Our Year of War Read online

  33. Ibid., 9–12.

  34. The Mitsubishi A6M Type Zero navy carrier fighter was the most well-known and widely produced Japanese interceptor. Officially, the United States referred to the plane as a “Zeke,” following a pattern that gave male names to fighters and female names to bombers. American fliers, army or navy, routinely called the plane a Zero. There were other similar single-engine Japanese fighters, such as the imperial army’s Nakajima Ki-43 Type 1 Hayabusa (Peregrine Falcon) fighter (code name “Oscar”) and the Nakajima Ki-84 Type 4 Hayate (Gale) fighter (code name “Frank”). The capable Type 4 Frank proved a menace to B-29s at high altitude. With some modifications, it served as a night fighter, too. All of these single-engine types were often misidentified as Zeros, too. See Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully, Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2005), 78–79, 89–90, 479–80.

  35. HQ, 42nd Bombardment Squadron, History of the 42nd Bombardment Squadron (Heavy), 13–16. For the crash of U.S. Olympian Louis Zamperini and his crew, see Lauren Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (New York: Random House, 2010), 125–26. Zamperini’s story was made into the movie Unbroken, released in 2015.

  36. HQ, 42nd Bombardment Squadron, History of the 42nd Bombardment Squadron (Heavy), 19–20.

  37. U.S., Headquarters, 42nd Bombardment Squadron, October Monthly Summary (Apana Airfield, Guam: 42nd Bombardment Squadron, November 1, 1944), 1–9; U.S., Headquarters, 42nd Bombardment Squadron, November Monthly Summary (Apana Airfield, Guam: 42nd Bombardment Squadron, December 1, 1944), 1–8; U.S., Headquarters, 42nd Bombardment Squadron, December Monthly Summary (Apana Airfield, Guam: 42nd Bombardment Squadron, January 1, 1945), 1–9; U.S., Headquarters, 42nd Bombardment Squadron, January Monthly Summary (Apana Airfield, Guam: 42nd Bombardment Squadron, February 1, 1945), 1–4; U.S., Headquarters, 42nd Bombardment Squadron, February Monthly Summary (Apana Airfield, Guam: 42nd Bombardment Squadron, March 1, 1945), 1–10; U.S., Headquarters, 42nd Bombardment Squadron, March Monthly Summary (Apana Airfield, Guam: 42nd Bombardment Squadron, April 1, 1945), 1–3; U.S., Headquarters, 42nd Bombardment Squadron, April Monthly Summary (Apana Airfield, Guam: 42nd Bombardment Squadron, May 1, 1945), 1–3; U.S., Headquarters, 42nd Bombardment Squadron, May Monthly Summary (Apana Airfield, Guam: 42nd Bombardment Squadron, June 1, 1945), 1–3; U.S., Headquarters, 42nd Bombardment Squadron, June Monthly Summary (Apana Airfield, Guam: 42nd Bombardment Squadron, July 4, 1945), 1–3.

  38. U.S., Headquarters, 42nd Bombardment Squadron, July Monthly Summary (Okinawa: 42nd Bombardment Squadron, August 6, 1945), 1–2.

  39. George Lauby, “From the Platte to the Potomac: Hagel Recalls His Roots,” North Platte Bulletin, January 16, 2013.

  40. Bolger interview with Charles T. Hagel; Bolger interview with Thomas L. Hagel.

  41. Bolger interview with Charles T. Hagel; Bolger interview with Thomas L. Hagel. See also Myra MacPherson, Long Time Passing (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984), 13. In addition, see Myra MacPherson, “The Private War of Chuck and Tom Hagel,” Salon.com, April 30, 2007, accessed May 15, 2016. Chuck Hagel recalled that he began paying into Social Security at age eight.

  42. Charlyne Berens, Chuck Hagel: Moving Forward (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 11–13. See also Bolger interview with Charles T. Hagel and Bolger interview with Thomas L. Hagel.

  43. MacPherson, Long Time Passing, 14. For the Hagel lumber company and its several locations, see http://www.centurylumbercenter.com/locations.aspx ?location=Ainsworth, accessed May 16, 2016. The company began in 1883. In 1972, the firm took the name Century Lumber.

  44. Berens, Chuck Hagel, 15–16. For Charles Dean Hagel’s employers, see Lauby, “From the Platte to the Potomac: Hagel Recalls His Roots,” 1.

  45. Berens, Chuck Hagel, 15; Bolger interview with Thomas L. Hagel.

  46. MacPherson, “The Private War of Chuck and Tom Hagel.” Chuck Hagel in his book America: Our Next Chapter, 251, attributes his father’s death to a heart attack. Charlyne Berens in Chuck Hagel, 19, describes the death as the result of a brain aneurysm. The two causes are not mutually exclusive.

