Our Year of War

by Daniel P. Bolger

  By mid-month the president knew he had to act. He waited on the wise men to tell him the right answer, but he sensed what was coming. New secretary of defense Clark Clifford already had LBJ’s ear. Clifford convinced the president that the Westmoreland strategy was bankrupt. The MACV commander had to go. On March 22, without fanfare, Johnson announced that Westmoreland would report back to Washington in June to take over as U.S. Army chief of staff.28 Announced as a promotion, the press reported it as a relief, not a good thing in military circles. LBJ let it ride.

  On March 25–26, the wise men gathered to report out. They told Johnson what he expected. Get out. The interim steps would be a bombing halt up north, negotiations, and “Vietnamization,” turning the war over to ARVN, the exceedingly unexpected heroes of the Tet Offensive.29 But those measures all amounted to temporizing, making the best of a bad bargain. Essentially, the United States had failed. Now it remained to be seen what might be salvaged.

  On March 31, 1968, Johnson went on television to announce the change in strategy. He looked like he’d been horsewhipped. “Tonight” he intoned, “I want to speak to you of peace in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.” He then calmly and slowly reviewed his stillborn prior peace initiatives, each rebuffed by Hanoi. But this time, the United States would act “unilaterally, and at once.” “We are reducing,” he said, “substantially reducing—the present level of hostilities.” He explained the bombing halt. There would be no big troop influx, nor any ground attacks into Laos or Cambodia, and certainly not any thrusts into North Vietnam. He emphasized that America had “no intention of widening this war.”

  Johnson stated that he anticipated these U.S. actions would allow for peace talks, and he named the U.S. envoy, Averell Harriman, one of the wise men. The president mentioned a few more forces already tapped to deploy, including a small call-up of reserves. He also noted that even a war held to the new limits required additional taxes, never popular, especially in an election year. Finally, he turned to his own role. He saw resolving Vietnam as his key duty: “Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.”30 Not only was America quitting, albeit in slow motion—Johnson, too, had thrown in the towel.

  Four days later, it got worse.

  DOCTOR MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. enjoyed the rare distinction of being tracked and vilified by both the Soviet KGB and the American FBI.31 These rival organizations kept tabs on King. They didn’t quite understand all he meant to America, especially black America. But they sure knew he was important.

  So did James Earl Ray, a white petty criminal and drifter born in Alton, Illinois. Ray had once volunteered for the George Wallace campaign in North Hollywood, in Los Angeles, California. He didn’t like African Americans. And he hated King. So on April 4, 1968, he killed him.32

  Ray got away cleanly from Memphis, Tennessee, and he remained on the run for two months. The FBI’s inability to say immediately who shot King, and the lengthy manhunt that followed, satisfied few across America. Many anguished African Americans suspected all manner of conspiracies, and the well-known antipathy of the FBI, George Wallace, and way too many white Americans offered fertile ground for speculation. President Lyndon Johnson and the other white American leaders said all the right things. Even George Wallace called the shooting a “senseless, regrettable, and tragic act.”33 But in restive inner cities, people weren’t listening anymore.

  Within hours of King’s death, unrest spread across southwest Memphis. Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington followed suit, as did over a hundred other cities. State governors mobilized more than 50,000 guardsmen. The regular army sent in more than 23,000 soldiers.34 America burned.

  North Omaha went up, too. It didn’t rate any regular army troops, but the Nebraska National Guard took to the streets. Nobody died, although there were injuries and property damage. The already beaten-up Twenty-fourth Street business corridor lost more stores. Up and down the thoroughfare, seemingly in every other building, plywood replaced plate glass. Burnt storefronts marked the path of the looters.35 Twice in two months—when would it end?

  Across the nation, the great riots of April 1968 cost 31 dead and 3,129 injured. Police arrested 16,268 suspects and fire departments responded to over 2,000 conflagrations. Along with Baltimore, Chicago, Memphis, Omaha, and Washington, the biggest disturbances occurred in Cincinnati, Detroit, Kansas City, Louisville, New York City, Pittsburgh, and Wilmington, Delaware.36 Bad as things got—and they got very bad—this awful wave ended the grim annual cycle of inner-city riots that marred the 1960s. There’d be exceptions: Omaha in 1969, for one. The country’s underlying racial distress had been suppressed, not resolved. And there were other societal demons, way too many, still unsatisfied.

