Our Year of War

by Daniel P. Bolger

  As MACV strength rose, the army brought in enlisted volunteers and draftees by the hundreds of thousands, by definition all “privates and second lieutenants” in the words of General Creighton Abrams, MACV deputy commander in early 1968. The army didn’t have a proportionate number of solid sergeants, and no way to get them unless President Johnson mobilized the entire National Guard and Army Reserve. He did not. As for growing the NCOs over time, well, it took five years to develop a buck sergeant, ten to create a squad leader, and fifteen to make a platoon sergeant. They just weren’t there, and they would never be there, unless the war lasted two decades.31 That wasn’t much of a plan.

  So like so many others in country, Company B played short. The unit had some fine NCOs: First Sergeant Martin M. Garcia, Sergeant First Class William N. Butler, Sergeant First Class Lawrence E. Pugh, Sergeant First Class William E. Smith, Specialist 5 Phillip Rogers. As Chuck Hagel stated: “The senior sergeants were the reassuring, calming guys. And in many cases, many cases, these were the guys that didn’t fall apart.”32 Under fire, the privates and the young officers watched the steady older sergeants. As they went, so went the company.

  But a rifle platoon had at most a single experienced sergeant first class or staff sergeant, maybe one buck sergeant with some time, and all the rest young guys.33 With or without enough veteran sergeants, though, squads still must be led. Somebody had to take charge. As a result, the old imperative took over. Again, the prescience of Basic Combat Training applied. The smart, strong, large, and alert rose to take charge, to lead the way in the field. Both Hagel brothers fit that description. The two were acting NCOs almost from the day Tom arrived, “the fighting Hagel brothers,” as the younger one put it.34 They could be trusted.

  Moreover, they wanted to be trusted. They sought point and slack duties. As Chuck said, he “always felt a little better” with him and Tom in the lead. Fellow Company B soldier Edward E. “Gene” Bacon, with two years of college under his belt, explained why. Chuck came across as “very articulate, very bright” and “commanded real respect from the officers right away.” Tom, too, stood out. He made the other soldiers laugh. Exceptionally well read and perceptive, he asked the right questions before and during missions. And he never forgot anything.35

  TO THESE TWO, the captain entrusted the fate of the truncated ranks of Company B. Tom Hagel knew the company had to “chop our way out—every step of the way [italics in original].” With the light fading, Chuck led on what he later called “the path of most resistance,” right through the heaviest vegetation. Better bamboo than booby traps. Tom pulled slack, compass in hand.

  Chuck whanged away with the machete. Before each cut, he scanned the darkening shrubbery. Tom hung close in the dusk.

  About twenty-five yards from the start, Tom spat out urgent words in a low tone: “Stop. Don’t move.” Chuck immediately froze in place, no answer, fist up. Tom raised his fist, too, and the gesture rippled down the file, right out of the Fort Benning infantry manual. Halt.

  There. There it gleamed in the fading light, a gossamer filament. Trip wire? Looked like it. So the VC had in fact been right nearby, the hungry sharks skimming just past where you could see them. They left this piece of death behind.

  Tom traced the taut string to a can nailed to the crotch of a thin softwood tree trunk. From the can’s open mouth, like an evil chick ready to hatch, poked the top of an American M26 hand grenade.36 Very sporting of us to supply both sides. If Tom pulled the wire, the pinless grenade would slide out, its handle would pop off, and four seconds later, goodbye Hagel brothers.

  Tom studied the thing like a surgeon sizing up an especially tricky open abdomen. With trip wires, a point man had three choices, all perilous. He could cut the wire, which left the grenade in its hole, harmless. Sometimes, though, Mr. Charles rigged the lines so that releasing tension blew the device. It might be possible to avoid the snare, and swing wide of it. But the VC liked to use more than one. Any attempted bypass could run into more booby traps, and thus be equally deadly. Finally, and most tricky of all, a soldier might attempt to remove the grenade and keep the handle down, then toss it far aside to blow in the distance. In this twilight stretch of jungle, with low-hanging branches all around, such a throw might very well bounce back in your face.

  Tom went with cutting the cord.

