Just before I left, I bought a miniature fishing boat for Christian in the airport terminal. It was made from a water buffalo horn. It represented a better time, a better tradition in Vietnam. Before there were helicopters, B-52 craters, Agent Orange, and AK-47s.
When I got home, I gave him the boat and asked him would he like to go with me the next time I visit Vietnam.
Christian said, “Yes. But, Dad, what would I do there?”
Captain
Joseph B. Anderson, Jr.
Topeka, Kansas
Platoon Leader
An Khe
June 1966–June 1967
Company Commander
Cambodia, Phouc Vinh
May 1970–April 1971
1st Cavalry Division
U.S. Army
Shortly after I got to Vietnam, we got into a real big fight. We were outnumbered at least ten to one. But I didn’t know it.
I had taken over 1st Platoon of B Company of the 1st of the 12th Cav. We were up against a Viet Cong battalion. There may have been 300 to 400 of them.
And they had just wiped out one of our platoons. At that time in the war, summer of 1966, it was a terrible loss. A bloody massacre.
This platoon had been dropped in a landing zone called LZ Pink in the Central Highlands to do a search and destroy operation. It was probably eight o’clock in the morning. They didn’t realize that they were surrounded. After the helicopters left, the VC opened up and just wiped ’em out. They knocked out the radios, too, so nobody knew what happened to them.
My platoon happened to be out on patrol some miles away. We were the closest to the area of their intended operation. So when there was no word from them, I was given instructions to move in the direction of where they had been dropped and try to find where they had gone.
This is my first operation. I’m new in country. People don’t know me. I don’t know them. They have to be thinking, Can this platoon leader handle it? I was only a second lieutenant.
We went into a forced march all day. When it got dark, we pulled into a clear area like a landing zone and put our perimeter out and set up for the night. Headquarters wanted me to keep moving and keep searching through the night. I knew it wasn’t a smart thing to do, because you could get ambushed. You can’t see what you’re doing in the dark.
Around ten or eleven o’clock, they opened up on us. They were still there. We fought all night long, until six in the morning.
I learned very quickly how to call in artillery, how to put aircraft over me to drop flares and keep the area lighted up so they couldn’t sneak up on me.
I was calling the artillery in within 35, 40 yards of my own people, as tight as I could without hitting us.
I can’t remember wondering if I was ever gonna get out of this. I just did not have time to think about it. I was just too busy directing fire to be scared.
After we drove them off, we began to fan out and search the area. We found the ambushed platoon just 50 yards away. About 25 of them were dead. There were four still alive, but badly wounded. They must have played dead, because all the bodies had been searched and stripped of weapons and equipment. Then four more members of that platoon who had gotten away came out of the jungle to join us. Only one of my men had been hurt. He was shot in the hip.
For rescuing the survivors and driving off the VC battalion I received a Silver Star. But most importantly, the action served as a bond between my platoon and me. It was my first chance to react under fire, and it had gone well. My men knew I could handle the responsibility.
I was an absolute rarity in Vietnam. A black West Pointer commanding troops. One year after graduation. I was very aggressive about my role and responsibilities as an Army officer serving in Vietnam. I was there to defend the freedom of the South Vietnamese government, stabilize the countryside, and help contain Communism. The Domino Theory was dominant then, predominant as a matter of fact. I was gung ho. And I thought the war would last three years at the most.
There weren’t many opportunities for blacks in private industry then. And as a graduate of West Point, I was an officer and a gentleman by act of Congress. Where else could a black go and get that label just like that?
Throughout the Cav, the black representation in the enlisted ranks was heavier than the population as a whole in the United States. One third of my platoon and two of my four squad leaders were black. For many black men, the service, even during a war, was the best of a number of alternatives to staying home and working in the fields or bumming around the streets of Chicago or New York.
Earlier that year, French National Television hired Pierre Schoendoerffer to produce a film about America’s participation in the war. He had been with the French forces at the fall of Dien Bien Phu to the Communist forces in North Vietnam. After visiting different operations around the country, both Army and Marine, he settled on the 1st Cav because of the new approach of our air mobility, our helicopter orientation. And he wound up with my platoon because of its racial mix—we had American Indians and Mexican-Americans, too—our success in finding the lost platoon, my West Point background and ability to speak French. He and the film crew stayed with us day and night for six weeks, filming everything we did. They spoke very good English, and I didn’t speak good enough French. And Schoendoerffer had as much knowledge and experience about the war as any of us.
The film would be called The Anderson Platoon. And it would make us famous.
During the filming in late September, we encountered another Viet Cong battalion in a village right on the edge of the coast. A couple of scout helicopters had been patrolling, looking for enemy signs. The Viet Cong fired on them and shot them down. We were already lifted off that morning, going to another location, when we were diverted to the scene. In air mobility. The basic concept of the 1st Cavalry Division. And it worked.
My platoon was the first one on the ground. We blocked a northern route of egress, and then we started to sweep south through the village. It’s amazing. We walked through the village, through their entire battalion, to link up with our company on the other side. And they never fired a shot. To this day I don’t know why.
