by Larry Berman
From Moorer’s perspective, the plan looked foolproof. The navy had been in the backwater of events and influence in Vietnam, a situation exacerbated by the navy’s reluctance to expend resources and manpower in what was seen as the army’s war. Admiral Veth was a man of limited vision who had been content with a defensive strategy, limiting the navy’s role to interdiction of supplies coming in from the sea.37 There was a dichotomy between the Brown Water Navy fighting in the Mekong Delta and the Seventh Fleet offshore, with little interplay between the two. The glory and resources went to the aircraft carriers and air strikes in the north. Outside of the Mobile Riverine Force, a combined army and navy team in the delta, the navy was a passive component with little influence and taking fewer casualties.
Less than six months after Tet, on July 25, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson announced the nomination of Rear Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., to the grade of vice admiral with a new assignment as commander of naval forces, Vietnam, and chief of the Naval Advisory Group of the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam.38 For his service as director of systems analysis, Bud was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for displaying “exceptional acumen, integrity, tact and diplomacy as personal representative of the Chief of Naval Operations, not only in dealings within the Department of Defense, but also in testifying before Congressional Committees.”
The Brown Water Navy patrolled the bewildering maze of inland waterways of the Mekong Delta, which comprised one fourth of South Vietnam’s total area and which was home to over one third of its population. It was also home and shelter for tens of thousands of Vietcong forces. These waters served as a source of infiltration from the north, its dense vegetation allowing limited visibility and providing cover for guerrillas waiting in ambush. The floating vegetation and heavily silted water concealed mines and other hazards.39
Tom Moorer spun Bud’s promotion to vice admiral and a third star as signaling a new importance to the navy’s role in Vietnam. Bud knew otherwise but was rightly elated about the promotion. His mind flashed back to the day he took command of the Isbell. Once again Bud Zumwalt was in a leadership position with nowhere else to go but up. In a July 25, 1968, letter, Bud’s brother Jim joked, “As I understand the picture there are currently 14 full admirals and 35 vice admirals in the navy—only 49 more notches for you to climb. As I have often said, I have no doubt that you will make # 1.” Jim added that “we hope and pray that your new assignment will bring you personal happiness and success and that God will protect you from the possible dangers that lurk in that war torn land.”40
In a farewell poem to Rear Admiral E. R. Zumwalt, his staff at Systems Analysis offered the following:
A toast to a gentleman of the greatest renown,
A very great leader who is known all around,
Our choice for the man who is upward bound
And sure to reach the top of the mound.
Under his watchful supervision,
The CNO’s Systems Analysis Division
Became a reality, instead of a vision,
And provided assistance to every decision.
Its job to analyze for cost/effectiveness,
They have turned every stone and left nothing at rest,
’Cause their very fine leader always demanded the best,
As evidenced by the bouquets on his vest.
Be it at work or be it at play,
The Big “Z” is the surest to say,
“Let’s give it a go and turn not away,
And rise to the occasion with a Hip, Hip, Hooray.”
But above and beyond his analytical mind
Is his strong sex appeal and easy line.
We hasten to mention that warm winning smile
That flashes a message: “All ladies beguile.”
As he departs, a new Command to boost,
We gather here to say Farewell to the King of the Roost.
He is the greatest in effectiveness at a terrific low cost.
Without him to guide us, we’ll surely be lost.
CHAPTER 8
BROWN WATER NAVY
Seldom does a man by intellect and force of character affect the lives of so many, and seldom does this run so deep as to give reality to the concept of complete and total loyalty. Seldom, if ever, has a naval commander suffered so directly (especially when the casualties were heavy) and personally, the consequences of his orders in combat.
