by Mark Berent
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
1500 Hours Local, 7 September 1966
The Oval Office
The White House, Washington, DC
"Whitey, I can't agree with you," the president said. "A total assault on the North like you propose would be rape, not seduction. I want to seduce those little fellas. You got to understand, bombing the North is a political tool that I am using to convince old Ho to quit, and I can't use it up all at once. If I went all out, why, the Rooskies and the Chinese would be all over us. So I've got to pick these targets, one by one, in such a way as to show that rascal Ho we're serious while making sure you and the other generals don't get us into the Third World War."
The president waved his heavy glass of Fresca at Whitey Whisenand. "That's why I won't let you flyboys bomb the smallest crapper up there without checking with me."
LBJ hadn't been too specific about his job when he asked Whitey to be a Special Advisor for air to the National Security Council, nor had he since clarified his duties, other than to ask his overall assessment of the progress of the Vietnam War. This arrangement of having another military man in the White House was one more piece of evidence, so it was said in the Pentagon, that LBJ did not trust military advice given to him via the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Today, Whitey was seeing the president about a specific Navy strike request, not a `total assault' as LBJ had put it.
Both men were standing in front of the fireplace in the Oval Office. Walt Rostow, who bore the weighty title of Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, sat on the couch facing them. More or less considered a hawk, Rostow was none-the-less known unfavorably in the back rooms of the Pentagon for once having thrown a water pitcher at a colonel he had disagreed with. He and Whisenand wore dark suits, white shirts, and the distinctive slanted red and blue stripes of school ties. The president had removed his gray suit coat to reveal his red suspenders. Rostow nursed a luke warm coffee.
Neither Whitey nor Rostow quite knew what their relationship was to each other, except that Whitey, in the military, had to accede to Rostow as a member of the Executive Branch. As yet, the assessment Whitey was compiling for the president was just that--for the president. It did not have to be cleared through Rostow or anybody else. With the exception of today's request for an audience, Whitey had been quietly busying himself studying previous reports in his small office in the White House near the Situation Room.
As he had researched and jotted down his conclusions, he had realized the mistakes the executive branch and the military had made regarding Vietnam that contributed to the current morass. Foremost was the lost chance at having an eminence grise in the South Vietnamese hierarchy. Someone such as USAF General Ed Lansdale who, as a colonel, had done remarkable things helping Magsaysay against the communists in the Philippines. He had later been immortalized as Colonel Hillandale in Charley Lederer's book, The Ugly American.
Had Lansdale been in the palace with Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem before the coup that killed Diem in 1963, scant weeks before Jack Kennedy himself was assassinated, things might have been different. Lansdale, in all likelihood, would have prevented the monastic seclusion into which Diem had entered with the eager help of his brother Nhu and his brother's wife, Madame Nhu. Whereas Lansdale had helped Diem secure the presidential election in 1955, by the early Sixties he was no longer in favor with the U.S. State Department, hence could no longer influence Diem. Thus a political handle on South Vietnam by the United States was lost.
Although the U.S. had not engineered the coup that killed Diem, it had been perceived to give tacit approval. What no one in the Kennedy regime at the time had even considered was, who was going to pull the country together after Diem was ousted. Following his death, in a matter of a few months, a series of presidents and prime ministers had made the situation worse. Only the seizing of power in 1965 by VNAF General Nguyen Cao Ky had ended the anarchy.
Whitey wrote in his notes that the first mistake was having no power behind the power. Mistake Two was having no strategy. He was appalled. The United States simply had no strategy for the war in Vietnam. There was a vague goal of keeping the communists out of South Vietnam, but no rational method to reach that goal.
Whitey studied the territorial maps and concluded that Mistake Three was believing in the boundaries of Vietnam as shown on the maps. Whereas Ho Chi Minh was using all of the territory in Indochina including Laos and Cambodia to fight his war, LBJ and the SecDef only saw the war zone in terms of the territorial boundary line around Vietnam. What little CIA and U.S. Army action LBJ had so far sanctioned in Laos was not even close to cutting the Ho Chi Minh Trail supply route. Further, LBJ was doing nothing about Ho's open use of Cambodian seaports and roads to truck war supplies to the VC in South Vietnam.
