The American Military - A Narrative History

by Brad D. Lookingbill

Abrams ordered his staff to remove the luxurious divans, wall hangings, and potted plants. While chomping on a cigar, he barked: “I don't want people coming over here – and their sons are fighting and dying – and I'm in there with three-inch carpets!” What he wanted for his office was a government-issued steel desk, small table, and side chairs.

  After succeeding Westmoreland as the Army Chief of Staff, Abrams returned stateside and was diagnosed with cancer. Surgeons at the Walter Reed Army Hospital removed one of his lungs, which left a tremendous scar. Recovering in an uncomfortable hospital bed, he tearfully whispered to one visitor: “Nobody will ever know the goddamn mess Westmoreland left me in Vietnam.” Though still in pain, the 59-year-old mustered the strength to stand and to spend a few hours working at his Pentagon office each day.

  On August 13, 1974, Abrams stood up for the U.S. Army one last time. He put on his uniform and marched with the Joint Chiefs into the Oval Office to greet President Gerald R. Ford, who took office following Richard M. Nixon's resignation. Afterward, Abrams's son drove him back to Walter Reed. He suffered from two blood clots, one in his right leg and another in his remaining lung. A long career that spanned three wars and assignments from West Point to the Pentagon ended on September 4, 1974. Abrams became the first Army Chief of Staff to die in office.

  As staff members emptied his Pentagon office, they discovered a half-full box of cigars. No one smoked the cigars or threw them away. A wooden box soon appeared with a small metal plaque on top, identifying the contents as “General Abe's last cigars.”

  Figure 14.1 “The Wise Men”: luncheon meeting, March 26, 1968. Collection LBJ-WHPO: White House Photo Office Collection, 11/22/1963–01/20/1969, National Archives

  Death spared Abrams the agony of witnessing the outcome of the long war in Vietnam, where Americans failed to prevent the expansion of a socialist republic. The Pentagon was accustomed to planning decisive victories in the shortest time at the least cost, but the organized violence in Southeast Asia defied the best war plans. Despite the limited efforts of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, the U.S. managed to kill the enemy without securing an ally. The home front became divided, while the public distaste for the Selective Service system compelled a restructuring of the armed forces. Faced with grim prospects, the officer corps confronted one of the most difficult leadership challenges in American military history.

  The war in Vietnam arguably represented the most tragic ever experienced by men and women in uniform. Thanks to congressional authorization, the Johnson administration intensified military actions in Indochina after 1964. U.S. forces quickened the pace of operations from the Tonkin Gulf to the Mekong Delta, but a covert infrastructure kept many areas under the sway of communist-backed guerrillas. As the Nixon administration pursued “peace with honor,” the last American combat units withdrew from Southeast Asia in 1972. While the Cold War cast a powerful spell over the American people, the Vietnamese lost more than 3 million lives in their war for national unification.

  The domino fell in Vietnam, where Americans fought a war made of slogans, charts, and statistics. Out of more than 200 million people, less than 5 percent of the U.S. population participated in the armed conflict. American troops suffered 211,471 casualties, with 47,369 killed in action and another 10,799 fatalities from other causes. The federal government spent more than $150 billion on the clash in Southeast Asia. However, few officials knew how to measure the full dimensions of a contest for legitimacy and power. Without an effective strategy to counter an insurgency, the American military lacked a framework to understand the war that occurred beyond the conventional battle lines.

  Into the Quagmire

  A Vietnamese war for national liberation reshaped the map of French Indochina. As the French withdrew their armed forces, the Geneva Accords of 1954 mandated a temporary partition along the 17th parallel. Called the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, it stretched westward from the South China Sea to Laos. The decolonized landscape represented a bewildering cauldron of competing ethnic, religious, economic, and political groups.

  Ho Chi Minh, a seasoned revolutionary, led the League for the Independence of Vietnam, or the Viet Minh. General Vo Nguyen Giap commanded the People's Army of Vietnam, which was identified with the initials PAVN. Communist leaders established the Democratic Republic of Vietnam with its capital in the north at Hanoi. Hanoi coordinated a violent effort to unify Vietnam, offering a democratic facade for a communist insurgency in the countryside.

