Our Year of War

by Daniel P. Bolger

  In the aftermath of the July 3 action, at least one senior officer recommended Tom for the Silver Star, third in precedence among U.S. valor awards, to go with his third Purple Heart. He eventually received the Bronze Star with “V” (valor) device, the nation’s fourth most prestigious medal for bravery, which he certainly deserved.60 For that matter, Tom had more than met the criteria for the Silver Star. For what it was worth, both brothers also rated official commendation for their gutsy effort, although wounded, to lead the company out of the VC-infested jungle back on March 28, but that water had long ago passed under the orderly room bridge. Given the haphazard nature of awards procedures in Vietnam, even Tom’s Bronze Star for July 3 came as a welcome surprise.

  Infantry units in country were notoriously poor on paperwork. If rifle company leaders liked to fill out forms, they’d have gone into the Adjutant General’s Corps. As a result, relatively noncontentious matters, like Purple Hearts and Combat Infantryman Badges, went right through. But valor awards required a carefully worded, properly typed citation and supporting statements. Overworked officers and sergeants didn’t always get around to the write-ups. The company clerks had to peck it all out, along with administrative directives, promotion orders, personnel evaluations, supply forms, combat plans, periodic reports, and a thousand other demands of the official U.S. Army. Shooting war or not, the paper chase never let up. Maybe it could have worked out at Fort Bliss or Fort Ord. But at Bear Cat, let alone at forward firebases with a twelfth of the outfit changing out monthly? Forget it.

  As a result, all too many times, awards in MACV somehow struck the exact wrong note. As one 9th Infantry Division officer put it: “The awards system was an atrocity.” Not in the same league as cutting off a finger to get a ring, but the harsh accusation rang true enough. The officer went on: “It was used more as a morale builder and for other political reasons than to reward true valor in combat.”61 Overly ambitious officers and even some careerist sergeants wrote up their own narratives, citations, and even witness statements, which they pleaded with privates to sign. Draftees were overlooked, as few of those temporary troops cared all that much about such army formalities. But the junior soldiers knew what really went down in firefights. When the younger enlisted men saw the deserving ignored and the undeserving feted, it grated. Over time, the entire awards drill built resentment between draftee riflemen, including acting NCOs like the Hagels, and the lifers.

  The Bronze Star marked a critical day in Tom Hagel’s evolution as a soldier. On July 3, he killed a foe, a fellow human being, one on one. Even in a rifle company, and despite the high volume of gunfire traded in the claustrophobic jungles and villages of Vietnam, few men on either side dealt that brand of close-quarters death. Movies and television love to portray personal combat, especially hand-to-hand encounters, punching, wrestling, stabbing, and so forth. While quite exciting, such jarring events are also extraordinarily unusual. Most enemy troops in Vietnam died under the stand-off flensing of aerial bombardment, helicopter gun runs, and artillery barrages. Almost all of the rest fell to infantry machine gun engagements and rifle fire at midrange, often through heavy foliage. American riflemen aligned on motion, muzzle flashes, or spots of colored cloth near or far, but definitely not close enough to see a face. The average U.S. infantry soldier met his opponent in person only when the VC lay dead or stood mute in hang-dog captivity.62 When American troops saw slain enemies, lots of the riflemen had just squeezed their triggers. But who knew whose bullet did the final deed? That had been Chuck Hagel’s experience—plenty bad, certainly unnerving, but still allowing for the barest wisp of a distance, and so a thankful degree of impersonality.

  Yet after July 3, Tom Hagel had been denied that slim comfort. He saw the man he shot through the head. Certainly it had been him or Tom, shoot or die, the classic showdown. Tom Hagel did just what the drill sergeants taught him to do, that ultimate feat so often discussed and so rarely executed. When lesser men might have frozen and paid with their lives, and those of other Americans, Tom acted like a soldier.

  Still, he did it, he alone, eyeball to eyeball, and no rationalization would ever alter that stark fact. Moreover, scant hours earlier, Tom had stood a few steps away when a keyed-up lieutenant blew away an unarmed young female civilian. What a day—a twofer from hell. Now and again, always unbidden, never wholly forgotten, and never really forgiven, those extremely disturbing images came swimming up from the depths.63 A true psychopath or a person of limited intellect might have let it go. Tom Hagel could not. It changed him for the rest of his days.

