The Generals
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he became the special assistant to the chairman: Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, 429.
“We are going to stomp them to death”: Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie (Random House, 1988), 568.
CIA veteran Robert Komer: Tim Weiner, “Robert Komer, 78, Figure in Vietnam, Dies,” New York Times, April 12, 2000.
“firepower alone was not the answer”: Sheehan, Bright Shining Lie, 21.
“firepower became the dominant characteristic”: Doughty, “Evolution of US Army Tactical Doctrine,” 38.
when one Vietnamese sniper: Charles Krohn, The Lost Battalion of Tet: Breakout of the 2/12th Cavalry at Hue (Pocket Star, 2008), 149.
saw a battalion commander call in air strikes: Michael Lee Lanning and Dan Cragg, Inside the VC and the NVA: The Real Story of North Vietnam’s Armed Forces (Fawcett Columbine, 1992), 221.
On one day alone: George MacGarrigle, Taking the Offensive: October 1966 to October 1967 (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1998), 56.
“With one salvo” . . . “they could not control”: Stuart Herrington, e-mail message to author, November 21, 2011; see also Stuart Herrington, Silence Was a Weapon: The Vietnam War in the Villages (Ballantine, 1987), 43.
“over 675 sightings”: Harry Maurer, Strange Ground: An Oral History of Americans in Vietnam, 1945–1975 (Avon, 1990), 457.
“That the Army never could determine”: Gregory Daddis, No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War (Oxford,2011), 18.
“You only see the things”: Selected Papers of General William E. DePuy, 441.
“I was deficient at the next level up”: DePuy, interview by Perlman (Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS, 1994), DePuy Papers, USAMHI, 24–25.
“We got into a firepower war”: Harold Johnson, interview by Agnew, USAMHI, 20.
“The time gap between when the infantry”: Interview by Spruill and Vernon, in Sorley, ed., Press On!, 1070.
“I have looked over your training guides”: DePuy to Terry Allen, March 13, 1967, DePuy Papers, box 4, Correspondence 1967, USAMHI.
Allen’s son and namesake: MacGarrigle, Taking the Offensive, 359. The encounter in which the younger Allen died is discussed extensively by David Maraniss in They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 (Simon & Schuster, 2003).
“It is the duty of the executive” . . . “if found less than outstanding”: Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive (HarperCollins, 1993), 89.
18. THE COLLAPSE OF GENERALSHIP IN THE 1960s
“That’s why I am suspicious”: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (Harper & Row, 1976), 252.
“The campaign of escalating pressure”: Westmoreland, “A Military War of Attrition,” 61.
“It just seemed ridiculous” . . . “I didn’t like any of them”: Weyand oral history, Weyand Papers, USAMHI, 108.
Kinnard surveyed Army generals: Kinnard, The War Managers, 45.
“We . . . didn’t know”: Selected Papers of General William E. DePuy, 441.
“We were searching and destroying”: “Interview #2 with General Bruce Palmer Jr.,” interview by Lt. Col. James Shelton and Lt. Col. Edward Smith, January 6, 1976, in historians’ files, USAMHI.
“One reason they [Hanoi] could not read our signal”: Westmoreland, “A Military War of Attrition,” 61.
On May 30 of that year, they met without him present: McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 100–102. This paragraph relies heavily on his chapters 4 and 5, as does this entire chapter.
“Taylor gave misleading answers”: McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 152.
Later in 1964, the Chiefs again made a run: McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 175–76.
McNamara omitted a key phrase: McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 192.
“the assumptions that underlay the president’s policy”: McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 178.
“You’re my team”: McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 265.
they would behave as his minions: McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 309–11.
Finally, in November 1965, Wheeler and the other members: These three paragraphs combine two accounts provided by Cooper: Charles Cooper, “The Day It Became the Longest War,” Proceedings of the Naval Institute, May 1996, 80; and Christian Appy, Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides (Viking, 2003), 122. Historians have tended to keep Cooper’s account at arm’s length, in part because no corroborating evidence has been provided by other attendees, but I am not aware of any evidence that has surfaced to cast doubt on his account.
“a wary beagle”: Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Little, Brown, 1979), 34.
“And then on the way to the White House”: As told by retired Army Col. Harry Summers in David Anderson, ed., Facing My Lai: Moving Beyond the Massacre (University Press of Kansas, 1998), 158.