  Nothing.

  He and Chuck then sidestepped quietly away.37 The file followed. Like they used to say at Fort Bliss: “Pay attention, soldier.” The life you save may be your own… and your brother’s.

  NOT LONG BEFORE MIDNIGHT, one by one, the company’s riflemen emerged from the rough green treeline into the cleared area along Route 15. Along the highway, America’s big Rome plows had clear-cut the jungle. Out among the stumps and deadfall, the battered riflemen looped into a wide circle. Men took a knee and exhaled. It had been a wearing night march through the swaddling, steaming vegetation, darker than dark. For most of the long row of exhausted soldiers, as Tom noted, “All you could do was hold to the back strap of the one in front.”38 But the Hagels got it done. Company B made it.

  Within a half hour or so, helicopters fluttered down onto the makeshift pickup zone. A night lift was unusual, but the company had taken quite a beating. Fortunately, one of Ewell’s many initiatives required helicopter crews to fly more night missions. Two decades later, army aviators used purpose-designed night-vision goggles for such tasks. In 1968, they took risks by relying on onboard lighting, ambient horizon glow, sticking to familiar routes, and taking it slow.39 Lucky for Company B, the aviators capably dealt with the cleared shoulder of Route 15. The Hagels and the rest flew back to Bear Cat.

  The company’s mission amounted to a failure, redeemed only by the successful extraction of all those hit. In a war impelled by a strategy of attrition, carried out by young Americans on individual one-year deployments directed by but a few veteran front-line leaders and opposed by a guerrilla foe who opened almost nine of ten engagements, Company B’s vexing day matched far too many similar experiences. Yes, the U.S. infantry drove off the VC and held the field, a traditional mark of victory in conventional wars. But once the stricken departed, so did Company B.40 If that was winning…

  On the 9th Infantry Division scoreboard, the stark numbers spoke for themselves: one U.S. killed, fourteen U.S. wounded, VC body count zero. The dispassionate analysts at division G-2 rated the VC K-34 Artillery Battalion as “combat effective” and not located with any precision beyond somewhere in southeast Bien Hoa Province. But to throw the beat-up 2-47th a bone, and perhaps spare Lieutenant Colonel Tower the considerable wrath of Ewell, the intel staffers found that “the measure of success” for the March 28 firefight and related operations lay in this finding: “The enemy had not been able to renew his offensive attacks against Saigon despite rumors and intelligence reports that such attacks had been planned.”41 Five weeks later, events in greater Saigon put paid to that hopeful supposition.

  At his level, Chuck Hagel harbored no illusions. In a multipage letter home, he excoriated Tower’s “asinine policies,” mentioned the enemy’s use of “ingenious homemade booby traps, constructed with our material,” and wrote that it resulted in fifteen men wounded. He didn’t mention Summers, killed in action.42 In World War II, some lieutenant might well have censored every one of those burning lines out of Hagel’s missive. But by Vietnam, that no longer happened. It wasn’t the whole story, but it was all Betty Hagel was going to get, and probably more than she wanted.

  WITHIN AN HOUR of landing at Bear Cat, the brothers arrived at the 50th Medical Company’s clearing station, and then found themselves packed into another bird, headed to the 24th Evac at Long Binh.43 They got there well after midnight.

  The 24th Evac had already seen the rest of Company B. Some kept right on going, heading for Japan. A few stayed over, as doctors and nurses worked to keep them going long enough to fly out. The Hagels showed up in the receiving area, two filthy, bloodstained, bone-tired, gaunt, hungry young men in a
well-lit facility. To the overworked medical people, some of them female Nurse Corps officers, the brothers must have resembled hoboes in jungle fatigues.

  Under the bright lights of the treatment suite and the knowing gaze of the experts, the clumsy, messy field dressings on Chuck and Tom stood out as amateur efforts, kindergarten finger-painting intruding into the studio of master artists. Without a word of judgment, the medical people went to work. The blood-crusted, sweat-stained wrappings went away to be burned.

