by Tom Wilson
"Just couldn't stay out of it, could you?" said Moss.
Buster grinned. "No, sir."
"I get you the best colonel's job in the Air Force, and you volunteer to go to the asshole of the world. You ever been to Takhli?"
"Never even been to Thailand, General."
"Only place on earth it can rain buckets for two hours, then half an hour later blow up a hellacious dust storm."
"I've heard they fight well at Takhli."
Flo quietly came in and placed a cup of coffee on Moss's massive desk.
"Anything on my schedule this morning?" Moss asked her.
"Nothing until nine, as you wanted."
"What then?"
"You go to MAC-V for General Westmoreland's meeting."
"Get me out of it." Moss rolled his eyes at Buster. "Boring as hell. They talk about body counts, bomb tonnage, and percentages of population affected by pacification programs. Everything's numbers. No one talks about how to win the war."
Flo's mouth tightened. "I told General Westmoreland's executive officer that you'd be there. You missed the last two meetings."
Moss glared but she stood her ground. Finally he sighed. Knowing she'd won, Flo quietly left the room. Moss waved Buster toward a chair.
"How's Gentleman Jim?" Moss asked. Gentleman Jim was General McManus, Chief of Staff of the Air Force. Buster had worked at his right hand at the Pentagon, in the job Moss had pulled strings to get him into.
"The chief's got a bad heart. It's worrisome to his staff, but he keeps charging along."
"He's got a thankless job," Moss muttered. "The politicians still ignoring him?" General McManus, even more than the other service chiefs, was overlooked by the President and the SecDef L.B.J. viewed himself as an expert on aerial warfare and felt he needed no outside advice. He and a small circle of cronies prioritized targets in North Vietnam, established restrictions, and authorized certain of them to be destroyed, without asking for military opinion.
Buster made himself comfortable. "That's one reason I'm here, sir. General McManus wanted me to brief you face-to-face on a matter he feels is important."
"He called and said you'd need a couple of hours."
"The chief's concerned about the way the war's going."
"The air war?"
"The whole thing. He feels it's getting more screwed up with every passing day. He's a strong believer that America should never have become involved in a land war here."
Moss snorted. "Now there's an original thought."
"General Westmoreland is traveling to Washington next month to wave the flag. The chief thinks he'll ask for more troops."
Moss looked surprised. "More troops? Jesus, he's already got half a million here."
"General McManus believes he'll ask for between one hundred fifty and two hundred thousand more."
Moss thought, then slowly nodded his head. "Maybe so. Westy likes big numbers."
"The chief wants to know if you could force the issue over here with air power alone."
"Sure we can. I told him that last time we were together."
"He says the timing was wrong last time you talked."
Moss glowered. "Politically wrong, he told me at the time."
"He also wants to know if it can be done without expanding ROLLING THUNDER." ROLLING THUNDER was the OPlan for the bombing campaign in North Vietnam.
"You mean can we win with air power here in South Vietnam and not change anything about what we're doing up north?" asked Moss.
"Yes, sir. The President keeps a stranglehold on air activity over North Vietnam. It's his private show. Every time the chief makes a suggestion about bombing more vigorously up there, he's told to shut up and sit down."
"It doesn't matter what the President or anyone else thinks. North Vietnam is the key. No matter what you read, Hanoi's running the entire show. The NVA regular troops, the Viet Cong irregulars—they're all controlled by politicians and military coordinators sent from up north. All major decisions for both the NVA and Viet Cong come from party leaders in Hanoi."
Buster sipped his coffee and listened.
"A few months ago I briefed Gentleman Jim that we can still kick their asses by systematically bombing Hanoi and Haiphong, like the guys who wrote the ROLLING THUNDER OPlan meant to do in the first place. The original planners said we should hit the enemy relentlessly, around the clock, and not let up until we'd destroyed their infrastructure. It would have been a piece of cake two years ago. Every week that passes, the defenses get tougher, and we'll take more losses doing it."
"Then you feel there's no way to win the war here in the South?"