  SPECIALIST 4 TOM HAGEL’S SAFE RETURN, even if a bit worse for the wear, calmed Chuck. At one point, the rumor mill at Bear Cat listed Tom as missing in action. Given the days it took to extract the waterlogged remains of those killed in the helicopter crash, not to mention the distance to Long An Province and Tom’s rather unusual role as a self-motivated supernumerary—and one with boundless tactical initiative—it took a few days to shake out. Chuck wisely chose not to pass any of that anxiety back to Nebraska.64

  From the modest home in Columbus came news from brother Mike. Eager to do his part like Chuck and Tom, Mike had notified the draft board he wanted to go, too. When he went for the medical screening, the doctors flunked him, 4F, medically unfit, due to a knee problem incurred while playing high school football. The result greatly frustrated Mike, who very much hoped to join his brothers in uniform, although even the most speeded-up timeline wouldn’t get him to Vietnam until well into 1969. For her part, Betty Hagel breathed a sigh of relief.65

  So did Tom. He had seen enough. In a letter to Mike, written not long after the searing events of July 3, Tom Hagel pulled no punches. “It is just that joining the Army at the time of the Vietnam crisis is rather foolish,” he wrote. “This war is completely immoral. We are losing more every day.” Tom added a postscript: “You don’t have to go into the Army to have my respect. To the day I die, I will be ashamed I fought in this war.”66

  Chuck wouldn’t agree, and Tom knew it. Ever the All-American big brother, Chuck nursed his own reservations. But he kept them to himself. In Vietnam, and back home in America, even in the crazy, awful year of 1968, Chuck retained his optimism. With two Purple Hearts already and many more patrols to come, the alternative was too grim to consider. Like any rifle platoon NCO hopeful to stay on his feet, Chuck saw the glass as half full.

  For his part, Tom wouldn’t say the glass was half empty. No, when you looked into the unblinking eyes of the dead—“river blindness” indeed—the body counts and the body bags, the upheaval at home with King, the riots, RFK, and all the rest, the level of the water ceased to mean anything. In the high summer of 1968, America’s glass sure as hell wasn’t half full, or even half empty. It was broken.

  CHAPTER 9

  Constant Pressure

  Every night when you’re sleepin’ Charlie Cong comes a’creepin’.

  TIM O’BRIEN

  If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home1

  The most pivotal battle in the summer of 1968 didn’t occur in the Mekong Delta, the Central Highlands, or the A Shau Valley. No, the big one happened on August 28, 1968, in Grant Park, in the city of Chicago. Not one U.S. citizen died. But because a bunch of enraged American police officers beat the hell out of a number of outraged American protestors, everybody lost. Repercussions rippled into the headquarters in Saigon, the politburo in Hanoi, and the glacial peace talks in Paris. Over time, slowly but surely, the fateful consequences made it all the way down to 2-47th Infantry, busy running roads and setting ambushes in the monsoon-soaked backcountry of Long An Province. The Johnson administration’s shell-shocked reaction to the January 1968 Tet Offensive ensured the United States would not win the war. One hot, bloody night in Chicago did much to chart the course to final American defeat.2

  In embattled Chicago, as nearly ten thousand unruly young dissidents milled in the streets, the fractious Democratic Party nominated their candidate for the 1968 election, V
ice President Hubert Horatio Humphrey (HHH) of Minnesota, a well-known liberal trapped in the giant shadow of LBJ. Johnson sneered that he had Hubert’s “pecker in my pocket.” So it appeared. Regardless of his strong personal misgivings, Humphrey accepted LBJ’s war policy right along with the Democratic Party’s bid for president.3 Johnson’s bankrupt Vietnam strategy hung around Humphrey’s neck like the rotting carcass of an albatross.

  Beaming HHH, the self-described “Happy Warrior,” gave his acceptance speech as shrewd dissidents goaded the police outside the Hilton Hotel. Like the North Vietnamese generals planning Tet and Mini-Tet, the chief Chicago activists were willing to trade their blood (well, a bit of it) for maximum psychological impact. Chanting “The whole world’s watching,” the peaceniks and a smattering (a very small one at that) of Black Panthers pelted the Chicago police officers with taunts, insults, profanities, and obscenities. Next came food, garbage, plastic bags of urine, and even feces. Sticks, rocks, bricks, and cement chunks followed.4 The police held their line, but the taut lawmen, many of them military veterans, chafed and leaned forward.

