Letters

RE: DAK TO ISSUE 

These two articles were terrific. I was with the 15 Engr. Co. (LE) during the November 1967 attack and the 1968 Tet Offensive. After 45 years, I finally found out the big picture about all the campaigns in the Dak To area. Both authors did a great job putting all the pieces together. 

WE DESERVED BETTER

I just read the latest issue of The VVA Veteran. I looked at the map of Dak To and it brought back many memories. I was not at Dak To during the battles covered in The Veteran. You name the places listed on the map and we were there, albeit in late 1961-62. All the villages in the area—whether Montagnard or others not even listed—knew us and our purpose because we spent time there. What we did was classified Top Secret and probably would not be acknowledged to this day.

It is with a heavy heart that I read the article. The powers that be in Washington would not listen to the experts on the ground and, as far as I’m concerned, ignored our plans. I was fortunate to listen to ideas presented in highly classified meetings in Saigon with Col. Frank Serong and Lt. Col. William Mann of the Australian Army, who were advisors. As far as I’m concerned, there would not have been a Dak To or a Tet Offensive where so many American lives were lost due to leadership issues within and outside the theater of operations once they made the decision to commit combat units and begin ground and air operations.  

We were operating just like the SOFs are operating today. It was working and we were winning. The names of seventeen of my brothers-in-arms are inscribed on The Wall. They were U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. We were a small group and we took care of each other. I stood on the tarmac at Bien Hoa AB in February 1962 to say farewell to two Army and six Air Force servicemen who were shot down.

I will never forget what the chaplain said: “Will these men have died in vain? I hope not.”

A day doesn’t go by but I take a moment to think about the buddies who did not make it back. God bless all Vietnam veterans. We deserved better than we received for what we gave.

A FEROCIOUS FIGHT

While I found John Prados’s article, “Dak To: One Hell of a Fight,” not to be inaccurate, it did not give true justice to the fierce violence in fighting those battles at Dak To.

To appreciate the fierceness more, consider that certain units of the 1st Brigade, 4th Inf. Div., as well as some units of the 173rd Airborne received the Presidential Unit Citation. Some individual members received Medals of Honor.

A tidbit about Hill 875: Prados said, “the Sky Soldiers of 4/503 gradually fought their way toward the crest.…Col. Johnson stopped his lead company short, because its flanking cohorts had been held up by the enemy. On November 23, two companies of the 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry provided an assist. The Sky Soldiers reached the summit.” In fact, two different units simultaneously assaulted the crest of Hill 875 that day. Elements of the 503rd went up the north slope. Elements of the 1st Bn., 12th Inf., 4th Inf. Div. assaulted the summit by way of the south slope. The two forces linked up on top about an hour and a half after the attack started.

NOT AT LIBERTY

Thirty-four American Navy personnel were killed, an additional 171 were injured, and an expensive intelligence ship was destroyed off the coast of Egypt in international waters on June 8, 1967. The virtually defenseless ship was attacked repeatedly by Israeli fighter jets using 30-mm cannons and napalm. Israeli torpedo boats ripped a massive hole in her side. Breaking faith with all American servicemen, the Johnson administration commanded the survivors of the U.S.S. Liberty not to speak of that terrible ordeal and forced those men into lives suffocated by PTSD.

An historian, however, is not supposed to be bound by a gag order. So I was surprised to read in the January/February issue

Mr. Gorenberg’s rich and detailed exposition of American-Israeli relations during the Vietnam War period without finding even a passing reference to the Liberty. How is that possible? That omission has long been part of the sad history of the Liberty and her crew.

It would have been very interesting to read the Israeli perspective. It seems that I did.

FAILED ATTRITION POLICY

Thank you for the excellent book review by Marc Leepson of Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam. Leepson didn’t mention names when he wrote, “he [Westmoreland] feuded with the U.S. Marine Corps brass over strategy and tactics.”  Both Marine Generals Krulak and Walt disagreed with the war of attrition strategy. Krulak went over Westmoreland’s head directly to President Johnson, but was overruled.