  With a capital in the south at Saigon, Ngo Dinh Diem, a Roman Catholic with U.S. financial and military backing, presided over an anti-communist regime called the Republic of Vietnam. The Ngo family formed a dynasty to support Diem, who made few attempts at political and economic reform. He won and retained the loyalty of the planter class that dominated the Mekong Delta. Claiming that undemocratic conditions precluded a fair contest, he refused to hold elections and suppressed opponents involved with the Viet Minh.

  Diem branded Vietnamese communists in the south with the term Viet Cong. At the direction of Hanoi, native southerners conducted insurgent attacks in the Mekong Delta and around Saigon. Agitation and violence also spread in the Central Highlands, where the Viet Cong recruited followers among the Montagnard tribes. To demonstrate Saigon's incapacity to govern the hamlets, they kidnapped and assassinated local officials. They appreciated the human and psychological dimensions of dau tranh – a mosaic of nonmilitary and military actions over long periods of time designed to achieve victory in war. Cadres, supplies, and guerrillas moved southward along a Laotian corridor dubbed the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The traffic snaked around the DMZ. By the early 1960s, a number of armed groups resisting Diem had coalesced across South Vietnam into the National Liberation Front, or NLF.

  Figure 14.2 Vietnam, showing 1954 North/South division and routes of invasions and evacuations, 1945–1975

  One U.S. president after another committed to training and equipping the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, which they called ARVN. Initially, Americans in the military advised their counterparts about the art of conventional warfare, including the use of artillery, armor, and infantry to repel an invasion. They also wanted ARVN to “take the war to the enemy,” but the Battle of Ap Bac during 1963 revealed the incompetence of the South Vietnamese troops. Consequently, the U.S. Air Force increased the number of bombing sorties. In selected areas, C-123 aircraft dumped poisonous defoliants such as Agent Orange that turned the jungle terrain and the rice paddies into mud. By the summer of 1964, as many as 20,000 American military advisors were operating in South Vietnam.

  Meanwhile, President John F. Kennedy increased the strength of U.S. Special Forces. The Army authorized an elite unit to wear distinctive headgear: the Green Beret. With counterinsurgency concepts featured in Army schools and training camps, they prepared to fight guerrillas in a specific geographic area and received language training to facilitate operations in the field. In the Navy, the Underwater Demolition Teams provided personnel for commando raids by sea, air, and land units. Known as the SEALs, they trained to conduct covert missions against enemy sanctuaries. Green Berets and SEALs played key roles in the Civilian Irregular Defense Group, which the CIA originally formed to assist local militias. Furthermore, the Strategic Hamlet Program relocated rural populations into “fortified villages.” Many officers worked tirelessly to win “hearts and minds,” although some grew critical of the advisory effort. Despite their gains in South Vietnam and in Laos, they seemed unable to halt the insurgency.

  Even in Saigon, the Diem regime lost legitimacy. During 1963, Buddhist leaders organized street demonstrations and public immolations. Encouraged by the Kennedy administration, a group of Vietnamese generals conducted a coup on November 1. They brutally murdered Diem and his brother. The coup leaders took charge with a 12-member Military Revolutionary Council, which was headed by General Duong Van Minh.

  Just three weeks after the killing of Diem, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Vice President Lyndon Johnson, wh
o previously served in Congress for two decades, succeeded his slain predecessor in the White House. “I am not going to lose Vietnam,” Johnson vowed a few hours after taking the oath of office.

  In a matter of months, the new Saigon regime unraveled following another coup. With South Vietnam plunging into political chaos, the insurgency in the countryside intensified. At Johnson's request, General Maxwell Taylor stepped down as chairman of the Joint Chiefs and went to Saigon to run the U.S. embassy. General Nguyen Khanh, whom Johnson called “my American boy,” deposed a feuding military junta and took charge of the government. He worked closely with the U.S. in an enlarged covert action called Operation Plan 34 Alpha, which involved intelligence-gathering, leaflet drops, commando raids, and espionage missions.