—VICE ADMIRAL EARL FRANK RECTANUS1
Bud was expected to be in Vietnam by early September 1968, two months before the presidential election. As he departed Washington on August 26 for a series of whistle-stop briefings across the United States and the Pacific, his thoughts turned to assembling a staff and gaining an appreciation for the challenges ahead. While the Zumwalt family spent the last days of August on the beach and visiting friends from their earlier assignments in Coronado,2 Bud was sequestered in all-day briefings.3
Bud was soon joined by his new flag lieutenant and aide, Howard Kerr. Kerr had enlisted in the navy in 1960 and was commissioned after graduating from Officer Candidate School in Newport. He served successive tours on the carrier Bonhomme Richard and the destroyer Walke before joining the staff of Cruiser-Destroyer Flotilla Nine. By September 1966, he had enrolled in the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and was writing his master’s thesis, “The U.S. Military in Vietnam from 1954 to 1963.”4 Kerr was next scheduled to command a patrol boat in Vietnam when Bud offered him the position. Kerr respectfully declined, preferring a command assignment of his own. “After I’d hung up the phone, I went back and I was reading the New York Times, and I got to about the middle of the first section of the Times, and my eye caught this article that said that the Navy had just named the youngest three-star admiral in its history and that he was going to Vietnam to take command of U.S. naval forces in-country. I put the paper down, and I thought through that a little bit and I told my wife that I thought I had just made a big mistake.”5
After making a few calls to friends for advice, Kerr realized he should have accepted the job. He decided to call Bud back to see if there was any chance for reconsideration. Bud readily accepted the reversal, insisting only that Kerr be the one to contact BuPers. “I had to sign in blood that I had, in fact, turned down a command tour and violated all the tenets of the religion.” Kerr’s detailer warned that the assignment could be career suicide because “there are a lot of people in Washington who were delighted to see Zumwalt leave town.”6
On September 10, 1968, Zumwalt and Kerr, accompanied by their spouses and the Zumwalt daughters, Ann and Mouzetta, departed from San Francisco for Pearl Harbor. Kerr had thoughtfully called ahead to ask United Airlines to have the flight attendants let him know when it was safe to move about the plane. Bud’s orders read that upon departure of the continental United States, he was authorized to assume the title of vice admiral, United States Navy, and wear the insignia, which Kerr had purchased because “we intended to have this frocking ceremony on board.”7 Admiral Moorer had given strict orders that Bud was not to be pinned until the aircraft was not only in the air but halfway over the Pacific. Bud saw it as one final attempt to “jerk him around,” recalled Ann. “I remember being very intrigued that Dad literally waited until the wheels were up and just over the Pacific when the pinning occurred. I realized he obeyed the orders but with a slightly different interpretation.”8
As soon as the seat belt sign was off, Mouza pinned one set of stars, Kerr’s wife, Patricia, pinned another, and the final honor went to Ann. “As I pinned I wondered when Dad would receive his fourth star knowing it would be soon. Even though I was told this duty was a career ending, I knew Dad would come out some way, somehow with a fourth.”9
Kerr had brought aboard a bottle of champagne, but United had already gotten behind the idea and threw a big party with champagne for everyone on the flight and a special cake for the new vice admiral. In a “Dear Clan” letter, Bud described the moment: “We left continental United States and imme
diately after take-off, high in the air over the Pacific, amid bubbling champagne glasses and happy cheers, in accordance with orders, executed my promotion to Vice Admiral.”10
Three days of briefings from navy staff at Pearl Harbor were followed by a short holiday at the home of Al and Betsy Toulon on Kauai. Bud and Howard were struck by one particular omission during their briefings—they were getting a series of overviews involving blue-water carrier operations in Tonkin Gulf and Rolling Thunder air strikes against targets in North Vietnam, but there was little to no mention whatsoever of an in-country war for the navy.
