Vietnam April 2021 by HistoryNet

Victor and Vanquished Enemy Pilots Become Friends

HOMEFRONT Three Dog Night No. 1 with ‘Joy to the World’

Walking Point A harrowing firsthand account

From Combat to Common Ground

The U.S. and Vietnam chart a new course in 1995

‘Spiritual Malaise’ Gen. Ridgway’s April 1971 blast at the U.S. Army

HISTORYNET.com APRIL 2021

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APRIL 2021

ON THE COVER An unidentified soldier is on patrol in high grass on Jan. 10, 1966. AP PHOTO; INSET: CHRIS WALTER/ WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES.

WALKING POINT WITH THE REDCATCHERS

An infantryman describes what it was like to be on patrol and at the “tip of the spear”—most likely to make first contact with the enemy. By Tom Brooks 2

VIETNAM

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6 Feedback Letters 8 Intel April Briefing 14 Reflections A Marine’s Sacrifice 18 Arsenal P-38 Can Opener

20 Homefront March-April 1971 21 Battlefront 50 Years Ago in the War 60 Media Digest Reviews 64 Hall of Valor Donald Skidgel

FROM ENEMIES TO FRIENDS

Dan Cherry and Nguyen Hong My fought each other in the air during the war. Years later, they met on the ground and became friends. By Jon Guttman

36 1971: THE ARMY’S YEAR OF ‘GRIEVOUS BLOWS’

Lt. William Calley’s conviction for My Lai murders was among the black marks on the Army that distressed retired Gen. Matthew Ridgway. By Bob Orkand

RECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES

In 1995, former foes reached agreement on a project that brought them closer together. By Charles H. Lutz

FROZEN FOREVER IN THEIR YOUTH

James Allen Logue’s 35 mm camera captured the daily routine of his Army unit. By Gary D. Ford A P R I L 2 0 21

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MICHAEL A. REINSTEIN CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER DAVID STEINHAFEL PUBLISHER ALEX NEILL EDITOR IN CHIEF

APRIL 2021 VOL. 33, NO. 6

CHUCK SPRINGSTON EDITOR ZITA BALLINGER FLETCHER SENIOR EDITOR JERRY MORELOCK SENIOR EDITOR JON GUTTMAN RESEARCH DIRECTOR DAVID T. ZABECKI EDITOR EMERITUS HARRY SUMMERS JR. FOUNDING EDITOR

CRITICAL GENERAL

Retired Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway, a veteran of World War II and Korea, was distressed by the malfeasance he saw in the ranks of the U.S. Army fighting the Vietnam War in April 1971, as recounted in this issue. To read more about Ridgway ,visit Historynet.com. Search: “Ridgway.” Through firsthand accounts and stunning photos, our website puts you in the field with the troops who fought in one of America’s most controversial wars.

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VIETNAM

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Rappelling practice was part of the 12-week training course for noncommissioned officer candidates at Fort Benning, Georgia. Because the relatively short training period put NCOs into the field faster, they were dubbed “Shake ‘n Bake” sergeants.

Forrest Gump: Psyops Chapter Regarding the obituary of Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump (December 2020): The obituary lists him as an officer with the 4th Infantry Division. Groom was actually with the 245th Psychological Operations Company, attached to the 4th. Because the enemy put a price on the head of anyone wearing the PSYOP insignia, the intel folks at the 4th advised him to exchange his PSYOP shoulder patch for the unit’s cloverleaf. The 245th PSYOP Company became the 8th PSYOP Battalion. I served with the unit in 1969. Groom described his experiences in the December 2013 issue of Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine [“Psyops: Weapons of Mass Instruction—A Vietnam memoir from the author of Forrest Gump”]. Bruce Beagley Scituate, Massachusetts

When it all began

I very much enjoyed your Shake ‘n Bake article in the December 2020 issue [about a fast-paced Army program to train sergeants for Vietnam]. I was in Company B, 1st Battalion. 5th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division. You covered our unit in an April 2018 article about Operation Pegasus [in April 1968]. Prior to that battle we had received a large group of badly needed replacements, including two Shake ‘n FEEDBACK Bake sergeant E-5s. [lowest sergeant level]. Our three rifle platoons were being led by draftee sergeant E-5s, no lifers, no officers at the platoon level. I was platoon leader for 2nd Platoon and was assigned one of the new sergeants. Until I read your article I had no idea of the training they went through. I believed then and do now that the on-the-job training we received was very important in preparing us to lead as low-level sergeants, with one glaring exception—map and compass. We had virtually no training in this area. In fact, when I took over the platoon I was given a map and no compass, which made things somewhat interesting when I led a patrol. For a short time, the Cav was sending troops to the rear for noncommissioned officer training, but by the time my fellow sergeants and myself were in need of that training we were too shorthanded and could not be spared. At any rate, I still have mixed feelings regarding that program and can see the value in it, but we had some damn good troops come through the ranks. Jim Dunnigan Portland, Oregon 6

Correction A caption in the article “Tet Water Battle” in the February 2021 issue misstated the number of fuel drums that a lifting device could pick up at once. The number was five, not six. The article “Going Rogue” in the December 2020 issue misstated the headquarters of the 265th Radio Research Company. It was Camp Eagle, not Phu Bai. Email your feedback on Vietnam magazine articles to Vietnam@HistoryNet.com, subject line: Feedback. Please include city and state of residence.

COURTESY CHARLES W. GALLON JR.

Training Recipes for Sergeants

Regarding the Controversial Question “When exactly did the war begin?” (October 2020): Erik Villard decided it began Nov. 1, 1955, the formation of Military Assistance Advisory Group-Vietnam, and ended May 15, 1975, the recapture of SS Mayaguez [seized by Cambodian communists]. Any date one selects is dependent on his/ her relationship to the war. Dr Villard, a historian, picks dates that have significant meaning. My relationship with the Vietnam War is extensive, including two tours as a combat adviser. Because of my service as an adviser, I deem the war began on April 30, 1945, when U.S. Army Lt. Col. Archimedes Patti, Office of Strategic Services Indochina Operations chief, met with Ho Chi Minh on the Vietnamese-China border. The first American killed was Army Lt. Col. Peter Dewey, OSS agent, on Sept. 26, 1945, in an ambush in Saigon. For me, the war terminated on April 30, 1975, when some of the last to leave Saigon had been U.S. advisers. Bob Worthington Las Cruces, New Mexico

VIETNAM

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A helicopter sprays Agent Orange over a rural area of South Vietnam in an undated photo. Millions of gallons of the toxic chemical were used during the war, and veterans today are suffering from myriad illnesses related to Agent Orange.

diate and long-term health effects. Exposure to Agent Orange has been linked to cancers, birth defects and many other serious medical conditions. The defense authorization act, more than 4,500 pages long, took almost a year to finalize. Passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate in early December 2020 with large bipartisan support, the legislation was vetoed by President Donald Trump on Dec. 23. The House of Representatives voted to override the veto on Dec. 28, and the Senate followed on Jan. 1. In addition to providing Agent Orangerelated benefits, the legislation authorizes $740.5 billion for national defense spending, with $635.5 billion allocated to the Pentagon and $26.6 billion to Energy Department nuclear weapons programs. Veterans exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War and diagnosed with any of the newly added conditions can contact the Office of Veterans Services about eligibility for compensation. —Zita Ballinger Fletcher

VIETNAM

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gent Orange benefits will now be available to Vietnam veterans suffering from three illnesses not previously eligible for the benefits. The National Defense Authorization Act, passed Jan. 1, 2021, gives “presumptive” benefits status to bladder cancer, hypothyroidism and Parkinson’s-like symptoms. Presumptive status means that veterans who served on the ground or in the waters of Vietnam do not have to provide documentation to prove they were exposed to Agent Orange. The Department of Veterans Affairs presumes that specified diseases among Vietnam vets are linked to Agent Orange because the poisonous herbicide was sprayed widely across South Vietnam to kill jungle vegetation that offered food and cover for communist forces. An estimated 83,000 Vietnam veterans suffer from the three conditions now eligible for Agent Orange benefits, according to Military Times. Most of them are already receiving other veterans benefits, but about 34,000 not currently getting full disability compensation will benefit directly from the new legislation, expected to cost about $8 billion over 10 years. During the Vietnam War, the U.S. used more than 20 million gallons of herbicides as defoliants from 1961 to 1971. Agent Orange was the most widely deployed chemical herbicide. By some estimates, about 13 million gallons were used in Vietnam alone. Also used in Laos, Cambodia and parts of Thailand around U.S. bases, Agent Orange contains the highly toxic dioxin TCDD, which produces imme-

CPA MEDIA PTE LTD/ALAMY

Defense Act Widens Agent Orange Benefits Eligibility

A CON T R OV ER SI A L QU EST ION

A SERIES EXAMINING CONTENTIOUS ISSUES OF THE VIETNAM WAR BY ERIK VILLARD ONE FREQUENTLY DEBATED QUESTION of the Vietnam War concerns North Vietnam’s motive for laying siege to the U.S. Marine Corps base at Khe Sanh in northwestern Quang Tri province just south of the Demilitarized Zone and about 10 miles from Laos. Actually, North Vietnam had several motives, some rarely discussed in the literature of the war. Hanoi had shortterm, medium-term and long-term reasons for besieging Khe Sanh, a conclusion drawn from both American sources and postwar Vietnamese histories. The short-term goal for the siege, which began Jan. 21, 1968, was to provide a diversion for the communists’ Tet Offensive, which would strike all across South Vietnam the night of Jan. 30-31. The North Vietnamese Army’s 304th and 325th divisions closed in around the Khe Sanh base in early January, ringing alarm bells through Washington. The base was defended by a mere two battalions from the 26th Marine Regiment. It was accessible only by air and not well-fortified. Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the top U.S. commander in Vietnam, ordered the 3rd Battalion from the 26th Marines and some supporting forces to Khe Sanh immediately. When the siege began, the ferocity of the rocket and mortar attacks deepened President Lyndon B. Johnson’s anxiety. Determined not to let the garrison fall like the French base at Dien Bien Phu had to a communist-led independence movement in 1954, Johnson ordered Westmoreland to take all necessary measures to protect Khe Sanh. The South Vietnamese rushed several airborne battalions to Quang Tri province—exactly what Hanoi wanted. Those airborne battalions were among the best units in the South Vietnam’s army and the most likely to thwart the coming communist attacks on Saigon and other big cities. The North Vietnamese never expected to overrun Khe Sanh, but they wanted to put on a convincing show. However, the siege prompted Westmoreland to move two brigades of the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) into Quang Tri and neighboring Thua Thien province. The 1st Cav units played decisive roles in de-

feating Tet attacks there. On balance, the Khe Sanh diversion backfired for the communists, tying down the better part of two North Vietnamese divisions in the critical first days of Tet. In its medium-term motive for the siege, Hanoi hoped to lure allied forces into western Quang Tri province, ambushing them as they pushed west on the rutted and partly washed-out Highway 9. This plan also turned out badly. When allied forces initiated Operation Pegasus on April 1, 1968, to lift the siege of Khe Sanh, the North Vietnamese were rotating units there and had only part of one division in place. Short on manpower, the North Vietnamese could do little to stop the airmobile 1st Cavalry Division from leapfrogging over their blocking positions and reopening Highway 9. North Vietnam’s long-term motive for eliminating Khe Sanh stemmed from its concern that the U.S. and South Vietnam might use the base as a staging area for a cross-border operation into Laos to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Those fears were well-founded. Westmoreland and his successor, Gen. Creighton Abrams, intended to launch such an operation in late 1968, but never received the authority to do so.

BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES

CPA MEDIA PTE LTD/ALAMY

What was the communists’ objective in laying siege to Khe Sanh in January 1968?

Dr. Erik Villard is a Vietnam War specialist at the U.S. Army Center of Military History at Fort McNair in Washington D.C.

Fires from a mortar attack on the Khe Sanh Marine base burn in the background as a C-130 transport plane brings supplies to the besieged post on March 1, 1968.

A P R I L 2 0 21

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THE PHOTO SHOWING THEIR TEETH

Newly arrived U.S. Air Force F-4E Phantom II aircraft line up at Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base on Nov. 17, 1968. They will serve in the 469th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 388th Tactical Fighter Wing.

Sizing Up North and South IN POPULATION AND AREA

SOURCES: CIA WORLD FACTBOOK; VIETNAM STUDIES, U.S. ARMY ENGINEERS 1965-1970, DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY, 1973; ANTHROPOMETRIC SURVEY OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM, ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY, OCTOBER 1964; UNITED NATIONS STATISTICS DIVISION; U.S. CENSUS BUREAU; EMBASSY OF THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM

NORTH VIETNAM

60,773

Hanoi

SQUARE MILES

New York City

15.9 million

POPULATION IN 1960

SOUTH VIETNAM

67,108

Da Nang

SQUARE MILES

14.6 million

POPULATION IN 1960

Vietnam is about 1,000 miles long from the northernmost to southernmost point, roughly the distance from New York to Miami

Miami

Saigon

TOP: U.S. AIR FORCE

North and South Vietnam, although dramatically different in their governments and economy, were almost identical in their physical size and population. In square miles, South Vietnam was slightly larger than Florida, the 22nd largest state. North Vietnam was slightly larger than Georgia, the 24th largest state. In a 1960 census, North and South both had populations roughly the same as California, the second-most populous state at the time. Today, the unified Vietnam is 127,881 square miles, slightly larger than New Mexico, the 5th largest state. Vietnam’s population in July 2020 was 97.3 million, according to a United Nations estimate, roughly 2½ times the estimated July 2020 population of California, now the most populous state.

VIETNAM

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Neil Sheehan, a Vietnam War correspondent famous for acquiring the Pentagon Papers for The New York Times, died Jan. 7, 2021, at age 84 in Washington from complications of Parkinson’s disease. Born Cornelius Mahoney Sheehan on Oct. 27, 1936, in Holyoke, Massachusetts, he grew up on a dairy farm owned by his Irish immigrant parents. After graduating from Harvard University in 1958, Sheehan joined the Army and served until 1962. He was hired by United Press International that year and sent to Vietnam. The 25-year-old correspondent became known for his hard-driving and detailed approach to reporting. He was hired by the Times in 1964 and continued to report on Vietnam until 1966. After four years in the war zone, Sheehan became disillusioned with the conflict. Former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked the classified Pentagon Papers to Sheehan in 1971. The 7,000-page dossier of U.S. government documents revealed the doubts and lies of government officials running the war in Vietnam. “The public had a right to those papers,” Sheehan said in a 1988 NPR broadcast. “The American public had paid for those papers with their lives of their sons and with the treasury of this country. And I had no qualms whatsoever.” Sheehan won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for his book A Bright Shining Lie, a history of the war recounted through the experiences of Army Lt. Col. John Paul Vann, killed in a helicopter crash in Vietnam in 1972. Angel Macias, a Vietnam veteran and original member of the Army’s Delta Force, died on Jan. 5, 2021, at age 80. He was a resident of Parkton, North Carolina. Macias, born in Torreón, Mexico, on Aug. 8, 1940, was raised in Texas and joined the U.S. Army at 19 in Corpus Christi. While serving in Vietnam, he was awarded decorations for bravery, including the Bronze Star. Delta Force is an elite Army unit specializing in counterterrorism, hostage rescue and other high-value, direct-action missions. It was founded in 1977 by Special Forces Col. Charles Beckwith and is formally known as 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta. Macias was a sniper on a Delta Force team flown to Iran in a C-130 transport plane during Operation Eagle Claw, an attempt to rescue American hostages in Tehran in 1980. He received a commendation from President Jimmy Carter. After retiring from Special Forces as a sergeant major, Macias worked in civil service as a security specialist and became known for his gardening skills. —Zita Ballinger Fletcher

“If you ask a man to lay down his life for his country, the least you can do is tell him that he has the right to win. …If we were officially at war, the anti-Viet Nam demonstrations and the act of burning draft cards would be treasonable. …It’s silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Viet Nam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home for Christmas.” —Ronald Reagan, Oct. 9, 1965, in remarks after a speech at California’s Coalinga College and at a press conference, The Fresno Bee, Oct. 10, 1965. Reagan had declared his candidacy for governor in the November 1966 election. 12

SHEEHAN: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES; MACIAS: ROGER MERCER/ THE FAYETTEVILLE OBSERVER; REAGAN: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES

WORDS FROM THE WAR

VIETNAM

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‘I’M GOING TO GET THAT GUN’ THE LAST WORDS OF MARINE’S GOOD FRIEND AND HERO By David Nelson A company of the 3rd Marine Division was patrolling in South Vietnam’s A Shau Valley on Feb. 22, 1969, when it was ambushed. A mortar round struck the command group, seriously wounding the platoon leader and others. A young first lieutenant, Lee Roy Herron, found himself in charge. Pfc. Terry Presgrove, hurt in the mortar blast, explained what happened next. “Lee came up to me shortly after the mortar REFLECTIONS had hit in our midst. I was lying on my back on top of another wounded Marine.” Screaming above the roar of the firefight, “Lee knelt down and asked me where my battle dressing was, seeing that I was bleeding.” The two men exchanged a few words. Then, Presgrove recounted, Herron “used the only four-letter word I ever heard him say: ‘Damn.’ He was visibly upset by the carnage but had that look of determination and firm resolve to do his duty. Our eyes met, communicating without speaking the knowledge that we were in a serious jam. He patted me on the head and quickly moved off toward the dug-in enemy.” I met Herron in seventh grade at Matthews Junior High School in 14

Lubbock, Texas, in 1957. We soon became best friends. By fall 1962, we knew we would have to register for the draft. The U.S.-backed April 1961 invasion of Fidel Castro’s Cuba by Cuban exiles had turned into the Bay of Pigs disaster, and the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis raised fears of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Herron and I began college life in 1963 at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. He was a government major. I took pre-law courses. Herron went into a Marine officer program, the Platoon Leaders Class, in 1964. On his advice I joined him in the Marines on Oct. 21, 1965. On June 13, 1966, Herron and I flew to Washington, D.C., on our way to nearby Marine Corps Base Quantico, where officer training is conducted. Gung-ho, Herron finished first in his class. I was satisfied with just completing the tough training course and graduating. I was accepted into a Marine Corps law program and preferred to do my military service as a member of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, a JAG officer. Herron was determined to be an infantry officer. We parted ways. Newly married, I began law school at Southern Methodist University. He headed for Vietnam. Herron left Quantico for Monterey, California,

U.S. MARINE CORPS/ PFC. C. E. SICKLER JR.

Navy chaplain Capt. Salvatore Rubino conducts a prayer service at Fire Support Base Razor in the A Shau Valley on Jan. 26, 1969. David Nelson’s friend, Marine 1st Lt. Lee Roy Herron, is in the right corner, wearing glasses and holding a small Bible.

