Our Year of War Read online

  The army marched at quick time, 120 30-inch steps a minute. The army ran at double time, 180 36-inch steps a minute. Troops learned to march and run while wearing stiff boots, broken in the hard way. They wore steel helmets and web gear of utility belts and suspenders. From each soldier’s webbing hung a bayonet and scabbard, a one-quart canteen, two ammunition pouches, a medical bandage packet, and a little butt pack the size of an overstuffed football, full of a rolled plastic poncho, a weapons cleaning kit, and other mandatory odds and ends. They also carried M14 rifles, 44.3 inches long and 10.7 pounds, beefed up versions of the World War II Garand M1.16 Counting the rifle, the water, the helmet, and the other stuff, each man carried forty extra pounds—the equivalent of shouldering a four-year-old boy—on every march and run. The beast of burden feeling passed through your head every time the drill sergeants commanded (without even a hint of irony), “Saddle up.” You got used to it, so much so that after the first two weeks, when you took off your equipment, you felt funny and light on your feet, like an astronaut loping along on the moon.

  Recruits did not wear the full ensemble for the physical fitness test. At the end of the first week, the men stripped to their uniform shirts and trousers, doffed their caps, and ran through the five scored events. First, they did the 40-yard crawl (36 seconds to pass, 25 seconds for a maximum score). Next, the men swung like Tarzan, hand over hand, along the 13-rung horizontal ladder, turning at each end for as many iterations as possible (36 rungs pass, 76 rungs max). Then came the run, dodge, and jump a little pair of wooden rails and a shallow ditch to traverse in a figure eight (26.5 seconds to pass, 22 seconds max). A 30-yard grenade throw followed (3 hits pass, 5 hits max). Finally came the one-mile run (8.5 minutes pass, 6.5 minutes max).17 Most of the raw troops made it through that initial trial, more or less. Almost all passed the test by week eight. Chuck Hagel did well from the outset. He kept his squad leader chevrons.

  The rifle range occupied weeks three and four. The semiautomatic M14 shot one round with each trigger pull. It fired the standard 7.62mm NATO cartridge, and it had a decent kick against the shooter’s soldier. Troops in Vietnam did not use it anymore, having long ago switched to the lighter, smaller M16 with its “rock and roll” full automatic setting. But Hagel and the trainees used the older weapon.18 It went with their shiny brass belt buckles, the black leather boots, and the Korean War–era field gear. Fundamentals of marksmanship did not change. Hagel paid close attention to the drill sergeants’ coaching. He qualified expert. Once more, he led the way.

  Week six, bivouac week, found the men out overnight in the scrubby desert. By this juncture, the weaklings had either gotten stronger or fallen out. The soldiers set up two-man pup tents and ate canned C-rations. From their little camp, they sortied out for day and night tactical maneuvers and practice patrols.

  Training included throwing live hand grenades, always exciting with rookies. M26 fragmentation grenades have a pin and a handle. When you pull the pin, the handle pops loose. Then you have four seconds to throw it to where it needs to be before it blows.19 Sometimes, a nervous trainee dropped one. The drill sergeant then earned his pay, grabbing it and tossing it clear. None of that happened in Hagel’s outfit.

  On the night infiltration course, the men crawled under barbed wire as live machine gun rounds ripped overhead. If a soldier stood up, he’d get shot and likely killed. The guys all knew better now. They ran through it like pros, heads down, bellies flat on the sand, inching forward. It gave the troops some idea of what it might be like to be under fire.20 Sure, it was canned and controlled. But it conveyed the right point. You could get killed doing these things. Stay alert. Stay alive.

  After bivouac week, the trainees pushed into their individual proficiency test. This one got at the various key soldier skills. The first station subjected the troops to a sit-down multiple-choice test to examine knowledge of military customs, courtesy, and justice. A second station also used a written test to quiz army traditions, organization, and ranks. The group then moved outside and reclaimed their field gear and rifles. They’d need them. The third spot assessed manual of arms and close-order drill, beloved of the sergeants, but of tactical value only if the War of 1812 broke out again. At the fourth site, graders assessed hand-to-hand combat techniques. Location five focused on tactical movements, notably the high crawl, the low crawl, and the three-second rush. The sixth area tested battlefield first aid: clear the airway, stop the bleeding, protect the wound, and treat for shock. The soldiers then proceeded to site seven to demonstrate skills with gas masks and reacting to chemical threats. Number eight offered a guard duty practical exercise. As the men finished, all of the various subtasks were totaled.21 Once more, Chuck Hagel stood first.

