They Marched Into Sunlight

by David Maraniss

  The administration’s campaign questioning the allegiances of protesters was now leaking its way into newspapers across the country. In Madison, editors at the State Journal were laying out their Page of Opinion for October 19, choosing the headline “Reds Publicize Peacenik March” for a piece by conservative columnist David Lawrence. His column, datelined Washington, quoted at length from a promotion of the antiwar rally in the latest issue of the U.S. Communist Party newspaper, The Worker. Detailed instructions were given in the party organ, Lawrence reported, “as to the exact time and location” participants could catch buses to Washington. There was even a local angle to the list, and hence Lawrence’s column, with the revelation that “In Madison, Wis., several campus and community groups have joined to charter buses for Washington.” Lawrence cited The Worker’s interest in the rally to make LBJ’s point. He charged that “there are influences at work in this country and abroad which are trying to break down the spirit of America’s armed forces and to mobilize public opinion, if possible, in the U.S. to bring about a withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam.”

  When the Cabinet adjourned, Johnson slipped out the White House’s southwest gate and rode up Pennsylvania Avenue to his old hangout on the Senate side of the Capitol where the luncheon host, Senator Allen Ellender, Democrat of Louisiana, was serving his signature dish, succulent shrimp and crab gumbo.

  THAT NIGHT, while antiwar students in Madison planned a class boycott and University of Wisconsin administrators huddled at Dean Kauffman’s house, trying to figure out how to respond to that day’s violent turn of events on campus, President Johnson reconvened his war council. The session this time was expanded to include—along with the regulars Rusk, McNamara, and Rostow—Associate Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, an old LBJ confidant who moonlighted as a presidential adviser; Undersecretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach, General Maxwell Taylor, and unofficial White House counselor Clark Clifford. There was one other special guest. It was not McGeorge Bundy, who had slipped LBJ a memo urging him to maintain his gradualist course and then retreated to New York, but Dr. Henry Kissinger, the Harvard professor and national security consultant who had been overseeing back channel negotiations with the North Vietnamese through two French scientists. Kissinger’s improvised effort revolved around a question that had dominated White House discussions about Vietnam all fall—when and whether to implement a bombing pause in an effort to bring Hanoi to the bargaining table.

  Secretary of State Rusk opened the meeting by hailing Kissinger. “I am sure I speak for all of us in expressing appreciation and admiration of Professor Kissinger,” Rusk said. “He handled a very delicate matter in a very professional manner. I think we may wish to begin this discussion with Professor Kissinger’s explanation of M and A.” (M and A were the initials and code names of the two Frenchmen: Herbert Marcovich and Raymond Aubrac.)

  The professor offered his hard assessment of the two men: “M is a biologist with very little political judgment. He is similar to many American scientists who are carrying placards. His primary motive is to bring the war in Vietnam to an end. A is probably a Communist. He is very aware politically. He has close relations with Ho. In 1946, Ho stayed at his home in Paris. I have little confidence in M’s judgment. I have greater confidence in A’s judgment.” However, Kissinger added, “if it served his purpose, A might color his report.”

  Since late August, with the Frenchmen as intermediaries and Kissinger overseeing them, the White House had exchanged three sets of messages with the North Vietnamese. As soon as the process began, the Americans decided not to bomb within a ten-mile circle of central Hanoi. This was regarded by the White House as a gesture of goodwill. There had been no reciprocal gesture by the North Vietnamese, Rusk said, and no indication that they would not take military advantage during an American bombing pause.

  Now he read aloud the key paragraph of the most recent message to Hanoi:

  The United States Government understands the position of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam to be as follows: That upon the cessation by the United States of all forms of bombardment of the DRV, the DRV would enter promptly into productive discussions with the United States. The purpose of these discussions would be to resolve the issues between the United States and the DRV. Assuming the correctness of this understanding of the position of the DRV, the United States Government is prepared, in accordance with its proposal of August 25, to transmit in advance to the DRV the precise date upon which bombardment of the DRV would cease and to suggest a date and a place for the commencement of discussions.