Meanwhile, the division piled on. We put about a brigade in, three battalions, and surrounded the village about a mile across. We did it so quick, they were fixed. They couldn’t escape. And with artillery, aircraft, and naval gunfire off the coast, we really waged a high-powered conflict. But not without casualties.
Around noon, my platoon sergeant, a white guy named Watson from Missouri, and some of his people were searching holes in the ground, and they threw a grenade in to see if any enemy were in it. The enemy was in there and threw the grenade back out, wounding Watson and three others. We had to pull back to get them out on a medevac.
I made Owens the platoon sergeant. He was a black guy from California who was as professional as they come.
Around four o’clock, another platoon got in trouble, and we started moving to help them. Owens’s squad moved on the attack first, then he got hit in the head, a bullet crease. And we had to consolidate our position and medevac him out.
I remember very distinctly chastising my organization for firing during that night. I felt they were spooked and just shooting at shadows. The next morning, there were all kinds of bodies out there, where the Viet Cong were trying to slip out to escape the encirclement.
That was one lopsided operation. We lost only four or five men, maybe thirty wounded. But the Viet Cong lost more than 200 killed.
After a couple of weeks, we got Watson and Owens back.
There were only a very few incidents of sustained fighting during my tours. Mostly you walked and walked, searched and searched. If you made contact, it would be over in 30 or 40 minutes. One burst and then they’re gone, because they didn’t want to fight or could not stand up against the firepower we could bring with artillery and helicopter gunships.
In the jungle you couldn’t count on tanks and APCs for support. You couldn’t count
on gunships supporting you in contact unless they were already overhead. You had difficulty getting supplied at all. You just didn’t get it unless you carried it or it could be kicked out the door of the chopper.
Sometimes we could move easily. There were other times you moved maybe 25 yards in an hour, cuttin’ and choppin’ your way through bamboo every step.
Snakes weren’t the big problem. Mosquitoes and malaria were.
And every once in a while, we’d run into a iguana. And it would scare somebody ’cause it would be so unique and ugly-looking. And the meeting would be so sudden.
I made it a policy not to follow trails and paths. That way you avoid ambushes and punji sticks. And none of my men got hurt from that. I just didn’t allow them to take the easy way. And it’s very difficult to keep 30 men who’re tired or bored or frustrated or scared from making mistakes. But the bigger mistake would be to let them get away with something most of the time and then have it come back to hurt or kill them one time when they did not expect it. The lesser price was to take the more difficult route, the one that is least likely to be ambushed or booby-trapped.
Whenever we would go into villages, as the film documents, we would set up our medics to treat the children and the people. We would tend to scars, wounds, whatever. Give them aspirin and soap. We’d give the kids gum, cookies, C-rations. If we wanted to eat off the land, we would buy a chicken or buy a pig. And the film noted that this was probably the first army in the history of the world that did not take what it wanted.
I lost only one man during the first tour. Just one man in my platoon.
Oddly enough, it was not from enemy fire. It was friendly fire.
I guess it was in October. We were in a fairly heavily populated area in the An Lo Valley. On the coast in III Corps. We were conducting night operations to keep the Viet Cong from moving around among the population. It was around four-thirty in the morning. One patrol came back in earlier than they were supposed to to my platoon headquarters. They should’ve come in after daylight. So one of my men on the perimeter threw a grenade out at the noise, thinking it was enemy movement. I don’t know whether they were trying to come in or whether they were lost. The grenade landed among them, wounded three not too seriously, but was close enough to Shannon that it killed him.
Shannon had been in country about eight months, longer than me. He was a rather quiet white guy from California. A rifleman. Did his job all the time. A good soldier.
I did write a letter to his folks, telling them he did an exceptionally good job. I did not describe the circumstances under which he was killed, because we were directed not to put those kinds of details in letters whatever the case may be.
When the film was about to be released for viewing on American television, there was some concern among CBS officials about his family’s reaction to his body being shown after the incident. My wife wound up calling his family. She explained what would be seen in the documentary and asked if they had any objections. They didn’t.
The film describes the grenade as an enemy grenade. Which is not the real circumstances.
Speaking of phone calls, I had to make a different kind when I got home. Reese, my radio operator, had gotten his girl friend pregnant in North Carolina before coming to Vietnam. She had the baby while he was there. In the film he is shown with a couple of young Vietnamese ladies in a club during R & R in Saigon. He wanted me to call his girl friend and convince her that this was done purely for the film. Being from North Carolina, how would that look for him to be seen with those women on national television?
I made the call. And she thanked me. She said she was a little embarrassed, but it was not that big a thing.
I returned to Vietnam in June 1970. I’m a company commander now. A captain. And I went directly into Cambodia, about 15 miles over the border, trying to locate enemy food and weapon caches. We’re dealing with the NVA now.