  The eight-station test culminated the eight-week program. Most of the soldiers wondered what came after the graduation parade. The army placed each newly minted private in a designated role, known as an MOS (military occupational specialty). Some already knew their MOS. Those who had gone to recruiting offices and signed voluntary enlistment contracts for three or four years had it down in writing before they’d ever gotten to Fort Bliss. Hagel, like all the other draftees, got his orders in the last week of Basic Combat Training. For him, Advanced Individual Training would be at Fort Ord, California. Hagel knew immediately what that meant. “I had the most famous of all MOS’s, 11-Bravo [11B],” he said, “which is the infantryman MOS. I didn’t fight that. I thought that if you’re going to be in the Army, you want to be a warrior.”22 The army agreed.

  The army had more for Hagel, the best in his platoon and company. In the few free moments, when the other privates smoked, joked, or goofed off, Hagel studied field manuals and polished his boots. It paid off. After looking at all of the top scorers, the senior drill sergeants and colonels in command designated Private Chuck Hagel as the number one trainee of the 10,000-man cycle. He received a promotion to private first class, a certificate of achievement, and a trip to the El Paso chamber of commerce to accept the American Spirit Honor Medal. Chuck Hagel would earn many distinctions in uniform and afterward. But these mattered more than most. The guy who couldn’t get settled after high school had found his way. “I can really do this,” he told himself.

  Sergeant First Class William Joyce escorted the army’s newest PFC (private first class) to the awards luncheon. Hagel had dealt with Joyce every day at Fort Bliss, but strictly in the line of duty. As they drove into El Paso, Joyce shared some advice. He told Hagel: “You’ve got to be the best and give your best because people are going to rely on you. They’re going to depend on you if you go to Vietnam.”23 Hagel listened intently. Vietnam. Like the grunts in country liked to say: there it is.

  WHEN MANY YOUNG AMERICANS headed west for the Summer of Love in San Francisco, Chuck Hagel did, too. Ignoring Scott McKenzie’s song “San Francisco,” Hagel didn’t wear flowers in his close-cropped hair. He didn’t smoke dope, and he didn’t join the “be in” in Haight-Ashbury.24 Instead, in that endless summer of 1967, he reported to Advanced Individual Training at Fort Ord, a hundred-odd miles south of the hippies and the fun. A hundred thousand youth in the Bay Area made love, not war. Hagel worked on making war.

  Advanced Individual Training took things to the next level. For eight weeks, Hagel and the other 11Bs learned about the key infantry weapons and how to use them. They popped fat 40mm grenades out of the tubular M79 “blooper” or “thumper,” which looked for all the world like the army’s real-life version of Elmer Fudd’s cartoon break-action shotgun. They learned how to rip off belts of 7.62mm ammunition (four ball, one tracer) through the M60 machine gun, the “pig,” developed by reverse engineering the German army’s wicked MG422, scourge of the 1944 Normandy beaches. They still carried M14s, and did more shooting with them, but also got some time with M16 automatic rifles. Handling weapons, shooting them, and growing comfortable with them formed the core of the Fort Ord weeks.

  One range stood out. Called “quick kill,” this set of lanes lined up the
new infantrymen, then confronted them with brief glimpses of man-shaped targets. E-silhouettes, a flat dark-green cardboard head and torso, represented a standing foe. F-silhouettes depicted a head and shoulders poking out of a trench or tunnel mouth. The Es and Fs popped up, some half seen behind barriers, others in shadows. The riflemen in training, moving upright as they’d be on foot patrol, turned and shot as fast as they could. It all taught the soldiers to fire reflexively at noises and flashes.25 The drill sergeants warned the budding infantrymen. You won’t see the Viet Cong. The jungle is too thick. Go with your instincts. Quick kill.

