Our Year of War

by Daniel P. Bolger

  25. Major Robert A. Doughty, U.S. Army, The Leavenworth Papers Number 1: The Evolution of U.S. Army Tactical Doctrine, 1946–76 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, August 1979), 38–39. Doughty served as an adviser in Vietnam, later headed the Department of History at West Point, and completed his service as a brigadier general.

  26. Bergerud, Red Thunder, Tropic Lightning, 73.

  27. Patton was quoted in Doughty, The Leavenworth Papers Number 1: The Evolution of U.S. Army Tactical Doctrine, 1946–76, 36.

  28. Hunt, The 9th Infantry Division, 22; Ewell and Hunt, Sharpening the Combat Edge, 19–24.

  29. Bergerud, Red Thunder, Tropic Lightning, 40. Bergerud interviewed numerous 25th Infantry Division veterans. Lieutenant Richard Blanks described his schedule, which matched that found in the 9th Infantry Division before Ewell took command.

  30. Gittinger, Interview with Lieutenant General Julian J. Ewell, 24, 32.

  31. Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel.” Chuck Hagel noted that his unit was understrength and usually short on NCOs as well as riflemen. He saw no real change from the Ewell policies.

  32. Gittinger, Interview with Lieutenant General Julian J. Ewell, 13 ; Ewell and Hunt, Sharpening the Combat Edge, 83. The authors stated: “We then began to realize that the supermarket approach of large turnover with small unit profit paid off much more than the old neighborhood grocery approach of small turnover with a large markup.”

  33. Ewell and Hunt, Sharpening the Combat Edge, 16, 38–39.

  34. For helicopter combat contributions and increased aviation availability, see Ewell and Hunt, Sharpening the Combat Edge, 44–46, 56–57.

  35. For Ewell’s constant pressure quote, see Gittinger, Interview with Lieutenant General Julian J. Ewell, 24.

  36. Ewell and Hunt, Sharpening the Combat Edge, 38–39; Hunt, The 9th Infantry Division, 32–33; Agency for International Development, Economic and Engineering Study Grain Storage and Marketing System Vietnam, 25.

  37. Ewell and Hunt, Sharpening the Combat Edge, 186; Hunt, The 9th Infantry Division, 26.

  38. Gittinger, Interview with Lieutenant General Julian J. Ewell, 15; Ewell and Hunt, Sharpening the Combat Edge, 186.

  39. Both of these quotes can be found in Nick Turse, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (New York: Picador, 2013), 206–7. Turse argues that the entire American way of war in Vietnam constituted a war crime. Leaving aside his extreme claims, he drew on excellent sources, including previously unreleased official investigations. The 9th Infantry Division under Major General Julian J. Ewell comes in for particular criticism. For the casualty totals, see Ewell and Hunt, Sharpening the Combat Edge, 185. The 9th Infantry Division reported over three thousand enemy killed in February, March, and April of 1969, but never exceeded those numbers before or after that period. In April of 1969, the 9th alone, one of eight army divisions in country, accounted for one-third of all VC/NVA killed.

  40. Bunting, The Lionheads, 17.

  41. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, 240–41; Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, 431–32.

  42. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, 240–41; Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest, 793, 798; Davidson, Vietnam at War, 452; Sorley, Westmoreland, 191.

  43. Sorley, Westmoreland, 194.

  44. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, 240.

  45. Halberstam The Best and the Brightest, 794–95.

  46. MacPherson, Long Time Passing, 11; Bolger interview with Thomas L. Hagel.

  47. Bolger interview with Thomas L. Hagel; U.S., Fleet Marine Force Pacific, WestPac SitRep #1066 through #1071 (Camp H.M. Smith, Hawaii: Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, February 27 through March 3, 1968), 3–9. See also Jack Shulimson; Lieutenant Colonel Leonard A. Blasiol, USMC; Charles R. Smith; Captain David A. Dawson, USMC, U.S. Marines in Vietnam: The Defining Year, 1968 (Washington, DC: Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, History and Museums Division, 1997), 248. The marines later assessed a total of thirty-five enemy dead, although that exceeds the counts reflected in the contemporary records.

  48. Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel.”

  49. Bolger interview with Thomas L. Hagel; Berens, Chuck Hagel, 33.

  50. Richard B. Frank, Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle (New York: Penguin, 1990), 457–59, 489–90. The 1944 movie was The Fighting Sullivans. The destroyer USS The Sullivans (DD-537) served in both World War II and Korea. A new guided missile destroyer, USS The Sullivans (DDG-68), served in the global war on terrorism. The Sullivans were not the only family so affected. Another famous case involved Fritz, Bob, Preston, and Edward Niland of Tonawanda, New York. Wartime reporting convinced the authorities in Washington that all but Fritz had been killed in action, with both Bob and Preston killed in the 1944 Normandy invasion and Edward dead in Burma. Fritz was evacuated to the United States as the sole survivor. After the war, Edward emerged alive from a Japanese prison camp. The Niland family’s story became the basis for the 1998 movie Saving Private Ryan.