While reading old memos, Whitey saw that one man in the civilian hierarchy, John McCone, seemed to have realized the problems and come up with a solution. McCone, DCI (Director Central Intelligence Agency), had told SecState Dean Rusk and SecDef Robert McNamara that he had grave misgivings about sending American men into ground battle while shackling the use of air power up North. McCone said he believed the communists were counting on world pressure to stop the limited air strikes that were happening up there. Before that pressure came about, either unshackle the air to go North, or don't commit ground troops in the South.
Whitey took it all in and was drafting a paper that entailed one dominant theme: Fight the Viet Cong in South Vietnam and fight the NVA in North Vietnam.
These assessments, however, were not the reason Major General Albert G. Whisenand had requested an audience with his Commander in Chief. Rather, it was about an urgent message from Task Force 77, the U.S. Navy contingent positioned on Yankee Station in the South China Sea off the coast of North Vietnam. The urgent Ops Immediate message said that 111 SAM-2 missiles had been photographed four hours earlier on rail cars northeast of Hanoi. No guns had come up on the Navy RA-5 Vigilante that took the photos, and the weather was clear and due to remain so for the next six hours. The commander of TF 77 requested permission to strike within the hour. He said his attack aircraft were armed and poised for an instant launch and he needed an immediate answer. He had no way of knowing his TWX had been lost for twenty-two minutes in the White House pipeline. Whitey had grabbed it. (He had surreptitiously made sure such things were brought to his attention.) He was now personally pleading the case to destroy the SAMs.
"Mr. President, I'm not asking for total assault. All I'm asking is for your immediate permission to destroy 111 SAM missiles where they sit instead of having to fight them one by one as they are launched at our aircraft." Whitey stood facing the president. He held a clipboard with the enacting message for the president's signature.
The president slammed his Fresca glass on the mantel and strode rapidly to his desk. "Is the `Perfessor' still in the building? Get him up here," he barked over the intercom. He remained behind his desk and turned back to Whitey. "Bomb, bomb, bomb, that's all you guys want to do. You just don't understand."
Whitey walked to stand in front of LBJ's desk when it became obvious the president was not coming back to the fireplace. Walt Rostow stood, but didn't take sides mainly because he had yet to be asked. The door to the Oval Office opened. The Secretary of Defense, Robert Strange McNamara, whom LBJ labeled the `Perfessor,' walked in with short and purposeful steps. His black suit was a shade darker than the rest, his Harvard tie discreet, his shoes polished to a high gloss. His black hair was combed straight back. His face was clear and unlined; his eyes bright and hard behind his glasses. LBJ motioned him over and handed his civilian Secretary of Defense the Navy request while he continued to talk to Whitey.
"You just don't understand how to send the proper signals, General," the president said. "I'll explain it to you. We won't bomb the SAMs, which signals the North not to use them. You see? They know we could hit them today, but we don't. Because we let their missiles go, they won't shoot them at our boy
s." He hitched at his suspenders and sat in his leather swivel chair behind his desk. "You tell him, Mac."
The SecDef sat down in the straight black chair to the right of the president's desk. He looked up from the TWX at Whitey and spoke in a soft but crisp voice.
"Those Surface to Air Missiles, and the others at the sites under construction, are flash points we must avoid. We cannot hit them, not only for the reason the president told you, but additionally because there are Soviet technicians servicing them. Any surprise attack might incur Soviet casualties and that would lead to greater Soviet participation in the war." He cocked his head at Whitey. "You can understand that, can't you, General?"
Before Whitey could answer, LBJ said, "There you have it. The answer is `no,' and now you know why." He smiled as he stood and walked around the desk. He took Whitey cordially by the elbow and escorted him to the door. "I knew you'd understand once we explained it to you." Rostow beat them to the door and opened it. LBJ paused and clasped Whitey's hand in a firm shake while holding his elbow. "Anytime," he said, giving Whitey his broad smile and crinkly eyes, "anytime you want something explained about this here war, why, you just come right on in. You hear?" LBJ snapped his fingers in remembrance. "One more thing, General. I want your personal attention in studying a way to reduce our pilot casualties in Vietnam. We must take care of our boys, you know." At these words, Whitey felt himself going purple with rage but managed through supreme will power to keep his mouth shut.