We set up the first night, and the first thing I did in the morning was send out a patrol just to make sure that nobody set up the ambushes. The patrol, five of them, got hit instantly within 50 yards of the perimeter. Only two of them made it back. I didn’t know what the status was of the other three.
I put a platoon together to go out and try to find them. And they really drew heavy fire, B-40s and AKs. Then I sent another platoon. This went on for two days. That was very unusual for them to stand and fight. What we didn’t know was that we were on the edge of a major supply cache. And they were fighting to defend it.
Meanwhile, I was calling in artillery. We couldn’t get much air support because we’re too far away from our bases in Vietnam. We couldn’t get more troops in because the jungle was so thick. Supplies had to be kicked out of helicopters from treetop height. That’s how tight it was. We as a company were operating independently.
On the third day we finally ran them off. It must have been a company of NVAs, And we found our three individuals. All three were dead. I’d rather that not have happened. But I would have rather it have been the patrol that got hit than moving the whole company and get 15 or 20 people ambushed.
My medics went out to put the bodies in body bags. But they couldn’t do it. The bodies had begun to decay, and the maggots got to them. It was just too emotional and stomach-wrenching for the medics. They broke down. They were throwin’ up. So I had to go out and personally put the decomposed bodies in the bags myself. It was a responsibility that I could not pass on to anybody else. I was the commander.
We found 10 tons of food supply—corn, rice, and so forth. And about 50 tons of Soviet weapons and ammunition. It was the largest cache ever captured by the Cav.
Michael Davidson, the Second Field Force commander, flew out to congratulate us. He had known me at West Point. He had been the commandant at the time I was a cadet.
There was a great amount of criticism about us going into Cambodia. But from that time in June until I gave up the company in November, we didn’t receive another single shot. We’d wiped out all their supplies and demoralized them so greatly that they were not ready to fight. As we ran our patrols, we would find they were trailing us so they could eat our garbage, the stuff we’d throw away.
As a company commander, I did not have any feel for the political and international ramifications of going into Laos, going into Cambodia. But as a guy who had to live or die by how well the enemy was equipped or fought, there was no doubt in my mind that the correlation was very great between us going into Cambodia and then not taking any more heat from the enemy.
I had a great deal of respect for the Viet Cong. They were trained and familiar with the jungle. They relied on stealth, on ambush, on their personal skills and wile, as opposed to firepower. They knew it did not pay for them to stand and fight us, so they wouldn’t. They’d come back and fight another day. We knew that we could not afford to get careless with them, because you pay the price. But they were not superhumans. And they did not scare us.
The NVA were more like us in being oriented to organization, numbers, and to some degree firepower, although they didn’t have as much as we did. But they were as motivated as we were. They didn’t pay the same attention to detail, to preparing for battle, to digging in. They were there doing the basics, doing a job.
During that second tour, I could see that drugs were making an impact on American forces, but in the field the men would tend to police themselves and not let drugs endanger the unit. What was very clear to me was an awareness among our men that the support for the war was declining in the United States. The gung ho attitude that made our soldiers so effective in 1966, ’67, was replaced by the will to survive. They became more security conscious. They would take more defensive measures so they wouldn’t get hurt. They were more scared. They wanted to get back home.
I spent my last months in the base camp at An Khe, an aide to the commanding general. Being featured in The Anderson Platoon had obviously helped my career.
Being in the rear meant clean showers, shaving every day,
and air conditioning. It meant eating in the executive dining room. And since the general called his wife every Sunday night, I could call mine, too.
One night, Lola Falana came through for a show. She was invited to a special reception, and I got to dance with her. When I called my wife on Sunday night, I said, “Guess who I danced with? Lola Falana.” And my wife said, “I thought you were in combat.”
Career officers and enlisted men like me did not go back to a hostile environment in America. We went back to bases where we were assimilated and congratulated and decorated for our performance in the conduct of the war.
The others were rejected, because the nation experienced a defeat. The nation heard stories of atrocities, of drugs. Everyone who was in Vietnam was suspect. And that generalization is unfair to apply to all the people who were there. In two tours I just did not experience any atrocities. Sure, you shot to kill. But personally I did not experience cutting off ears from dead bodies or torturing captured prisoners.
Long before Saigon fell, it was clear to me the United States was not willing to win the war. So the only alternative is to lose the war.
When Saigon did fall, the only feeling I had was, you might expect that considering how things deteriorated. There was no remorse, no feeling of life wasted.
I was at peace with myself about my behavior and my contribution to the process. I went over there and I did what I had to do. I didn’t volunteer for it, but I bought into it when I signed up for the Army.
Personally it was career-enhancing. A career Army officer who has not been to war during the war is dead, careerwise. I had done that. I received decorations. Two Silver Stars, five Bronze Stars, eleven Air Medals. And The Anderson Platoon brought me a level of notoriety and recognition. I was in a very good position for promotion and future responsibilities. But in 1978 I decided I did not want to cool my heels for the next eight to ten years to become a general. I was not prepared to wait. I resigned my commission, worked a year as a special assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, and joined General Motors as a plant manager.
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