  No communist propagandist in Hanoi could have better arranged matters. Of course, they had nothing to do with it. This violent showdown sprang right from the broken heart of the American nation. Having endured enough gabbing, jabbing, and grabbing, Chicago’s men in blue went into action. Squads of helmeted police officers waded into the mob. Truncheons rose and fell. The crowd broke apart. Some supposed ringleaders ended up in paddy wagons. A lot of people on Michigan Avenue found their faces bloodied and their hands cuffed. Members of the news media felt the blows, too. Later, investigators reported 192 law officers hurt, 425 injured demonstrators, and 668 arrests. Tear gas drifted into the posh lobby of the Hilton.5

  The so-called police riot appalled and horrified average Americans. The country seemed to be coming unglued. Angry and self-righteous, Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley chose to meet the press. He strode to the podium like Westmoreland in the U.S. embassy courtyard after Tet. It turned out about as poorly. In a malapropism that said it all, Daley summarized: “The policeman isn’t there to create disorder; the policeman is there to preserve disorder.”6

  Beyond the debacle in Chicago, other candidates made their case. For the Republicans, Richard Nixon led the ticket. He’d come out of the gate running well, courtesy of a well-organized, traditional convention held in relatively sedate Miami, Florida. The “new Nixon” certainly surprised many, maybe even himself. To many Americans, the old Nixon, “Tricky Dick,” conjured up memories of shiftiness, Red-baiting, and defeats in the 1960 presidential contest and the 1962 California gubernatorial election. But for 1968, he did his homework, big time, as only he could. Character questions aside, nobody doubted Nixon’s brainpower or will. The reinvented Nixon put his finger directly on the twin, intertwined problems of the day: disorder at home and failure in Vietnam.7 By simply acknowledging both impressions—something Humphrey could hardly do without parroting the discredited LBJ or breaking with him in public, both unthinkable—Nixon had done enough. Solutions were left purposely vague.

  To deal with the campus uprisings and urban unrest, Nixon borrowed the phrase “law and order” from George Wallace. As his running mate, Nixon chose a tough figure from the April Baltimore riot, Governor Spiro Agnew of Maryland.8 And he left it undefined beyond that. Race wasn’t addressed, and by not saying much there, he said a lot. The implication came through. Forget Great Society handouts or reconciliation. Lower the boom on longhairs and arsonists, white, black, brown, whatever. Period.

  As for Vietnam, Nixon also played coy. Speaking to audiences, he emphasized the need for a new strategy. The doves heard withdrawal. The hawks heard victory. And all opposed to LBJ’s approach, a majority of Americans by mid-1968, understood that Nixon intended to proceed differently. When he talked in public, Nixon tapped his breast pocket, as if the Vietnam plan rested right there.9 Indeed it did. The pocket was empty.

  The third candidate for president left no doubts where he stood. George Wallace wanted to turn back the clock, before hippies, before urban insurrections, and before no-win conflicts in small third-world countries. Wallace didn’t bother with policy prescriptions. He threw out the red meat, telling free-loving, foul-mouthed youngsters he had two four-letter words for them: “work” and “soap.” “We need some meanness,” he thundered, and he wasn’t advocating material want. His downscale white audiences, urban ethnics and rural old stock, ate it up. Pollsters estimated that Wallace might earn 20 percent of the vote, carry up to ten states, and throw the election into the House of Representatives.10 Now that could sure bring on a constitutional crisis, and then… well, who knew? Race versus race. Class versus class. Young versus old. Doves versus hawks. The visceral hatred hung out there like a pallid specter, just past the fingertips. And nobody could make it go away.

  IN VIETNAM THOSE busy enough lost track of the social insanity back home. From glances at the Stars and Stripes and snatches of bulletins caught on Armed Forces Radio, both Hagel brothers knew things in the United States had gotten pretty bad. But after the horrendous spring rioting and the King and Kennedy assassinations, the rest amounted to more of the same, additional blows to an already punch-drunk national psyche. The street brawl in Chicago made far less of an impact in the ranks of 2-47th Infantry. Soldiers in country knew and they didn’t know. After all, the Hagels and the rest had their own concerns, not least among them staying alive.