"Not with air power. Here it's a ground show. Westy uses us as artillery. Mainly close air support and beating up jungle trails." Moss stood and walked over to a wall map, and tapped his forefinger on the red splotch of ink at the top. "Hanoi's the key. The only key. We're fighting two wars, Buster. An unconventional ground-and-air war here and a conventional air war up north, and we're fighting both of them wrong."
0720L—Route Pack Five, North Vietnam
First Lieutenant Joe Walker
Coming down in the chute, he'd been aware that something was badly wrong with his legs. That had been big problem number one. Second had been the fact that there'd been no good place to land. All he'd seen on the way down were trees, very tall teak trees, and they'd extended in every direction except to the east. Since he didn't dare steer the chute toward the dense population of the Red River Valley, he'd had no option but to go down in dense forest.
He knew to hold his knees and feet tightly together and assume a crouching position when he went into treetops, but when he'd tried, his legs wouldn't respond. When he'd finally descended, he was whipped and battered by limber branches, his chute hung up, and he was slammed hard into a tree trunk.
The chute slipped, then caught even more firmly, and again he was battered against the trunk. When the pain from his legs finally began to course through him, he almost passed out.
A previous flight commander had told them all that if they found themselves in a situation like this, as soon as they got on the ground, they should pick a direction and run like hell, putting several miles between themselves and where the gomers saw them go down. Joe Walker, the fastest man ever to play football for the Air Force Falcons, could not even have crawled if he'd been on the ground, and he was not on the ground.
Waves of excruciating pain enveloped him, and he shrieked, then gritted his teeth together to stop the noise. His teeth chattered from the effort.
It eased finally and he fumbled, retrieved a survival radio from his vest, and called for Wildcat lead. When Billy Bowes responded, he told him of his situation.
Another minute passed, and Bear Force leader radioed and asked about his condition, and he repeated his litany.
The pain swept over him again, and he whimpered over the air, not caring that the pilots up there might hear.
Bear Force leader asked if he could see any unfriendlies in the area. Joe repeated that he could not see the ground, that he was caught in the treetops.
Wildcat lead came back on the air. Billy Bowes asked if he had his tree kit with him.
A few weeks earlier they'd been provided with a thin nylon rope and a pulley assembly, to be carried in a pouch sewn to their vests. Some of the pilots had refused it for the sake of saving weight. But Joe had not, and he wondered why he hadn't remembered it.
Use it, Wildcat lead urged, to lower yourself.
Joe began fumbling at the Velcro tape securing the pouch and, doing so, dropped the hand-held radio and heard it crashing through the branches below. He panicked before remembering there was a backup radio in the vest and another in the survival kit dangling below him on a tether. Finally he pulled the rope out and began lacing it through a parachute harness ring, wishing he'd watched closer when they'd demonstrated how to use the kit. When he thought he had it right, he gave the rig a couple of tugs. It held. He cautiously opened first one parachute release, then the o
ther, and immediately began to slip and fall.
Damn!
He held on to the rope for dear life, dropping several feet, catching, dropping again, with the rope slipping through his gloved hands before his hold became effective, and again he was swinging and being battered against the tree trunk. He held on with all his dwindling might, rope burns smarting his palms. He banged again into the tree and screamed from the excruciating pain.
After hanging stationary for a full minute, he began to play out the line cautiously, ignoring the searing sensation from his hands, dropping in jerks and starts. After fifteen minutes of lowering, he could see the ground for the first time, and the dizzying height made him catch his breath. He was still more than fifty feet up the tree and knew there was not nearly enough rope to make it to the ground.
He heard a buzzing, mosquito sound grow closer. Engine noise from a propeller-driven aircraft. He tied the rope carefully, so he'd be held in position, and pulled out the second radio.
Sandy lead, the A-1H pilot who was the first of the rescue team to arrive at a scene, was calling on emergency guard frequency.
After answering appropriate personal questions to establish that it was indeed First Lieutenant Joe Walker on the other end of the radio, he was told to continue to lower himself.
