Our Year of War Read online

  6. Davidson, Vietnam at War, 396–99, 419–21, explains the North’s planning and preliminary operations for Tet. Giap’s quote, as well as an overall pre-Tet strategic assessment, can be found in Krepinevich, The Army in Vietnam, 238–39. For a graphic depiction of MACV and ARVN battalion-level positions on the eve of Tet, see Stanton, Vietnam Order of Battle, 385.

  7. Davidson, Vietnam at War, 425–26; Dougan and Weiss, Nineteen Sixty- Eight, 8–11, 184.

  8. For General Erich Ludendorff’s quote, see Keith Neilson and Greg Kennedy, The British Way in Warfare: Power and the International System, 1856–1956 (London: Routledge, 2010), 139.

  9. Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Viking, 1983), 545. Lieutenant General Tran Do, a key VC commander during the war, died in 2002. He fell out of favor with the Hanoi party leaders in 1999.

  10. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, 392; Davidson, Vietnam at War, 426.

  11. Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (New York: Vantage, 1989), 707–9. For examples of later arguments that MACV anticipated the Tet Offensive, see Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, 393, and Davidson, Vietnam at War, 430–31. Westmoreland claims “no surprise.” To his credit, Davidson admitted that while he and his intelligence staff discerned that the NVA would strike, “much more unexpected were the assaults on the many cities and towns.”

  12. Gross, “One Rifle Company’s Wild Ride,” 50; Nolan, The Battle for Saigon, 200–1.

  13. Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel”; Berens, Chuck Hagel, 29–30. For a video summary of the introductory training at Camp Martin Cox (Bear Cat), see U.S. Department of the Army, Headquarters, 9th Infantry Division, Reliable Academy (Bear Cat, Republic of Vietnam: Headquarters, 9th Infantry Division, 1967) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90SmIUVepd0, accessed June 4, 2016.

  14. Weigley, History of the United States Army, 436–38.

  15. Ibid., 510.

  16. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, 358.

  17. Krepinevich, The Army in Vietnam, 205–10.

  18. Russell F. Weigley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants: The Campaign of France and Germany 1944–1945 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1981), 13.

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

  20. Stanton, Vietnam Order of Battle, 77.

  21. John Sloan Brown, Kevlar Legions: The Transformation of the U.S. Army 1989–2005 (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center for Military History, 2011), 253–57. A 1971 West Point graduate, Brown commanded a tank battalion in the 1990–91 Iraq War and completed his U.S. Army service as a brigadier general. His son served in Iraq in 2003–04.

  22. John E. Gross, Our Time: Training, Deploying, and Combat with Company C, 2nd Battalion, 47th Infantry (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2013), 80–81.

  23. Forrest Gump, directed by Robert Zemeckis, Paramount, 1994. Forrest Gump and Bubba Blue walk past a wooden sign with the words alpha company, 2nd/47th infantry, 9th infantry div. “old reliables.” The latter is the nickname of the 9th infantry Division.

  24. Starry, Mounted Combat in Vietnam, 60, 106–7; Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel.” For more on the M113, UH-1D, and numbers of maneuver battalions in MACV, see Stanton, Vietnam Order of Battle, 260–61, 280, 282, 333.

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

  26. Ibid.; Hagel, America: Our Next Chapter, 154. The AK-47, Avtomat Kalashnikova Model 1947, took its name from its inventor, Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov.

  27. U.S. Department of the Army, Headquarters, 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Infantry, Significant Activities for Calendar Year of 1968 (APO San Francisco, CA: Headquarters, 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Infantry, March 31, 1969), 1. The mortar might have been a Russian-made 82mm, but the VC used captured U.S. and ARVN 81mm mortars, too.

  28. Starry, Mounted Combat in Vietnam, 120–21, 123–24; Gross, “One Rifle Company’s Wild Ride,” 50; Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel.” For the contemporary record of orders and movements, see U.S. Department of the Army, Headquarters, 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Infantry, DA Form 1594: Daily Staff Journal (Bien Hoa, Republic of Vietnam: Headquarters, 2nd Battalion (Mechanized, 47th Infantry), 0001–2400, January 31, 1968, 1–2.

  29. Bolger interview with Charles T. Hagel.

  30. Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel”; Nolan, The Battle for Saigon, 206; Starry, Mounted Combat in Vietnam, 124; Headquarters, 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Infantry, DA Form 1594: Daily Staff Journal, 2–3. For video of the ammunition supply point explosion, see U.S. Department of the Army, 221st Signal Company (Pictorial), Attack at Long Binh and Widow’s Village (Long Binh Post, Republic of Vietnam: 221st Signal Company (Pictorial), January 31, 1968) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZhPUVDCZH0, accessed June 4, 2016. Some sources refer to the town as Widow’s Village, but the official accounts clearly refer to Widows Village (plural, not possessive).