  47. Berens, Chuck Hagel, 20–23; MacPherson, Long Time Passing, 13–14; Bolger interview with Thomas L. Hagel.

  48. Berens, Chuck Hagel, 23–24. See also Bolger interview with Charles T. Hagel.

  49. Bolger interview with Charles T. Hagel; Bolger interview with Thomas L. Hagel; MacPherson, Long Time Passing, 13–14; Hagel, America: Our Next Chapter, 153.

  50. Bolger interview with Thomas L. Hagel. See also MacPherson, Long Time Passing, 13; Berens, Chuck Hagel, 16–17, 24–25. By volunteering for the draft, both Hagel brothers kept their service obligation to two years. Had they enlisted, they would have had to sign up for a minimum of three years.

  CHAPTER 2. THIS MAN’S ARMY

  1. Peter Tauber, The Sunshine Soldiers: A True Journal of Basic Training (New York: Ballantine, 1971), 243. An army reservist, Tauber completed his basic training at Fort Bliss, Texas. He did not deploy overseas.

  2. Lawrence H. Suid, Guts and Glory: The Making of the American Military Image in Film (Lexington KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2002), 118–23, 129, 136, 424. Suid’s book is the classic study of how the military has worked to present itself through movies. All the examples listed were in circulation in 1967. Richard Widmark played a Fort Bliss training sergeant in Take the High Ground (1953), filmed at the installation.

  3. Berens, Chuck Hagel, 24–25. For Hagel’s own account, see Mike Perry, interviewer, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel,” Experiencing War: Stories from the Veterans History Project (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, August 2002) at http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/vhp-stories/loc.natlib.afc2001001.02230/transcript?ID=mv0001, accessed May 27, 2016.

  4. Terrence Maitland and Peter McInerney, A Contagion of War, The Vietnam Experience (Boston: Boston Publishing, 1983), 27.

  5. Perry, “Interview with Senator Chuck Hagel”; Hagel, America: Our Next Chapter, 151.

  6. For more on Sergeant First Class William Joyce of Alabama, see Hagel, America: Our Next Chapter, 151–53. See also Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel” and Bolger interview with Charles T. Hagel.

  7. John M. Collins, “Basic Combat Training: Flashbacks and Forecasts,” Army (August 2004), 47–48. Collins entered the U.S. Army as a private in 1942 and retired as a colonel after wartime service in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. For the history of basic training in the U.S. Army, see Weigley, History of the United States Army, 371–77 (World War I), 400–3 (1918–1940), 428–30, 436–39 (World War II), 503–4, 528, (1945–1963).

  8. For the location of the U.S. Army training centers during the Vietnam War, see Stanton, Vietnam Order of Battle, 361. For more on training centers, to include both draftee and voluntary enlistment numbers, see also Ellen R. Hartman, Susan I. Enscore, and Alan D. Smith, Vietnam and the Home Front: How DoD Installations Adapted, 1962–1975 (Champaign, IL: U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, December 2014), 41, 60–61. For the number of voluntary enlistments, see Clark Dougan and Samuel Lipsman, A Nation Divided, The Vietnam Experience (Boston: Boston Publishing, 1984), 76. A half million young men enlisted from June 1965 to June 1966. For the number of draftees trained, see U.S. Selective Service System, “Inductions,” at https://www.sss.gov/About/History-And-Records/Induction-Statistics, accessed May 27, 2016. Inductions totaled 382,010 in 1966, 228,263 in 1967, and 296,406 in 1968, the height of the draft calls. Depending on the month and year, draftees made up from 40 to 60 percent of all army inductions. Of note, like Chuck and Tom Hagel, about 10 percent of draftees volunteered to be drafted.

  9. Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel.”

  10. Hartman, Enscore, and Smith, Vietnam and the Home Front, 54–57.

  11. Bolger interview with Charles T. Hagel.

  12. For excellent, if hilariously cynical, descriptions of the first day or so at Basic Combat Training at For
t Bliss, see Tauber, The Sunshine Soldiers, 29–35. For a useful half-hour video summary of Basic Combat Training, see U.S. Department of the Army, The Big Picture: The Men from the Boys, The First Eight Weeks (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Information, 1967). Actor and U.S. Army Air Forces World War II veteran Gary Merrill narrated this program. For Chuck Hagel’s role as a peer leader, sometimes by force of threat thereof, see Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel.” Hagel recalled: “So it was kind of just like you’d pick out the biggest, toughest, smartest guy in the bunch. And you say, ‘Okay. You’re in charge. Now do something with it.’ And I remember in basic training—it didn’t ever happen in AIT [Advanced Individual training], but I had a couple of guys come at me with shovels and—guys in my own unit.”

  13. Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny (New York: Dell, 1951), 116.

  14. Berens, Chuck Hagel, 25.

  15. Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel.”