  Cleaning up took a few hours. Both men got washed thoroughly, not as pleasant as it sounds. Infantrymen accumulate a lot of grime. Hospitals don’t approve. So hot water and scrubbing took a while.

  The doctors—real physicians, not the brave but much less well-trained field medics—dug a lot of ball bearings out of both men. Because Chuck’s scatter pattern hit him smack over the heart and lungs, the diggers left a few in there, nestled between the ribs. “And so it’s interesting when I get chest x-rays,” Chuck noted later.44

  To be sure nothing became infected by the ubiquitous tropical germs of Vietnam, the brothers both stayed a few blessed days. The price of admission for this hotel ran pretty high. But it had its pluses: food, rest, the presence of women (admittedly mostly officers). The leaders at 24th Evac understood that riflemen had it tough. If two nights under clean sheets helped, all to the good.

  This is when Chuck found time to write his family his long letter about the incident. Author Myra MacPherson read it years later, and referred to the way both Hagels explained their experiences to their worried mother Betty and brothers Mike and Jimmy as The Hardy Boys Go to Vietnam.45 While few could dispute MacPherson’s deep insight into the Vietnam generation as a whole and the brothers Hagel in particular, she owed the guys a bit more credit. Chuck to a great extent, and Tom for sure, had plenty to write about some rather disturbing aspects of the war. Where they pulled up short involved all references to their own personal experiences. Some of it reflected their upbringing. Young men from small towns in Nebraska didn’t trash-talk or beat their chests. Things happened, you stated them plainly, and you moved on. In addition, both Chuck and Tom were looking out for their single mom, already carrying a hell of a burden.

  What else could they do? No civilian would ever understand the real deal. And if you loved them, you made sure they did not:

  It’s time now for another episode in “Surprise Surprise.” I hope you haven’t received anything from the Army as yet. [She had not.] But (oh yes, light a Camel, get a cup of hot coffee, and then sit down) your two sons have earned a distinguished medal, the Purple Heart. Now please stay calm.46

  Hagel went on to explain that he received “a pellet” in his chest “which was no problem” and Tom got “a pellet” in his elbow “which was easily popped out.” Those statements were true, but greatly understated the number and impact of scalding ball bearings that slammed into each man. Chuck went on: “So No Problems. No sweat!” And then he invoked “the Good Lord, the Saints, Dad” for their evident efforts to keep the brothers safe.47 It was one way to describe the outcome.

  Both brothers, then and now, downplayed their injuries. “Our wounds were no big deal,” said Chuck later. “There was nothing that was life-threatening.” But Tom, ever thoughtful when he had time, remembered the rest of the awful scene: streaks of blood swirling in the stream, bright red swathes smeared on spring green leaves, the abject confusion, soldiers too stunned to talk, others unable to stop moaning, the men down, some without legs, a few without faces, the one who didn’t make it, and then that long, slow walk out through darker woods than Dante Alighieri ever imagined on the lip of hell. “It was one of the most terrible times,” said Tom.48

  Tom got at the deeper meaning of the wounding, one seen a quarter century earlier by another rifleman in a jungle war, Corporal James Jones of Company F, 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division. Later the acclaimed author of the novels From Here to Eternity and The Thin Red Line, Jones thought hard about what it meant to get hit by the enemy. “They had crossed this strange line,” he wrote of the wounded.49 They knew something that those not struck would never know.

  The infantryman’s war in Vietnam, like the way into Dante’s pit of hell, passed through descending circles: arrival in country, first live patrol, first contact with the enemy, first wounded friendly seen, first wounded foe encountered, first dead GI right there, first dead VC observed, first time shooting back, first prisoner taken, first enemy shot close enough to recognize him as a man, and first time wounded. There was only one more step. Those who took it, like John Summers of Baltimore—well, they never reported back.

  That was the line Jones mentioned. Now the Hagels had stuck their toes across, and pulled them right back. But for a few minutes, they’d been there. For a lot of men, even those “lightly” wounded like the Hagels, once was enough. A good number of them never really went back to the war. They found ways out, some acceptable, some less so. It’s easy to get the curious types, the bravado boys, to go to the first firefight. But the second, or the twenty-second, or the one after Charlie put a hole in your hide? No way. Yet Chuck and Tom went back.