  In the halls of power in Washington and in divided, damaged cities across America, anxious civil authorities prepared for the worst. On the campaign trail, Bobby Kennedy called for understanding among all Americans. George Wallace demanded a crackdown on the affluent white hippies and belligerent black urban rioters. And Richard Nixon? He planned “to restore order and respect for law in this country.”37 He didn’t mention race. But most Americans, black or white, got the message.

  AFRICAN AMERICAN SOLDIERS in Vietnam got the message, and they didn’t need to hear it from Richard Nixon, either. The United States might not be able to appoint a single black cabinet secretary, nor find a black federal district court judge, nor select even one black Apollo astronaut. But by God, those Selective Service draft boards sure made their numbers, right in accord with the population percentages. If you looked around any firebase in Vietnam, that became obvious. Thanks to de facto segregation—and not just in Omaha, Nebraska, either—most American communities might not look like America in a racial sense. But the army in Vietnam sure did.

  The army even had a role in LBJ’s Great Society, doing something for equal opportunity. In 1966, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara introduced Project 100,000, designed to “rehabilitate” those he labeled the “subterranean poor.” When measured on standardized tests—admittedly geared for those with the advantage of a good education—most Project 100,000 candidates hailed from the bottom third of the available manpower pool. Some were accepted from the bottom 10 percent of all recruits. By dropping the standards, to include waiving minor legal infractions, underprivileged youth could put on a uniform, get some discipline, and learn a skill, such as automotive repair or electronics maintenance. It amounted to the Job Corps with a GI haircut. Had America’s army been at peace, or just pulling Cold War duties in West Germany and South Korea, that might have worked out. But with the Vietnam War going full tilt, it sent a lot of these marginal youths right into the line of fire. Of 354,000 inducted under this policy, 41 percent were African American. A post-war study rated the program as “less than successful” and noted that military service “doesn’t appear to be the panacea for struggling youth.”38

  Chuck Hagel, an acting NCO by April of 1968, described the results of such assignments. He recalled: “You were having drafted into the Army guys that had their options. Either go to jail in Texas or New York or New Jersey or whenever, or go into the Army. So you didn’t have the model soldier in the Army in 1968. And it showed.”39 The excesses of Project 100,000 gave credence to the often cited beliefs that the poor and the black fought the war while the wealthy and white stood aside. It wasn’t so. But well-intentioned do-gooding like Project 100,000 led directly to these perceptions. Young African Americans in Vietnam drew their own conclusions about the war and “the Man.”

  The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. shook Americans in uniform no less than those at home. Most soldiers, white and black, found it shocking, another indicator that the country was going mad back on the other side of the Pacific. Chuck Hagel remembered how it hit him and his fellow soldiers: “Everyone was silent.”40

  But even as these understandable reactions rippled across the force, it’s important to keep in mind that MACV’s battal
ions daily exhibited a casual degree of racism unthinkable in the U.S. military fifty years later. Many vehicles and bunkers flew Confederate flags, and few white men thought anything of it. Not often, but enough, the word “nigger” served as just another noun. Even certain sergeants and officers, not all from the south, either, resorted to the slur in speaking to or about African American troops. The majority, the decent leaders, didn’t use the term or permit it. The less aware kept right on blabbing. And those who thought themselves slick split the difference, eschewing the insult in public and employing it when they guessed the black soldiers were out of earshot.41 But combat troops have excellent hearing.

  All too often, the official army didn’t seem to notice that one in eight U.S. troops was African American. Photographs in field manuals and on instructional posters consistently displayed white males demonstrating the proper use of weapons and equipment. Soldiers of color usually didn’t make an appearance, and if they did, their placement was clearly subordinate. Supply sergeants and those running the little post exchange huts hardly ever stocked magazines, hair care products, and hygiene items of interest to young black men. Even the USO shows rarely featured black entertainers—plenty of Joey Heatherton and Wayne Newton, not enough Lola Falana or James Brown, and certainly no Jimi Hendrix.42 It all added up. It all grated.