VIETNAM

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COURTESY HERRON FAMILY

and the Defense Language Institute. He called from there with exciting on the machine gun positions. His last words to news: “Guess what, David? Danelle Davis and I are getting married. You his radio operator were ‘I am going to get that gun’ remember her, don’t you? Can you come to our wedding May 4 in Lub- and with that he jumped up firing and throwing bock?” I had to tell him I could not. I would be in the middle of law school hand grenades until he did knock out the gun pofinal exams. Missing Herron’s wedding remains one of my deepest regrets. sition.” A supporting enemy machine gun hit Herron excelled at the language school and was offered the opportunity Herron high in the chest and he died instantly. “Lee loved you very much,” Fox conto serve in Washington, D.C., as a Viettinued, “as he spoke of you often and alnamese language translator. Of course, ways had your picture handy. He loved he refused that opportunity so he could God and his country and for these three go to Vietnam. He arrived there Dec. 30, things he died. He died a Marine hero 1968. Herron was a first lieutenant asand he has been put in for our country’s signed to Headquarters and Service highest medal, the Medal of Honor. I Company, 3rd Marine Division, at the know this will not ease your loss in the Vandegrift Combat Base in northern least but you can expect to be called on to South Vietnam. He asked for transfer receive this for Lee.” to the front lines and was sent to Alpha I heard Fox speak about the battle on Company, 1st Battalion, 9th Marine Aug. 2, 1997, when he was a retired coloRegiment, 3rd Marine Division. nel addressing the Texas Association of Even in Vietnam, Herron mainFormer Marines. He said there was a heavy tained his strong faith in God’s purmist and cloud cover when Herron ran topose and destiny for him. His sister ward a machine gun bunker to destroy it, Jane sent me a photograph that but after he succeeded and went after the showed him attending a church serfinal bunker, the mist and cloud cover sudvice at a base other than the one to denly lifted. In the sunlight, Herron was which he was assigned. Herron had clearly visible to the enemy in the bunker hitched a ride with a resupply helicopter just to Marine Lee Roy Herron wrote and was killed by machine gun fire. Fox, attend the service. to a high school friend, “I’m taking advantage of the clear skies, called in The chaplain in the photograph, retired Navy ‘used to’ fire fights by now. It’s amazing how one adapts air support to destroy that last bunker. Capt. Salvatore Rubino, eloquently described the to this madness.” Herron’s mother, Lorea, expressed no bitservice. “There was the utter desolation and destruction all around,” he said. “There was the noise. Often, even during the terness. “He died doing what he always wanted to worship services fire power was called in and guns would roar. …Just before do—defend his country,” she hold me. He had I served communion, a helicopter approached to deliver ammunition. The prepared her for that eventuality in a “just in case” wind generated by the rotor was so strong that I had to cover the chalice letter written to his parents in November 1968, with my hands to keep it from flying away. I was even afraid that the altar, the month before he shipped out to Vietnam. He made up of five C-ration boxes and four ammo boxes, would bite the dust.” left the letter with Lance in Lubbock. “When you read this I’ll be dead or missing in Herron described his combat experience in a Feb. 18, 1969, letter to Charles Lance, a close friend of ours in high school and college: “I’m ‘used action,” Herron began. “This letter is my way of to’ fire fights by now. It’s amazing how one adapts to this ‘madness’ – the saying goodbye and is a final thank you for being blood, etc. doesn’t bother me at all. Generally speaking, we’re kicking hell such wonderful parents. …Please believe me out of NVA. Regiment has broken their code, and we know that they are when I say that I have no regrets. I was given the really hurting. Between a regiment of Marines, AIR, and arty – they can best parents that a child could have. I was taught either fight and die or retreat. So far they have been fighting. Our body to love God and our country, and since it was God’s will that I die young, I’m proud to die as a count keeps mounting.” During the Feb. 22, 1969, battle when Alpha Company was ambushed, Marine defending America.” V Herron saved the lives of numerous Marines before being killed. He was awarded the Navy Cross, the second-highest valor award for Marines. David Nelson spent three years on active duty and The company commander, 1st Lt. Wesley Fox, who received the Medal of achieved the rank of captain. After his service, he Honor for his own actions that day, described Herron’s death to Danelle in was a tax partner with Ernst & Young and later a March 12, 1969, letter: “I am sorry that this is so late. The reason is Alpha vice president of Houston Endowment, a private company is still in the bush and operating on the Laotian border close to foundation. He lives in Houston. where Lee died. On 22 February our company was on patrol and moved into the attack on a known North Vietnamese position. They were in bunDo you have reflections on the war kers and had a good machine gun defense. My command group was hit by you would like to share? a mortar round which also wounded the 2nd Platoon leader. Email your idea or article to Vietnam@historynet.com, “Lee took command of the 2nd Rifle Platoon and led them in the attack subject line: Reflections VIETNAM

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Easy carry

A key chain or dog tags’ chain could easily pass through the hole.

Food fulcrum

The notch gripped the can lid so the blade would cut through.

Strong spine

A forged rib gave the P-38 strength.

Lid cutter

Blade unfolded to cut through the can lid.

THE P-38 ‘JOHN WAYNE’ CAN OPENER By Carl O. Schuster

Designation: Opener, Can, Hand, Folding Type I Length: 1½ in. Weight: Under 2 oz. Material: Aluminum sheet metal Distribution: In every case of C rations

GREGORY PROCH

On Jan. 21, 1968, the Marines of Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment, successfully defended Hill 861 protecting Khe Sanh against an assault by two battalions of the North Vietnamese Army. As the shock of combat wore off, some Marines used their “John Wayne” can openers on Cration cans to grab a quick meal. The P-38 can opener was one of the troops’ most important pieces of field gear in Vietnam. The can opener was included with every case of C rations. The P-38, first used on a large scale with the widespread distribution of C-ration cans during World War II, consisted of a short, notched sheet-metal handle with a small hinged blade that rotated to pierce the can lid. The C ration’s World War II colleague, the K ration, used a “key” ARSENAL opener. Simple and easy to use, the P-38 had a handle that was designed with a hole in it so the device could be lowered into boiling water for cleaning. However, most of the troops used the hole to hang the can opener from their dog tags or key chains. To open a can, one unfolded the P-38 blade, hooked the notch on the can lid and “walked” the opener around until the lid could be lifted or removed. The handle can also serve as an ad hoc flathead screwdriver. Other uses for the P-38 included cleaning mud and debris from boots, sharpening pencils, trimming threads from uniforms and stripping wires. The origins of the P-38 designation are unclear. There are three plausible theories: The P-38 is about 38 mm long; it could open a can faster than the P-38 fighter can fly; or 38 “punctures” were needed to open a C-ration can with it. Navy and Marine Corps personnel dubbed it the “John Wayne” in the belief that the actor did a training film to demonstrate its use, but the film has yet to surface. More than 12 million were produced by 1970. Variations have been adopted by several nations, and the trusty P-38 remains in production worldwide today. V VIETNAM

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March 8 Undefeated heavyweight champ Joe Frazier and undefeated Muhammad Ali, stripped of his title in 1967 for refusing the draft, meet in New York’s Madison Square Garden after Ali’s boxing license is reinstated. In the “fight of the century,” viewed by 300 million worldwide, Frazier defeats Ali in a unanimous 15-round decision. March 12 Theaters begin showing The Andromeda Strain, based on Michael Crichton’s 1969 novel about scientists trying to contain a deadly extraterrestrial organism. The book and movie are credited with launching the techno-thriller—a suspenseful plot with a big role for technology.

April 1 The first Starbucks opens in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. That Starbucks was just a store where people could buy roasted and wholebean coffee to brew at home. In 1984 Starbucks introduced an espresso bar at one of its Seattle stores and served its first Caffe Latte.

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April 15 Patton, a blustery portrayal of World War II Gen. George S. Patton, wins Oscars for best picture, best actor (George C. Scott) and best director (Franklin J. Schaffner). Glenda Jackson was best actress for her role in Women in Love, a British drama about romantic relationships.

HOMEFRONT

MARCH-APRIL

1971

April 17 Three Dog Night tops the pop charts with “Joy to the World,” written by country musician Hoyt Axton, and stays there six weeks to become the year’s No. 1 song. The lyrics, beginning with “Jeremiah was a bullfrog,” often don’t make sense— but were never intended to.

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March 25 Operation Lam Son 719, launched Feb. 8 as the South Vietnamese moved into Laos to strike North Vietnamese Army bases, ends in a rout of the Army of BATTLEFRONT the Republic of Vietnam. ARVN casualties totaled more than 7,000, nearly half the fighting force. The NVA lost at least 8,000. U.S forces, providing only air and artillery support, saw more than 100 helicopters destroyed, while suffering 1,400 casualties, including 253 killed or missing.

April 22 During an April 19-23 protest in Washington by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, former Navy Lt. John Kerry addresses the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” April 30 The Doobie Brothers, formed in San Jose, California, in 1970 and named after slang for marijuana, release their self-titled debut album, a blend of rock, country and blues. The band (not of actual brothers) became noted for its vocal harmonies. April 30 The Milwaukee Bucks, led by high-scoring center Lew Alcindor, beat the Baltimore Bullets 118-106, sweeping the NBA championship series in four games. The next day Alcindor, the series MVP, announced he converted to Islam and changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

March 28 About 50 Viet Cong attack Firebase Mary Ann in northern South Vietnam, manned by 231 soldiers in the 23rd Infantry Division (Americal) and 21 ARVN artillerymen. The Americans lost 30 killed and about 80 wounded. At least 15 Viet Cong were killed. Division, brigade and battalion commanders received reprimands for the lax defenses in what is considered the last major assault on U.S. forces. March 29 Concluding a court-martial that began Nov. 17, 1st Lt. William Calley of the Americal Division is convicted of murdering 22 Vietnamese civilians during the My Lai Massacre. On March 31, he was sentenced to life in prison. On April 1, President Richard Nixon transferred him to house arrest, where he remained during appeals. March 31 Army 1st Lt. Brian M. Thacker, A Battery, 1st Battalion, 92nd Field Artillery Regiment, covers the withdrawal of his small observer team and two ARVN units as Firebase 6 in the Central Highlands falls to an overwhelming NVA force. Already wounded, Thacker calls in artillery fire on his own position, then evades capture until the firebase is retaken eight days later. He was awarded the Medal of Honor. April 7 Nixon announces the withdrawal of 100,000 troops (of the 284,000 remaining) by Dec. 1. MARCH 8:. BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES; MARCH 12: LMPC VIA GETTY IMAGES; APRIL 1: SIMON CRUMPTON/ALAMY; APRIL 15: PHOTO BY 20TH CENTURY-FOX/ GETTY IMAGES; APRIL 17: CHRIS WALTER/WIREIMAGE; APRIL 22: BETTMANN/ GETTY IMAGES; APRIL 30: GUY ACETO COLLECTION; APRIL 30: WALTER IOOSS JR./SPORTS ILLUSTRATED VIA GETTY IMAGES

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PHOTO CREDITS

Soldiers of the 14th Infantry Division cautiously move through the tall grass on a patrol in 1965. Likely out in front of these troops is a point man, on the watch for enemy soldiers preparing an ambush and booby traps planted in their path.

WALKING POINT WITH THE REDCATCHERS A NEWBIE’S FIRST DAY IN THE MOST DANGEROUS PLACE ON A PATROL

PHOTO CREDITS

By Tom Brooks

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TAY NINH LONG BINH

SAIGON

Ambushed

DMZ

SO UTH V IETNA M Saigon

April 24, 1968 Near Tay Ninh

Company D, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, 199th Infantry Brigade, based at Long Binh, was beginning a three-day sweep searching for a North Vietnamese base camp along the Cambodian border near Tay Ninh when it was ambushed. Nine members of the company were killed.

had now been with my unit about 24 hours. We finished chow, made last-minute preparations and waited for dusk. At dusk two squads totaling 13 men headed out on the ambush. Bill had me walk in front of him. We set up an oval shaped ambush next to a trail with everyone facing outward so everyone’s back was covered, what’s known as an “all-round defense.” We laid out our Claymore mines, which are remotely detonated and shoot out steel pellets when they explode. We then got into position behind some cover.

