles. Forced urbanization had helped bring the social revolution to pass, he said, by creating a class of “consumers” for the farmers. In the year in which Vann spoke, 39,000 Saigon soldiers died.

  On June 9, 1972, Vann flew to Saigon with John Hill for a morning ceremony at which Abrams awarded Hill a Legion of Merit for his contribution to the victory. Vann stayed there for an afternoon strategy conference with Abrams and Weyand and the U.S. Army generals advising the three other ARVN corps commanders. He and Hill returned to Pleiku late in the day with Vann’s new deputy, Col. Robert Kingston, who was on the promotion list for brigadier. Hill was going home. He had already postponed his scheduled departure for several weeks to see Vann through the battle. Vann tarried at the Pleiku mess for the farewell dinner for Hill. Wine was served, and there were short speeches. Vann told Pizzi and Hill and others at the head table that he was leaving for Kontum immediately afterward to spend the night with Rhotenberry and Ba. He didn’t want to break his record. “I’ve been in Kontum everyday since this thing started.” he said. He had the mess stewards wrap some fruit and leftover fresh rolls and took an unopened bottle of wine to bring to Rhotenberry and Ba.

  He was in a jubilant mood when his helicopter took off shortly after 9:00 P.M. He had celebrated between the morning ceremony and the afternoon strategy conference by making love to Lee and then to two other Vietnamese women. He had started the official proceedings to marry Annie during an earlier trip to Saigon in May and had just sent her a note with Thomas Barnes, his Dep/CORDS for II Corps, who was flying to Nhatrang that night. He had forgotten all about the will he wrote on the day that Tan Canh fell. Peter Kama had gone off to Hue, where the airborne brigade had been transferred, with the slip of notepaper in his wallet. Vann radioed Rhotenberry and asked for a report on the weather in Kontum. The sky over the town was fairly clear on the night of June 9, but it had been so miserable with rain and fog on recent nights that Rhotenberry could not resist a quip after answering that the weather was fine. “You won’t have to reach down with your foot to find the LZ,” he said. “Roger that!” Vann replied. “I am fifteen minutes from your location.”

  Two creeks, one named the Khol and the other the Drou, cross Route 14 about three miles south of the Chu Pao (Pao Mountain) Pass below Kontum near the Montagnard hamlet of Ro Uay. The ARVN soldiers manning a sandbag blockhouse at the bridge there heard a helicopter approaching through the dark sky and then saw the fireball and heard the explosion of a crash. The Army aviators found him. A Cobra pilot spotted the last flames of the wreckage under a grove of tall trees the helicopter had struck. A special Huey gunship called the Night Hawk shone down the beam of its searchlight and located a place where Lt. Col. Jack Anderson, the aviator who had rescued the advisors at Hoai An, could land his Huey. He and a senior aircraft mechanic who had volunteered to go with him, Master Sgt. John Johnson, came upon Vann lying facedown in the grove. He had died instantly from the shock of the crash and his body was broken in many places, but he was not bloodied and the flames had not touched him. His Wellington boots were still on his feet. A patrol of ARVN Rangers who had arrived a few minutes earlier from a nearby fire base exacted payment for the danger of being sent to fetch him at night in an area where they had been fighting with the NVA. They stripped him of his wristwatch and wallet and his Rutgers class of 1954 ring before they carried his body to Anderson’s helicopter. “I hate to be the guy to give John Vann his last ride,” Anderson said to the copilot who had volunteered to fly with him, Capt. Bernard Ferguson, as they lifted off for the hospital at Pleiku.

  Doug Ramsey learned of Vann’s death in his seventh and last prison camp, this one near Kratie in Cambodia, where he had been moved in April. He and the other POWs were permitted to listen to Radio Hanoi and to Liberation Radio, the purported voice of the Viet Cong. The Vietnamese Communists paid Vann a reverse tribute by exulting in his end. They gave far more attention to his death than they had to the occasional deaths earlier in the war of ordinary American generals. “Vann committed towering crimes,” Liberation Radio said, and his removal “constitutes a stunning blow” for the U.S. and the Saigon side. The NVA newspaper, Military People’s Daily, published a special commentary, which Radio Hanoi broadcast, on the demise of “this outstanding chief advisor.” The Communists claimed to have brought down Vann’s helicopter. Radio Hanoi said a message had been sent to the antiaircraft unit responsible congratulating the gunners “for good shooting.”

  The Vietnamese Communists did not kill John Vann. The ARVN soldiers at the bridge heard no shooting prior to the crash, nor was there any other indication Vann’s Ranger had been crippled by bullets before it hit the trees. The force of the impact and the way the whirling rotor blades sheared off tree branches indicated that the helicopter had flown into the grove under power at cruising speed. The technical analysis of the engine and other components recovered from the wreckage confirmed this.