“I acquired the feeling”: Charles W. Jones and R. Manning Ancell, eds., Four-Star Leadership for Leaders (Executive Books, 1997), 62.
“The president was lying”: McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 331.
“his patron, exemplar”: Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson, 90.
“At no time that I was aware”: Alsop, I’ve Seen the Best of It, 466.
American involvement in combat in Vietnam: This useful summary of the Vietnam War by years was stated to me in March 2011 by Erik Villard, a historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History.
“We met with very strong enemy units”: David Elliott and W. A. Stewart, “Pacification and the Viet Cong System in Dinh Tuong: 1966–1967,” RAND Corporation, January 1969, 67.
“The Tam Hiep villagers’ confidence”: Elliott and Stewart, “Pacification and the Viet Cong System,” 73.
“the situation has never been as favorable”: MacGarrigle, Taking the Offensive, 439.
“The officer corps of the 1960s”: Krohn, The Lost Battalion of Tet, 82.
“its standard operational repertoire” . . . “long-term patrolling of a small area”: Krepinevich, Army and Vietnam, 49, 53.
Pentagon analyst Thomas Thayer recalled: Thayer, War Without Fronts, 18.
“Our direction was you organized”: Kim Willenson, The Bad War: An Oral History of the Vietnam War (New American Library, 1987), 105.
they were misused: Krepinevich, Army and Vietnam, 69–73.
Truong Nhu Tang, then a Viet Cong official: Truong Nhu Tang, A Vietcong Memoir (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985), 160.
“The rationale that ceaseless U.S. operations” . . . “and their dedicated commitment”: F. J. West, “Area Security,” RAND Corporation, August 1968, 4, 10. See also Krepinevich, Army and Vietnam, 59–61.
When advisers in the field: Krepinevich, Army and Vietnam, 76.
“accentuate the positive”: Sorley, Westmoreland, 74.
Lt. Col. John Paul Vann, effectively demanded a hearing: Krepinevich, Army and Vietnam, 83; see also Sheehan, Bright Shining Lie, 340–42.
A similarly skeptical State Department report: Krepinevich, Army and Vietnam, 89, and Appy, Patriots, 84.
“noted the absence of an overall counterinsurgency plan”: Krepinevich, Army and Vietnam, 85.
In March 1966, a lengthy report: The background of the authors of the report is discussed in Komer, Bureaucracy Does Its Thing, 137.
The report found that: “PROVN,” 24, 31, 52, 53, 48–49, 70.
“the South Vietnamese were virtually shunted aside”: James Willbanks, Abandoning Vietnam: How America Left and South Vietnam Lost Its War (University Press of Kansas, 2008), 280.
“The study deserved more mature consideration”: Davidson, Vietnam at War, 410–11.
which is how bureaucracies act: This last clause is the formulation of retired Army Lt. Gen. James Dubik, one of the critical readers of two drafts of this book.
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br /> “We went and fought the Vietnam War”: “Interview with R. W. Komer,” January 25, 1982, for Vietnam: A Television History.
“all that was needed”: Krepinevich, Army and Vietnam, 165.
“Firepower”: Krepinevich, Army and Vietnam, 197.
by one measure, financial expenditures: Thayer, War Without Fronts, 25–26, 79.
“They [the Americans] didn’t want to pacify”: Willenson, The Bad War, 137.
“The military battlefield”: Truong, Vietcong Memoir, 212.
In a poll of 976 teachers and students: John Moellering, “Future Civil-Military Relations: The Army Turns Inward?,” Military Review, July 1973, 79.
“the American Army fought magnificently”: Anthony Wermuth, “A Critique of Savage and Gabriel,” Armed Forces and Society, May 1977, 490.
“The war was not lost on the battlefield”: Appy, Patriots, 400.
“our American leadership”: Taylor interview no. 1b, by Dorothy Pierce, February 10, 1969, LBJ Library, 7.
“By the second decade after World War II”: Sheehan, Bright Shining Lie, 285.
“If an officer progresses”: Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, 335.
“No reaction, no questions”: John Cushman, e-mail to author, January 1, 2012.
“The Vietnamese people are the prize”: Sheehan, Bright Shining Lie, 631.
President Johnson read a copy of Krulak’s memo: Sheehan, Bright Shining Lie, 633.
