Our Year of War

by Daniel P. Bolger

  More help came at 10:35 a.m., when Company B, 4-39th Infantry arrived. They descended into an open, dusty dirt patch just southwest of Widows Village, brought in by a flight of UH-1D Huey helicopters. The VC lit up the landing zone, dirt puffs and green tracers and holes punched in the Hueys. But the choppers made it in and out okay, and so the fresh rifle company did, too. Somebody up higher had shifted the 4-39th riflemen from a different battalion area, seventeen miles away. When air mobility worked, it was a wonderful thing.

  The 4-39th captain, Barnes, and Butler got together behind an M113. They agreed on a simple plan—the foot troops to the west, scouts in the center, Butler’s men to the east. When the rest of Company B arrived, they’d fill in behind and “mop up,” a rather innocuous term for the dangerous work of winkling out any VC die-hards. The U.S. ground attack commenced about 11:45 a.m.

  The tracks led, .50 calibers shooting up each house. The M113 gunners didn’t spare the ammunition, either. Riflemen followed, popping off 5.56mm rounds at known, likely, and suspected VC, which is to say every muzzle flash, dust devil, and suggestion of movement. M79 grenadiers blooped their deadly 40mm eggs behind buildings and into ditches. The U.S. line advanced methodically, chewing its way north. The echoing din and dry dirt clouds were tremendous, a man-made storm front rolling slowly north through Widows Village. Several houses started on fire, adding smoke billows to the already acrid midday air.

  Overhead, Lieutenant Colonel Tower watched the attack from his usual perch. How those battalion commanders relished their ringside seats a thousand feet up! From that altitude, it all seemed like a board game. See the big picture. Move the pieces around. Coordinate supporting arms. The guys on the ground, sweating and struggling, hated the sky-box micromanaging, except when the flying commanders brought in needed help. This time, Tower delivered.

  The lieutenant colonel scared up two new AH-1G Cobra gunships. With real humans doing the aiming, Tower trusted the helicopter guys to look before they fired inside Widows Village. The aviators would be a lot more accurate than a pattern of artillery shells fired off a map estimate and arcing in from miles away. Tower warned his men on the ground to halt in place. Then he cleared the helicopters to go after the VC holed up in the north end of the streets.

  Both armed helicopters passed overhead as their crews sized up the situation. Then they swung wide, lining up, one behind the other. The lead bird dropped its nose and went to work. The Cobra unleashed a brace of seven 2.75-inch folding-fin rockets, tearing up the VC-held houses. He pulled away. Then the second Cobra slid down, rocketing the same shattered, smoking buildings. As the trail helicopter rose up and clattered off, the lead AH-1G came back around, aligned its nose turret, and gave the hostiles some mini-gun (from six 7.62mm gatling-style rotating barrels) for good measure. A throaty rasp, some kind of god-awful chainsaw, ripped the air. The second bird then followed suit—more chainsaw, then silence. A cloud of reddish dust bloomed over the beaten zone.

  When the Cobras finished up, declaring “Winchester” (out of ammunition), a follow-on pair of UH-1C Huey Hogs appeared, repeating the pounding with more rockets and machine gun bullets. The two rounds of gunship strikes finished off the VC, minus the stragglers, the stubborn, and the stupid.35 Hunting them down fell to the rest of Company B, including Hagel. It took most of the afternoon.

  Scout lieutenant Brice Barnes earned the Distinguished Service Cross after dodging fire all day, culminating in a rare face-to-face shootout with an especially doughty VC. Company B, the scouts, and the 4-39th Infantry together claimed seventy-seven enemy killed and ten prisoners taken—very impressive, but also an indication that hundreds of men from the VC battalion got away. The intel people at battalion confirmed that supposition just before sunset. To take Widows Village, the Americans lost three killed (two scouts and Corporal Huie) and sixteen wounded (twelve from Company B, three scouts, and one from 4-39th). At least two local civilians, hiding out in the ruins of Widows Village, got killed, too. The ARVN’s model settlement had been thoroughly trashed. But after a very long, very dicey twenty-four hours, Long Binh Post was safe.36 The Americans called it a victory.

