Back in Birmingham, on November 22, 1968, a Sunday morning, Alma was returning to the house she shared with her sister after spending the night at their parents’ home. Dangling from the doorknob was a notice that she had a telegram, which she could pick up at the Western Union office. Alma called, but Western Union would not divulge the message over the phone. She went back to the Johnsons to pick up her father for moral support before heading into town to learn the contents of the telegram. It was from the Department of the Army informing her that her husband, Major Colin L. Powell, 083771, had been involved in a helicopter crash. Mail could be addressed to him at the indicated base hospital in Vietnam. Nothing more, and not a word about the nature of my injuries, except that they were minor.
The week before, Saturday afternoon, November 16, we had been flying west of Quang Ngai in General Gettys’s UH-1H, a top-of-the-line helicopter, with only ninety hours logged in the air. The brightness of the day was reflected in the general’s sunny mood. I studied him, dressed like any other GI, in jungle fatigues, soft cap, and canvas-and-leather boots, a rotund, amiable man, his broad face set in a smile. Gettys had reason to feel good. In this cat-and-mouse war, with rarely a decisive thrust, his ill-starred Americal Division had scored a clear victory. The day before, the nth Infantry Brigade had uncovered twenty-nine North Vietnamese Army base camps, including a headquarters and a training post. The nth had also captured a large cache of weapons and enemy documents. The battalion commander had ordered a landing site hacked out of the jungle, and that was where we were headed. General Gettys wanted to see the battalion’s prize.
As we flew along the steep, encroaching hillsides, the thought struck me that we had a lot of freight aboard one aircraft—the division’s two-star commanding general; his chief of staff, Colonel Jack Treadwell (a Medal of Honor recipient); Captain Ron Tumelson, the general’s aide; me, the division’s G-3; and a four-man crew. I had thought earlier that maybe this landing would be better handled by a small slick piloted by one of those nineteen-year-olds with a safecracker’s touch and plenty of experience in shoehorning helos into tight fits. But the general’s pilot, Chief Warrant Officer James D. Hannan, was an experienced flier. This was his general, his helo, his landing, and he expected no problem.
We spotted a smoke grenade signaling the site of the hole chopped out of the heavy growth and headed for it. The pilot began his approach to the landing site, realized he was coming in too fast, backed off, and came at it again. On the second pass, he hovered, then began his descent. Bits of snipped-off branches and leaves swirled through the air as we moved down through the trees. Since I was sitting outboard, I could see how little clearance we had, about two feet at each end of the blade. I began to shout, “Pull out!” But it was too late. I watched the pilot struggling against a treacherous backdraft created by the trees, and then, whack! At a height of about three stories, the blade struck a tree trunk. One minute we were flying and the next we were dead weight, as the main rotor blades went instantly from 324 rpm to zero. The helo dropped like an elevator with a snapped cable. I reflexively assumed the crash posture, head down, arms locked around my knees. I listened to the engine’s futile whine for what seemed an eternity before we smashed into the ground.
Standard procedure calls for getting away from the aircraft as soon as possible, before it catches fire. I released my seat belt and jumped out the door. Ahead of me was the helo’s gunner, Private First Class Bob Pyle. We did not get far from the wreck before we realized that others were still on board, none of them moving. Pyle ran back to jimmy open the pilot’s door. I climbed back into the hold, noticing for the first time a pain in my ankle. The engine was still grinding away, and smoke started to fill the helo. I found General Gettys, barely conscious, his shoulder at an odd angle and probably broken. I managed to release his seat belt, got him out, and dragged him into the woods. By now, several soldiers on the ground had joined us as we went back for the rest of the victims. I found Jack Treadwell and managed to pull him to safety. I climbed aboard again and heard the pilot moan as PFC Pyle struggled to free him. Ron Tumelson, the general’s aide, was slumped over, his head trapped between the radio console and the engine, which had smashed through the fuselage as if it were an eggshell. Tumelson was covered with blood. I saw no sign of life and was sure he was dead. I managed to shove aside the dislodged console and free him. And then I heard him groan. I noticed a dent where the engine had struck his helmet, which had provided just enough protection to save him. I dragged him into the woods with the others. In the end, everyone was rescued, the most seriously injured being the pilot, who suffered a broken back.