That night, to his wife's consternation, Whitey closed himself in the music room and drank two bottles of a robust Burgundy. In the background he played over and over Stanley's Modern Major General song from Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance.
"We're going to pay for all this," he said to himself for the dozenth time. "Oh God, how we are going to pay."
1230 Hours Local, 12 September 1966
Headquarters, 7th Air Force
Tan Son Nhut Air Base, Republic of Vietnam
Court walked down the steps from VNAF Headquarters where he had just visited two Vietnamese officers he had known at Squadron Officer's School. Colonel Vo Xuan Lanh and Major Ut, while glad to see him, had talked at length about the way the U.S. was handling things. They were not pleased. They told him to read everything the author Bernard Fall had written so as to better understand the communist methods. As he left they gave him a book written in French by Jean Lartéguy titled Le Mal Jaune, loosely translated as The Yellow Sickness. They explained the book would give their good friend Court a better understanding of the Vietnamese way and how they interacted with westerners.
He started to walk the long distance from the VNAF headquarters area to the 7th Air Force headquarters. He had placed Lartéguy's book in the old leather navigator's kit he used as a briefcase. Already in the case were his pay record and his TDY orders assigning him first to the 366th Tactical Fighter Wing. The 366th flew F-4s from Da Nang Air Base located north up the coast from Saigon. At Tan Son Nhut he was to report to the OIC of the Bravo Division in the Directorate of Combat Operations, listed as DOCB in the 7th Air Force command chart.
He was wearing his one pair of khakis 1505s. The pants were already baggy at the knees, and the center of the shirt dark with sweat. Captains don't rate staff cars and the base bus had just made its half-hourly run past the VNAF building. After ten minutes of breathing dust and having it crust on his uniform, Court gratefully accepted the offer of a ride to 7th Air Force HQ from two Air Police sergeants in their jeep. He shared the back with a bare pole that could accommodate an M-60 machine gun. The jeep lurched into the heavy military traffic flow.
They were halfway past the French Cimetiére Militaire when the AP in the right seat nudged his partner.
"Hey, look over there." He pointed toward the rear of the cemetery where the gravestones ended at a high red brick fence. They saw furtive movement by an eight-foot mausoleum where there shouldn't have been any. The driver spun the wheel and braked on the shoulder. The two men grabbed their M-16s from corner mounts, dismounted, and leaped the drainage ditch between the jeep and the cemetery. They ran to the scene, dodging from tombstone to tombstone as if wary of rifle fire. One ran to two figures struggling on the ground while his partner covered him.
Court climbed out, stepped across the ditch, and moved closer. The tombstones were gray and seemed weathered far beyond the dates of only fourteen or fifteen years before.
A khaki-clad figure on the ground was moaning and thrashing away from the AP who was trying to lock his wrists behind him in handcuffs. A thin barefoot girl with dirty legs scrambled to her feet and ran like a jack rabbit disappearing between the tombstones. She looked about twelve.
"GAWDDAMN," the soldier on the ground bellowed and lurched to his feet. He was a big man and his eyes were wild and unfocused. "GAWDDAMN" he said again and before anybody could move he ran head on into the side of the mausoleum and fell back among the tombstones, unconscious and bleeding.
"Sheeit," the AP who had been trying to handcuff him said. He got to his feet, pulled out a bandanna and wiped his forehead. Then he knelt, rolled the man over, and placed the handcuffs on him far up his forearms and grunted as he squeezed them shut with a loud clack.
He turned the man face up and thumbed open an eye. "He'll live, but I don't know what for."
"Dinky dau cigarettes?" the covering AP questioned.