  51. U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Defense Instruction Number 1315.15: Special Separation Policies for Survivorship (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense, with Change 1 of June 1, 2012), 1–4.

  52. Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel.”

  53. MacPherson, Long Time Passing, 11; Berens, Chuck Hagel, 33.

  54. Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel”; Bolger interview with Charles T. Hagel; Bolger interview with Thomas L. Hagel. See also MacPherson, Long Time Passing, 11.

  55. Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel”; MacPherson, Long Time Passing, 11. For Chuck Hagel’s quote, see Patricia Sullivan, “A Vietnam War That Never Ends,” Washington Post, Post Mortem blog (August 5, 2009) at http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2009/08/vietnam_still_resonates_in_the.html, accessed June 11, 2016.

  56. Bolger interview with Thomas L. Hagel.

  57. Berens, Chuck Hagel, 34, 36. For Betty Hagel’s quotes, see MacPherson, Long Time Passing, 419.

  CHAPTER 5. BLAST

  1. James Jones, WWII (New York: Ballantine, 1975), 86. Author of the novels From Here to Eternity and The Thin Red Line, James Jones served as a rifleman in the 25th Infantry Division in World War II. He earned the Purple Heart when wounded during combat on Guadalcanal in January of 1943.

  2. U.S. Department of the Army, FM 7-15: Rifle Platoon and Squads, Infantry, Airborne, and Mechanized (Washington, DC: Headquarters, Department of the Army, April 1965), 4–6, 192–95. Although the U.S. Army in World War II used yards to mark distances, by Vietnam, most measurements were metric. Altitudes and elevations continued to be counted in feet. For consistency and reader understanding, measurements have been converted to standard units, with the exception of weapons (5.56mm, for example).

  3. Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel”; Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, 188.

  4. Eric Brandner, “Just as in Vietnam, Hagel Still Navigates the Road Less Traveled, On Patrol: The Magazine of the USO, Summer 2014, 30. For an example of a three-man point element, see Bergerud, Red Thunder, Tropic Lightning, 108.

  5. Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel.”

  6. Department of the Army, FM 7-15: Rifle Platoon and Squads, Infantry, Airborne, and Mechanized, 207; Bergerud, Red Thunder, Tropic Lightning, 108.

  7. Department of the Army, FM 7-15: Rifle Platoon and Squads, Infantry, Airborne, and Mechanized, 254–55.

  8. Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel.”

  9. U.S., Headquarters, 9th Infantry Division, Operational Report of 9th Infantry Division for Period Ending 30 April 1968 (Camp Martin Cox, Republic of Vietnam: Headquarters, 9th Infantry Division, May 12, 1968), 7. For casualties on February 28, 1968, see David L. Argabright, ed., 9th Infantry Division “The Old Reliables” Those who Gave Their Lives in Southeast Asia 1966–1970 (St. Charles, IL: 2nd Battalion, 60th Infantry Southeast Asia Vietnam Association, September 18, 2000), 6, 7, 9, 23, 36, 38, 43, 46. In addition to th
ose killed in the rocket attack, two others were killed in action elsewhere on February 28, 1968.

  10. 9th Infantry Division, Operational Report of 9th Infantry Division for Period Ending 30 April 1968, 29–30; Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel.”

  11. Casey, Dougan, Kennedy, and Stanton, The Army at War, 153, 155. For more on this event, see Ray Funderburk, “Mekong: Memoirs of Ray Funderburk, PIO [public information officer], 9th Infantry Division, 1967–68,” at www.mrfa.org/pdf/Funderburk.Memoirs.pdf, accessed June 14, 2016. The Hagel brothers recalled the incident in Brad Penner, producer, writer, reporter, “Interview with Charles Timothy Hagel and Thomas Leo Hagel, Part 14 of 21,” Nebraska Educational Television, August 15, 1999. Penner created a half-hour documentary from his many hours of file footage. Most of the interviews occurred on site in Vietnam as the brothers visited the locations of their key 1968 experiences. The raw video can be reviewed at http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/vhp/story/loc.natlib.afc2001001.88134/, accessed June 26, 2016. For the 25th Infantry Division’s base camp and the Cu Chi tunnels, see Bergerud, Red Thunder, Tropic Lightning, 29–33.