  31. Nolan, The Battle for Saigon, 210; Headquarters, 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Infantry, DA Form 1594: Daily Staff Journal, 3.

  32. Headquarters, 9th Infantry Division Public Affairs, “Widows Village: VC Graveyard Tet 1968,” Octofoil, April–May–June 1968, 1. The Octofoil was the division’s quarterly magazine. Some sources identify Robert Andrew Huie as a private or private first class, but the record of casualties lists him as a corporal, the most junior NCO rank. Given his role as a track commander, that was clearly his duty position on January 31, 1968.

  33. Nolan, The Battle for Saigon, 210–11. For additional details by a soldier present at the firefight, see John Driessler, Widow’s Village—The True Story at http://www.angelfire.com/ny2/SGTFATS/WidowsVillageTruth.html, accessed June 3, 2016. Sergeant First Class William N. Butler earned the Silver Star at Widows Village. See Headquarters, 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Infantry, Significant Activities for Calendar Year of 1968, 2. The RPD, ruchnoy pulemyot Degtyaryova, the standard VC light machine gun, was designed by Vasiliy Alekseyevich Degtaryov.

  34. Headquarters, 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Infantry, DA Form 1594: Daily Staff Journal, 3; Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel.” See also 221st Signal Company (Pictorial), Attack at Long Binh and Widow’s Village.

  35. 221st Signal Company (Pictorial), Attack at Long Binh and Widow’s Village. For additional video of the U.S. attack on Widows Village, see U.S. Department of the Army, Armed Forces Vietnam Network, Contact with Vietcong During Tet, 2nd Battalion, 47th Infantry, 9th Infantry Division, 01/31/1968 (Saigon, Republic of Vietnam: Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, January 31, 1968) at https://archive.org/details/ContactWIthVietcongDuringTet, accessed June 4, 1968.

  36. Headquarters, 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Infantry, DA Form 1594: Daily Staff Journal, 3–6; Nolan, The Battle for Saigon, 212–19. For 2-47th Infantry, two additional Americans (one scout and another from Company A) were killed in action, making a total of five dead for January 31, 1968. The battalion’s wounded totaled forty-five. For the day, the battalion reported 213 VC killed and 17 enemy prisoners. The number of prisoners was listed as 32 in the U.S. Army Valorous Unit Award earned for the actions on January 31, 1968.

  37. Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel”; Bolger interview with Charles T. Hagel. Captain Robert George Keats graduated from West Point in the Class of 1965. See Chris Carroll, “Hagel Pays Tribute to Fallen Commander,” Stars and Stripes, May 24, 2013. See also A Classmate (anonymous member of the U.S. Military Academy Class of 1965), “Robert George Keats” at http://www .west-point.org/users/usma1965/25736/, accessed June 29, 2016. Keats earned the Silver Star during the Tet Offensive. He was buried in the West Point cemetery.

  38. Yuri Beckers, “The Octofoil Shoulder Patch,” at https://9thinfantrydivision .net/9th-infantry-division-history/the-octofoil-shoulder-patch/, accessed June 5, 2016.

  39. Michael Casey, Clark Dougan, Denis Kennedy and Shelby Stanton, The Army at War, The Vietnam Experience (Boston: Boston Publishing, 1987), 145
–46.

  40. James Hinds, 3rd Squadron, 5th Cavalry, Third Squadron, 5th Cavalry in Vietnam: Part I (CONUS and III Corps) (Self-published, 1992), 72–79. CONUS refers to the continental United States. III Corps was the Vietnamese designation for headquarters assigned to the provinces around Saigon. In the month before Tet, the squadron lost seventeen killed, three missing, and sixty-three wounded. On December 31, 1967, on Route 2, Troop C, 3-5th Cavalry had been ambushed. The U.S. lost ten troopers killed, three missing in action, and twenty-nine wounded. Two tanks and six armored personnel carriers had been damaged too badly to move. No Viet Cong casualties were reported. A month later during Tet, Troop A fought in Bien Hoa, suffering six killed and twenty-four wounded. Troop B secured Route 2, but despite three straight nights of contact, sustained no casualties. Troop C fought in Xuan Loc and lost one killed and ten wounded.