"Sheeit, no. This ain't no maryjane. This one's on smack. Third one this month," he said. "And that kid probably sold him the stuff then tried to steal it back when he got stoned." He motioned toward the jeep. "Go call the desk and have 'em get an ambulance over here." He turned to Court.
"Sorry, Captain. You still want a lift, we'll get you to 7th." He wiped the sweat and dirt from his face and wrung out his bandanna. "This stuff is coming in this here Veetnam fast and cheap and these here Saigon commandos are going nuts over it. I tell you."
Court looked down at the unconscious soldier. His head was cocked at an angle at the base of a dirty tombstone. He wore khakis, dirty and torn now, with only a National Defense ribbon pinned above his shirt pocket. He wore Adjutant Generals Corps collar brass.
Court looked closer at the tombstone and read the inscription.
Ice reposé un pilote de chasse mort pour sa patrie pendant le guerre d'Indochine.
(Here lies a fighter pilot dead for his country during the Indochina war.)
Court presented himself at the DOCB office and was ushered into the august presence of Colonel Donald Dunne, whose office walls held many guns and other war trophies. Behind his desk was a wall map of Indochina. A chromed fake hand grenade housing a cigarette lighter stood on his desk next to a two-foot carved teak affair that embossed his name and rank over a giant pair of carved command pilot wings. The colonel wore immaculate pressed and starched olive drab USAF fatigues. The eagles on his collar were sewn with white thread and seemed outsized. His name was stitched over his right chest pocket flap, and Command Pilot wings over his left. The colonel had a high forehead topped by crew-cut black hair interspersed with grey. He appeared fifty or so, Court thought, a little old for a full bull. Court handed him his orders. The colonel glanced at them.
TEMPORARY DUTY ORDER-MILITARY
............................................................... TO: |FROM: |DATE:
TO: 3rd Cmbt Spt Gp (CAS)
FROM: 3rd Tac Ftr Wg (DO)
DATE: 6 Sep 66
...............................................................
1. INDIVIDUAL(S) wp on TDY as shown in items 5 through 21.
2. ISSUING OFFICIAL: Lawrence L. Emmett, LtCol, USAF, Asst Deputy Commander, Operations
3. SIGNATURE:
4. PHONE: 7108
5. GRADE: Capt
6. NAME: Bannister, Courtland EdM., AO3021953
7. ORGANIZATION: 531 Tac Ftr Sq
8. SECURITY CLEAR: TS
9. EFF ON OR ABOUT: 7 Sep 66
&n
bsp; 10. Approx No. of Days: 30
11. PURPOSE OF TDY: Commando Sabre F-100 Refresher and instrument training.
12. ITINERARY
FROM: Bien Hoa AB, Vietnam
TO: Tan Son Nhut AB, Vietnam, 7AF/DOCB, Da Nang AB, Vietnam, 366TFW/DO
Tahkli RTAFB, Thailand, 355TFW/DO
RETURN TO: Bien Hoa AB, Vietnam VARIATIONS: Authorized
13. THEATER CLEARANCES: Obtained
14. MODE OF TRANSPORTATION: Military Aircraft
15. AUTHORITY: AFM 35-11
16. SPECIAL ORDER NO: T-768
17. DESIGNATION AND LOCATION OF HEADQUARTERS
Department of the Air Force
HQ 3rd Tactical Fighter Wing (PACAF)
APO San Francisco, 96227
18. EXPENSES CHARGEABLE TO:
5763400 306-7442 P458 213804 (48.00)
S599500W OA-T-66-131 (CUSTOMER ID CODE)
19. TDN. For the Commander
20. DISTRIBUTION "D"
21 SIGNATURE ELEMENT OF ORDERS AUTHENTICATING OFFICIAL
W. R. Montell, 1stLt, USAF
Chief, Administrative Svc
...............................................................
AF FORM 626
MAY 63 PREVIOUS EDITIONS WILL BE USED UNTIL STOCK IS EXHAUSTED
*GPO 1963-690-033
---------------------------------------------------------------
"What do you know about Commando Sabre?" the colonel asked Court.
"Very little, Sir," he replied.