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SOU T H VI E T NA M

breaking in new arrivals we would be “walking point”—out in front of everyone else in the unit. The point man is the eyes and ears of the patrol. He is the tip of the spear. We had heard horror stories of a point man tripping a delayed booby trap and getting a couple of guys behind him killed or missing the signs of an ambush and walking into it. Point duty weighed on everyone’s mind. On April 22, about 3 p.m., we new guys in the 199th Infantry Brigade were assigned our battalion and company. I went to Company D of the 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment. We were going to leave the main base at Long Binh on resupply choppers and fly to a fire support base somewhere on the Cambodian border near Tay Ninh. There were six of us on a Huey helicopter, and I’m sure all of us had that queasy “butterfly” feeling. To avoid small-arms fire, we flew at about 1,500 feet. Looking down, all I could see was green jungle with few open spots and the occasional reflection of a small river. After about 30 minutes, I spotted a round brown spot. We started circling and losing altitude. I could see artillery pieces, bunkers and a few people moving below. We landed, stirring up a cloud of dust. The platoon leaders and squad leaders of Company D welcomed us, introduced themselves and distributed us among the units that needed replacements. I got 3rd Platoon, 3rd Squad. Another new guy also went to 3rd Squad. The squad leader, Spc. 4 Manton (I don’t recall his full name), assigned a more experienced soldier to stay with the new guys to show us the ropes. My mentor was Pfc. Bill Trobledger from New Jersey. Bill’s first remark to me was: “I’ve only been here two weeks so I’m not quite sure why I got the job. I’m just learning what’s going on myself.” Even with two replacements assigned to 3rd Squad we were still an undermanned squad of six. The squad should have had nine—the squad leader and two fire teams of four men. After a meal of C rations, we set up guard duty. Two men kept watch for an hour. Then we got two hours of sleep while the next two shifts were on. This would last until dawn. The muggy morning soon became hot as the sun rose high enough to shine through the jungle. We spent the day cleaning weapons and preparing our gear for a night ambush and a three-day sweep that would start the next day, April 24. About 4 p.m. a chopper flew in mail and chow. Men from the company mess section in the rear brought out mermite (insulated) containers with a hot evening meal. I could tell they didn’t like being in our area. They kept eyeing the jungle around them. A guy wearing new fatigues and shined boots had gotten off the chopper and was in line in front of me. I introduced myself, and he said everyone called him Tex. He had been with the 199th for nine months and was just coming back from an R&R break. Tex had been approved for a trip to Hawaii, but after landing there he boarded another plane and flew to his home in Texas. He only had about 48 hours with his family, but there was a party for him, and he saw a lot of friends and relatives. Tex told me, “I’m glad I went. In this place you never know what’s going to happen.”

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n April 1968, after arriving in Vietnam as a 22-year-old private first class from Dover, Delaware, and being processed through the 90th Replacement Battalion, I reported to my permanent unit, the 199th Infantry Brigade, nicknamed “The Redcatchers” because it was activated in 1966 to destroy the communists in South Vietnam. The new arrivals went through a week called “Redcatcher Training,” conducted at the 199th Infantry Brigade main base at Long Binh, about 20 miles northeast of Saigon. During that week we fired the M16 rifle, M79 grenade launcher, M60 machine gun and M72 light anti-tank weapon, or LAW, a rocket launcher. We had to become proficient with every weapon our platoon would carry. We had done all these things during advanced infantry training in the States, but some of us needed a refresher since it had been a few months. The evening after our last day of training we sat around talking about what it would be like out in the bush. We knew at some time during the process for

COURTESY TOM BROOKS

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We were to be 50 percent awake, meaning Two days after the there were two men to a position, one spending April 24, 1968, battle, the author, at left, with an hour sleeping and the other an hour at watch. platoon members (from Then we switched. Bill said he would take first left) Spc. 4 Al Dunn, James Proctor, watch. I remember lying back with one hand on Pfc. Spc. 4 Alan Fugit. In my M16 and wondering how anyone could sleep January 1969, Brooks, in this place when the North Vietnamese Army left, then a sergeant, with Sgt. Clyde Wyatt, or Viet Cong might be walking into our position. also at the April 24 I looked up through the trees and caught a battle. glimpse of the moon once in a while. The next thing I knew a hand was shaking me. I bolted upright with my rifle in hand and whispered, “What’s happening?” Bill said I had started to snore. He warned me to be perfectly quiet. I think that’s the last time that year I ever snored. So much for being able to sleep! At dawn after a second uneventful night, we headed back to our fire support base. When we arrived, guys were already packing everything and rolling up the barbed wire. We were moving. Most of the company, including my platoon, was headed on the three-day sweep trying to find an NVA base camp reported by intel to be in the area. Everything happened quickly. CH54 Tarhe cargo helicopters, nicknamed Skycranes, picked up the artillery pieces, and Hueys were being loaded with equipment. Drums of fuel were opened and dumped on the ground rather than being hauled out. At midmorning Company D moved on foot in the opposite direction from where it had patrolled on a previous three-day sweep. We were heading into territory we hadn’t covered before. It was still dry season and hot as hell. Everyone was soaked with sweat after 15 minutes. The 1st Platoon had point. There was no trail. At times the point man had to use a machete to hack out a path. Once the machete sliced right through a big wasp nest. The point man threw down his weapon and swatted the wasps, which made them angrier and brought on more. Someone tried to help him but got swarmed too. Soon men were running everywhere. I had always heard that if you stay still and keep from swatting them, wasps won’t come after you. I backed up against a tree and popped a smoke grenade, as did a couple of other guys. We were not stung. However, the point man sustained so many stings that he passed out and had to be carried on a stretcher until we reached an open

area suitable for a medevac helicopter to land. Afterward 2nd Platoon took over. The walk got easier as the jungle thinned out somewhat. We were able to cover more ground. Although I did not know it at the time, the company commander was expected to cover a certain amount of ground each day. The amount was designated by some higher-up sitting behind a desk in an air-conditioned office in the rear. We stopped for a break sometime after noon. By then, everyone was drinking out of his second canteen and opening C rations.

hen we got moving again, it was 3rd Platoon’s turn to go on point duty. That day we new guys were getting broken in, and we knew everyone was watching. Shortly after we reached a well-worn trail, it was my turn to walk point. I was a little apprehensive to say the least. I thought I might come face to face with the bad guys around the next bend and knew I had to look out for booby traps. I was thinking: “If I screw this up, I could get someone else killed.” Although I remembered my training, this was the real thing. The mental concentration required while walking point, especially in the jungle, is intense. I had hardly been on point 15 minutes when I came to a bend in the trail and stopped. I put my hand up to signal the men behind me to halt. I then stepped off the trail to the left, and 1st Lt. Harvey Hutchinson came forward with his radio operator. I didn’t need to tell him why I had stopped. Just past the bend was a lean-to covered with a canvas roof. In front of the structure was a fire with a cooking pot over it. The lieutenant F E B R U A R Y 2 0 21

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move forward with caution because the NVA was nearby in fortified bunkers. We moved forward and slightly right to make sure we weren’t separated from 1st Platoon. The first thing I saw was a medic working on a couple of guys. One of the wounded was leaning against a tree with a tourniquet around his stump of a leg. The other end of that blown-off leg was sticking out from a boot that he held his hand around. He laughed at us, saying he had a “million-dollar wound”—he would go home after his leg was sewed back on, and we would still be out here in this shit. He had been shot up with morphine and evidently was feeling it. We had gone less than 50 feet when we entered a slightly more open area. As we moved in, we were hit with full automatic fire from an AK-47. I heard the rounds whizzing by and thumping into the trees behind us. Someone yelled: “They’re in the trees!” Our machine gunner sprayed the trees. I heard a series of crashes as an enemy soldier toppled down through the branches, hitting the ground headfirst like a rag doll just 30 feet in front of me. As we continued forward a short distance, we saw 1st Platoon to our right exchanging fire with the enemy. Suddenly there was fire aimed right at us. We all dropped for cover behind trees. The

AP PHOTO/HORST FAAS

talked quietly on the radio to the commanding officer, Capt. Don Zimmerman, who was behind us with the command section. Meanwhile, we kept our weapons trained ahead. The lieutenant told me to move back and assist the machine gunner. He then brought Bill up to the point position. As I moved back, I saw 1st and 2nd platoons moving off to the right and coming up even with us. When the three platoons were lined up, we began moving forward. The 1st Platoon, on my right, was visible, but thick jungle obscured 2nd Platoon. Moving ahead, I heard the 2nd and 3rd platoons reporting on the radio that they found some small living quarters. Just a couple of minutes later, a giant roar of enemy gunfire and the “karump” and boom of North Vietnamese B40 rocket-propelled grenades filled the air on my right, followed within seconds by the reply of American M16 rifles, M60 Bill was machine guns and exploding grenades. I heard conscious rounds snap through the trees. We were ordered to halt and watch the area forward and to our left but couldn’t so that the NVA couldn’t come around us. speak. I could not see what was going on, but I sure I thought could hear it. It seemed like we waited a long it could time. I opened a can of peaches and slurped have and them down. One of the new guys asked, “How should have can you eat at a time like this?” I replied that I didn’t know how long it would be before I had been me another chance. lying there. Less than 10 minutes later, the call came to

U.S. soldiers search for Viet Cong in a swampy jungle creek bed, June 1965, about 40 miles northeast of Saigon. Point men knew they were positioned to be among the first killed.

guys in the back moved up to join us and took firing positions. The gun smoke was so thick that it created a haze in the air. But I could see in front of me two guys lying on the ground, apparently wounded or dead. One was Bill. Out of the haze walked a medic holding up our squad leader, Manton, his arm dangling with purple oozing out—probably muscle. It seemed everyone but me kept shooting. After a short time the firing died down. Spc. 4 Frank Nixon from Virginia crawled forward to check on the two guys down. He rolled the first one over, but the guy jumped up and ran back with us. He had only been playing dead. Nixon then rolled Bill over and dragged him behind us. He called for a medic who started working on him. About that time the firing had died down. I stood up and tried to look around the tree to see what everyone had been firing at. So far the only enemy soldier I had seen was the one who fell out of the tree. As I looked around the tree, someone said: “Hey new guy, get down before you get shot.” I answered, “I’m just trying to see what you are firing at.” Then he said: “Do you think we can see anything? We’re just firing in the direction it’s coming from. They’re in well-camouflaged bunkers.” He was soon to become my good friend Pfc. Ray Robinson from Boston. The medic working on Bill asked for some help with the plasma bag, so I crawled back to hold it while he found a vein and inserted the needle. I could see Bill was conscious but couldn’t speak, probably because he was too weak. As I helped him, I thought that it could have and should have been me lying there. I was point man, but they didn’t trust the new guy yet, so they called Bill over. Bill kept mouthing the word water, but the medic said: “Don’t give him any. It might choke him.” I took my canteen out, wet my fingers and dabbed Bill’s lips with some moisture. He mouthed, “Thanks.”