When a commanding general’s helicopter goes down, other aircraft materialize as if out of nowhere. I looked up to see a swarm of helos circling a landing zone that had not been big enough to accommodate even one without a mishap. Finally, they backed off and made way for a dust-off bird, a medical evacuation helicopter. One by one, we were winched up to the aircraft, swaying helplessly in the breeze, wondering if all eyes watching were necessarily friendly.
Back at the Chu Lai base hospital, x-rays revealed that, in addition to lacerations and bruises, I had a broken ankle. Ordinarily, that meant I would be evacuated. Army medical policy was to ship anybody with broken bones to Japan, since the dampness in our sector discouraged healing. The division, however, was not about to lose a recently acquired G-3 just because he had a cracked bone. The doctors put me in a cast, and I hobbled around as best as I could. I was not as sensitively impaired as my commanding general. General Gettys had been scheduled to meet his wife in Hawaii for R and R and complained to me, “Dammit, Colin, how’s a man supposed to do what a woman expects him to do with his arm in a sling?”
My cast lasted a week before it started crumbling. I replaced it with an Ace bandage and went about my business. The doctors warned me that I was being foolish, but the ankle healed in about seven years. It only troubled me if I stepped off a curb at the wrong angle, which produced a sensation similar to being electrocuted. Fortunately, today, it gives me no trouble.
I was about to spend my second Christmas in Vietnam. During the holiday season, Chu Lai reeked of a strong, gamy odor. Gifts from home of smoked salamis and hams from the Hickory Farms mail-order company were all the rage. At first, they were heartily welcomed. Then they started to spill out of the mailroom and the huts and hooches until it seemed we were going to be overcome by smoke inhalation. I have not been able to eat a smoked anything since.
On Christmas Eve, my friends and I went to watch Bob Hope and the troupe he had brought to entertain the forces, the stunning Ann-Margret, Les Brown (and—what else?—his Band of Renown), the pro football star Rosey Grier, and Miss World, Penelope Plummer. That was more like it, war as we remembered it from old newsreels. Afterward, we retired to the officers’ club to listen to a Filipino rock group. I particularly remember their rendition of the Patsy Cline hit “I Fall to Pieces,” which on Filipino lips had a charm of its own: “Arfo do PZs.” And we drank too much. The helicopter pilots drank the most, especially those flying the next day. Many were on their second or third tours. Their casualty rate was high, and the highest risks of all were taken by the crews of the dust-off helos of the Medical Service Corps such as I had recently ridden. To pick up the wounded they had to hover in full view of the enemy and slowly corkscrew down. Every minute they could save resulted in lives saved. We had a near reverence for their courage. For their part, they faced their lot with black-humored fatalism, referring to fellow pilots who went down in flames as “crispy critters.”
My distinction as the only major serving as a division G-3 inevitably had to end. Lieutenant Colonel Dick Lawrence completed his six months as a squadron commander and moved up to the G-3 slot Gettys had promised him. Gettys told me that he knew the situation was awkward, since I occasionally had had to overrule Lawrence while I was G-3; nevertheless, he hoped I would stay as Lawrence’s deputy. I gladly signed on as his number two, and in the years that fo
llowed, Dick became another valued mentor to me.
Since by January 1969 I was halfway through my tour, I began thinking about my next assignment. I knew what I wanted. I had been approved for the Army’s grad school program. The next hurdle was to pass the Graduate Record Examination. I managed to find an Arco-type study guide and, since Chu Lai offered few distractions, spent my evenings devouring this book. One drizzling Saturday morning, I crowded onto a slick that was taking a bunch of short-timers to Da Nang for their return home and made my way to a Quonset hut. There, with an unlikely-looking collection of would-be scholars, I took the test. A couple of months later I got word that I had done well, and I applied for admission to The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. GWU, just across the Potomac River from the Pentagon, had become something of a finishing school for the Washington military establishment. Many officers took degrees in international relations, which seemed appropriate. But at about this time, the Army began steering its personnel toward modern management so that it would have officers ready to enter the computer age. Consequently, I applied to the GWU School of Government and Business Administration, aiming for an M.B.A. This degree had an additional appeal. By now I had over ten years in the Army. And I figured that when my military career ended, I would be more marketable as an M.B.A. than as an expert in Western European political systems.