  While Johnson focused on his presidential election campaign in 1964, Vietnam turned into a quagmire. Trouble was brewing in the Gulf of Tonkin, where U.S. destroyers patrolled international waters in support of Operation Plan 34 Alpha. On August 2, three North Vietnamese P-4 torpedo boats attacked the U.S.S. Maddox operating near the coast. According to the report of Captain Herbert L. Ogier, the skipper of the Maddox, the destroyer evaded torpedoes and returned fire. Aircraft launched from the carrier U.S.S. Ticonderoga strafed the retiring P-4s. Two days later, the Maddox and the C. Turner Joy reported radar, sonar, and radio signals indicating another attack. Although later information discounted the second attack, no one at the time seriously questioned the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

  Johnson recounted what happened to members of Congress, who overwhelmingly passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7, 1964. It authorized all actions necessary to protect U.S. forces and to provide for the defense of allies in Southeast Asia. To retaliate, fighter squadrons immediately blasted an oil-storage facility in the town of Vinh. Given the congressional authorization, the Johnson administration proceeded to expand American military operations within South Vietnam, against North Vietnam, and across Indochina.

  Gradual Escalation

  “Why are we in Vietnam?” President Johnson rhetorically asked a university audience during the spring of 1965. His answer was that Americans “have a promise to keep” in the fight against communism. He voiced the idealism that many in uniform initially brought with them to the combat zones of Southeast Asia. The demonstration of military strength, he reasoned, would be sufficient to stop the aggression of North Vietnam against South Vietnam. Regarding the conflict as a crucial test of the nation's willingness to deter the spread of communism throughout the Third World, he insisted that the U.S. would maintain a military presence in Vietnam as long as necessary. To achieve national security, he intended to demonstrate restraint while appearing steadfast and determined.

  Robert S. McNamara, the Secretary of Defense, encouraged a “tit-for-tat” approach to national security. He surrounded himself with a technocratic staff of “whiz-kids” schooled in systems analysis. While admitting “that no significant military problem will ever be wholly susceptible to purely quantitative analysis,” he posited that breaking down major problems quantitatively “removes one more piece of uncertainty from our process of making a choice.” Moreover, his annual defense budget focused on the functional elements of the armed forces. Called “program packages,” his headings included Strategic Offensive Forces as well as General Purpose Forces. He weighed each against the goal it sought to achieve, correlated the costs and the benefits of the weapons systems involved, and inserted the approved packages in his final tables. While the Army, Navy, and Air Force retained their separate training and administrative organizations, he created “unified and multiservice commands” to direct military operations. Rather than destroying enemy combatants, he wanted the U.S. to use limited but graduated pressure to affect their calculation of interest.

  “Mr. McNamara's War” attempted to punish North Vietnam for the violence of the Viet Cong. Secretary McNamara calculated that the policy of gradual escalation required a ground force of 600,000 in South Vietnam, 1,000 American deaths each month, and no decisive victory earlier than 1968. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Earle G. Wheeler, maintained that crushing communist forces without delay depended upon effective planning and logistics. General Westmoreland, who served as the senior officer for the Military Assistance Command in Vietnam, or MACV, believed that Hanoi would not stop supporting aggression unless convinced that the Viet Cong could not successfully infiltrate the countryside. To that end, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy underscored firepower, mass, and pacification in the strategic equation. The Johnson administration presumed that rising “body counts” would eventually drive the enemy to a “crossover” point, at which time the insurgency would become too costly for North Vietnam to maintain.

  Meanwhile, the Viet Cong began targeting U.S. forces. On November 1, 1964, insurgents shelled a U.S. air base at Bien Hoa. While killing four Americans, they destroyed or damaged 13 B-57 bombers. On February 7, 1965, guerrillas attacked the military barracks in Pleiku. Eight Americans died and hundreds more suffered wounds. A few days later, communists detonated explosives at the American quarters in Qui Nhon, which left 21 dead under the rubble. In response, Johnson ordered retaliatory air strikes against military and industrial targets in North Vietnam.

  Beginning on March 2, 1965, Operation Rolling Thunder delivered sustained, direct aerial bombardments designed to reduce communist infiltration. Officials in Washington D.C. dictated the targets, the flights and models of aircraft, the tonnages and types of ordnance, and the day and hour of the attacks. Johnson refused to authorize unrestricted bombing in the Red River basin, which might provoke China to enter the war directly. Nevertheless, carrier planes and B-52 bombers pounded targets from the Ho Chi Minh Trail to Hanoi. The sorties dropped more than a million tons of explosives from 1965 to 1967, while herbicides destroyed approximately half of the timberlands. Sortie rates and bombing metrics measured efficiency but not momentum. Despite the monsoon of ordnance that rained down on Vietnam, the flow of insurgents from the North into the South continued unabated.