Sandy lead sounded nervous. They were not far from the hot area, and the quaver in his voice was warranted. Sandy told him the choppers were holding only twenty minutes' flying time away, waiting for authorization to proceed. He advised Joe to lower himself to the ground while they waited.
Joe told him the rope wasn't going to reach.
Sandy grew quiet at that revelation. Since there was no way they could rescue him from halfway up a teak tree, Joe said he'd somehow get the rest of the way down.
0749L—Seventh Air Force Headquarters
Colonel Buster Leska
Over the intercom General Moss asked Flo to call in Lieutenant Colonel Gates, the staff officer who had escorted Buster to the office.
"We can talk freely in front of Pearly," Moss said. "He's my out-of-country expert—stays in touch with the Thailand units and keeps me up to speed on the air war up north."
They'd been talking about the possibility of an air campaign to force the North Vietnamese out of the war, but no matter where Buster tried to lead the conversation, Moss kept returning to the key—Hanoi.
Gates rapped at the door and hesitantly poked his head inside.
"Come on in," Moss snapped. He'd grown increasingly annoyed about Buster's reluctance to understand that the quickest way to end the war was through massive bombardment of targets in and around Hanoi.
Gates started to take a seat to one side of the room, but Moss waved him up beside Buster. "Anything new happening, Pearly?" Moss asked.
"PACAF headquarters ordered increased surveillance of Phuc Yen airfield."
Moss glanced at Buster. "That's their biggest MiG base. We've requested permission to bomb the damned place a dozen times since I got here last year, but each time it's been denied. Maybe PACAF knows something we don't. Think they're going to finally turn us loose, Pearly?"
"I queried PACAF on scrambler phone, but they're not saying. They just say to comply with the message, which directs two photo flights a day over Phuc Yen."
"Anything else?"
"Preliminary results of the morning alpha strikes are in."
Moss eyed him. "And . . . ?"
"They radioed a success code on both targets."
Moss turned to Buster. "We sent forty Thuds and eighteen Phantoms to bomb a dinky highway overpass and a bridge we've knocked down twice before. Both targets were passed down from the executive branch. Both will be repaired within a day or two. That's what's wrong with the war up there. We keep playing games."
"I thought you requested the bridges campaign."
"Sure I did. And it was like pulling teeth trying to get it approved. But if you're talking about winning this thing, about really hurting the North Vietnamese and making them rethink what they're doing, we're going to have to do a hell of a lot more."
Buster reflected on what he'd been told. Thus far it had gone as General McManus had predicted.
Moss turned to Pearly Gates. "Losses?"
"An F-4 from Ubon northeast of Hanoi, and a Thud from Takhli to the west. They're trying to get the Thud pilot out, but they're worried about the location, which is only fifteen miles from the Red River."
"A goddam highway overpass," Moss muttered. "And believe it or not, that's a better target than we get most of the time."
Buster was still thinking about the loss of the Takhli bird.
"Pearly, Colonel Leska's on a mission from the Chief of Staff. Gentleman Jim wants to know if we can force the North Vietnamese to withdraw their troops by using air power."
The lieutenant colonel grew a happy look of anticipation.
"But he wants to know how we'd do it only here in South Vietnam."
Gates's smile faded. He slowly removed his glasses, pulled a cloth from his shirt pocket, and methodically began to polish the lenses. It was not a rude reaction, just a prop to allow himself to think things out. Others might light a pipe.
"I told him there's no way," Moss added, frowning at the thickness of the lenses.
"Hanoi," Pearly Gates said in an even, deliberate tone, "has been the key to Tonkin Vietnam for centuries. It's the center of their culture. The Chinese understood that, and nothing had changed a hundred years ago when the French arrived. Only after Governor General Doumer set up business in Hanoi did the French finally control Indochina."
"Paul Doumer," said Moss, parading his knowledge, "was the guy who showed the French how to plunder Indochina."