On January 22, 1969, Army charter flight P2102 touched down at Hick-ham Field, Hawaii, the military side of Honolulu International Airport. R and R, blessed R and R. I got off the plane, impatient to see my family yet afraid that it was too good to be true. I had arranged for reservations at the Halekulani Hotel, obtained plane tickets for the children as well as Alma, and had a rental car waiting. As I walked down a corridor into the terminal, I could see up ahead families leaning forward, straining to pick out a familiar face. Then I heard a wonderful shriek: “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” Little Mike, now almost six, with Linda, age three, toddling behind, came rushing toward me. Each one seized a leg and held on for dear life. The pressure of those small arms around me was one of the most joyous sensations I have ever known.
We did nothing very original over the next few days. We went to the beach. I tried to teach Mike to surf (as if I knew how). We saw the village where the movie Hawaii was filmed, and the zoo, and a dolphin show, and the blowhole where the blue waters of the Pacific spurt through the rocks in a timeless geyser. Alma and I went out alone just one night. We managed to find a baby-sitter and took in a luau at Fort De Russy. We went to the International Marketplace to hear Don Ho, who must have sung “Tiny Bubbles” to every soldier who ever made it to Hawaii on R and R. For weeks afterward, the lyric stuck in my mind (“Tiny bubbles, in the wine. Tiny bubbles make you feel fine …”).
And then it was over. The last night, we put the kids to bed without any fuss, just as if they were home, and Alma and I sat out under the magical Hawaiian sky. Vietnam was a million miles yet only a plane ride away. I did not talk about the past six months, and Alma did not ask. That is usually the way with career soldiers and wives. Alma, thank God, was not of that breed of service spouses who think they have been commissioned along with the husband and like to talk shop. They know who has been given an accelerated promotion and who has been passed over, who received the choice assignment and who was dead-ended. Alma never cared for that world of career politics. She made a home, raised the kids, kept me happy, and impressed everybody at every post at which we ever served.
What we talked about that night was the children. Mike had had to get used to me the first time I came home from Vietnam. Then, four years later, I was gone again. We were together here in Hawaii for only a few days, and I was leaving again. I was afraid of becoming a here-he-comes-there-he-goes father, and I counted on Alma to provide the extra parental ballast, which, from all evidence, she was doing nicely.
At midnight, an Army bus pulled up outside the hotel, and my brief taste of family life was over.
It was an afternoon in mid-March. I was in my office-hooch when I got word to expect a visitor from the inspector general’s staff of MACV, Military Assistance Command Vietnam. In the Army, such news is about as welcome as learning that the IRS intends to audit you. The investigator turned out to be tight-lipped and noncommittal; he never explained the purpose of his visit. He used an old-fashioned reel-to-reel tape recorder as he took my name, rank, position, and duties in the division. No elaboration, just the questions fired off in a Joe Friday monotone. He then asked if I was custodian of the division’s operational journals, and I said I was. He asked me to produce the journal for March 1968. I explained that I had not been with the division at that time. “Just get the journal,” he said, “and go through that month’s entries. Let me know if you find an unusual number of enemy killed on any day.”
I sensed he knew what I would find. I started thumbing through the journal, and after a few pages one entry leaped out. On March 16, 1968, a unit of the nth Brigade had reported a body count of 128 enemy dead on the Batangan Peninsula. In this grinding, grim, but usually unspectacular warfare, that was a high number. “Please read that entry into the tape recorder,” the investigator said.
By now, both my curiosity and my guard were up. I asked if he would excuse me while I called the division chief of staff. “Cooperate with him,” the chief of staff said firmly. The investigator asked me if I believed the journal accounts to be accurate, and I said they usually were. Then, as he prepared to leave, he asked if I knew Captain Ernest Medina. Yes, I answered, Medina was a member of my tactical operations center. The investigator said he was going to question Medina next. He left, leaving me as mystified as to his purpose as when he’d arrived.