  There was more for those inclined to look, and after King’s death, many young African Americans did. A lot of “dark green” troops appeared to get tagged for more than their share of work details: digging trenches, filling sandbags, and burning human waste. A notable fraction of “light green” soldiers seemed to end up shuffling papers in the headquarters. The officers would say such assignment choices reflected education, and maybe they did.43 That simply rubbed jagged salt in a raw gash.

  When frustrated African Americans looked up the chain of command, the number of black officers amounted to a fraction, a mere 4 percent of the entire U.S. Army officer corps, and almost all them lieutenants and captains.44 There were higher-ranking officers of color like Major Colin Powell (G-3 for the Americal Division). There were even senior leaders like Brigadier General Frederic E. Davison, who commanded the 199th Light Infantry Brigade in Saigon during Tet. But there weren’t many.

  A good number of African American soldiers took the news about King very hard. Right on its heels came press reports, then letters from home, and phone calls for a few, all emphasizing neighborhoods in turmoil. In 2-47th Infantry, the body of John Summers, killed in action in the firefight on March 28, made it back to his hometown of Baltimore in the shadow of columns of smoke. His funeral became one more in the sequence of seven men killed in the riots of April 6–11, 1968.45

  At Bear Cat, 2-47th felt the backlash. As Chuck Hagel explained, in Company B “there’s no question that the King assassination set off a real powder keg that had been simmering under the surface.” Over the previous months, thoughtless officers and NCOs had allowed troops to self-segregate into black tents and white tents. The company’s few senior sergeants, both black and white, cautioned against it. But the company had been busy with field operations since Tet, and seen three different captains in command in just over three months. After losing the competent Captain Robert G. Keats at Tet, the replacement struggled. He let the privates do as they wished, not usually a good idea in a rifle company. When the news broke about King’s death, the company’s African American soldiers refused to go out on a mission. Some loudly defied the white officer. The rest apparently agreed. 46

  A young lieutenant from Chicago thought otherwise. Jerome “Skip” Johnson, age twenty-three, went through Officer Candidate School, earning a commission as an armor officer. With 3-5th Cavalry detached almost two months earlier, the 9th Infantry Division didn’t have tanks anymore, so a personnel officer assigned Johnson to 2-47th Infantry, mechanized on their M-113 tracks and thus close enough. Johnson served as a platoon leader and, due to the endemic officer shortage, also acted as company executive officer, second in command to the captain. Johnson knew his business. Chuck Hagel considered him “steady, careful, never excitable—and in combat, that’s who you want leading.”47

  With the white captain flummoxed, it fell to Skip Johnson to sort it out. His older brother had been killed in country in 1967. His home city of Chicago burned in 1966 and ignited again after King’s killing. America had asked a lot of Johnson, and given him damn little in return. Even his officer’s rank, something honored even on the West Side of Chicago in 1968, wore heavy on his collar in those days after King’s death.

  Skip Johnson did not hesitate. He went to the tents that housed the African American soldiers. Every face turned his way. He didn’t say much—just enough. “We are all Americans,” he said. “We’re going to live together, we’re going to take care of each other, we’re fighting together, we’re going to get each other’s backs. Let’s get it done.” He went to leave, but then stopped, turned back, and stood there.

  “This is not just an order from your commanding officer,” he said. “This is from me, Jerome Johnson. You will deal with me personally on this.”48

  That ended it—for now.

  IT’S UNLIKELY THE FLINTY OLD MEN in Hanoi knew of the confrontation in the tents of 2-47th Infantry. At their level, the U.S. mechanized infantry battalion might have rated a dot on a map. The internal doings of one of about 120 such American outfits didn’t rise to the top. In the wake of the Tet Offensive, the northern politburo had bigger fish to fry.