  16. For marching and running rates, see U.S. Department of the Army, Field Manual 22-5: Drill and Ceremonies (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, November 30, 1966), 11. For the M14 rifle, see Stanton, Vietnam Order of Battle, 276.

  17. R. P. Carver and F. R. Winsmann, “Analysis of the Army Physical Proficiency Test in Terms of the Fleishman Basic Fitness Tests” in Perceptual and Motor Skills (April, 1968), 203–8; Whitfield B. East, A Historical Review of Physical Training Readiness and Assessment (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, March 2013), 129.

  18. For an entertaining summary of M14 rifle training, see Tauber, The Sunshine Soldiers, 48, 113–14, 153–54. See also Department of the Army, The Big Picture.

  19. Department of the Army, The Big Picture: The Men from the Boys.

  20. Tauber, The Sunshine Soldiers, 191–93. Even anti-war satirist Tauber found the night infiltration course exhilarating and challenging.

  21. Ibid., 248–49; Department of the Army, The Big Picture: The Men from the Boys.

  22. Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel.” For a more cleanly edited version of this quotation, see Tom Weiner, ed., Voices of War: Stories of Service from the Home Front and the Front Line (Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 2012), 19.

  23. Berens, Chuck Hagel, 25–26; Hagel, America: Our Next Chapter, 152; Bolger interview with Charles T. Hagel.

  24. Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York: Bantam, 1993), 212–16. Gitlin was a leader of the anti-war movement as well as one of its most articulate chroniclers.

  25. Dave Grossman, On Killing (New York: Back Bay Books, 1995), 253–57. Grossman, a former U.S. Army infantry officer and former West Point instructor, looked closely at the psychology behind military training and its relationship to actual combat. See also Hartman, Enscore, and Smith, Vietnam and the Home Front, 59. Tom Hagel noted that the E and F targets depicted men with Asian faces wearing conical straw hats.

  26. Maitland and McInerney, A Contagion of War, 30; Hartman, Enscore, and Smith, Vietnam and the Home Front, 66. For a very readable account of infantry Advanced Individual Training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, see John Sack, M (New York: Signet, 1967), 9–71. In 1968, infantry Advanced Individual Training was extended to nine weeks to accommodate additional Vietnam War techniques.

  27. Berens, Chuck Hagel, 28. For Officer Candidate School policies, see Ron Milam, Not a Gentleman’s War: An Inside View of Junior Officers in the Vietnam War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 18–23. Milam served as an officer in Vietnam.

  28. Berens, Chuck Hagel, 28. For the Redeye, see Mary T. Cagle, History of the Redeye Weapon System (Redstone Arsenal, AL: U.S. Army Missile Command, May 23, 1974), 146, 192–94.

  29. Bolger interview with Thomas L. Hagel; Berens, Chuck Hagel, 33.

  30. Berens, Chuck Hagel, 28–29, 33.

  31. Gitlin, The Sixties, 255; Carroll, House of War, 293–97. Both authors were active protestors in the 1960s. Carroll was present at the Pentagon on October 21, 1967.

  32. Weigley, History of the United States Army, 431–40; Dougan and Lipsman, A Nation Divided, 72–76.

  33. B. G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley, Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History (Dallas, TX: Verity Press, 1998), 51–52. Burkett served as an officer in Vietnam with the 199th Light Infantry Brigade. Whitley is a prominent Texas journalist. This book is controversial, as Burkett aggressively exposes numerous phonies claiming to be Vietnam veterans. That aspect aside, the book contains some authoritative and thought-provoking demographic data derived from reliable, annotated sources. For corroborating data, see Committee to Review the Health Effects in Vietnam Veterans of Exposure to Herbicides, Veterans and Agent Orange: Health Effects of Herbicides Used in Vietnam (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1994), 74–79.

  34. Dougan and Lipsman, A Nation Divided, 76. Those who served expressed particular respect for the conscientious objectors who served in Vietnam without carrying weapons. Most were medics, and many earned decorations for valor. Corporal Thomas W. Bennett and Specialist 4 Joseph G. LaPointe Jr. both earned the Medal of Honor. Both were killed in action.

  35. Gitlin, The Sixties, 291.

  36. Ibid. Among those who chose a religious vocation was James Carroll, son of a U.S. Air Force lieutenant general. The younger Carroll left air force ROTC at Georgetown University to pursue the Catholic priesthood. Carroll resigned as a priest in 1974. The draft ended in 1973. See Carroll, House of War, 336–40.