  Other field exercises attempted to teach what to expect in Vietnam. Hagel and the others learned how to look for trip wires across trails. They searched mock Vietnamese villages, set up night ambushes, and ran reconnaissance patrols. Within the bounds of the possible, it rated as adequate, maybe even pretty good, preparation for war. But you had to recognize what didn’t occur. Nobody shot back, no men in training suffered wounds, and the “enemy” consisted of detailed play-dead guys for the blank-fire phases or cardboard targets on the shooting ranges. It all lacked a lot. The army tried to fill that major deficiency by substituting physical exhaustion, insistent time standards, and intrusive grading. The entire enterprise bore the same relationship to real combat that shadow-boxing does to real boxing. Nobody punched back. Nobody bled. And in the end, that made all the difference.

  In addition to the demanding combat exercises, there were still barracks inspections and marching and running and push-ups. But the drill sergeants, who gave no quarter on Fort Ord’s training ranges, backed off some on the spit and polish. 26 This wasn’t basic. Many of these guys in training would leave Ord and head right to Vietnam.

  Hagel didn’t get orders to Vietnam. Instead, he got an offer and a special assignment. The army asked Hagel to consider going to Officer Candidate School. Flattering, yes—but it also ensured three years of service in addition to what Hagel had already completed. He declined.27

  The other opportunity, the special assignment, wasn’t optional. Hagel and nine other enlisted men assembled at White Sands Missile Range, out in the New Mexico desert west of Fort Bliss. White Sands wasn’t a training center, but a proving ground. The army tested rockets and even nuclear bombs out in that lonely expanse. What did that have to do with PFC Chuck Hagel?

  He had been judged capable of learning fast and keeping a secret. For three months, Hagel and his fellow soldiers received intensive training on the FIM-43 Redeye shoulder-fired antiaircraft missile. The launcher looked like a World War II bazooka, a pipe with a sight and trigger handle mounted on it. With a round inside, the thing weighed just over eighteen pounds. The missile peeped out of the open muzzle, and its clear bubble nose shielded an infrared seeker. If you pointed a loaded Redeye launcher up into the sky, the missile searched for a heat source—say an enemy jet engine. When you felt a vibration in the handle, sort of like a buzzing cell phone today, the thing had locked on. Then you pressed the trigger and, racing out at nearly twice the speed of sound, the Redeye streaked up into the air and rammed into the hostile airplane’s tailpipe. So went the concept.

  In actual firings, the Redeye could be finicky. Its range was just under three miles, around 15,000 feet in altitude. So opposing planes had the option of flying higher. If the target turned fast, the way jet fighters do, the Redeye might lose its fix. Opposing aircraft could spoof it by dumping out flares. A lot depended on a missile-man willing to hang in there and track the bad guy until the Redeye lined up. Hagel and his nine teammates worked hard to get the hang of it.

  They did so in silence. No phone calls were allowed. Mail arrived and went out, but authorities checked all of it. As the soldiers gained the ability to track and hit aerial targets, word came down. They’d all be going to Germany, via Fort Dix, New Jersey.28 Hagel got a short leave first. He returned to Nebraska.

  While Chuck perfected his craft with the secret weapon, brother Tom also missed the Summer of Love. As he and Chuck had agreed back in Nebraska, Tom started down the same path as his brother. He, too, went through Basic Combat Training at Fort Bliss. Although some clerk recommended Tom to be a cook, the younger Hagel received 11B as his MOS, and then headed to Fort Ord. Tom didn’t rack up all the kudos Chuck earned, but the younger brother did just fine. He, too, met the drill sergeant’s preferred standard—tall, smart, clear-eyed, articulate, and trustworthy. Belligerent NCOs didn’t faze Tom. The drill sergeants noticed. Even with an iffy high school record and no college, Tom also merited Officer Candidate School. And he turned it down. His orders, like Chuck’s, read Germany. But Tom heard that after six months in Europe, he’d likely get levied to Vietnam. Volunteer draftees tended to end up there, and Tom had no special-purpose Redeye qualification to keep him squared off against the Soviet air force.29 Tom’s timeline ran about two months behind that of his brother.