  With South Vietnam on the verge of collapse, Johnson decided to enhance security around U.S. air bases and coastal enclaves. On March 8, 1965, 3,500 Marines stormed ashore at Da Nang. Accompanied by landing craft, amphibious tractors, helicopters, 105-mm howitzers, and M-48 tanks, they walked along the beaches with South Vietnamese women, who put flowered leis around their necks. A few weeks later, the Marines cleared areas close to the large airfield. That August, they began to conduct combat missions for Operation Starlight.

  To achieve the desired “body counts” from combat missions, the Johnson administration found no substitute for putting boots on the ground. In 1965, Washington D.C. promised Westmoreland an additional five Army divisions. Although the active military totaled more than 2.6 million service members at the time, most performed duties at installations around the world. Unfortunately, too many failed to rate as combat ready. What the Pentagon needed was not simply more able-bodied troops but also more well-trained units. The Joint Chiefs recommended mobilizing the reserve component – the National Guard and the Reserves – for military operations of this magnitude. However, the commander-in-chief decided not to call up reservists. Rounding out the Army divisions with citizen soldiers, he feared, would distract the nation from the “War on Poverty.” Instead, the monthly draft call-ups doubled that summer without a great deal of public notice.

  The failure to call up reservists while increasing the number of draftees affected the force composition in unintended ways. Because a reservoir of veteran personnel in the National Guard and the Reserves remained untapped, the Army drew from a limited leadership pool. Ostensibly, requirements for experienced cadres at training bases competed with the demands for seasoned leaders in combat arms. Commanders began to promote junior officers and non-commissioned officers prematurely and to replace them at entry levels with the untested. At the same time, the best and the brightest faced the prospect of repeated one-year tours without an effec
tive rotation system. Some resigned from the uniformed services or refused to re-enlist, causing rapid turnover and lower retention. Going forward, the infusion of underprepared troops throughout the ranks exacerbated the morale problems that afflicted the Army.

  The failure of the Army to utilize the reserve component undermined the quality of “weekend warriors” across the U.S. Though denied the opportunity to serve as deployed units overseas, at least 2,000 National Guardsmen volunteered to fight in Vietnam. However, many units in the states evolved into popular havens for “draft dodgers.” The National Guard soon became infested with individuals, who felt no personal obligation to defend their country.

  During 1965, the DOD organized the Select Reserve Force, or SRF, to improve readiness in particular units. Drawing from the National Guard and the Reserves, the 150,000-member composite force trained longer hours during extended drills. Though many expected to deploy to Vietnam, the SRF eventually formed a strategic hedge against threats in Korea, Europe, or elsewhere around the globe. Despite the higher standards met by the self-proclaimed “Super Ready Force,” the program was terminated in 1969.

  Compulsory ROTC participation declined on college and university campuses, but Congress attempted to strengthen the neglected programs. Passed in 1964, the ROTC Revitalization Act increased funding for scholarships in subsequent years and raised the monthly subsistence allowance for certain cadets. An increasing number of students decided to take advantage of the benefits that ROTC offered, even though some merely hoped to postpone entering the draft. For the rest of the decade, ROTC programs remained the primary source for new officers on active duty and in the reserve component.

  Touting its own Great Society program, the DOD eventually launched Project 100,000 in 1966. Secretary McNamara wanted to enlist recruits from the pool of draft rejects, who failed to meet the aptitude standards because of their “poverty-encrusted” lives. Through remedial instruction and paternalistic discipline, the Pentagon promised to elevate the “New Standards Men” for productive careers. While attempting to reclassify 100,000 men each year, 354,000 recruits actually donned uniforms. More than a third of the “Moron Corps,” as they were derisively nicknamed by their comrades, earned assignments in the combat arms. In other words, many received a one-way ticket to Vietnam. Even though the armed forces remained desperate for manpower, the project lost funding five years later.