HISTORYNET ARCHIVES

AP PHOTO/HORST FAAS

crawled back to my position, still hearing occasional rounds coming our way. A few men behind us tried to blow down trees to make room for the medevac coming to pick up the dead and wounded. One guy climbed a tree to cut back branches that would get in the way of the chopper blades. He was a perfect target for the enemy, yet got his work done without being shot. He was another soon-to-be buddy—Michael “Moon” Mullins from Indiana. Someone said men were needed to pick up ammunition that was about 100 feet behind us. I didn’t know there was more ammo. The heavy

gunfire around me had drowned out the sounds of a chopper that came in and kicked out a resupply. I volunteered to help get it. At the helicopter drop site, a few men opened the boxes and handed out M16 and M60 rounds. There were also poncho-covered bodies lying there. One them was Tex, the man who had just returned from R&R. I later learned his name was John M. Weatherford, a 21-year-old staff sergeant from Mesquite. Tex was one of nine killed that day. A new guy I recognized was just sitting there 199th Infantry Brigade patch among the wounded. I asked if he had been wounded. The 199th Infantry He just looked at me and didn’t answer. He left on the Brigade was activated in medevac with the wounded being transported to the Fort Benning, Georgia, on brigade’s main base. He told people he couldn’t take it. June 1, 1966, and arrived Somehow he managed to get a job in the rear. We had in Vietnam on Dec. 10, 1966. no problem with that, but he lost our respect when we It operated largely in the region around Saigon. The heard he was in the club bragging about his time in brigade left Vietnam in late the bush—a grand total of two days. September 1970 and was I and the other ammunition carriers returned to inactivated at Fort Benning the line and were distributing the ammo when we on Oct. 15. During the war were told to pull back a short distance and pop smoke it suffered 755 killed, 4,679 wounded and nine missing. to mark our positions. Huey helicopter gunships were on the way to attack the NVA positions. I heard them approaching but couldn’t see them. The jungle was too dense. The sound that followed was unbelievable—like a hundred chain saws running wide open. The first words out of my mouth were, “Holy shit! What was that?” The guy next to me said it was the sound of the helicopters’ miniguns. “I’m glad they’re ours!” I responded. Debris and shell casings rained down on us. Pieces of wood and leaves drifted in the air. I didn’t hear a shot fired at us after that. It was getting late in the day. Dusk was approaching. The last of the wounded and dead were loaded onto the medevac. That was the last time I saw Bill. (Although seriously injured, he survived his wounds.) I started to light a cigarette, and my hands were shaking. Someone next to me said, “You are coming down off an adrenaline high.” Platoon leader Hutchinson yelled, “Saddle up!” We moved out in a hurry to find a good night position before dark. As we went back through the jungle, our eyes kept scanning both sides of us and to our rear. About 30 minutes later, we emerged into a large field of elephant grass about 7 feet high. We set up positions along the edge of the field but worried about getting mortared. There was another concern: The height and thickness of the grass made it hard to see if enemy intruders were crawling up on us. We got word to keep 50 percent awake but try to get some rest because we were going back to the enemy base camp in the morning to finish what we started. So this was Vietnam. I had survived my first 48 hours and first time on point duty. We all found our niche in the platoon. I carried the M60 machine gun for about six months. I liked that firepower. Luckily, we had guys who preferred to walk point. They felt like they could do a better job than most. V

Tom Brooks entered the Army in 1967 and served in Vietnam 1968-69. In 1970, he was contacted by the Delaware National Guard and received a direct commission to officer. He retired from the Guard as a major in 1993 and lives in Lewes, Delaware. Email: tqbrooks@verizon.net F E B R U A R Y 2 0 21

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FROM ENEMIES TO FRIENDS

THIRTY-SIX YEARS AFTER CLASHING OVER NORTH VIETNAM, TWO FIGHTER PILOTS BURY THE HATCHET By Jon Guttman

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n the night of April 28, 2009, two former adversaries from the Vietnam War gave a double presentation at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Thirty-seven years earlier, they had engaged in a life-and-death struggle over North Vietnam. But on that night in 2009, former enemies Dan Cherry and Nguyen Hong My stood together as friends to recount the remarkable events that led to this unlikely moment. Edward Daniel Cherry, born in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1939, enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in July 1959. After completing flight training in 1965, he was assigned to the 49th Tactical Fighter Wing in Spangdahlem, West Germany, flying the Republic F-105D Thunderchief fighter-bomber. From January through August 1967, Cherry flew 100 combat missions over North Vietnam in F-105Ds with the 421st and 44th Tactical Fighter squadrons from Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base.

As Air Force Maj. Dan Cherry victoriously roars past The MiG That Didn’t Get Away, the title of Lou Drendel’s painting, he momentarily wonders, “Who was this guy?” Cherry could never have imagined that he would someday learn the answer.

LOU DRENDEL

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In 1971, after returning to the States for a stint at McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita, Kansas, as an F-105 instructor, Cherry requested a second Southeast Asian tour and reported in June to the 432nd Tactical Reconnaissance Wing at Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base, flying the McDonnell Douglas F-4D Phantom II fighter-bomber. Over the next year he logged 185 combat missions—50 over North Vietnam. On March 30, 1972, the North Vietnamese invaded South Vietnam in what became known as the Easter Offensive. Although the United States had withdrawn all but two of its combat brigades by then, it provided South Vietnam with critical air support. On April 6, President Richard Nixon launched Operation Linebacker, a bombing campaign against North Vietnamese industrial and transportation targets. The North Vietnamese air force responded with a formidable triad air defense combining anti-aircraft artillery, surface-to-air missiles and MiG fighters. “On April 16, 1972,” Cherry recalled, “my name came up for a mission. I was with the 13th Tactical Fighter Squadron, and we were pretty well prepared.” His unit’s Phantoms were to escort bomb-laden strike Phantoms from the Korat air base to the Hanoi area. Capt. Frederick S. Olmsted Jr., with Capt. Stuart Maas as his weapons system officer, led the four-plane flight with Capt. Steve Cuthbert and Capt. Daniel Souell at his wing. Trailing them were Cherry, a major at the time, with Capt. Jef30

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COURTESY BRIG. GEN. DAN CHERRY, USAF RET. (2)

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ABOVE: Two crews of the 13th Tactical Fighter Squadron celebrate victory on April 16, 1972. From left: Jeffrey Feinstein, Cherry, Fred Olmsted and Stu Maas. LEFT: Cherry stands beside the red star stenciled on his plane.

frey S. Feinstein. Their wingmen were Capt. Greg Crane and Capt. Gerry Lachman. Each of the F-4Ds carried AIM-7 Sparrow radar-guided air-toair missiles. All but Crane’s aircraft were also equipped with heat-seeking AIM-9 Sidewinders.

COURTESY BRIG. GEN. DAN CHERRY, USAF RET. (2)

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North Vietnamese Lt. Nguyen Hong My of the 921st Fighter Regiment, looking out from the cockpit of a MiG-21PFM, was shot down by Cherry in April 1972. BELOW: Cherry’s F-4D taxis on the runway at Yakota Air Base in Japan sometime later in 1972. Cherry saw his old plane again in 2004.

eparting from Udorn at 7:30 a.m., the flight orbited over Ban Ban, Laos, but the strike planes never arrived at the rendezvous point. Olmsted then led his flight north on a secondary mission to seek and destroy enemy MiGs. As the Phantoms approached the North Vietnamese air base at Yen Bai, Maas in the lead plane detected enemy aircraft approaching from 20 miles away. Pilot Olmsted turned toward the “bandits.” As the range closed to 5 miles the Americans spotted two MiG-21s flying 5,000 feet above them. Olmsted and the other pilots turned and climbed. “I was on the outside of the turn,” Cherry reported afterward, “so I fell

behind as we turned. About halfway through the turn, my wingman called a third MiG. It was a camouflaged MiG-21 and he was at 12 o’clock level to me and climbing into position behind Olmsted’s element. The North Vietnamese had apparently been setting a trap, using the two silver MiGs for bait. The camouflaged MiG had been at low level and as we started our turn he had climbed, hoping to sandwich us between the two lead MiGs and himself. Their separation wasn’t great enough, though, and the hunter suddenly became the hunted. As we had prebriefed, we separated the flight into two elements. Olmsted continued after the two lead MiGs, and I went for the camouflaged 21. The MiG must have spotted me A P R I L 2 0 21

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In April 2008 former aerial adversaries Dan Cherry and Nguyen Hong My meet face to face for the first time when they appear on a TV show, The Separation Never Seems to Have Existed, in Ho Chi Minh City.

going on, I called Jeff in the back seat and told him, ‘I’ve got the reticle [crosshairs] on the MiG…lock him up!’ He did and the analog popped out indicating a good radar lock. It took awhile for me to pull up line abreast of Greg. When I finally did, I clamped down on the trigger again…never expecting the missile to come off. Suddenly, whoosh! That big AIM-7 smoked out in front of us.” The missile hit its target, blowing the MiG’s right wing off and sending it spinning to the left, trailing smoke and debris. “After about two rolls the MiG driver ejected right in front of me,” Cherry reported. “I pulled off to the left to miss the chute and make sure that Jeff would see the guy and the MiG going down in flames…We must have been close to supersonic, with the afterburners cooking…and I know we weren’t more than 50 feet away from him when we passed. Even at that I got a good look at him…he had on a black flying suit, and his parachute was mostly white, with one red panel in it. I thought, ‘This is just like in the movies!’” Within a minute of Cherry’s victory, Olmsted caught up with the two higher MiG-21s. The leader did a split-S maneuver and dove for the deck, but his wingman remained behind. Olmsted fired an AIM-7, which knocked off the MiG’s right horizontal stabilizer. His second Sparrow

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ADAM TOOBY (2)

“The MiG driver ejected right in front of me. I got a good look at him. I thought, ‘This is just like in the movies.’”

JOHN FLECK

about the same time I rolled out of my turn and headed for him, for he turned hard left away from me and into a cloud.” Cherry followed into the cloud and—after breaking out into the clear with his wingman, Crane—spotted the third MiG at 2 o’clock and 5,000 feet above them in a climbing turn. “I went to max afterburner and pulled around to go after him,” Cherry said. However, when he launched his two sidewinder missiles, they would not track. The MiG went into a diving spiral. As the Phantoms pursued it, Crane called, “I’m taking the lead, passing on the right.” Cherry acknowledged and rolled into the wing position. The chase was at about 25,000 feet when Crane fired his AIM-7s. The first two malfunctioned. His third was about to strike, Cherry noted, but “at the critical point the MiG driver broke hard and the Sparrow went right by his tail without detonating.” Crane had shot his bolt, but the dodging MiG21 had lost speed and Cherry still had three Sparrows. “Flying to the inside of Greg’s turn,” he reported, “I began to gain on him. While this was

struck dead center, destroying the MiG in a fireball. It was Olmsted’s second victory. He had previously been credited with a MiG-21 on March 30. Returning to Udorn, the Phantom crews threw a celebration. Adding to their success, an F-4D of the 432nd TRW, crewed by Capt. James C. Null and Capt. Michael D. Vahue, had knocked down a third MiG-21. It was an exceptionally good day for the 432nd TRW and a bad one for the North Vietnamese, whose records mention no pilot losses but acknowledge the loss of all three MiG-21s. As one consequence, the enemy air force restricted MiG activity south of the 20th parallel, where they would be close to U.S. forces at the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South near the 17th parallel.