  12. Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel.”

  13. Rudyard Kipling, “Gunga Din,” in M. M. Kaye, ed., Rudyard Kipling: The Complete Verse (London: Kyle Cathie, 1990), 323.

  14. Bergerud, Red Thunder, Tropic Lightning, 24, 114.

  15. Department of the Army, FM 7-15: Rifle Platoon and Squads, Infantry, Airborne, and Mechanized, 207.

  16. Hagel, America: Our Next Chapter, 154–55.

  17. Bolger interview with Thomas L. Hagel. Specialist 5 Phillip Rogers held a rank no longer used in the contemporary U.S. Army. For those with responsibilities but not leadership authority, the army designated specialist ranks 4 through 7, and briefly even an 8 and 9 level. In World War II, these were known as technical ranks and marked by a “T” inside the soldier’s chevrons. Except for Specialist 4, all these designations were eliminated by 1985. Despite common usage, to include some official documents, the ranks were never formally titled as specialist fourth class, fifth class, and so on.

  18. Myra MacPherson, Long Time Passing, 8–9.

  19. Bergerud, Red Thunder, Tropic Lightning, 200.

  20. Ronald J. Glasser, 365 Days (New York: Bantam, 1971), 4–6. During the Vietnam War, Dr. Ronald Glasser served as a U.S. Army major at Camp Zama, Japan. In addition to his own experiences, Glasser collected accounts of those in country. See also Bergerud, Red Thunder, Tropic Lightning, 200–5; Doleman, Tools of War, 68, 70–71. For triage, see Peter Dorland and James Nanney, Dust Off: Army Aeromedical Evacuation in Vietnam (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2008), 5.

  21. Sam McGowan, “Herculean Ordnance,” Air Force, March 2016, 58–62. The M121 went into service in the spring of 1969. A year later, the 15,000-pound BLU-82 became available. It remained in use through the 2001 Afghanistan campaign. Since then, the BLU-82 has been replaced by the GPS-guided 21,600-pound GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB, “mother of all bombs”).

  22. Dorland and Nanney, Dust Off, 71–72; Hagel, America: Our Next Chapter, 155.

  23. MacPherson, Long Time Passing, 8; Penner, “Interview with Charles Timothy Hagel and Thomas Leo Hagel, Part 14 of 21.”

  24. Dorland and Nanney, Dust Off, 68–69.

  25. Stanton, Vietnam Order of Battle, 212, 214, 215, 217. Bear Cat did not have a full-fledged hospital, only a clearing (emergency treatment and stabilization) facility run by the 50th Medical Company and the 9th Medical Battalion. The 3rd Surgical Hospital was in Dong Tam in May of 1967, and would eventually support the bulk of the 9th Infantry Division by the second half of 1968.

  26. MacPherson, Long Time Passing, 9.

  27. Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel”; Bolger interview with Charles T. Hagel; Bolger interview with Thomas L. Hagel.

  28. Stanton, Vietnam Order of Battle, 53.

  29. Weigley, History of the United States Army, 533–35.

  30. Sorley, Thunderbolt, 184.

  31. Weigley, History of the United States Army, 533–35. See also Lewis Sorley, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam (Orlando, FL: Harvest Books, 1999), 288.

  32. Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel.”

  33. Sorley, A Better War, 288. In an extreme case, General Creighton Abrams found a rifle company in which only the captain, one platoon sergeant, and one squad leader had more than two years in the army.

  34. MacPherson, Long Time Passing, 11; Bolger interview with Thomas L. Hagel.

  35. Berens, Chuck Hagel, 32. For more on both brothers in Vietnam, see Charles P. Pierce, “‘Before This Is Over, You Might See Calls for His Impeachment,” Esquire, April 2007, 143.

  36. Bolger interview with Thomas L. Hagel.

  37. Brad Penner, producer, writer, reporter, “Interview with Charles Timothy Hagel and Thomas Leo Hagel, Part 15 of 21” (Lincoln, NE: Nebraska Educational Television, August 15, 1999) at http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/vhp/story/loc.natlib .afc2001001.88134/, accessed June 26, 2016.

  38. MacPherson, Long Time Passing, 9.

  39. Ewell and Hunt, Sharpening the Combat Edge, 65–66.

  40. Paddy Griffith, Forward into Battle: Fighting Tactics from Waterloo to Vietnam (Strettington, UK: Antony Bird Publications, 1981), 124–25.

  41. 9th Infantry Division, Operational Report of 9th Infantry Division for Period Ending 30 April 1968, 10, 38, 110.

  42. MacPherson, Long Time Passing, 19.

  43. Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel.”