  The explanation of the crash did not lie in gunfire. Vann had drained the last of the courage out of his regular pilot, Bob Richards, with the rescue of the advisors at Tan Canh. He had been forced to let Richards stay in Nhatrang in May to try to recover his nerve. Richards had then taken leave in Bangkok and gone AWOL. As a replacement, Vann had recruited a twenty-six-year-old aviator, Lt. Ronald Doughtie. He was a capable and a daring pilot, but he did not have Richards’s experience and judgment. While the weather was fine that night in the valley of the Bla River where Kontum is located, it was bad in the Pleiku region south of the Chu Pao Pass, with rain squalls and a lot of haze to hinder visibility. The verdict of the official investigation was that Doughtie may have suddenly found himself in a patch of blinding weather and instead of instantly switching to his instruments for guidance, attempted to continue to fly visually. When a pilot does this he is overcome by vertigo. He may think he is flying level, when actually he is turning and descending steeply in what airmen call “the graveyard spiral.” The fact that Doughtie flew into the trees at a 45-degree angle was taken as substantial evidence that this had occurred. Colonel Anderson had guessed at vertigo when he stood amid the wreckage and looked up at the slash marks down through the trees while the Night Hawk ship illuminated them with the searchlight. Doughtie was also killed instantly by the shock of the impact, as was a captain from the Pleiku headquarters who was riding along in the backseat. The captain was interested in becoming a pilot, and Doughtie was going to give him an informal lesson on the way back from Kontum.

  Anderson and some of the other aviators wondered why Vann and Doughtie were following the road up to Kontum. It was the hazardous way. One had to fly fairly low to keep the road in sight, and one ran the additional risk of being shot at going through the Chu Pao Pass. A regiment of NVA had occupied bunkers and caves on its ridges in May to prevent overland resupply and reinforcement of Kontum, and despite B-52 strikes, some of them were still there, including the crew of a 12.7mm antiaircraft machine gun who fired at anything flying low. There was a safe route that circled around to the west of Chu Pao. It avoided bullets, and in case of bad weather
one could get landing instructions from a U.S. Air Force Ground Control Approach team that had been stationed with its radar equipment at Kontum Airfield to guide C-130S carrying supplies in at night, when there was less danger of shelling. Another senior Army aviator flew to Kontum along this westerly route the same night, leaving Pleiku shortly after Vann did, and he encountered no trouble.

  If one understood John Vann, one was not puzzled. The road was the quickest way, and Vann would have preferred it for fun. In his mood of jubilation he would have enjoyed taunting his enemies in the pass as his helicopter raced by them in the dark. Doughtie had either ignored the risks too or had not understood them because of his inexperience, and so he had not resisted Vann as Richards might have done.

  Four months after Vann died, on October 9, 1972, I found the grove of trees. I had gone to the Highlands to interview Rhotenberry and Ba and others who had fought his last battle with him, and I felt that I could not leave without seeing the place where his helicopter had crashed. I had read the official reports. I knew by then that official reports were never enough to explain John Vann. There was always more to his story.

  The CORDS advisors at Pleiku let me hitch a ride out to the fire base nearest the crash site on the Huey assigned to them. An advisor to the task force of ARVN Rangers there, Capt. Dennis Franson, offered to help me look. We ran across a second lieutenant at a company position down the road who was a Montagnard. He said he knew where a crash like the one I was seeking had occurred. He took a soldier as a bodyguard and led us down a trail toward the hamlet of Ro Uay.

  The day was hot and sunny, with a sky of white clouds. One could see for miles in every direction. The grove was just 550 yards off the road on the northwest side of the hamlet and was the only clump of high trees in the whole vicinity. The Montagnards practice the crude system of slash-and-burn agriculture. They kill the trees by cutting around the trunk, burn the undergrowth, and plant crops until the soil is exhausted in three or four years. Then they move on to another section of forest while the original planting renews itself. All of the other trees in the vicinity were lower, second-growth ones coming up in abandoned plantings. It seemed strange that Vann’s helicopter had somehow found this one patch of tall trees in the darkness and rain.

  The wreckage was scattered around the grove for fifty to sixty yards. The speed at which the machine had hit the trees and the explosion of the fuel cells had shattered the little helicopter. The sole recognizable fragment was the twisted tail boom. The grove was beautiful. The trees were majestic in their natural state. The canopy of their branches gave deep shade. The sun came down in rays of gentled light. I wondered why the tribal people had left this grove of trees untouched.

  I saw a small, low square of hewn logs planted upright in the ground nearby and asked the Montagnard lieutenant what it was. “Dead men here,” he said. “Dead men here,” he repeated, sweeping his hand about.

  Then I saw the figures placed around another, larger square of hewn logs farther into the trees. I had not noticed them before, because I had been concentrating on the wreckage. They were carved of wood in the primitive fashion of the Montagnards, an ancient people who migrated into Indochina earlier than the Vietnamese. The figures were squatting, resting their chins on their hands and staring into space. I had seen figures like them at another tribal hamlet not far from this one nearly ten years before, and I knew now why the trees had not been touched. The grove was the hamlet graveyard. The tribal people had left the trees in their natural state to guard the graves and to provide shade for their burial rites.