  The response from Hanoi seemed unpromising. Rusk read it to LBJ:

  At the present time the United States is continuing the escalation of the war in an extremely grave manner. In these conditions words of peace are only trickery. At a time when the United States continues the escalation we can neither receive Mr. Kissinger nor comment on the American views transmitted through this channel. The position of the Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam is perfectly clear. It is only when the United States has ceased without condition the bombardments that negotiations can take place.

  Nothing constructive had come from the exchange, Rusk concluded. The North Vietnamese said talks can start with a cessation of bombing, but not that they will start. And they were silent on the request not to press forward militarily in the South during a bombing pause. This indicated to Rusk that they were planning a “negotiate and fight” strategy.

  Kissinger said he detected “slight movement” in Hanoi’s position since the exchanges began. There were signs, he said, that the North Vietnamese wanted “to keep this going.”

  President Johnson listened to the debate for a few minutes before offering his opinion. “My judgment is that they are keeping this channel going just because we are not bombing Hanoi,” he said. “I know if they were bombing Washington, hitting my bridges and highways, I would be delighted to trade off discussions through an intermediary for a restriction on the bombing. It hasn’t cost him one bit. The net of it is that he has a sanctuary in Hanoi in return for having his consul talk with two scientists who talked with an American citizen.”

  Katzenbach disagreed with the president. A bombing pause made sense, he said. It would “bring together the ranks in this country and abroad.” He favored a pause beginning in mid-November or early December.

  “Just pause, period?” Johnson asked.

  “Yes,” Katzenbach answered. “I would say very loud and clear that we are ready. I would make clear through private channels that the assumption that they would not take advantage of the bombing still holds. If they attacked us along the DMZ, I would respond immediately. If they were to begin a major resupply, we should deal with that immediately.”

  Johnson turned to Defense Secretary McNamara. “Bob, how effective can you be in dealing out resupply?”

  McNamara, who had become a disbeliever when it came to bombing North Vietnam, used this opening to press his point again. “Mr. President, I believe I can show beyond a shadow of a doubt that bombing in Hanoi and Haiphong will not affect resupply in the South one bit.” If the North took military advantage of a pause, he added, “we should counter with military reciprocal action.”

  General Taylor now entered the debate. The former ambassador to South Vietnam and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had recently returned from a trip through South Vietnam and much of Asia with Clark Clifford. Fresh in everyone’s mind was the article Taylor had written for the previous Sunday’s New York Times Magazine in which he argued assuredly that the war was being won. “Any indication of weakness is viewed with contempt,” Taylor said now. It would be weak, he argued, to initiate a bombing pause without any signs of reciprocity from Hanoi. “If we have a pause, let Thieu request it,” he said, referring to the South Vietnamese president, who was to be inaugurated at the end of the month. “This would give us a better position and would not make it appear as another Washington proposal to Hanoi. We cannot afford to be
weak.”

  Clifford, in lawyerly fashion, parsed the message from Hanoi. “As I see it, there are five parts to their response,” he said. “One, they charge the U.S. with escalation. Two, they charge the U.S. with trickery. Three, they will not receive Mr. Kissinger. Four, the position of their government is clear. Five, it is only when bombing ceases that negotiations—or discussion—can take place.”

  To Clifford this seemed like old stuff. “We should say that we assume from the language you have used that you feel there is nothing to be gained from a continuation of this dialogue. If you have a different view, we would be glad to hear it,” he argued. The exchanges with the Frenchmen were probably not viewed by the North Vietnamese as anything more than a way to stay informed, he said. “I do not believe they will use this type of channel when they are serious about really doing something.” There was, then, “no basis for suspension or cessation” of the bombing, he concluded, agreeing with his traveling companion, Taylor. “I think it would be misinterpreted in Hanoi. It would be utilized to build up their supplies, just as they did during the four-day Tet holiday.” If there was to be a suspension of bombing, he said, it should not come until “after the formation and shake-down of the new government” in South Vietnam. In conclusion, Clifford said, he would recommend ending “Henry’s effort” and doing three simple things: “One, watch; two, wait; and three, see how the situation develops.”