The entourage next flew to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, where Mouza and the two girls settled into their quarters and registered for school. Bud and Howard were next off for their survival training in the Philippine jungles.11 In a letter to his family, Bud described the training: “Ate lunch of fresh water shrimp, fish, wild game hen and wild coffee. Started fire without matches. Dishes cut from bamboo.”12 Bud found it a “fascinating experience,” entering the jungle with nothing but salt and a pouch of rice, where “the Negritoes” taught him jungle survival. He thought it all “great fun and a piece of cake. . . . I thought it was being the Eagle Scout all over again.”13 Kerr offered a slightly different account. “The program was to set you down in the middle of the jungle. We had a machete, and that was it. We had Maguire, a small Negroid Filipino. And the admiral and I proceeded to survive in the jungle with this young man’s skills. Without him I don’t know what we would have done. We found that you could make coffee from nuts that fell off trees. That you could reach in amidst a tangled bunch of vines and find one that had fresh water in it. We found how to fish, without poles or string, in streams.”14
By September 21, it was time for the final leg of Bud’s journey. During the flight to Saigon in an Air Force T-39, Bud was reviewing briefing books and thinking about his upcoming meeting with General Creighton Abrams, commander of U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), who less than five months earlier had relieved General William C. Westmoreland. In the wake of Tet and Johnson’s March 31, 1968, withdrawal from the presidential race, Bud shared Paul Nitze’s view that the war was now lost politically, making it impossible to prevail militarily. It was only a matter of time before the political leadership would require a plan for disengaging the United States without damaging its interests in the region and upsetting the strategic balance.
Kerr thought his boss looked especially pensive and inquired what he was thinking. The presidential election was just two months away. If Hubert Humphrey won, Bud thought he might have as little as six months to one year to arrange the navy’s exit. If Nixon was elected, he anticipated having as many as eighteen months. The primary mission of his command was likely to involve turning over the naval in-country assets to the Vietnamese, yet not a single briefing had mentioned the Vietnamese navy or the in-country war.15 Vietnamization had yet to become the watchword of U.S. policy, yet Bud was already conceptualizing a plan for shifting responsibility to the Vietnamese. This was the “first time that I ever heard him express what he saw as his primary mission in Vietnam—to pave the way to get out,” recalled Kerr.16
Arriving at Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut Air Base on the morning of September 22, the youngest vice admiral in the history of the navy turned to his flag lieutenant. “Well, Howard, this is day one. Let’s get on with it.”17 Bud Zumwalt was going into an area in which the two flag officers preceding him had not been able to achieve anything significant, either for themselves personally or for the navy.18 Descending the airplane stairs, Bud eyed Admiral Kenneth Veth on the tarmac in his dress whites, a stark contrast with Bud’s khakis. Exchanging common courtesies and small talk, the two men had little else to say. The awkwardness was undoubtedly fueled by Bud’s third star.
The two men went from the tarmac to see General Creighton Abrams. Bud had met Abrams several years earlier when the then major general had served as the army representative of the Department of Defense task force for Cuba contingency planning. At the time, Bud was the assistant secretary of defense’s ISA representative to the group. Neither could say they knew the other in any real way. Abrams kept the two admirals waiting for about fifty minutes, which seemed like hours as Bud struggled to make conversation. When Abrams entered the room, he walked directly to shake Bud’s hand, totally ignoring Veth. “I was present at the first meeting,” recalled Kerr. “General Abrams walked into the waiting area, invited Zumwalt inside, leaving Veth and me outside.”19
Bud benefited enormously from the fact that Abrams had just received a letter from his close friend, incoming secretary of the navy Paul Ignatius, advising that “one of the Navy’s brightest stars would soon be arriving.”20 That was good enough for Abe to give the new arrival a chance, although he was inwardly steamed about not being consulted on the appointment. Abrams believed the navy had been useless in its strategic and tactical contributions to the in-country war. Admiral Veth had been dropped from the Saturday weekly intelligence estimates updates (WIEU) because he had nothing to contribute. “He was not putting any chips on the table,” recalled intelligence chief Earl “Rex” Rectanus. “If you’re not putting any chips on the table, then you can’t play.”21 Abe did not know what needed to be done, but he knew the Brown Water Navy was missing the war. “I don’t know what you are going to do, but I know that what you’re doing now stinks,” Abrams said to Bud.