  Now I also knew what had happened on that night. John Vann had come skylarking up the road, mocking death again, unaware that these figures of death were waiting for him in this grove.

  ***

  Vann’s friend, George Jacobson, stayed until the end. He left on a helicopter from the roof of the embassy not long before dawn on April 30, 1975, to take refuge aboard a Seventh Fleet ship off Vung Tau as the NVA tanks were preparing to move into Saigon. John Vann was not meant to flee to a ship at sea, and he did not miss his exit. He died believing he had won his war.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The research and writing of this book have been like a long voyage of discovery. I would not have completed it without the love and support of my family, the help and encouragement of friends, and the generosity and assistance of those I encountered along the way.

  For fellowships to partially defray research costs and living expenses on my sixteen-year odyssey I thank Gordon Ray and The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; William Polk, Peter Diamandopoulos, and The Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs; Nicholas Rizopoulos, David Calleo, Lewis Lehrman, and The Lehrman Institute; Leslie Dunbar and the Field Foundation; John Bresnan, Reuben Frodin, and The Ford Foundation; Joel Colton and The Rockefeller Foundation; and James Billington, Peter Braestrup, Michael Lacey, and The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Russell Baker, John Fairbank, Leslie Gelb, Brendan Gill, James B. Reston, A. M. Rosenthal, Harrison Salisbury, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Roger Stevens, Seymour Topping, Cyrus Vance, and Tom Wicker wrote fellowship recommendations for me.

  The Library of Congress gave me space in which to write and access to its unsurpassed research facilities from 1980 onward. I thank Daniel Boorstin, the former Librarian of Congress; John Broderick; Ellen Hahn; Winston Tabb; Christopher Wright; William Sartain; Joseph Brooks; and in particular Suzanne Thorin and Bruce Martin for being so accommodating.

  A. M. Rosenthal, Seymour Topping, Max Frankel, James Greenfield, Craig Whitney, Hedrick Smith, and Bill Kovach extended to me the facilities of the New York Times. Vo Tuan Chan and Le Kim Dinh of the Saigon bureau helped with logistics and translation during my research trips to South Vietnam in 1972 and 1973. Sunday Fellows, the librarian of the Washington bureau, always responded to my requests for material from the clip files. Linda Lake of the news research section in New York also located clips for me.

  Ambassador Tran Kim Phuong granted me a visa to South Vietnam for my 1972 research trip despite the recommendation of a high-ranking State Department official that he refuse. Hoang Due Nha, then commissioner-general for information of the Saigon government, gave Ambassador Phuong permission to do so. Ambassador Bui Diem, the former envoy in Washington, urged them to grant me the visa.

  For their hospitality during that 1972 trip I thank Craig Whitney, Frenchy Zois McDaniel and Morris McDaniel, John Swango, Maj. Gen. Michael Healy and Col. Jack Matteson, and former Sgt. Major Charles Eatley; Joseph Treaster and Barbara Gluck and Frank Wisner were especially hospitable during my subsequent trip in 1973.

  I am also grateful for the hospitality extended to me during research trips in the United States—to Mary Jane Vann and John Allen Vann, Vince and Ann Davis, Carl and Edith Bernard, and Edward Story.

  Robert Osgood granted me the use of an office at Washington’s School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University for the academic year of 1974–75

  James Chace served as chairman of four seminars I gave at The Lehrman Institute in the winter and spring of 1976. The rapporteur was John Lax, a young historian of imagination and brilliance whose life and promise were snuffed out by a drunken driver.

  Brig. Gen. E. H. Simmons made me welcome at the Marine Corps Historical Center in the Washington Navy Yard. Jack Shulimson and Keith Fleming guided me in locating the documents I needed. Joyce Bonnett found most of those I requested in her archives.

  Vincent Demma, George MacGarrigle, Richard Hunt, William Hammond, and Joel Meyerson of the U.S. Army Center of Military History in Washington were companions along the road, patiently replying to every inquiry.

  Col. James Agnew, Col. Donald Shaw, and Dr. Richard Sommers of the U.S. Army Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, facilitated the declassification of the classified portion of John Vann’s papers they held. The Army’s Office of the Adjutant General and the Department of Defense responded swiftly and with little qu
ibbling to my other Freedom of Information Act requests. Harry Eisenstadt of the Defense Mapping Agency helped me to purchase the military maps I needed.

  The Office of Air Force History in Washington graciously provided publications and general reference assistance.

  Harry Middleton, David Humphrey, Charles Corkran, and Sharon Fawcett of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in Austin, Texas, were forthcoming with documents from their archives.

  Ann Elam of the Fairfax County Police Department located the records of Garland Hopkins’s suicide.

  Tess Johnston typed large sections of a semifinal draft of the manuscript. Prosser Gifford, deputy director of The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and William Dunn, the assistant director for administration, arranged for the typing of other sections by Eloise Doane and Pat Sheridan.

  Col. Paul Raisig, Jr., an old comrade from 1962 in the Mekong Delta, consented to read the manuscript for technical military accuracy. If any mistakes remain, however, they are mine.