  Chuck Hagel knew it had been a hell of a fight. More action followed for the next few days. “We took tremendous hits,” he said. Many were leaders. To add to the pain, two days later, the riflemen moved forward through a different ramshackle hamlet, looking for VC. Hagel was near Captain Robert Keats. “We were in a cemetery one morning,” said Hagel, “and a sniper shot him right between the eyes, and he was right next to me.”37 After evacuating their fallen captain, the company kept going. The war didn’t let up.

  TOM HAGEL LANDED in Vietnam two weeks before the Tet Offensive. He didn’t linger at Long Binh. He had hoped to serve with brother Chuck in country, and got pretty close when the clerks at the 90th Replacement Battalion sent him, too, to the 9th Infantry Division at Bear Cat. Like Chuck, he sharpened his battle skills in five days of jungle training at the Reliable Academy. In those relatively routine last days of January, nobody there had any idea of the storm about to break over Vietnam.

  During his week or so at Bear Cat, Tom sewed on the 9th’s Octofoil shoulder patch, the eight-pointed red and blue flower surrounding a white circle, all mounted on a round, olive-drab background. In medieval heraldry, the white circle designated the ninth son—the division—surrounded by his eight brothers, red for artillery, blue for infantry, and not coincidently America’s national colors.38 Irreverent young soldiers called the patch “flower power” and the “psychedelic cookie.” And both Hagels wore it. By army measures, they didn’t live in the same house, or even the same street. But they were in the same town of 16,000 souls. They shared the patch.

  That wasn’t by request, nor by design, but by the routine machinations of army accounting, the individual replacement system puttering along, the widgets and screws drill. The 9th had first deployed to Vietnam in December of 1966 and January of 1967. With the first year up, the division needed a huge infusion of soldiers to backfill the departing original deployers.39 Losses in Tet only turned that crank faster.

  Nobody had time to ease Tom Hagel into the war. He reported to the 3rd Squadron, 5th Cavalry just as the Tet Offensive cooked off. The 3-5th had sustained significant casualties before, during, and just after Tet, with eighty-two men—pretty much an entire troop—lost right about the time Tom Hagel made it to Vietnam.40 The squadron needed men.

  This unit employed M48 tanks, M113 armored personnel carriers, and dismounted soldiers, too. In keeping with the cavalry tradition, the battalion-size outfit was designated a “squadron,” the companies were “troops,” and the men proudly called themselves “troopers.” The frontier Regulars at long-ago Fort Robinson, Nebraska, would have recognized the nomenclature immediately, and indeed, the original 5th Cavalry had carried the day back in 1876 in a scrap with the Cheyenne at War Bonnet Creek, Nebraska. Great-grandfather Herman Hagel used to resupply the old-time 5th Cavalry. Now son Tom served in the Vietnam-era version. Much like the mechanized 2-47th Infantry, 3-5th acted as a reaction force when things went haywire. The Tet Offensive surely qualified.

  To chase down and finish off troublesome pockets of VC infiltrators, the 3-5th “Bastard Cav” was on loan to the biggest separate armored organization in country, the powerful 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. PFC Tom Hagel went right out on operations near Bien Hoa Air Base. He took a minute to jot a note to his brother, courtesy of the army post office:

  Dear Chuckles,

  Well, by now I’m sure you’re wondering what the hell happened to me. I am in what amounts to a recon squad and securing force. When we move to the DMZ [demilitarized zone; the border with North Vietnam], I’ll really be busy. I’d just as soon be with the 2/47 as here. The CO [commanding officer] is a real prick. Well, take it easy and I don’t know when I’ll be seeing you next.41

  It’s unclear to which particular prick Tom Hagel referred, as he had a troop, squadron, and regimental commander, and one, two, or all t
hree certainly might have qualified for the epithet. In any event, as Tom warned Chuck, the squadron’s activities around Saigon soon wrapped up. On February 16, 1968, Tom’s Headquarters Troop scout platoon, Troop A and a platoon of Troop C left Blackhorse Camp en route to New Port, Saigon.42 The Bastard Cav was about to get a new daddy. They were headed north.

  GENERAL WILLIAM C. WESTMORELAND got his first whiff of the full import of Tet when he went to the courtyard of the U.S. embassy. Dead VC, shattered masonry, and expended cartridges lay here and there. Blood stained the walkways. Nineteen enemy sappers breached into the compound. But they never entered the chancery building. It was over after a few awful hours.