  Abe Fortas agreed with Clifford. The unofficial channel should be closed, he said. “Professor Kissinger should say, ‘Thanks, it’s too bad. You know you could have gotten somewhere if you had really wanted to.’”

  The next time the president made a public statement about suspending bombing, Fortas argued, he should be prepared to stop bombing altogether, not merely pause. “The bombing pauses have intensified criticism in this country. I cannot see why they will not negotiate with the bombing but say they will talk without the bombing. This has always been incomprehensible to me.” In any case, given the circumstances, Fortas thought it “would be sad” if Johnson were to cease the bombing now.

  “I see no ray of hope out of this,” Justice Fortas said.

  Rostow, the national security adviser, had the last word. The enemy’s military situation in the South was weak, he declared. The major field of battle now was “no longer in the South [of Vietnam]…but in American politics.” The White House was slow to come to that realization he said, but it was obvious. “The question is, would a pause destroy our strength with the hawks and the doves? Domestic politics is the active front now.” A bombing pause, he argued, “would be no more than an exercise of domestic politics and international politics.” He recommended sending word back to Hanoi that they interpreted the last North Vietnamese message as “a dignified rejection” of the American proposal. But he also thought they should keep the Kissinger channel open. “After that, then we could see about a pause which would unite the country rather than divide it.”

  Johnson agreed with Rostow. The back channel discussions might be a failure to that point, but he saw no reason to stop them. He doubted that a pause would work, but he still held out hope.

  The president and his aides, with the world’s most sophisticated military hardware and intelligence gathering apparatus at their disposal, had no idea that another mass gathering scheduled for that weekend would have far more bearing on the course of the war than the peace demonstration in Washington. The Politburo in Hanoi was convening for five days of meetings at which back channel talks with a pair of French scientists over a possible bombing pause seemed inconsequential. The agenda was to “finalize the bold plan” for an all-out military attack against the cities of the South, what would become known as the Tet Mau Than event, or Tet Offensive. As the evening of October 18 drew to an end, LBJ and his men seemed to be stumbling through the fog of war and peace.

  Chapter 25

  Body Count

  ON THE MORNING OF October 19 Jim Shelton visited the 2/28 Black Lions officers quarters in Lai Khe. It had been only a few weeks since he had last lived and worked there as the battalion operations chief, but that posting, in a more literal way than he could have imagined, was many lifetimes ago. The surroundings were familiar but empty-feeling now, every mundane object transformed into a relic of the dead. As he looked around, a Vietnamese woman approached and pulled on his sleeve. Big Jim recognized her from the old days; she was the woman from Ben Cat who washed their laundry. She motioned for him to follow her into a quonset hut, where she showed him stack upon stack of folded clothes. This is all the dead guys, all their laundry. Those are Terry Allen’s pants and shirts, Shelton realized. He paid and tipped the laundry woman, then asked some enlisted men to take away the stacks of clean clothes and burn them.

  At Alpha Company’s camp nearby, Tom Grady, the highest-ranking company officer now that Captain George was in the hospital, began taking inventory of the personal effects of soldiers killed in the battle. It was an uncomfortable task, and in the rush to get it dispensed with, someone said they should just dump each dead man’s belongings into a box and ship them home. To Grady that seemed thoughtless. Check every item first, he said. He did not want incriminating items going back to the families. There could be letters to married men from girlfriends or pictures of the wrong woman. Life was always complicated, and it seemed more so for young soldiers. The families had enough heartache already, Grady said. There was no reason to make it worse. It was also Grady’s responsibility to write letters to the families, and for that he used the same cautious philosophy of benign censorship. He found no compelling reason, for instance, to tell grieving parents that their son had put an M-16 to his head and killed himself in the heat of battle. In death all the soldiers were heroes.