Abe seemed completely comfortable letting Bud figure it out, or not. Abe’s message was loud and clear. Bud could attend the WIEU meetings, but as soon as he stopped producing, he’d lose his place at the table. Bud understood that he needed not only to devise a plan for transitioning the navy out of Vietnam, but also to develop a strategy for getting the navy into the brown-water war. The army and MACV dominated the landscape in Vietnam because they saw it as their war, a war in which their soldiers were dying. Until he convinced General Abrams that he was there “to kill VC, to make some offensive moves,” he was not going to have cooperation from MACV.22
The change-of-command ceremony was scheduled for September 30. Paul Ignatius was arriving in Saigon a few days later, and Bud was expected to brief the new secretary on his plans for the Brown Water Navy. These first days in Saigon had been sobering. “We came away from those days with a clear understanding that the staff in Saigon was cut off from the forces in the field,” recalled Kerr. “It was just a sleepy, large, moribund staff which had fallen into a static pattern of reading message traffic.”23 Tennis matches and dinner dates were more important than fighting the war. In general, the staff came to work with no sense of urgency, planning their days around social events and five p.m. martinis. “Admiral Veth was a loser,” said Bud in another moment of complete candor. “He was out there having a gay social time and was not invested in the war itself and his concept of the war was to keep his troops from getting shot at.”24
Bud had much in-country homework to do, beginning with a tour of South Vietnam’s major naval operational and advisory groups. He needed to meet as many component commanders and army commanders in the Mekong as possible. He also thought it best to get away from Admiral Veth until the change of command. In this case, the combat zone offered sanctuary because Bud knew Veth would not be there. After just two days in Saigon, a whirlwind tour of South Vietnam began, including twenty-seven individual flights around the country, from Da Nang near the DMZ to An Thoi on Phu Quoc Island off the coast of Cambodia.
Bud learned quite a bit during a meeting with his component task force commanders, Captains Robert Salzer, Arthur Price, and Roy Hoffmann. Each of these extremely capable field commanders had been yearning for an interdiction campaign that would hurt the enemy.25 Salzer commanded Task Force 117, the joint army-navy Mobile Riverine Force involved in search-and-destroy missions. Art Price commanded Task Force 116, the River Patrol Force, whose mainstays were the patrol boats, river (PBRs), involved in severing enemy supply lines as part of Operation Game Warden. Roy Hoffmann commanded Task Force 1
15, the Coastal Surveillance Force, primarily engaged in Operation Market Time, a combined U.S. Navy and South Vietnamese navy effort by PCF Swift Boats to stop the flow of supplies from North Vietnam into South Vietnam.26 Bud needed each of these men, promising promotion if they stayed with him for the battle ahead.27
Basically the naval strategy in-country from 1964 until 1968 had involved two relatively predictable and static patrol functions: Market Time (TF 115) patrol of Vietnamese coastal waters by Swift Boats and Game Warden (TF 116) patrol by PBRs of major waterways, like the Mekong and Bassac rivers on a daily basis, searching for smuggled communist weapons in watercraft as small as sampans and as large as coastal trawlers.28
With its many crisscrossing rivers and canals, the Mekong offered a particularly appropriate area for naval riverine and interdiction operations. But what type of plan could be developed quickly and get the buy-in of so many disparate task force components? It was obvious to everyone on the ground that there were navy resources not being used. With the advent of General Abrams as MACV commander in 1968, the overall strategy changed to clear and hold rather than search and destroy.29 Within that context, Bud sought to develop tactics that were more proactive in a strategy that took the fight to the enemy, interfered with their substantial logistics support, and rolled them back, holding the cleared territory. He would accomplish this by creating barriers and bases near the Cambodian borders and redeploying some Market Time assets to riverine interdiction.