Afterward, the Marine Corps Combined Action Platoons continued to operate by understaffing operational infantry units by 10 percent because Westmoreland refused additional manpower requests to staff the CAP units. Even with reduced numbers, by 1969 Marine CAP units were effective in reducing enemy operations in I Corps and the individual unit loss ratios were lower for the Marine Corps than for the Army. 

Many have made the case that if Westmoreland had adopted the pacification strategy instead of the failed attrition policy, the outcome might have been different. We won’t know for sure. All of this has been documented in Gen. Krulak’s First to Fight, Lt. Col. Corson’s The Betrayal, and two of my books, Civic Action: Marines Fighting a Different War in Vietnam and Year of the Monkey.

BLAMING WESTY

Having reviewed this same title myself, I naturally read Mr. Leepson’s review of Westmoreland with great interest. In general, I agree with his conclusions, but I also feel some observations are in order. Author Lewis Sorley, in effect, ratted out his boss after the latter’s death, thus not giving him a chance to respond. In 1989 I interviewed Gen. Westmoreland for an hour after having served under him in Vietnam and also having read his 1976 memoirs.

I was impressed that Westmoreland didn’t put any blame on Presidents Kennedy and Johnson when he well might have, but instead put all the blame on his own shoulders. Both Mr. Sorley and Mr. Leepson give those two commanders-in-chief a pass on their own responsibilities for the conduct of the war. Basically, I conclude that Westy told President Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara what they wanted to hear, and vice versa. In the first published volume of LBJ’s taped conversations, he predicted that the war would not be won and that we should get out in 1965, but went in with ground troops anyway. After the fact, McNamara admitted that he, too, had been wrong, so there’s plenty of blame to go around.

Have we learned our lesson? We have not, and terms like “hearts and minds” are still being used in today’s wars, as they will no doubt be in the future. We didn’t get it right in Vietnam.

Two points that both author and reviewer also ignore are these: First, just like in the Spanish Civil War that preceded World War II, Vietnam served as the testing ground
for both sides for strategies, tactics, and weaponry that might one day be used on a larger scale, but, fortunately, weren’t. Second, what would really have thrown our entire war effort into a cocked hat was the entry of the People’s Republic of China into the war on the ground, as happened in Korea. We can thank our lucky stars that that didn’t happen.

MENTORING YOUNG WARRIORS

At our Chapter 689 Annual Banquet in Angola, I commented that it broke my heart when our newest associate member joined us. This young man is 22 years old, a Marine who served honorably and is still technically on active duty.

He’s a good kid—intelligent, articulate, clean-cut—and serving a life sentence. How does this happen? It happens when a culture of abandonment takes hold. It happens when we older veterans fail to step up to mentor today’s young warriors.

This experience prompted Incarcerated Chapter 689 to begin another intensive Veterans Against Drugs and Violence program. Those of us who have lived for 55 and 65 years with our problems with drugs and violence owe it to the youth of today and today’s generation of warriors to live the VVA creed: “Never again….”

THAT SAME OLD LINE

“Never again will one generation of veterans allow the government to abandon the next generation of veterans” doesn’t do it for me. But I agree wholeheartedly with Patrick Burke in his assertion that when we use “Never again will one generation of veterans abandon another,” we are wimping out against a former generation of warriors.

We certainly cannot blame World War II and Korean vets for not comprehending the true significance of what was happening in Vietnam. They were being lied to by the Commander-in-Chief, generals, and the press and were never given the truth about what we were going through over there. We were sucked into the same political war industry crapola that our brothers and sisters are being sucked into today in the Middle East, with that same patriotic line of bull.  

Meanwhile, we were being led around and lied to by generals who were padding body counts for their own glory. May they rot in hell. McNamara, Johnson, Westmoreland, the general staff, war industry profiteers, and politicians were all men without honor.
We paid the price. 

THE TIES THAT BIND

Patrick Burke’s recent letter attempts to make a case for changing the VVA founding principle to “Never again will one generation of veterans allow the government to abandon the next generation of veterans.” He believes, based on the support that he received from his dad and uncles, that this would be more historically correct. I disagree, and I would guess that what I went through is more in line with VVA’s current motto.