ADAM TOOBY (2)

JOHN FLECK

y the end of 1972 the bombing campaigns of operations Linebacker I and II had resulted in American tactical victories that, like many others before them, did little to change the war’s ultimate outcome—the fall of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. Cherry continued in his Air Force career, retiring on Dec. 1, 1988, as a brigadier general with numerous awards including the Distinguished Service Medal, the Silver Star with an oak-leaf cluster and the Distinguished Flying Cross with nine oak-leaf clusters. After returning to his hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky, Cherry dwelt little on his wartime experiences. Yet he wondered what had become of the enemy pilot he shot down. In June 2004, Cherry visited the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at WrightPatterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. At the nearby town of Enon, the Veterans of Foreign Wars post had taken charge of a Phantom that served with the Air Force Reserve until retired in 1989. Although painted in current gray camouflage, the plane had a red star on the intake splitter plate. Checking the plane’s serial number—66-7550— Cherry found the plane to be the very F-4D he had flown when he downed the MiG. Although the Phantom was suffering from neglect, Cherry arranged to have it moved to a Bowling Green site being developed into the Aviation Heritage Park, devoted to military aviators from Kentucky. His F-4D was the first of several aircraft displayed there. By the time restoration was complete, Cherry commented, “It was in better shape than it was when I flew it back in April 1972.” The rediscovery and resurrection of his Phantom led Cherry “to believe anything is possible.” He began making inquiries to see if he could identify the MiG pilot he had downed. In response, an attorney acquaintance with friends in Vietnam contacted the producers of a popular reality TV program that reunited people who had lost contact with each other. Weeks later, he heard from Thu Uyen Nguyen-Pham, producer of the show The Separation Never Seems to Have Existed (English translation), broadcast in Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon. “Please write me a letter,” she said. “Tell me what you’d like to do and why.” Two weeks after Cherry sent her an email giving details of his combat, she replied: “We have found the brave MiG pilot, and we’d like you to come to Vietnam to meet him.” Cherry consulted with the U.S. Embassy and former prisoners of war, including Lt. Col. Wallace G. Newcomb, a former F-105D pilot of the 13th TFS who had been shot down on Aug. 3, 1967, and spent the rest of the war in the notorious “Hanoi Hilton” POW prison. “I was encouraged from all sides,” Cherry said. “Wally Newcomb told me, ‘Dan, it’s just too good an opportunity for you to turn down.’” “Thu Uyen was a delight to work with,” Cherry said. “She’d been educated in the United States and was a Fulbright scholar [an exchange program for U.S. and foreign scholars]— very professional.” When the show started at 9 p.m., April 8, 2008, he had yet to meet his former opponent, Lt. Nguyen Hong My. “I’d never even seen a picture of Hong My,” Cherry said. “So it was very dramatic when he came in from the other side of the stage. He was an imposing figure—I thought he’d have made a good movie star. We just locked eyes immediately, sizing each other up, but he had a pleasant look on his face, and I remember he had a very firm handshake. He spoke a little English and he said, ‘I’m glad to see you’re in good health and I hope we can be friends.’”

McDonnell Douglas F-4D Phantom II Crew: Two Engine: Two General Electric J79-GE-15 turbojets, each 17,000 lbs. of thrust with afterburner Wingspan: 38 ft., 5 in. Wing area: 530 sq. ft. Length: 58 ft., 3 in. Max. weight: 58,000 lbs. Max. speed: 1,432 mph Climb rate: 41,000 ft. in 1 minute Combat radius: 502 miles Operating altitude: 55,850 ft. Armament: Up to four AIM-7 Sparrow air-to-air missiles; up to four AIM-9 Sidewinder AAMs. Bomb load: 16,000 lbs.

Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21MF Crew: One Engine: One Tumansky R-11F-300 turbojet; 14,550 lbs. of thrust with afterburner Wingspan:. 23 ft., 6 in. Wing area: 247.6 sq. ft. Length: 51 ft., 8.5 in. Max. weight: 28,723 lbs. Max. speed: 1,351 mph Climb rate: 55,774 ft. in 8 minutes, 30 sec. Combat radius: 230 miles Operating altitude: 57,750 ft. Armament: Internal GyrazevShipunov GSh-23L 23 mm auto cannon with 200 rounds; up to four R-13M air-to-air missiles or four R-60 AAMs Bomb load: 1,650 lbs.

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“We were taught to never run away from the enemy, both in the academy and in combat. To do so showed bad character.”

of his opponents. As it turned out, Mock and Stiles were safely rescued by helicopter. Almost three months later, Hong My had his fateful encounter with Cherry when he attacked the American Phantoms. In the North Vietnamese air force, he said, “we were taught to never run away from the enemy, both in the academy and in combat—to do so showed bad character. We were trained in how to evade most of your missiles.” Hong My explained the events of the aerial duel as he saw them: “On April 16, 1972, there were only two planes in my flight. I tried to evade your missiles and dodged five of them, but finally my plane took a hit from your missile and was shot down. I just took to my parachute—I had no time to think what was going on. I just tried to get out of the plane ASAP. Two of my arms were broken, and I was badly injured on my back. I spent a long time, six months, in the hospital. Four times I underwent surgery. The doctor said my health was not good, that I could not fly anymore.” Nevertheless, he returned to service. “In 1974, I got out of the Vietnam Air Force,” Hong My said. “As a pilot it was difficult to find a job. I went to school to take economics and foreign languages. After graduation I worked for the Vietnam Insurance Company. I retired in 2006 and cannot get any job now. But I’m busy enough working as a grandparent!”

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JOHN FLECK

fter the TV show in Ho Chi Minh City, the former opponents continued to talk with each other. “Being from Kentucky, I’d brought him a gift—a little bottle of Maker’s Mark [bourbon whiskey],” Cherry said. “As we got to know each other more, the chemistry continued to build. I saw two medals that he proudly wore on his chest—his First Class Wings, presented by Ho Chi Minh, and a badge for his aerial victory. “We became instant celebrities, reliving the combat on top of the Majestic Hotel in downtown Saigon. At one point, he pointed to my hand and asked, ‘You shoot your missile like this or like that?’ meaning thumb or forefinger. When I showed him, he spanked my trigger finger with a hearty laugh…At the end, he said, ‘I want you to come to my home in Hanoi.’ “It was very surreal as we flew on Vietnam Air, over the same country I flew countless missions over. I During a visit to the stayed in the Metropole Hotel, U.S., Nguyen Hong within walking distance of Hong My has dinner at a restaurant with My’s home. We took a wonderful Cherry, right, and stroll through the streets of Hanoi, John Stiles, who was aboard a recon past the old French opera house. Phantom he shot At his house I met his daughter, down in January 1972. Giang, and his son, Quan. Hong My then let me hold his grandson, little Duc, who was just having his first birthday. “The next day we took a tour of Hanoi, all the museums. The exhibits at the war museum—including a photo of my squadron, the 13th TFS—were a sad reminder of the war. But sadder still was the Maison Centrale, the ‘Hanoi Hilton.’ The French had originally used it for political prisoners, and it was a horrible place, now a museum. Hong My turned somber as we went through the exhibits, and he asked me, ‘You have a friend in here?’ Just then

JOHN FLECK

guyen Hong My, born in 1946 in Nghe An province in central North Vietnam, had joined the air force on July 1, 1965, and trained in the Soviet Union. “In 1968 I graduated from the pilot training course and went immediately back to my country to participate in the battle,” Hong My said. “My unit was the 1st Squadron of the 921st Air Force [Fighter] Regiment, nicknamed the ‘Red Star Squadron.’” The 921st was the first unit in North Vietnam to be equipped with the MiG-21. “Some pilots had shot down Phantom jets before me, but we actually didn’t learn or have a plan worked up on how to dogfight with enemy planes,” Hong My said. “It was a case of ‘you or me.’” North Vietnamese records credited Hong My with downing an RF-4C photoreconnaissance Phantom near the Laotian-Vietnamese border on Jan. 19, 1972, which earned him North Vietnam’s Badge for Victory. Cherry’s research revealed that Maj. Robert K. Mock and 1st Lt. John Stiles of the 14th Squadron, 432nd TRW, were downed at that exact location, but on Jan. 20. The date discrepancy possibly was a record-keeping error. Mock and Stiles, under anti-aircraft fire at the time, believed themselves victims of a 37 mm artillery shell. Cherry is sure that Hong My’s hastily loosed R-3S missile struck the RF-4C and that the American crew, focusing on the anti-aircraft fire, never saw the missile hit. “On Jan. 19, 1972, when I spotted John Stiles’ RF-4C,” Hong My said, “my fuel tank was very low. The air base called me back, but I still kept track on his plane and shot him down. Then I flew back to Tho Xuan air base, near Thanh Hua city. … Just after I landed, my plane ran out of fuel and shut off.” Hong My, like Cherry, wondered what became

JOHN FLECK

Stiles, back seat, and Cherry sit in an F-4E, while Hong My sits in the cockpit of a MiG-21PFM at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s “Air Venture” gathering at Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in 2012.