  In the short run, Tet and its blood-soaked aftermath—most notably at Khe Sanh and in Hue city, but also in the Central Highlands, the towns and jungles around Saigon, and in the rice paddies of the northern Mekong Delta—exacted a horrendous price for minimal gain. Not one liberated town center had been held. In the weeks after the initial wave of attacks, the NVA sent more than 80,000 new troops south to refill their depleted ranks. Tet had torn the guts out of the VC. After the great offensive, northerners predominated, even in many nominally local guerrilla units.49 In a military sense, the North’s Tet Offensive failed. Both sides knew it.

  And yet, the NVA generals also recognized that the comparative body count, while slanted dramatically against the communist cause, only went so far in determining the long-term result. General Westmoreland might have proclaimed victory, but clearly his Washington leadership did not agree.50 They sent few reinforcements. They announced Westmoreland’s departure. Then, in a development that surprised even the North Vietnamese, President Johnson altered the U.S. strategy: no wider war, a unilateral bombing halt, and a plea for negotiations. Finally, in an example of the supposedly inevitable consequences of the class struggle between haves and have-nots so beloved of Marxist-Leninist true believers, some alienated loser killed Martin Luther King Jr. America’s cities burned. So much for a U.S. triumph.

  Even the 9th Infantry Division staff, thoroughly and rightly averse to commenting on U.S. domestic politics, saw it. In their operational summary of the post-Tet situation, an unnamed intelligence officer soberly wrote: “The Viet Cong offensive failed militarily, but it must be viewed as a psychological success.”51 Hanoi’s inner circle smiled.

  Although crippled by Tet casualties, the North Vietnamese knew what to do. Pursuant to the American request, peace talks in Paris would start on May 10. The NVA generals wanted to put their markers on the table, to continue the political struggle from the barrel of a gun. The solution came right from the guerrilla creed. Enemy tires, we attack.

  CHAPTER 7

  Heat

  It might feel safer inside as long as nothing happens, but you couldn’t hope for a pleasant death if anything did happen shut up in a blazing steel room that was rapidly becoming white-hot and filled with an infernal symphony of fireworks as your own ammunition caught fire and added to the horror.

  STEPHEN BAGNALL, The Attack1

  The rains came late that year. Usually, the rain blew in with May. As long as the dry season persisted around Saigon, the skies stayed relatively clear, and U.S.
helicopters and jet fighter- bombers flew freely.2 Drier ground allowed MACV rifle units to keep hunting Charlie. For a mechanized battalion like 2-47th Infantry, every day without the wet monsoon offered another opportunity to get the 12-ton M113s off the roads and trails to find the enemy. The Viet Cong K-34 Artillery Battalion remained unlocated, of course. They knew how not to be seen.

  The NVA and their VC auxiliaries would move in early May, rain or no rain. The opening of the peace talks in Paris set that timing. In the weeks before the planned attack, the enemy went to ground, even underground. North Vietnamese Army doctrine taught their officers one slow, four quicks. Slow preparation came first, followed by quick advance, quick assault, quick clearance, and quick withdrawal.3 April 1968 was for preparation.

  Waiting for the NVA to act did not work for Major General Julian J. Ewell. He hounded the 9th Infantry Division’s battalions to get out and get after their elusive enemy. While he had a strong personal regard for Lieutenant Colonel John Tower, whom Ewell regarded as a fighter, the division commander considered the 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Infantry an asset of limited utility.4 The 2-47th could keep roads open, escort supply truck convoys, and, in emergencies like Tet, move quickly to the sound of the guns. Yet except for the clashes during Tet, 2-47th did not register much of a body count. And once the wet monsoon blew in, the constraints of weather on M113 mobility guaranteed even less production. As an old paratrooper determined to find and kill Cong, Ewell preferred walking infantry inserted by helicopter. He disliked the slow, predictable riverine guys. But he hated the mech.

  So 2-47th stayed not just busy, but hyperbusy, as if a frenetic pace of activity could make up for lack of results. The costly firefight on March 28 came from this push. With the internal dissension over the King assassination resolved, operations continued day and night. When pressed, the American intelligence analysts kept pointing to the Binh Son rubber plantation and its environs, right on the doorstep of the 9th Infantry Division’s Camp Martin Cox at Bear Cat, as the most likely place to find the VC. For his part, Charlie stubbornly refused to be found.