On returning home from Vietnam, I attempted to join the local American Legion post. Not having the decency to meet with me within the confines of the post’s own facility, a representative asked if I could meet him in a local bar. Also meeting with us was a friend who was a two-tour veteran of Vietnam. He bought us a beer and informed us that the post had decided that they didn’t recognize Vietnam as a real war, so we weren’t qualified to join the American Legion. This decision was made by World War II and Korean War veterans. The reception at the VFW hall wasn’t any warmer.

Even in 1979 when I had applied for a state government job the individual who interviewed me (a WWII Navy veteran) told me that he didn’t think it was right I was able to check the five-point veteran’s preference box on my application because “that wasn’t any kind of real war,” and we weren’t any kind of real soldiers because we had lost the damn thing.

As a footnote, let me say that recently, while out on a local hiking trail, I photographed a young family, using their camera. The father pointed to my olive drab baseball hat and said, “C.I.B.?” He was making reference to the Combat Infantryman Badge embroidered on the front. His wife said, “Isn’t that just like the one you have, honey?”

Handshakes ensued and the greetings of “What unit were you in?” and “How about you?” We walked the rest of the trail out together, the C.I.B. bond between us strong. He had been in the Army for eight years and had done two combat tours. I let him know that he would always have our support.

HELPING VETERANS

I was so moved by the letter bashing our national motto, “Never again will one generation of veterans abandon another,” that I felt I needed to step out of my deeply seated position in the Silent Veterans Majority and support this position. I, too, believe that we are pointing the finger at the wrong parties (past generations of veterans) in this childish, crybaby, pick-up-my-toys-and-go-home negative motto. We all know that the real culprits in our mistreatment, when returning home, were the politicians, war protesters, media, and general public (following like sheep). These were mostly non-veterans.

I would like to start a movement within our organization to strike this negative motto and replace it with a much more positive motto: “Veterans Helping Veterans.” 

WE THE PEOPLE

Like many of us who were dissatisfied with the way the war ended in Vietnam, Patrick Burke wants to blame the government, whereas the blame has to go to the people who elect the members of the government. Support can be defined in different ways. The general public was tired of the Vietnam War—especially with all the dissension going on in our country at the time—so its continuation wasn’t supported. Much like the Korean War, it didn’t affect everyone like World War II did. No rationing, no scrap drives, no war bond drives, etc. Remember all the patriotic movies of that era? Most of the movies about Vietnam, until recently, played on the stereotypes of misfit soldiers.

I think the media should take some of the blame, too, for picking out parts of the war that they wanted to dramatize. Showing soldiers, Marines, and sailors doing good things was not a priority.

Like Mr. Burke, I, too, was supported by my family in large part. I got letters and care packages from both my brothers (who served in the Army of Occupation in Germany in the ’50s) and one of my sisters. My infantry division was also sent supplies from a Cincinnati citizens group with the motto, “Cincinnati Supports the Fourth,” which I greatly appreciated.

However, I never got so much as a postcard from local veteran groups. Not even a note from the World War II vet whose children I hung out with. By and large we were ignored by the older generation. They ignored the Korean War veterans, too.

There was not even a Korean War memorial in our small city to honor the local men who died in that war until VVA Chapter 377 had one built for the Vietnam and Korean War dead. Names have since been added from the Gulf War also.

Perhaps this was only my own experience, but from what I’ve heard I believe this was part of a general malaise that occurred throughout the country. My chapter and other veterans groups have sent cards and packages to the new generation of service people, as well as invitations to join. This can be attributed to Vietnam Veterans of America’s founding principle, our generation of vets who have become active in the various vet groups, and in large part to the direct attack on our country on 9/11.

Mr. Burke is right that we can’t sit back and wait for the government. We the people have to make sure they don’t cut veterans benefits and cut our defense spending in this dangerous world we live in. We must always remember that “Freedom isn’t free.”