  On the other side of Lai Khe, up at the Delta Company base camp amid the rubber trees on the northeastern perimeter, a helicopter flew overhead at midmorning and hovered above the company street, a dirt road where Clark Welch and Bud Barrow once held formations. Big Rock and his trusty first sergeant were gone now, recovering from wounds at the hospital in Long Binh, and the new company commander, Captain Gerry Grosso, was just beginning to rebuild the devastated unit. Ray Albin, the plotter for the mortar platoon, looked up and noticed “this huge net hanging from” the helicopter. “And they dropped the net and the helicopter took off.” Albin and a few other soldiers walked over to see what was inside the net and were appalled by the sight. “It contained all the web gear and weapons of guys who had been killed and wounded,” Albin reported. “It was the most classless thing I had ever seen, to just plop that stuff down like that. We were still mourning. It couldn’t have been a worse place and a worse time. There it all lay—web gear, helmets, weapons, aid kits, radios—all with the scars of battle.”

  The pile was at once awful and mesmerizing, and curious Delta survivors combed through the mess. David Laub, the third platoon radioman who had made it out of the battle unscarred, rummaged through the strewn gear and found a roll of film stuffed into some web gear. The photos, when he later had them developed, were not combat shots but more the stuff of a tourist travelogue. Several showed a group of soldiers posing around a Vietnamese cart. Laub also picked up an M-16 that had the cleaning rod welded into the barrel. A broken weapon was no surprise to him or any of the men who combed through the debris. In accounts given to military historians, at least ten surviving riflemen claimed that their M-16s jammed and became worthless and two grenadiers said that their M-79s broke during the battle. Taking into account the dead men and others who were not interviewed, it is reasonable to assume that many more weapons malfunctioned.

  Coincidentally, only hours before Laub and his buddies examined the broken rifles in the battle pile, a House Armed Services subcommittee in Washington had released a scathing report accusing the army of “unbelievable” mismanagement of the M-16 rifle program. The M-16, which became the regular combat rifle for troops in Vietnam earlier that year after a long phase-in, was now a controversial symbol of a trouble
d war. When it replaced the M-14, the Colt-made M-16 was thought to be a superior weapon and the answer to the problems of fighting in the hot jungles of Southeast Asia. It was five inches shorter and nearly four pounds lighter than the M-14, was easier to hold, aim, and shoot, and could fire more rounds per minute when switched to fully automatic. As the rifle was originally designed, when it was known as the AR-15, it was considered reliable. But with its use in Vietnam came persistent newspaper articles and network television reports detailing instances where it jammed in combat. One NBC news account, in which the correspondent described several men throwing the M-16 away (as Black Lions did in the October 17 battle), drew the attention of congressional investigators. So did a letter that a soldier wrote home to his mother lamenting that several buddies had been killed when their rifles failed.

  The congressional subcommittee, chaired by Democrat Richard H. Ichord of Missouri, held hearings throughout the summer, visited two camps where the M-16 was tested, and traveled to Vietnam for ten days in July. At the start of the investigation Ichord defended the weapon, accepting the military’s argument that any problems were the fault of soldiers who did not properly clean their rifles. As the hearings progressed, Ichord changed his mind. The final report asserted that the M-16 had malfunctioned “seriously and excessively.” Most of the malfunctions involved jamming, and the jamming was caused primarily not by inept soldiers, although there were problems with training, but by a change in the gunpowder used in the rifle. The original IMR powder, recommended by the inventor of the M-16, Eugene Stoner, was clear burning and sent a minimal amount of residue down the gas-tube recoil system to the bolt. The replacement Ball powder created more residue but was considered easier to make and safer to manufacture because it was less combustible. The powder change, according to the congressional report, was done without adequate testing and reflected a decision for which the safety of soldiers was a secondary consideration. In fact most testing of the M-16 was done with the original powder, even though the army had already switched powders, a sloppiness that, in the words of the subcommittee, “borders on criminal negligence.”