  41. Bolger interview with Thomas L. Hagel. The letter is quoted in MacPherson, Long Time Passing, 10. Tom Hagel and Chuck Hagel correctly recalled that the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment was commanded by Colonel George S. Patton III, son of the famous World War II general, who took over on July 15, 1968. The younger Patton looked, talked, and fought like his illustrious father. As commander of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, Patton earned two Distinguished Service Crosses, the Silver Star, and the Purple Heart, rare distinctions for a full colonel. Because 3-5th Cavalry went north in mid-February of 1968, it detached from the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. Tom Hagel never served under Patton’s command. For a summary of the younger Patton’s service in Vietnam, see Brian M. Sobel, The Fighting Pattons (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997), 137–59. The younger Patton completed his service in 1980 as a major general. Like his famous father, he commanded the 2nd Armored Division.

  42. Hinds, 3rd Squadron, 5th Cavalry in Vietnam: Part I (CONUS and III Corps), 79; Bolger interview with Thomas L. Hagel.

  43. Westmoreland’s quotes come from Associated Press, “Recapture U.S. Embassy,” Chicago Tribune, January 31, 1968; Sorley, Westmoreland, 177–78.

  44. Westmoreland’s quote comes from Associated Press, “Recapture U.S. Embassy.” For the situation in Saigon and across South Vietnam, see Lewis Sorley, Thunderbolt: From the Battle of the Bulge to Vietnam and Beyond: Creighton Abrams and the Army of His Times (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 211–18.

  45. Davidson, Vietnam at War, 434. For the best examination of the role of the press in Tet, written by an experienced Saigon journalist who reported from Saigon during the war, see Peter Braestrup. Big Story, 2 vol. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977).

  46. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, 406; Davidson, Vietnam at War, 434.

  47. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, 404.

  CHAPTER 4. THE BUTCHER OF THE DELTA

  1. Alan Clark, The Donkeys (London: Hutchinson, 1961), 9. Clark served very briefly in the Household Cavalry and then as a long-time member of Parliament. He wrote several military history books. With regard to the quotation, General Erich Ludendorff and Major General Max Hoffman served in the Imperial German Army in World War I. After earlier duty on both the western and eastern fronts, by 1916 Ludendorff was the chief staff deputy in the German national high command. Hoffman spent the entire war in the east. In his bitter, controversial, influential, and eminently readable book The Donkeys, Clark attributed this exchange to the memoirs of General Erich von Falkenhayn, chief of the German general staff in 1914–16. No book written by Falkenhayn contained the quotation. It can be found, attributed to Ludendorff and an unnamed officer in the German general staff, in Evelyn, Princess Blucher (Evelyn Fuerstin Blucher von Wahlstatt), An English Wife in Berlin (London: Constable, 1921), 211. It’s unclear why Clark did not properly attribute the sentences, as they are central to his book’s strong argument. If nothing else, he offered an easy opening to his many critics. John Terraine, The Smoke and the Fire: Myths & Anti-Myths of War 1861–1945 (London: Leo Cooper, 1980), 170–71, offers one of many attempts to sort out the veracity of the quote. Terraine (1921–2003) was a well-known apologist for the British senior leaders in World War I with little time for Clark. British historians of the era split over the entire matter. The majority dismissed Clark’s sloppy research, although Great War veterans Basil Liddell Hart and Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery both praised the book. Given all of that, I think all we can do is credit Clark himself. Whatever the source of the quote, the sentiment rang only too true.

  2. Ted Gittinger, Interview with Lieutenant General Julian J. Ewell (Austin, TX: Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, November 7, 1985), 41. This interview occurred in Ewell’s home in McLean, Virginia.

  3. John Keegan, The Mask of Command (New York: Viking, 1987), 208–10, 214.

  4. Terraine, The Smoke and the Fire, 43–47, 148–57. Terraine strongly supports Haig’s performance, but as a good historian, reflects contrary facts and opinions as well.

  5. Josiah Bunting III, The Lionheads (New York: George Braziller, 1972), 15. Bunting served in Vietnam as an infantry officer in the 9th Infantry Division under Ewell’s command. A former enlisted marine and Rhodes Scholar, Bunting consciously made reference to British Great War literature, and his use of the term “Lions” in depicting American soldiers reflected that connection. The novel fictionalized the division as the 12th Infantry Division (“the “Lionheads” with a “Young Lion Academy” to train new arrivals and a “River Lion” riverine brigade). In Bunting’s narrative, “George Lemming” commanded. The outfit was clearly the 9th and the character was unmistakably Julian J. Ewell. Bunting, a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, made Lemming a product of The Citadel, the military college in Charleston, South Carolina, and a friendly rival of Bunting’s alma mater. Westmoreland spent a year at The Citadel before going to West Point. Ewell was a West Point alumnus.