"It is not an F-100 refresher or instrument training course, I can tell you," the colonel said with an air of great importance. "That was printed in Para 11 on the orders as a cover." He rose to stand next to the wall map and spread his legs.
"What I am about to tell you is classified Secret," he said. "Commando Sabre is a program of out-country sorties to direct and control strike missions against enemy targets of opportunity. Each sortie will be flown in a two-seater jet aircraft with FAC qualified fighter pilots in both seats. We are considering a program to use jet FACs because we are losing too many slow FACs in Laos along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and in the Route Pack One southern portion of North Vietnam. These are high threat areas for the slow FACs and they are not surviving. System wide, we have had some bad losses. We've got to get some eyeballs up there that are both maneuverable and fast enough to avoid ground fire, yet low enough to see what's happening on the ground."
The colonel looked at Court with eyes that began to light up as he warmed to the subject. His voice rose and he began to speak faster.
"You see the dichotomy here? We can't have it both ways, so we put two people in a fast airplane. The pilot in back looks around for targets, maybe uses binoculars, while the pilot in front flies. The only two-seat fighters we have are F-105Fs and Gs, F-4 Phantoms, and F-100Fs. The '105Fs are allocated to the special Wild Weasel mission, and the Phantoms are all tied up and critical because they have so much electronic gear in back. That leaves the F-100F which is the airplane we are considering. We have several in-country." The colonel had been talking fast with a strange staccato emphasis on each word which, at first, seemed out of character. Then Court caught on that the man was acting. He was imitating the mannerisms of actors from various war movies. Right now he seemed to be Gregory Peck in Twelve O'Clock High. The colonel took a cigarette from a pack in his desk and lit it with the chromed grenade. He puffed quickly without inhaling.
"You will go first to the F-4 fighter wing at Da Nang for indoctrination, then the F-105 fighter wing at Tahkli. Both are flying over the DMZ, Tally Ho in Laos, and other areas on pre-planned fragged missions. In those areas, there are many enemy targets of opportunity, primarily rolling stock, that need to be sniffed out. The F-4 and F-105 pilots fly in so many different areas they don't know any one area well enough to find these fleeting targets. The trucks in particular have hidden parks and revetments according to agent reports. You will go to each wing and fly with them in the mission aircraft to find out how it is up there. You will also brief them on how to use a FAC and how a FAC will use them. You have been flying totally under FAC control, except for Skyspot, for some time now." The colonel snubbed out his cigarette, and pointed at the upper reaches of the wall map.
"The program hasn't started yet as we are still gathering information. You are to fly here," he tapped the map, "in North Vietnam, and here," he tapped the map again, "in Laos." He turned to face Court.
"Your mission," he cracked out each word, "is to get in there to determine the volume of enemy anti-aircraft fire at low altitudes where the Commando Sabre aircraft will fly. In other words, you are to troll for guns."
Court almost shook his head at the man. My God, he thought, now he's acting the part of Clark Gable in Command Decision. Colonel Dunne caught something in Court's expression.
"Did I say something funny, Captain? For if you think I did, you are sadly mistaken." Colonel Dunne passed a hand over his crew cut. “This is no joke, I assure you."
Court stood. He tried to assume a look of earnest concentration while thinking the colonel probably even dreams in clichés. Colonel Dunne continued.
"You will dispatch nightly summaries to our office, DOCB, with info copies to the 37th TFW at Phu Cat who has the action for Commando Sabre."
Court decided he had better take Colonel Donald Dunne seriously. Trolling for guns was not a throwaway line.
"Tomorrow you will proceed by military air to Da Nang where you will report to," he glanced at a message on his desk, "Major Ronald E. Bender, the 366th Wing Weapons Officer. After sufficient missions to learn your trade as a FAC, you will report to Major Ted Frederick, the Weapons Officer of the 355th Tactical Fighter Wing at Tahkli, Thailand."
Colonel Dunne looked at Court and leered. "The 355th," he said with relish, "is currently flying F-105s over Hanoi. Our combined F-4 and F-105 loss rate is wicked, positively wicked. About five planes a week. Now that's not very funny, is it?"