  After seeing Betty, Mike, Jim, and the extended family, Chuck left for Fort Dix. When he got to the post in New Jersey, Sergeant First Class William Joyce’s words came swimming back up. People depend on you… if you go to Vietnam. He thought about it. There’d be no “if.” “The right thing,” Hagel said, “was to go where the war was.” Hagel went to the orderly room. He volunteered for Vietnam. That sure quieted the place.

  The sergeant at the desk told the captain, who immediately came out of his adjoining office. They called a chaplain. Together, the Fort Dix people tried to be sure Hagel was in his right mind. He was. When Tom got word of it, he volunteered, too.

  When she got the phone call, mom Betty was none too happy. But she knew her sons. This is what they wanted, and she supported them. “Well,” she said, “I hope you’ve made the right decision.”30 In the bitter fall of 1967, the Hagel brothers thought they had.

  IN THE VIEW of millions of young Americans in 1967, Chuck and Tom Hagel had just screwed up—big time. To those opposed to the war, the entire U.S. Army and its soldiers, not to mention the rest of the U.S. Armed Forces, the Johnson administration, the Establishment (whoever they might actually be), and pretty much everyone over age thirty seemed too immoral to be trusted. The Vietnam War clearly represented the worst, most depraved thing in American history, probably world history, and possibly prehistory, too. That was not yet a majority opinion in the United States. But by 1967, to the bewilderment of General Westmoreland and the chagrin of President Johnson, it was getting there.

  The anti-war youth surely had a point. All wars are bloody, confused, and wasteful. That’s baked in the sordid cake. In a democratic republic, we tolerate short, decisive wars. Smaller is better. We’ll put up with a big one, like World War I or World War II, if it looks like we’re winning and it doesn’t drag out. As a strategy, attrition never earned high marks in a West Point textbook, but Americans resorted to it in the trenches of the Argonne Forest in 1918 and the Anzio beachhead in 1944. It all depended on how it turned out. By 1967, the full-scale U.S. campaign in Vietnam had only been going on for two years, and though unwon, it did not yet seem unwinnable. Still, the indicators looked bad. Despite the optimistic calculations of Westmoreland and the desperate desires of LBJ, nobody could tell for sure when this thing would wrap up, or how many lives would be lost.

  Confronted with an apparently no-win war, politically conscious American youth turned on the war with the assured vitriol of true believers. No Communist Party propagandist in Hanoi, Moscow, or Beijing could hope to outdo the things said in rallies, inked onto posters, and printed on paper. In the great October 21, 1967, march on the Pentagon, you saw and heard them all. “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” “Bastard Johnson’s doom comes soon!” “Out demons! Out!” “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the NLF [National Liberation Front; the Viet Cong] is gonna win!” And finally, a few raised a plaintive cry, inverting the usual formula heard in unhappy underdeveloped countries. “Yankee come home.” When former B-24 pilot Senator George McGovern ran for president in 1972, he borrowed a variant of that last one as the theme of his nomi
nation acceptance speech: “Come home America.”31

  A few of those who marched for peace in Vietnam stuck with it for the rest of their lives. They became convinced, or maybe they started out that way, that war was indeed bad for children and other living things. These pacifists have marched against every American war, great and small, since Vietnam: the rest of the Cold War, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Iraq I, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq II. You have to respect them. There’s no easy money in peace activism, that’s for sure.

  But most of the young people who loudly objected to the war, and the multitudes who sympathized but didn’t march, concentrated their objections to this particular war at this particular time. As they grew older and Vietnam receded into history, the majority of them found that national interests countenanced other wars at other times. Why?

  Self-righteous posturing aside, it all came down to the draft. Young men didn’t want to die. Who can blame them? College students figured out well before MACV that the body count strategy, such as it was, boded ill for the young Americans who made up the U.S. side of the equation. If the draft didn’t exist, the widespread anti-war movement of the 1960s might have remained fervent but small, a few committed pacifists hanging out on the fringes of U.S. politics, the same place they had resided in all previous wars. But taking in 300,000 young men a year and sending a lot of them to Vietnam, well, that sure got attention. It really riveted the interest of those who had the education, time, and money to take a hard look at their prospects in the care of the strange creature known as the Selective Service System.