Pearly Gates judiciously nodded agreement. "The Japanese invaded in World War II and centered their activities in Saigon, but when Ho Chi Minh took over after the war, he immediately changed the capital back to Hanoi. And when he whipped the French in 1954, Hanoi became his home base as well as the center of the Lao Dong party nervous system. Threaten Hanoi, and you threaten the Lao Dong party. Eliminate the Lao Dong, and you've removed the communist threat to Indochina."
"Our purpose is limited," reasoned Buster. "We want the North Vietnamese to withdraw their troops and support from South Vietnam and Laos, nothing more."
Gates carefully placed his glasses on his nose and blinked. "The key's still Hanoi. If we threaten its destruction, they'll realize they're about to lose everything they've fought so hard for for the past thirty years."
"There's no other way?"
Pearly Gates shook his head without hesitation. "Hanoi's the head of the beast."
"If we bombed there, it would mean killing civilians."
"Most civilians were forced to leave the city proper over a year ago. Hanoi's a military fortress. But, yes, civilians would be killed. It's something to be considered."
"Foreign nationals?"
There are the embassies and two hotels where foreign visitors stay, and we should avoid them. But there are also military advisors, and that's something we'd have to deal with. There would be foreign casualties."
Moss casually waved a hand at Pearly to interrupt. "We're going to have to settle something right now, Buster. Unless we act like we're at war, nothing will succeed. That's what's gotten us to this sorry state of affairs, acting like we're not really at war, like all we're after is an agreement between gentlemen. The communists are not gentlemen out to bring better government to the Vietnamese people. They're after domination and control. We've either got to take off the kid gloves and duke it out, or keep hemorrhaging soldiers, sailors, and pilots in a halfway war. If Gentleman Jim wants us to come up with a plan to win, he's got to realize two things. One, it will take heavy bombardment of the Hanoi area. Two, it will involve loss of not-so-innocent lives."
Buster glanced at his watch. It was 0757. Three more minutes. That would provide the hour he'd promised General McManus he'd spend with option one.
"As I told you before
, Buster, there are two distinct wars going on. One's the guerrilla war in Laos and here in South Vietnam. That's the one the reporters follow, where the beleaguered, yet honorable and brave Viet Cong are slipping about in the jungle fighting the bullying Americans and the slothful Vietnamese."
Richard Moss had never liked politicians or reporters, but the description he'd just given was one increasingly parroted by a growing number of newspapers and congressmen in the States.
Moss shook his head sadly. "Honorable? Brave? Last week I was taken to a hamlet the Viet Cong had visited the previous night. They'd butchered the headman because he'd accepted supplies from the Saigon government, then they cut off his children's hands so they could never bear arms against them."
Buster winced.
"MAC-V invited the press out to the village, but they didn't want to go, because they said it was contrived by the military establishment and they were onto a hot story. Know what the reporters were excited about? They'd found a couple of South Vietnamese colonels with American air conditioners in their offices and sent in reports about the corruption of the ARVN."
Moss stared at him. "But that's down here in the South. Here our fighters and the B-52's are used to bomb supplies and troop concentrations and provide close air support for our troops. We do a damn good job of it when we can find them, but that's not an easy task. All they shoot at us with are small arms and the occasional thirty-seven-millimeter gun. Up north it's a different ball game altogether. Give him a rundown on North Vietnamese defenses, Pearly."
Gates nodded. "There's a total of about ninety MiGs, counting MiG-17's and . . ."
Buster waved his hand. It was time to drop the facade. "I received briefings on the defenses at the Pentagon, so I've got a good idea of what they've got."
Moss brought home one last point. "North Vietnam has become one hell of an armed camp, with hundreds of SAMs and guns backed up by MiGs. About three fourths of all that's concentrated in one area—Hanoi—and it's well coordinated. Does that tell you something about how much they prize the place?"
Buster slowly stood and walked to the map, studying it closely, then turned and shifted his vision from one man to the other. "I promised General McManus that I'd spend my first hour trying to find another way. He figured you'd tell me what you just did, but he wanted to know if there were any possible alternatives."