  Now came Westmoreland. Impeccably attired in his clean green jungle fatigues, four silver stars on his cap, upright and forceful, the MACV general inspected the site. A gaggle of cameramen and reporters trailed in his wake. Then, at about the same time on the morning of January 31 that 2-47th waded into Widows Village, Westmoreland turned to address the accompanying press.

  The commander summarized the embassy incursion, being careful to note that all the VC were dead and the chancery remained intact. “In summary, the enemy’s well-laid plans went afoul,” he stated. It was factual as far as it went.

  He continued: “The enemy very deceitfully has taken advantage of the Tet truce in order to create maximum consternation in South Vietnam, particularly in the populated areas.”43 You could say that, all right, with more than a hundred separate assaults throughout Vietnam. It took days to clear out the attackers in Saigon. It was the same in the Mekong Delta and the Central Highlands. Up north was even worse, which was why Tom Hagel and 3-5th Cavalry were headed that way. A marine regiment remained encircled at Khe Sanh. The fighting inside Hue city went on for weeks, with the Viet Cong flag flying over the old imperial citadel right to the end.

  Just in and around Saigon, the list went on and on: Bien Hoa Air Base, Tan Son Nhut Air Base, South Vietnam’s Independence Palace, the national radio station, several ARVN command posts, and even MACV headquarters. Westmoreland had to duck rockets whistling into his command post and then dodge bullets on the harrowing ride to the embassy. Hell, if MACV headquarters and the U.S. embassy weren’t safe, what was?

  Stalwart as ever on the trashed embassy lawn, Westmoreland emphasized his bottom line. “The enemy exposed himself and he suffered great casualties.”44 So there you had it. We killed them by the gross. Therefore, we won.

  As a victory announcement delivered over the background racket of gunfire and explosions around Saigon, it rang hollow, perhaps even delusional. The fact that the NVA and VC could pull off a massive surprise offensive, when supposedly beaten to their knees and on the verge of quitting, riveted attention back in America. North Vietnam might have taken horrendous losses, but they didn’t shy from more, and there was zero indication that Ho Chi Minh and his politburo might throw in the towel. Even as the opening round of Tet attacks died down, NVA and VC elements kept right on fighting. And young Americans kept right on dying. Crossover point be damned. If this was winning, a redefinition of goals seemed overdue.

  As television networks beamed back burning cities and crashed helicopters, and U.S. casualties mounted—the average American only tracked our side of the MACV ledger—a groundswell of shock and dismay rolled across America, the ammunition blast wave at Long Binh magnified to a continental scale. Pole-axed by the unsettling public reaction, generals and Johnson administration officials blamed the press. A good number of reporters certainly sexed it up and painted the canvas darkly. But in the United States, the press is a mirror, and despite the fonder hopes of some agenda-driven editors, only rarely a prism. Journalists reflect what we already know. As anchorman Walter Cronkite of CBS said, off the air for the moment: “What the hell is going on? I thought we were winning the war.”45 Uncle Walter, as he often did, spoke for Mr. and Mrs. America.

  Many military men, including Westmoreland, compared Tet to Adolf Hitler’s last-ditch Ardennes counteroffensive, a desperate attempt to win a lost war.46 Yet in December of 1944, no objective person could argue that the Allies were not winning, and decisively so. The great Battle of the Bulge caused a setback, not a reset. Even as German panzers tried one last lunge, you knew how that war would end up.

  Westmoreland believed that the Tet Offensive validated his attrition strategy. Driven by the bloodletting of 1965–67, the enemy came out of the shadows, stood up, and fought. And died. According to MACV counting, through February 11, the Tet Offensive cost the North’s forces 32,000 killed and 5,800 captured. American losses were 1,001 killed, and the oft-maligned ARVN lost 1,081. Hanoi’s general offensive went off on schedule, achieving a high degree of surprise. But to the astonishment of many, maybe even themselves, ARVN troops held. The popular general uprising fizzled completely. Pushed out front by NVA officers, Viet Cong guerrillas in particular bore the brunt of the beating. To Westmoreland, it smelled like a victory.47 Then and now, most military observers agreed.

  But war is more than trading shots with the other uniformed foe.