  Still, news garnered some interest. In the months heading toward the November election back in America, Specialist 4 Chuck Hagel found time to wager a case of beer with First Sergeant Martin Garcia, tough, smart, and glib. From East Texas and “all the way with LBJ,” Garcia dismissed Nixon as “washed up” and “a has-been.” The regular army NCO went with Humphrey. Chuck bet that the Republican would win.11 Neither thought anything of George Wallace. The fiery Alabama populist didn’t have many followers among lifers or conscripts.

  WHILE THE STORM CLOUDS built up over Chicago in late July, the Hagels went to Honolulu, Hawaii. There the brothers enjoyed five days of rest and recreation. In theory, they should have already gotten a week off at the Vung Tau center in country. But combat operations took priority, and the trip didn’t happen.

  That said, the battalion’s leadership made sure soldiers went on their out of country R&R. As Chuck said, “Once you were on the manifest, you were there.” Although 2-47th stayed active, the two Hagels departed on schedule. Tom was still healing up from his shrapnel wounds suffered on July 3. But he felt good enough to board an airliner with his brother and go to Hawaii.12

  In Honolulu, the brothers met mother Betty, brothers Mike and Jim, and their five aunts, too. “They’d all told their husbands that America would not win the war unless they went to Hawaii and made sure that Chuck and Tom had the kind of support they needed,” Chuck joked.13 For five days, all present enjoyed the amenities of a beachfront hotel. They forgot about the war.

  At least they tried to do so. The aunts enjoyed Hawaii. The brothers, both the duo from Vietnam as well as Mike and Jim, soaked up the sun and luxuriated in the surf and sand in the lee of Diamondhead. But Betty noticed something. She kept it to herself—why ruin the vacation? But it gnawed at her.

  “I had five sisters,” she recalled, “and none of their sons were in.” Betty knew nobody else from Columbus whose sons deployed to Vietnam, other than the Enquists, whose son Arthur John paid the full freight as a scout sergeant in 2-47th Infantry. But what about the rest of the young men of Columbus, Nebraska? As far as Betty could tell, they didn’t go. She knew no other mothers with a son in combat, let alone two. This sure wasn’t World War II, all for one and one for all. This one came down to hooray for me and the hell with you. Those young men who avoided the draft might get some sidelong looks in Nebraska towns. But their mothers slept soundly every night. Betty told herself something she couldn’t yet tell her soldier sons: “I hated the war.”14

  The five days passed like summer l
ightning. Chuck and Tom put on their uniforms, said goodbye, and boarded the westbound jet. They’d be home in a few months. Fear not. Brave faces all round—but after the parting came the waterworks.

  The plane cabin on the ride back to Vietnam was as silent as the tomb.

  CHUCK AND TOM returned to find First Sergeant Garcia with orders in his hand. They had been supposed to go to the Reliable Academy for NCOs back in June. But then had come the split-base Bear Cat–Long An missions, followed by the jitterbug operations, the major July 3 firefights, and then R&R. The Hagels had been acting NCOs, and good ones, for months. The first sergeant wanted to promote them to real sergeants. But that required two weeks of training at division. Off they went.15

  The course mixed classroom lectures with practical exercises. “There wasn’t much they were going to teach us about jungle warfare,” Chuck commented. The division apparently agreed. Most of the course focused on the stuff the brothers and the other young combat veterans did not learn under fire: traditions of the service, key regulations, how to resolve personnel issues for subordinates, how the supply system functioned, and the “big picture” of the division’s structure and function in country. Said differently, the NCO academy taught the Hagels how the army should run.16 Practice in Vietnam sure deviated a lot from theory. And there was a message there, all right.

  The brothers later joked that they finished first and second in the course. They certainly performed well enough. Promotion, though, necessitated another step, and not an easy one. Within a week after returning, Chuck cleaned himself up and went before a board of senior NCOs headed by Sergeant Major James W. Beam, the august, forbidding long-term professional who served as the battalion commander’s strong right arm. After reporting to the board, Chuck froze completely. An acting NCO who faced down Charlie daily found his throat dried up as he looked at that lineup of craggy old senior sergeants. After being allowed to regroup, Chuck nailed it. He typically excelled at public speaking, going all the way back to Nebraska days. But not this time, a good reminder for a new sergeant about to go back out on patrol. Take nothing for granted.