  Why?

  The brothers returned to Company B because they figured out one of the dirty big secrets of the army. For all the laws, regulations, and orders, for the enlistment contracts sworn in front of the flag and the mandatory “greetings” of Selective Service, for the many articles in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, for all the bluster of generals and colonels and sergeants major, in the end, Americans in Vietnam who stayed at it, who kept going out to hunt Charlie, chose to do their duty. They chose it every day in country. They were not compelled, and could not be.

  If you asked the Hagels (and people did, even in 1968), they’d say they did it for the country, or to honor their father, or to protect America. Yes, Old Glory gets you into the induction station. Out in the lethal greenwood southeast of Bear Cat, though, abstract patriotism doesn’t go too far.

  Soldiers don’t fight for the grand old flag. They fight for each other. America shrinks to the men to the right and left willing to shoulder a rifle and go at it. They keep each other going. Chuck and Tom sure did.

  Think about it. Does the threat of court-martial motivate a man to go out on patrol? Hardly. The worst army stockade offers three hots and a cot, and nobody stays there more than a few years, if that, just for shirking. As for officers or sergeants intimidating guys, or threatening to shoot them, well hell, the privates far outnumber the leaders. And every rifleman has his own loaded weapon. It almost never came to that, despite the fondest hopes of overwrought Hollywood screenwriters.

  The low field strength of a rifle company in Vietnam, or in the world wars, Korea, Afghanistan, or Iraq for that matter, reflected those few, those tough few, willing to keep going. The faint hearts flaked off along the way, and the army let them. It was just as well. On patrol, nobody wants to hear that the man next in line doesn’t care to fire his M16 today. Good men kept going. Chuck and Tom Hagel were such men.

  So was John Summers.

  IN THE WELL-KEPT WARD of the 24th Evac, the brothers had some time to catch up on the wider world. Like most soldiers in country, they relied on the Stars and Stripes, a semi-official daily newspaper that mixed accounts by uniformed military public affairs writers with wire service clippings and other articles drawn from the press in the United States. Because the Stars and Stripes sometimes went its own way, the generals didn’t care for it. But the troops did. As Chuck said, “I don’t know if there were really any other newspapers that we ever looked at or saw.”50

  The brothers paged through a stack of back issues. One caught their eye. The March 7, 1968, edition featured a big black front-page headline: “Youth Slain as Wallace Visit Ignites Violence in Omaha.” A big photo showed Alabama governor George Wallace getting pelted by debris.51

  What was George Wallace doing in Omaha? And why did his visit result in a riot? That kind of stuff didn’t happen
in Nebraska. Something had gone very wrong back home.

  CHAPTER 6

  Killshots

  The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality…

  DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

  “A Time to Break the Silence”1

  George Wallace flew with LeMay. In later days, when political pundits questioned how and why the presidential candidate selected the general as his running mate, it came back to that simple fact. Curtis LeMay commanded the Twentieth Air Force in the great 1945 fire-bombing campaign against the cities of imperial Japan. And Staff Sergeant George Corley Wallace Jr. flew as a flight engineer and gunner on a B-29 named Li’l Yutz.2 Like Charles Dean Hagel, Wallace had been in on the fiery finale. He idolized the grim-visaged general who set the pace in those desperate times. When Wallace thought of a leader, he thought of LeMay. For the campaign of 1968, there could be no better choice to join Wallace’s ticket as a candidate for vice president.

  For the rest of his days, Wallace proudly touted his war record. Yet we don’t remember George Wallace as a staff sergeant on a B-29 bomber crew. What we know instead is a man who began his tenure of office as governor in Montgomery, Alabama, bellowing: “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” Even as Wallace said those words in 1963, and stood in the doorway at the University of Alabama a few months later in a vain attempt to block racial integration, he was way behind the mood of the country.3 Fellow southerners Harry S. Truman of Missouri, Dwight D. Eisenhower of Kansas and Texas, and Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas saw the future. Wallace stood in the door, but he looked only backward, to a past steeped in America’s original sin of slavery.