my eyes fell on a picture of Col. John Flynn, and I answered, ‘Yes, I did.’” Flynn, an acquaintance of Cherry’s in the 49th TFW at Spangdahlen Air Base, was vice commander of the 388th TFW at Korat when his F-105D was brought down by a ground missile on Oct. 27, 1967. Flynn was the highest-ranking American POW in North Vietnam until his release on March 14, 1973. When Hong My learned that his new friend personally knew POWs at the prison, “he dropped his head and walked away, to leave me to my thoughts,” Cherry said. “When I came outside, he put his arm around my shoulder.” Cherry added: “Our POWs don’t hold anything against the pilots who fought us. They do still hold something against the government and the prison administrators.” After returning to the United States, Cherry wrote a short account of his odyssey in a book, My Enemy, My Friend, published in February 2009. The end of that book was not the end of the story, however. Cherry reciprocated Hong My’s hospitality by inviting him and his son to visit Bowling Green. On April 16, 2009, exactly 37 years to the day after the aerial combat in Vietnam, Hong My and Quan “sat in the cockpit of 550, which gave him possibly the unique distinction of being the only vanquished fighter pilot to sit in the fighter that actually shot him down,” Cherry said. Cherry flew Hong My in his Cessna 172 to Frankfort. “I cried when I was at the Kentucky Vietnam Memorial,” the Vietnamese veteran said. “Seeing the names of all the American soldiers who died in the war made me think too of all my friends.” Hong My wanted to know if the airmen he had shot down were still alive. Tragically, pilot Mock had died in a car wreck in Colorado just two months before Cherry began his research. The navigator, Stiles, lived in North Car-

olina. “We had a double full circle as Hong My visited Stiles and met his family, and they too became friends,” Cherry said. On April 26, Cherry, Stiles and Hong My went to Washington. “I think a lot about this visit,” Hong My later remarked. “I would like to see my country cooperate to bring back the remains of all soldiers missing in the war. I had two unforgettable things during my visit. First, the governor ‘promoted’ me to be an honorary Kentucky Colonel! The other was when I met John Stiles, to have dinner with him. I felt very happy.” The two pilots were able to recount the story of their shared experience at the National Air and Space Museum. At the end, Cherry concluded: “I hope in its way this helps Vietnam War veterans on both sides to find some closure and that it will be an inspiration to our two countries. If there is one thing I learned from this experience, it is that holding grudges is really futile.” “To me,” Hong My remarked, “the joy and the miracle of it all is, here we are, me, Dan Cherry and John Stiles, still alive and meeting together in Washington, D.C.” V

Jon Guttman is research director for Vietnam magazine. Cherry’s book, My Enemy, My Friend, written with Fran Erickson, and additional information are available at aviationheritagepark.com. A P R I L 2 0 21

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Lt. William Calley, at right, commander of the Army unit responsible for the March 1968 My Lai Massacre, has just left a preliminary court-martial hearing at Fort Benning, Georgia, accompanied by a civilian attorney, on Aug. 24, 1970. Calley’s case and ultimate conviction was cited in a harsh critique of the U.S. Army by distinguished retired Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway in April 1971.

1971: THE ARMY’S YEAR OF ‘GRIEVOUS BLOWS’ FIFTY YEARS AGO ONE OF AMERICA’S MOST DECORATED GENERALS SHARED HIS OUTRAGE WITH THE PRESS

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PHOTO CREDITS

By Bob Orkand

PHOTO CREDITS

“

ot before in my lifetime—and I was born into the Army in the nineteenth century—has the Army’s public image suffered so many grievous blows and fallen to such low esteem in such wide areas of our society,” began an op-ed piece in The New York Times on April 2, 1971, by retired four-star Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway. Ridgway—born March 3, 1895, at Fort Monroe, Virginia, as the son of an artillery colonel— continued: “This is of national relevance, though it portrays but one of many manifestations of the spiritual malaise presently pervading all levels of our people, and for the first time, to my knowledge, all armed forces ranks.” The essay, titled “The Ordeal of the Army,” was published just days after the longest court-martial in U.S. military history (more than four months) concluded at Fort Benning, Georgia. On March 29, 1971, 1st Lt. William L. Calley Jr. was convicted by a court-martial of the premeditated murder of 22 South Vietnamese civilians in 1968 in the village of My Lai. Two days later, Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment and hard labor at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The sentence was reduced on appeal by Secretary of the Army Howard H. Callaway and President Richard Nixon. The Calley case was just one of the stains on the Army’s reputation that distressed Ridgway. “The denigration of the Army’s Sergeant Major, his indictment, and that of several other senior noncommissioned officers by a Federal grand jury on charges of embezzlement of N.C.O funds overseas; the award of battlefield decorations for acts never performed; the pending charges against the former Provost Marshal General of the Army; and most damaging of all, the Mylai court-martial, are grievous blows.”

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idgway’s reference to “pending charges against the former Provost Marshal General of the Army” the Army’s top military police official, alluded to the alleged crimes of retired Maj. Gen. Carl C. Turner, then under indictment in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia. Exactly a week after the publication of Ridgway’s op-ed piece, Turner pleaded guilty to the unlawful solicitation of 136 firearms from the Chicago Police Department for his personal use. The government charged that Turner had misrepresented the weapons as gifts to the federal government. Turner acknowledged in 1969 U.S. Senate hearings that he had received nearly 700 weapons, turned half over to the Army, repaired others for museum display and sold at least 23 to a gun dealer in North Carolina. Additionally, Turner was charged with four counts of tax evasion, which asserted that he and his wife failed to declare almost $50,000 in income over a fouryear period. The general was forced to retire from the Army in 1969. Turner was also implicated in improprieties and graft in the Army’s Vietnam NCO clubs, another scandal referenced in Ridgway’s op-ed. Sgt. Maj. William O. Wooldridge, at one time the Army’s senior noncommissioned officer, was charged with participating in a scheme that involved three other noncoms. Wooldridge admitted under oath that he had intervened to block the investigation of three sergeants in Vietnam who were accused of black-market currency violations. All four World War II and Korean pleaded guilty to criminal fraud or conspira- War veteran Gen. Matthew cy charges, which included skimming slot Ridgway, here in Korea in machine money, kickbacks from suppliers to 1951, used an April 1971 piece in The New York the clubs and favors to higher ranking officers Times to express his dismay at the lapses of so they would look the other way. and morality Two years after Ridgway’s op-ed, a Senate integrity that he said pervaded the subcommittee in 1973 looked at allegations U.S. Army at that time.

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that Turner had hindered the investigation of the Retired Maj. Gen. Carl NCO clubs. Wooldridge told the senators: “The C. Turner admits to a Senate investigations nature of the military establishment does not subcommittee in permit thorough, independent investigation of 1969 that he got guns Chicago police alleged wrongdoing. As long as you have gener- from and resold them. als and sergeants major too, there’s going to be RIGHT: Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson influence used in certain areas.” probed fraud at NCO One NCO involved in the scandal, Sgt. Wil- clubs when he led the liam Higdon, explained in his testimony: “You committee in 1973. always take care of the general, the sergeant major, the base commander or whoever it might be.” Sgt. Seymour Lazar, responding to a question from subcommittee Chairman Sen. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson of Washington, stated that corruption and graft of this nature had “been going on since 1776.” Wooldridge, in a signed sworn statement, alleged that retired Maj. Gen. William A. Cunningham III, had deliberately chosen to overlook club management “improprieties” brought to his attention while commanding the 24th Infantry Division in Germany in 1965. The four NCOs had refused to answer questions when they originally came before the Senate subcommittee in 1969. They subsequently pleaded guilty to criminal fraud or conspiracy charges and agreed to tell the subcommittee about the scandal and its cover-up. Turner and Wooldridge were stripped of their Distinguished Service Medal awards in September 1969.

idgway’s complaint about “battlefield decorations for acts never performed” was rooted in the military’s morale problems in Vietnam as American troops fought in an increasingly unpopular war. Ridgway, a commander in World War II and Korea, had earned two awards of the Distinguished Service Cross, four awards of the Distinguished Service Medal, two awards of the Silver Star, two awards of the Bronze Star Medal with a “V” device for valor, a Purple Heart and the Combat Infantryman Badge, almost never awarded to a general while serving in that rank. In Vietnam, as Ridgway saw it, a grade creep had infiltrated the Army’s system to award medals for valor and meritorious service while in combat. Ridgway probably would have had little quarrel with the Army’s Vietnam Medal of Honor awards, 174 presented to date, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty. Each Medal of Honor recommendation was thoroughly vetted, underwent the most intense scrutiny and had eyewitness testimony. The Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest decoration for valor,

was awarded to just over 1,000 U.S. Army soldiers in Vietnam, according to the Home of Heroes website. Several recipients of the Distinguished Service Cross in Vietnam went on to become three- and four-star-generals. The Silver Star for gallantry in action is perhaps where Ridgway began to find fault with the Army’s award criteria. A total of 21,634 Silver Stars were awarded to U.S. Army personnel in Vietnam, according to Home of Heroes. Many of them went to commissioned officers. Some units allegedly had a standard “awards package” for battalion and company commanders upon completion of their normal six-month command tours. The package included a Silver Star, one or more Bronze Stars and possibly Air Medals, in addition to the Combat Infantryman Badge. Few enlisted men, even high-ranking NCOs, received such an “awards package” at the end of their tours. A 1978 book Crisis in Command: Mismanagement in the Army, by two former Army officers, Maj. Richard A. Gabriel and Lt. Col. Paul L. Savage, excoriated the Army leadership on multiple fronts, with particular aim at the service’s awards and decoration practices during the Vietnam War. The co-authors, who taught in the Politics Department at St. Anselm’s College in Manchester, New Hampshire, state: “A study of the available data concerning the number and type of medals awarded relative to both combat activity and actual casualties taken suggest that as the frequency and intensity of enemy contact declined, the number of awards, many for bravery, actually increased at an astonishing rate.” The study they cite is retired Col. William L. Hauser’s 1973 book, America’s Army in Crisis. “So blatant was the practice of awarding medals for actions that were at best marginal in terms of risk,” Gabriel and Savage say, “that even offiA P R I L 2 0 21

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meritorious service in the combat zone, 2,159 for achievement and 6,215 awards of the Bronze Star with a “V” device.

262

1,729

24,339

Bob Orkand, a retired lieutenant colonel, served in Vietnam as executive officer and operations officer of the 1st Battalion (Airmobile), 7th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) 1967-68. He commanded a mechanized infantry battalion at Fort Benning in the 197th Infantry Brigade 1972-73, a prototype of the volunteer Army. In 1974, he was Pentagon spokesman on the volunteer Army. He co-authored a study of the M16 rifle’s shortcomings, Misfire: The Tragic Failure of the M16 in Vietnam (2019). Orkand lives in Huntsville, Texas.