  44. Ibid.

  45. Myra MacPherson, Long Time Passing, 18.

  46. Ibid, 19.

  47. Ibid, 19.

  48. Ibid., 9; Berens, Chuck Hagel, 35; Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel.”

  49. Jones, WWII, 88.

  50. Perry, “Interview with Senator Charles Hagel.” For the Stars and Stripes, see http://www.stripes.com/customer-service/about-us/about-stars-and-stripes -1.101084, accessed June 17, 2016.

  51. Associated Press, “Youth Slain as Wallace Visit Ignites Violence in Omaha,” Stars and Stripes, Pacific edition, March 7, 1968.

  CHAPTER 6. KILLSHOTS

  1. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “A Time to Break the Silence,” delivered at Riverside Church in Manhattan, New York, April 4, 1967, at http://www.ameican rhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm, accessed June 17, 2016. The original speech included this ellipsis. After the pause, King went on to say “… and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing ‘clergy and laymen concerned’ committees for the next generation.” King was assassinated exactly one year later in Memphis, Tennessee.

  2. George Wallace’s crew flew to Tinian aboard a new B-29 they named Sentimental Journey, after the hit tune by Les Brown and his Band of Renown. When the crew arrived, the 794th Bombardment Squadron took the new aircraft and reassigned the men to the older Li’l Yutz. See Robert W. Bushouse, “Ray Crew,” in B-29 Crews, 794th–795th Bombardment Squadrons, 468th Bombardment Group (Windsor Locks, CT: New England Air Museum, 2010), 1–2. Captain Jack Ray headed the eleven-man crew that included Wallace. Sergeant Robert Bushouse was the senior fire control NCO (the B-29’s chief gunner).

  3. Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 2000), 109, 137. See also Stephen Lesher, George Wallace, American Populist (Boston: Da Capo Press, 1995), 56–57.

  4. Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (New York: Scribner, 2008), 223–24.

  5. U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1970 Census, Volume I: Characteristics of the Population, Part 29: Nebraska (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, January 1973), 29–6, 29–13, 29–33, 29–40. For African American population numbers, see U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1970 Census of Population, Supplementary Reports, PC (S1), Negro and Total Population of the
United States: 1970 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, June 1971), Table 1.

  6. Adam Fletcher Sasse, “A History of the North Omaha Riots,” North Omaha History blog at http://northomaha.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-north-omaha-riots .html, accessed June 22, 2016.

  7. “Mob in Omaha Lynches Negro; Attempts to Hang Mayor Smith,” Omaha Morning World-Herald, September 29, 1919. Nebraska State Historical Society, We the People: The 1919 Riot at http://nebraskahistory.org/exhibits/we_the_ people/1919_riot.htm, accessed June 22, 2016.

  8. Gitlin, The Sixties, 146. Malcolm X (né Little) only lived very briefly in Omaha after his 1925 birth. The post-1919 situation wasn’t good for African Americans in the city. The Littles moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and then Lansing, Michigan.

  9. Jessica Fargen, “King’s Legacy Continues in Lincolnites’ Lives,” Daily Nebraskan, January 14, 1999, 1. Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta and earned his doctorate at Boston University.

  10. Paul J. Scheips, The Role of Federal Military Forces in Civil Disorders 1945–1992 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2005), 169. The 1965 Watts riot saw thirty-four killed and about a thousand injured, as well as 950 buildings looted and 200 burned or otherwise damaged.

  11. Perlstein, Nixonland, 103–4.

  12. Sasse, “A History of the North Omaha Riots.”

  13. Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York; Basic Books, 1999), 290. Mitrokhin defected from Russia in 1992, after the collapse of the USSR. For the KGB role with the Black Panthers, see Yuri V. Andropov, “#1128A, Committee for State Security to Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 28 April 1970” in Vladimir Bukovsky, Soviet Archives Collected by Vladimir Bukovsky, at https://matiane.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/soviet -archives-collected-by-vladimir-bukovsky/, accessed June 22, 2016. Andropov headed the KGB from 1967 until 1982. Bukovsky, a prominent Soviet dissident, was forcibly deported in 1976. He smuggled out a large number of government documents. For Soviet intelligence collection versus the Strategic Air Command, see Loch K. Johnson, ed., Strategic Intelligence: Understanding the Hidden Side of Government (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2007), 37. For the GRU role, see Viktor Suvorov, Spetsnaz: The Inside Story of the Soviet Special Forces (New York: W.W. Norton, 1987), 158–59. Suvorov is a pseudonym for Vladimir B. Rezun, a former GRU officer who defected in 1978.