“I am deeply concerned”: Cover note to “Top Secret/SPECAT exclusive for Lt. Gen. Walt from Lt. Gen. Krulak,” October 7, 1966, Victor Krulak Papers, Marine Corps Archives, Quantico, VA.
Combined Action Platoons: James Donovan, “Combined Action Program: Marines’ Alternative to Search and Destroy,” Vietnam Magazine, August 2004, 7.
“In the process of operating”: Michael Hennessy, Strategy in Vietnam: The Marines and Revolutionary Warfare in I Corps, 1965–1972 (Praeger, 1997), 80.
One CAP that was almost entirely surrounded: West, “Area Security,” 15.
Marines in the program accounted for just 1.5 percent: Ronald Spector, After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam (Free Press, 1993), 192–93.
“absolutely disgusted” . . . “the deliberate, mild sort”: Both Kinnard and DePuy quoted in Krepinevich, Army and Vietnam, 175.
“I detect a tendency for the Marine chain of command”: Cosmas, MACV: The Joint Command, 333.
urged him to order the Marines: Gates, “American Military Leadership in Vietnam,” 194.
Lt. Gen. Phillip Davidson: “Oral History of Gen. Phillip Davidson,” part 1, March 30, 1982, LBJ Library, 2, 28.
The cost of bringing in a Communist defector: Thayer, War Without Fronts, 202.
“The solution in Vietnam is more bombs”: Sheehan, Bright Shining Lie, 619.
“It turned out to be infelicitous”: Selected Papers of General William E. DePuy, 439.
In one two-month operation: Krepinevich, Army and Vietnam, 191.
“I soon figured out how Westy liked to operate”: Jack Shumlinson et al., U.S. Marines in Vietnam: The Defining Year, 1968 (U.S. Marine Corps Headquarters, 1997), 13.
“I thought it was the most unpardonable thing”: Shumlinson et al., U.S. Marines in Vietnam, 238.
“Westmoreland never understood it”: Victor Krulak, “Interview by John Mason Jr., U.S. Naval Academy, 8 Dec 1969,” appendix to “Oral History, Lieutenant General Victor Krulak,” Benis Frank, interviewer, Historical Division, U.S. Marine Corps Headquarters, 1973, 53.
some 8,500 sorties: Thayer, War Without Fronts, 84.
“The allies had enormous firepower”: Thayer, War Without Fronts, 27.
Another view, heard more often outside the military: This paragraph reflects the analysis of historian George Herring, especially as presented in his article “American Strategy in Vietnam: The Postwar Debate,” Military Affairs, April 1982.
“Given the iron determination of the communists”: Richard Hunt, Pacification: The American Struggle for Vietnam’s Hearts and Minds (Westview, 1995), 279.
“Tactics employed” . . . “break the enemy infrastructure”: Ngo Quang Truong, “RVNAF and US Operational Cooperation,” in Vietnam War: An Assessment, 158–59.
“Had it been fully developed”: Dong Van Khuyen, “The RVNAF,” in Vietnam War: An Assessment, 78.
“a protracted war of attrition”: Westmoreland, “A Military War of Attrition,” 60.
“It turned out they controlled the tempo”: Selected Papers of General William E. DePuy, 441. See also Krepinevich, Army and Vietnam, 190.
the entire strategy of attrition: Here I am borrowing the terms used in Thayer, War Without Fronts, 91. See also Keith Nolan, House to House: Playing the Enemy’s Game in Saigon, May 1968 (Zenith, 2006), 19.
“As long as they could control their losses”: DePuy interview, LBJ Library, 28.
A strategy of attrition might possibly have succeeded: See Stephen Young, “How North Vietnam Won the War: An Interview with Bui Tin,” Wall Street Journal, August 3, 1995.
“If you attempted to run a business”: Edward Coffman, “Commentary,” in John Schlight, ed., The Second Indochina War (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1986), 187.
“It’s the stupidest damn thing”: Starry, interview by Spruill and Vernon, in Sorley, ed., Press On!, 1157.
The Army began a policy: Weigley, History of the United States Army, 510.
“little or no acquaintance with the battlefield” . . . “had to start all over again”: Walter G. Hermes, Truce Tent and Fighting Front: United States Army in the Korean War (University Press of the Pacific, 2005), 186, 350–51.
“patrol leaders had learned to lie”: Marshall, Bringing Up the Rear, 218.