I would not learn what this visit was about until the fall of 1969, when the world first heard of tragic events that had occurred on the Batangan Peninsula over a year and eight months before. This part of Vietnam, jutting into the South China Sea, had had a long reputation for hard, bitter fighting even preceding our involvement in the war. I knew it had been a hellhole, a rough piece of territory inhabited by VC sympathizers. The French in their day had been driven out of the Batangan Peninsula and stayed out. Every time we sent units there, we could expect dozens of traumatic amputations at the evacuation hospital from mines and booby traps sown by enemy guerrillas and sympathetic peasants, including women, even children.
None of which excuses what happened that March 16, 1968. On that date, a little over three months before I arrived in Vietnam, troops from the 11th Brigade entered the village of Son My on the South China Sea. A platoon headed by First Lieutenant William Calley herded hundreds of old men, women, children, even babies from the hamlet of My Lai into a ditch and shot them. Subsequent investigation revealed that Calley and his men killed 347 people. The 128 enemy “kills” I had found in the journal formed part of the total. A court-martial found Calley guilty of premeditated murder and sentenced him to life in prison. President Richard Nixon, however, intervened, and Calley’s sentence was reduced to three years of what amounted to comfortable house arrest. Captain Ernest Medina was also tried on murder and manslaughter charges for permitting the death of some one hundred Vietnamese, but was acquitted. What the taciturn investigator had questioned me about that afternoon would be remembered as the My Lai Massacre.
My Lai was an appalling example of much that had gone wrong in Vietnam. Because the war had dragged on for so long, not everyone commissioned was really officer material. Just as critical, the corps of career noncommissioned officers was being gutted by casualties. Career noncoms form the backbone of any army, and producing them requires years of professional soldiering. In order to fight the war without calling up the reserves, the Army was creating instant noncoms. Shake-and-bake sergeants, we called them. Take a private, give him a little training, shake him once or twice, and pronounce him an NCO. It astonished me how well and heroically some of these green kids performed, assuming responsibility far beyond their years and experience. Still, the involvement of so many unpre
pared officers and noncoms led to breakdowns in morale, discipline, and professional judgment—and to horrors like My Lai—as the troops became numb to what appeared to be endless and mindless slaughter.
I recall a phrase we used in the field, MAM, for military-age male. If a helo spotted a peasant in black pajamas who looked remotely suspicious, a possible MAM, the pilot would circle and fire in front of him. If he moved, his movement was judged evidence of hostile intent, and the next burst was not in front, but at him. Brutal? Maybe so. But an able battalion commander with whom I had served at Gelnhausen, Lieutenant Colonel Walter Pritchard, was killed by enemy sniper fire while observing MAMs from a helicopter. And Pritchard was only one of many. The kill-or-be-killed nature of combat tends to dull fine perceptions of right and wrong.
My tour was to end in July 1969. Judged solely in professional terms, it was a success. Holding down the G-3 spot for the largest division in Vietnam, as a major, was a rare credit. My efficiency reports continued highly favorable. I received the Legion of Merit, and General Gettys awarded me the Soldier’s Medal for my role in the helicopter crash rescue. That was Vietnam as experienced by the career lobe of my brain. And, for a long time, I allowed myself to think only on that side, an officer answering the call, doing his best, “content to fill a soldier’s grave.”
But as time passed and my perspective enlarged, another part of my brain began examining the experience more penetratingly. I had gone off to Vietnam in 1962 standing on a bedrock of principle and conviction. And I had watched that foundation eroded by euphemisms, lies, and self-deception. The pernicious game-playing that I had first detected in Gelnhausen had been exported to Vietnam during my first tour and had reached its full flowering during my second tour. Consider an expression like KHA, killed by hostile action. It removed some of the sting of the stark, more familiar KIA—killed in action—as though we did not want to upset the folks back home by what really happened in those rice paddies. The distinction was so meaningless that only self-deluding bureaucrats could detect it, and certainly not the poor KHAs. The Marines had fought throughout World War II and Korea as Marine Expeditionary Forces, MEFs. In Vietnam, they were refashioned MAFs, Marine Amphibious Forces. Why? “Expeditionary” raised images of men shipped overseas to fight and die, while you could be holding amphibious exercises off North Carolina. Who were we kidding, except ourselves? Years afterward, after I had become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Alfred M. Gray, threw out that Vietnam-era obfuscation. Marines left the country on military expeditions. Al, to his credit, restored MEF to its old standing.
My American Journey Page 18