  37. Ibid., 291–93; Dougan and Lipsman, A Nation Divided, 76.

  38. Ibid. For Johnson’s unwillingness to call up the National Guard and the service reserves, see H. R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 316–17. West Point graduate and armor/cavalry officer Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster served in Iraq I, Iraq II, and Afghanistan. His book is a very damning indictment of the senior U.S. military leadership of the 1960s. Although no significant mobilization of the National Guard and U.S. Army Reserve occurred, a call-up in 1968 sent 7,040 guardsmen to Vietnam. See John D. Stuckey and Joseph H. Pistorius, “Mobilization for the Vietnam War: A Political and Military Catastrophe,” Parameters (Spring 1985), 35–36.

  39. Stanton, Vietnam Order of Battle, 346–47; Morocco, Rain of Fire, 179; John S. Bowman, ed., The Vietnam War: An Almanac (New York: World Almanac, 1985), 358. The navy lost 628 air crewmen; the air force sustained 1,472 dead fliers. Those who opted for the navy sometimes ended up under fire on the ground in Vietnam. Martin J. Mayer, a Rutgers graduate, joined the navy to avoid carrying an M16 as a soldier in country. Selected for Officer Candidate School, he ended up on a riverine patrol boat (one played a key part in the film Apocalypse Now) and, yes, he carried an M16. Mayer eventually advanced to command the USS Enterprise Carrier Battle Group and, after thirty-seven years of service, retired as a vice admiral (three stars) in 2003.

  40. Burkett and Whitley, Stolen Valor, 48, 52. Some 7,000 U.S. women served in Vietnam. Eight nurses were killed in action. See Committee to Review the Health Effects in Vietnam Veterans of Exposure to Herbicides, Veterans and Agent Orange, 83. For the draftees in combat arms, see also Dougan and Lipsman, A Nation Divided, 78.

  41. Colin L. Powell with Joseph E. Persico, My American Journey (New York: Ballantine, 1995), 99, 135. Powell advised a South Vietnamese unit in his 1962–63 deployment; he was wounded in action. He then served as G-3 (operations officer) for the 23rd Infantry (Americal) Division in 1968–69.

  42. MacPherson, Long Time Passing, 28.

  43. Committee to Review the Health Effects in Vietnam Veterans of Exposure to Herbicides, Veterans and Agent Orange, 82; Burkett and Whitley, Stolen Valor, 47–48. Of the 101 eighteen-year-olds killed in Vietnam, 7 were African Americans.

  44. Arnold Barnett, Timothy Stanley, and Michael Shore, “America’s Vietnam Casualties: Victims of a Class War?” Operations Research (September–October 1992), 856–66. Among Yale g
raduates who served off the Vietnam coast aboard the destroyer USS Fox was navy officer and future Washington Post investigative reporter Bob Woodward.

  45. Burkett and Whitley, Stolen Valor, 55–56; Milam, Not a Gentleman’s War, 18–23.

  46. Burkett and Whitley, Stolen Valor, 454; Committee to Review the Health Effects in Vietnam Veterans of Exposure to Herbicides, Veterans and Agent Orange, 83; Dougan and Lipsman, A Nation Divided, 78. Hispanic ethnic groups were not well tracked during the Vietnam era, and their numbers appear to be split between the white, black, and other categories. The usual number offered is that Hispanics totaled at least 5 percent of all casualties.

  47. Tom Wolfe, “Art Disputes War: The Battle of the Vietnam Memorial,” Washington Post, October 13, 1982.

  CHAPTER 3. WIDOWS VILLAGE

  1. Ron Marks,… Of Bags, Counts, and Nightmares (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2013), 532. Marks served in Vietnam in both the 173rd Airborne Brigade and the 1st Infantry Division.

  2. Keith W. Nolan, The Battle for Saigon: Tet 1968 (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1996), xii–xiii (map), 199–205. The late Keith Nolan wrote numerous superb tactical histories of key engagements in the Vietnam War. His work set the standard, interweaving personal accounts with relevant documents.

  3. Berens, Chuck Hagel, 29.

  4. John E. Gross, “One Rifle Company’s Wild Ride: The Battles of Bien Hoa and Long Binh,” Vietnam, February 2008, 50. John Gross commanded Company C, 2-47th Infantry during the Tet Offensive. He completed his military service as a lieutenant colonel. For a map of 2-47th Infantry’s movements on January 30–31, 1968, see Donn A. Starry, Vietnam Studies: Mounted Combat in Vietnam (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978), 120–21. Starry served in J-3 Plans in MACV headquarters and then commanded the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in 1969–70, to include service in the Cambodia operation. He retired in 1983 as a general (four stars).

  5. Davidson, Vietnam at War, 396. Davidson, the MACV intelligence chief, noted that Giap strongly advised against launching the Tet Offensive in 1968. The North Vietnamese military leader did not think it would work; he considered the United States too strong, and recommended reversion to classic guerrilla tactics. For the number of targets attacked, see Clark Dougan and Stephen Weiss, Nineteen Sixty-Eight, The Vietnam Experience (Boston: Boston Publishing, 1983), 8.