“Stripped of its experienced leadership”: Blair, Forgotten War, 923.
smoking marijuana “every night”: Gorman, Cardinal Point, 19.
the 3,500-man unit: Gilberto N. Villahermosa, Honor and Fidelity: The 65th Infantry in Korea, 1950–1953 (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 2009), 205, 232.
under a system devised in 1964: Donald Vandergriff, The Path to Victory: America’s Army and the Revolution in Human Affairs (Presidio, 2002), 99, 302.
“few units were in sustained combat”: Lewis, The American Culture of War, 272.
a survey of officers: “Cincinnatus” (pseudonym for Cecil Currey), Self-Destruction: The Disintegration and Decay of the United States Army during the Vietnam Era (Norton, 1981), 158, 277.
“the problem with six-month or twelve-month command tours”: “Lieutenant General Walter F. Ulmer Jr., USA Retired,” interview by Lt. Col. Rick Lynch, 1996, Walter Ulmer Papers, box 1, USAMHI, 120.
“cast an amateurish quality”: Keith Nolan, Ripcord: Screaming Eagles Under Siege, Vietnam 1970 (Presidio, 2000), 42.
“With regard to having six months in command”: DePuy Oral History, 154.
more than twice as likely to die: Thayer, War Without Fronts, 113–14.
“Major offensives or waves”: Thayer, War Without Fronts, 16.
“This inquiry found that”: William Peers, “Report of the Department of the Army Review of the Preliminary Investigations into the My Lai Incident, Volume 1: The Report of the Investigation,” March 14, 1970, B-4. Hereafter: Peers Report.
“The relatively rapid turnover”: Truong, “RVNAF and US Operational Cooperation,” in Vietnam War: An Assessment, 173.
tactical commanders in the South Vietnamese military: Ngo Quang Truong, “ARVN Battalion to the Corps and the Tactical Advisor,” in Cao Van Vien et al., “The U.S. Advisor,” in Vietnam War: An Assessment, 687.
Lt. Col. David Holmes charged: David Holmes, “Some Tentative Thoughts After Indochina,” Military Review, August 1977, 86.
“culture of insecurity”: Markel, “Orga
nization Man at War,” iv–v, xiv.
tended toward “excessive caution”: Doughty, “Evolution of US Army Tactical Doctrine,” 37.
“The great majority of all ground battles”: Guenter Lewy, America in Vietnam (Oxford, 1978), 83.
“Pursuit became a forgotten art”: Palmer, Summons, 145.
“Our ground, naval and air forces”: George Keegan, “Dissatisfaction with the Air War,” in W. Scott Thompson and Donaldson Frizzell, eds., The Lessons of Vietnam (Crane, Russak, 1977), 143.
“atrocious” . . . “indications of American operations”: Davidson oral history, part 1, LBJ Library, 15.
“We placed our own girls” . . . “never hit the ordinary American targets”: “Interview with Nguyen Thi Dinh,” February 16, 1981, for Vietnam: A Television History.
“The U.S. soldier is very poor”: Albert Garland, A Distant Challenge: The U.S. Infantryman in Vietnam, 1967–1972 (Jove, 1985), 170.
“An American unit cannot take or destroy”: Garland, A Distant Challenge, 170. See also Lanning and Cragg, Inside the VC and the NVA, 236.
“Their idea was to surround us”: David Chanoff and Doan Van Toai, Portrait of the Enemy (Random House, 1986), 155.
“They had a lot of bombs” . . . “they reacted very slowly”: “Interview with Nguyen Van Nghi,” February 10, 1981, for Vietnam: A Television History.
“When the American soldiers fell down”: “Interview with Nguyen Thi Hoa,” March 1, 1981, for Vietnam: A Television History.
“The puppet troops were also Vietnamese”: “Interview with Dang Xuan Teo,” March 10, 1981, for Vietnam: A Television History.
“All the U.S. defensive positions”: Garland, A Distant Challenge, 168.
“We know we cannot defeat the Americans”: Garland, A Distant Challenge, 173.
“The stubborn commitment of the high command”: Gates, “American Military Leadership in Vietnam,” 198. This chapter is influenced by his analysis in that article.
“The battalion commander was almost forced”: From “Company Command in Vietnam Collection,” USAMHI Oral History Collection, quoted in Spector, After Tet, 219.
“squad leaders in the sky”: Kinnard, The War Managers, 59.