  In Vietnam and America in 1968, Tet cast into question all of the progress claimed to date. The numbers, always the numbers, the metrics of death, us versus them, trends and forecasts, ratios and percentages—they went on and on. The old NFL adage applied. Statistics are for losers. Getting stunned by a massive countrywide surprise offensive sure didn’t feel like victory. That other crossover point—U.S. public support for the war—was fast approaching. A half million Americans in uniform in Vietnam, Chuck and Tom Hagel among them, were about to find out what it meant to be on the losing side.

  CHAPTER 4

  The Butcher of the Delta

  LUDENDORFF: The English soldiers fight like lions!

  HOFFMAN: True. But don’t we know that they are lions led by donkeys.

  ALAN CLARK, The Donkeys1

  He knew what they called him. It rolled right off. In fact, he took pride in it. Asked about his reputation, he remarked that “there was a definite group that thought, as I mentioned, that I was Attila the Hun.” He went on: “This guy [himself] was a barbarian or something because I’d get out there and just kick hell out of these people—not our people, but the enemy.”2 Nobody, but nobody, killed Cong like Julian Johnson Ewell.

  Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, “Grant the Butcher,” locked in a blood-soaked embrace with the Army of Northern Virginia in 1864–65, recoiled from the sobriquet, and probably didn’t deserve it. Going against General Robert E. Lee and his tough, veteran Confederates pit strength on strength. Maneuvering didn’t work—Lee was always a step ahead, and just as determined. Only killing, slow and ugly, Abe Lincoln’s terrible arithmetic, sorted it out.3 Grant had been a butcher, but he never asked, nor sought, to be one.

  Field Marshal Douglas Haig, the “Butcher of the Somme,” mired in the sanguine trench struggle with the Imperial German Army in 1916–18, denied the title altogether, and he had done (and not done) just enough to earn it. On the Western Front, caught under the deadly hammering of Krupp artillery and Spandau machine guns, the British Expeditionary Force labored for years seeking a way out of the morass. Refining assault waves, tweaking barrage timetables, adding numbers—none of it availed. After enough slaughter, and some new weapons called tanks, the Germans slowly fell apart.4 Haig, too, had been a butcher, and he rationalized it to his last days.

  And Ewell? He sought the role, embraced it. He’d prepared his entire life to command a U.S. Army division in combat. He didn’t care what the troops or the news media or some swivel-chair whiz kid in Washington had to say. As Chuck and Tom Hagel and so many others soon found out, Ewell was all about killing Cong.

  You’d never mistake Ewell for Westmoreland. The latter looked like a general should, tall and bold, stalwart in mien and stature. For his part, Ewell reminded you of an insurance adjuster come to appraise your crumpled fender. He wore the black, horn-rimmed glasses —a tribute to Buddy Holly, and by 1968 about as out of date—issued by the thoro
ughly unfashionable army medical supply system. His head leaned forward a bit on a stalk of a neck. He was pasty faced, loose limbed, and somewhat awkward when he moved. His voice seemed a bit high pitched, especially when he got angry, as he often did. As one officer wrote of him: “He lacks command presence.”5 But he more than made up for it with brains and guts. Julian J. Ewell had both in spades.

  He also had a prominent martial name. In 1968, a few years after the centenary of the American Civil War, some observers noticed. Although he came from a military family, Julian J. Ewell never claimed any relationship to Confederate Lieutenant General Richard Stoddert Ewell, corps commander in Lee’s Army of North Virginia. That officer, “Old Bald Head,” didn’t look the part, either. The Civil War Ewell had his moments, but his men learned that he wasn’t a closer. In battle, most notably at the climactic clash at Gettysburg in 1863, Ewell played it safe. He held back.6 Not so Julian J. Ewell. He never hesitated—not once, not at all.

  Young Julian may not have claimed Old Bald Head, but he certainly was born into the army in 1915, two years before the United States joined the Great War. His father, Lieutenant Colonel George W. Ewell, taught military science at Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College (today Oklahoma State University) in Stillwater. His mother, Jamie Offutt Ewell of Kentucky, came from the same extended family as Jarvis J. Offutt, the World War I pilot who gave his life in France and his name to the Strategic Air Command’s headquarters base near Omaha, Nebraska.7 In addition, Julian and his parents lived in Panama, California, Pennsylvania, and Washington, DC, all courtesy of the U.S. Army. It all clearly influenced Julian’s choice of profession.