  6. Allen C. Guelzo, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (New York: Vintage, 2013), 22–23.

  7. For the Offutt family history, see http://offutt-history.tripod.com/id14.html, accessed June 9, 2016.

  8. Patricia Gates Lynch Ewell and Ira A. Hunt Jr., “Julian J. Ewell 1939,” at http://apps.westpointaog.org/Memorials/Article/11388/, accessed June 9, 2016.

  9. Clay Blair, Ridgway’s Paratroopers: The American Airborne in World War II (Garden City, NY: Dial Press, 1985), 30–38.

  10. Ibid., 42.

  11. Ibid., 413, 611.

  12. Ibid., 491, note, 611. For the defense of Bastogne, see Major Gary F. Evans and Specialist 5 Michael R. Fischer, U.S. Army, The 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment at Bastogne, Belgium, December 1944 (Bozeman, MT: 50th Military History Detachment, June 22, 1972), 1–10.

  13. Larrabee, Commander in Chief, 153. King sometimes denied the quote, but he certainly embraced its intent.

  14. For the importance of Kien Hoa Province to the Viet Cong, see Lieutenant General Julian J. Ewell and Major General Ira A. Hunt Jr., U.S. Army, Vietnam Studies: Sharpening the Combat Edge: The Use of Analysis to Reinforce Combat Judgments (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974), 188. For pacification status of the Mekong Delta in 1968, see Ira A. Hunt Jr., The 9th Infantry Division: Unparalleled and Unequalled (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2010), 141–42. Hunt served as both chief of staff and a brigade commander during Ewell’s tenure. He strongly supported Ewell’s approach. For a graphic depiction of the security situation in the ARVN IV Corps Tactical Zones, see Martin G. Clemis, “The Control War: Communist Revolutionary Warfare, Pacification, and the Struggle for South Vietnam, 1968–1973” (PhD dissertation, Temple University, May 2015), 475. In Vietnamese, the Mekong River is sometimes called the Nine Dragons River (Song Cuu Long), and thus the Delta is the Mouth of the Dragon.

  15. Julius Caesar, The Gallic War, trans. H. J. Edwards (Cambridge, MA: Dover 2009), 1. The famous first line is Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres. All Gaul is divided into three parts.

  16. For province populations, see U.S. Agency for International Development, Economic and Engineering Study Grain Storage and Marketing System Vietnam (Toledo,
OH: Wildman Agricultural Research, March 1970), 25. For unit locations, see Stanton, Vietnam Order of Battle, 274, 371.

  17. Stanton, Vietnam Order of Battle, 6, 77–78.

  18. Ewell and Hunt, Sharpening the Combat Edge, 16; Casey, Dougan, Kennedy, and Stanton, The Army at War, 145, 155; Stanton, Vietnam Order of Battle, 142, 153. In September 1968, as brokered by II Field Force, the 9th Infantry Division sent the mechanized 5-60th Infantry to the 1st Infantry Division and received back the 1-16th Infantry, a foot battalion. The units switched names, so the 1st Infantry Division ended up with the 1st Battalion (Mechanized), 16th Infantry and the 9th Infantry Division had a new leg 5-60th Infantry.

  19. Hunt, The 9th Infantry Division, 11. Bunting’s novel The Lionheads turns on the known tactical shortcomings of the Mobile Riverine Force. During their counterinsurgency of 1945–54, the French employed similar dinassaut (Division Navale d’Assaut, Naval Assault Division) riverine units.

  20. The 9th Infantry Division study is cited in Lieutenant General John J. Tolson, U.S. Army, Vietnam Studies: Airmobility 1961–1971 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1973), 181.

  21. Gittinger, Interview with Lieutenant General Julian J. Ewell, 6, 11.

  22. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, 99–100, 184; Ewell and Hunt, Sharpening the Combat Edge, 78.

  23. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, 6. He quotes the idea as “it is better to send a bullet than a man.”

  24. For the number of artillery shells to kill an enemy at Anzio, in Korea, and in Vietnam, see Edgar C. Doleman Jr., Tools of War, The Vietnam Experience (Boston: Boston Publishing, 1984), 48. For the 25th Infantry Division, see Eric M. Bergerud, Red Thunder, Tropic Lightning: The World of a Combat Division in Vietnam (Boulder, CO; Westview Press, 1993), 77. In the first quarter of 1967, the 25th Infantry Division shot 207,000 artillery rounds and claimed 231 enemy killed by those fires.