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Top Valor Awards

AP WIREPHOTO

cers began to refer to these awards and medals in derisive terms. They called them ‘gongs.’ Still, they continued to award them to one another and, more importantly, to accept them.” The authors claim that “some unit commanders used the number of awards for bravery that a unit had been given as part of a complex formula to measure the combat effectiveness of the unit.” This is a reference to a statistical system developed by Maj. Gen. (later Lt. Gen.) Julian J. Ewell, who commanded the 9th Infantry Division in Vietnam and later II Field Force, which oversaw units in the Saigon area and Mekong Delta. Ewell may have been influenced by Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara’s statistically minded bean counters in the Pentagon. The authors say Ewell’s system was derided by many officers, including Gen. Creighton Abrams, the top commander at Military Assistance Command, Vietnam 1968-72. Gabriel and Savage also make this bold statement: “Virtually every soldier who managed to survive his tour was given a Bronze Star [for meritorious service]; if he had seen any combat whatsoever, the tendency was to award him a ‘V’ device to go with it. The Combat Infantryman’s [sic] Badge, once the symbol of service and hazard that separated the true combat veteran from the ‘garret trooper,’ was debased so as to encounter derision from all the troops.” That particular assertion, however, is easily disproved with statistics. About 2.6 million U.S. military personnel served in Vietnam during the main ground combat period, Jan. 1, 1965, to March 31, 1973, according to Defense Department reALL ARMED FORCES, VIETNAM cords. About two-thirds were Army personnel. An estimated 1.6 million fought in combat, provided close support or were regularly MEDAL OF HONOR exposed to enemy attack. If “virtually every soldier” was given a EST. Bronze Star, the medal would have been DISTINGUISHED SERVICE CROSS, awarded to something like 1 million men. In NAVY CROSS (INCL. MARINES), AND AIR FORCE CROSS truth, about 35,000 Bronze Stars went to Army soldiers for their Vietnam service, acEST. cording to the National Archives. Those honSILVER STAR ors consisted primarily of 26,215 awards for

William O. Wooldridge became the top enlisted man in 1966 when he received the rank sergeant major of the Army. In 1973, after leaving the Army, he pleaded guilty to fraud.

umming up their analysis of the Vietnam War awards system, Gabriel and Savage conclude: “In the end, the award system designed to stimulate the morale of the troops undermined it. It became a standing joke. More important, however, was the fact that officers usually participated in the system with relish, swelling their personnel files with reports of their own bravery and thus increasing their chances for promotion. The troops were rarely fooled.” It surprises no one that “medal inflation” became a key component of Vietnam service. Given the opportunity to command a battalion or rifle company for a normal six-month tenure, officers were well aware that an outstanding efficiency report, together with a Silver Star, Bronze Star with “V” device and an Air Medal or two would go a long way toward favorable consideration by the next promotion board. The controversy over medal inflation didn’t end with the Vietnam War. It was also visible in Iraq and Afghanistan. NBC News reported in 2004 that the U.S. Air Force had “handed out” more than 69,000 awards and other honors for the Iraq War, followed by the Army with “40,000 medals issued and approved, including 111 Silver Stars and more than 13,000 Bronze Stars.” The year 1971 was a time of anguish for Ridgway not only on a professional level but also a deeply personal one. On July 1, his only son, Matthew “Matty” Ridgway Jr., a newly commissioned 22-year-old second lieutenant from Bucknell University’s ROTC program, was struck and killed by a train while portaging a canoe over his head alongside a railroad track in Ontario. The general and his wife flew over the Lake of the Woods in Canada where Matty died and scattered his ashes into the serene waters. Ridgway died at 98 on July 26, 1993. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. V

Lt. William Calley, with his civilian and military counsel, heads toward a pretrial hearing at Fort Benning, Georgia, on Jan. 20, 1970. When the trial began on Nov. 17, it was the culmination of a legal process that had started on Sept. 5, 1969.

COURT-MARTIAL OF LT. CALLEY THE LEGAL MANEUVERINGS BEHIND THE SCENES

BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES

AP WIREPHOTO

By Bob Orkand

n a sense, the court-martial of 1st Lt. William Laws Calley Jr. started in front of my desk at Infantry Hall, the headquarters and academic center of the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia. It was late Wednesday morning on Sept. 5, 1969. Col. Earl C. Acuff, deputy assistant commandant of the school and the man charged with running its day-to-day operations, was breathless after his swift descent down the stairs from the office of the school’s commandant, Maj. Gen. Orwin C. Talbott, one floor above. It wasn’t like Acuff to be huffing and out of breath. A master parachutist, he wore the Combat Infantryman Badge with two

stars, denoting service as an infantryman in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. During the Korean War, the ROTC graduate from the University of Idaho led the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment of the 7th Infantry Division at Pork Chop Hill and Old Baldy. In Vietnam he commanded the 1st Infantry Division’s 3rd Brigade. When Acuff was tasked in 1965 to evaluate the Ranger training program at Benning, he put himself through the course, becoming at age 47 the oldest soldier ever to graduate from the rigorous program and earn the Ranger tab. I was deputy secretary of the Infantry School. Standing in front of my desk, Acuff came quickly to the point: “Who’s the best writer we have at the school?” A P R I L 2 0 21

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Although Calley was charged personally with killing 22 civilians, as many as 504 may have been killed by his platoon.

a highly regarded officer, a Pennsylvanian commissioned from Ohio University’s ROTC program. Cameron wrote the best prose at the school. He was a mature, unflappable, experienced officer who could cope with all the investigation’s sensitivities. Acuff repeated the name. “Dewey Cameron. Of course, that’s it.” He smiled, knowing the right choice had been made. He repeated the name, then turned and ran back up the stairs to inform Talbott about the nominee for investigating officer. That afternoon, Cameron was appointed to conduct an investigation under the provisions of Article 32 into circumstances involving alleged murders of noncombatants at the village of My Lai 4 in northern South Vietnam’s Quang Ngai province on March 16, 1968, by Calley, then a member of the 23rd Infantry Division (Americal).

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ameron’s Article 32 investigation, which took several months, resulted in the court-martial of Calley. The trial began Nov. 17, 1970, and ended with a conviction on March 29, 1971. The lengthy proceedings captured the public’s attention and led to widespread condemnation of the Army and its personnel, further increasing the antipathy for the war in Vietnam. Although Calley was charged personally with the murder of 22 South Vietnamese civilians, as many as 504 may have been killed by members of his platoon. Retired four-star Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway, in an opinion piece published in The New York Times on April 2, 1971, called the revelations of the My Lai court-martial “grievous blows.” An organized cover-up had taken place within the Americal Division, presumably reaching all the way to division commander Maj. Gen. Samuel W. Koster, according to the findings of a commission headed by Lt. Gen. William R. Peers.

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I was used to dealing with all sorts of information requests, but this one took me by surprise. “What kind of writer are you looking for, sir?” I asked. “What kind of project is it?” “I don’t know all the details,” Acuff explained. “It’s apparently a war crime of some sort. It’s got interest all the way up to the White House and the Pentagon. The way I understand it, there’s a first lieutenant assigned to The School Brigade who’s due to be released from active duty tomorrow. We need to flag his records today so he can’t be discharged and I need to appoint an Article 32 investigator and have orders cut today.” Under Article 32 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a pretrial investigation is required before a “general court-martial,” the term for a military trial involving the most serious crimes, can be convened. An Article 32 investigation is much like a grand jury investigation in civilian life. Given the severity of the alleged charges—war crimes—and the high-level of interest in Washington, Acuff required a mature, skilled writer capable of conducting a thorough pretrial investigation and producing a clear, concise report about whether a court-martial was warranted. I ran a mental checklist of the dozens of qualified officers then serving on the staff and faculty at the Infantry School and analyzed prospective names while Acuff waited. Suddenly I had a name to offer him. “Dewey Cameron,” I said. Lt. Col. Duane “Dewey” Cameron, chairman of the Leadership Department, was the logical nominee. His department not only taught leadership but also supervised instructional programs in military writing. He was

The mass killing of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai village on March 16, 1968, was largely unknown until photos began appearing in the news media, like this one from Life Magazine in December 1969.

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RONALD S. HAEBERLE/THE LIFE IMAGES COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGE

The cover-up began almost immediately. On the day of the massacre, March 16, 1968, reporters at the U.S. military’s daily press briefing in Saigon were told: “In an action today, Americal Division forces killed 128 enemy near Quang Ngai City. Helicopter gunships and artillery missions supported the ground elements throughout the day.” With careers on the line for Americal leaders at division, brigade, task force and company levels, no mention was made of horrendous civilian casualties. Instead, enemy casualties were claimed. The Peers Commission report concluded that at least 175 to 200 South Vietnamese men, women and children had been killed, including perhaps three or four confirmed Viet Cong soldiers, although “there were undoubtedly several unarmed VC (men, women and children) among them and many more active supporters and sympathizers.” The commission investigated 14 officers directly or indirectly involved with the operation, including Koster and his assistant division commander, Brig. Gen. George H. Young Jr. The commander of the battalion-size task force that included Calley’s company, Lt. Col. Frank Barker, was killed in a helicopter crash before the investigation. By the first week of September 1969, as Calley was preparing for discharge from active duty, it was clear to the Army that he had participated in some manner in the killings at My Lai. Accordingly, the Department of the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. William Westmoreland, previously the top commander in Vietnam, instructed Fort Benning to commence the Article 32 inquiry so that Calley could be retained on active duty if a court-martial was warranted.

With the appointment of Cameron as the Article 32 investigator on Sept. 5, 1969, Fort Benning’s public information office issued a nebulous press release about an investigation of an Army first lieutenant for his actions in Vietnam. The release was largely ignored by the news media.

hen investigative reporter Seymour Hersh broke the full story of the massacre on Nov. 12, 1969, and it appeared in 30 newspapers nationwide, the American public was outraged at the atrocity. Time and Life magazines ran detailed reports with photos in late November and early December 1969. Much of the American public’s already waning support for the Vietnam War further eroded. By then, U.S. troop strength in Vietnam, which had peaked at 543,400 in April 1969, was decreasing under President Richard Nixon’s phased withdrawal program. In 1971, the troop count in Vietnam was down to 156,800. None of those remaining wanted to be the last casualty in an increasingly unpopular war. The Army was plagued by incidents of fragging, refusal to obey orders, drug abuse and desertions. In the continental United States, once-proud units such as the 1st Infantry Division at Fort Riley, Kansas, and the 5th Infantry Division (Mechanized) at Fort Carson, Colorado, became holding areas for short-timers back from Vietnam, with the consequent breakdown in military discipline. It was therefore a small wonder that Ridgway could offer in The New York Times a litany of woes that revealed the sad state of the American Army in 1971, with the circumstances at My Lai “the most damaging of all.” V

A photo of the My Lai Massacre became a symbol of the war to protesters in New York in 1973.

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RECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES IN 1995, THE U.S. AND VIETNAM DECIDED IT WAS TIME TO PUT OLD ANIMOSITIES ASIDE

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PHOTO CREDITS

By Charles H. Lutz

PHOTO CREDITS

The U.S. and Vietnam sought to build diplomatic bridges in an environment still bearing visible scars of war, such as the wreck of a B-52 bomber shot down in 1972. The aircraft’s remains rest in a small lake in the Ngoc Ha village of Hanoi.

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tional markets, were much more compelling. I had served in Vietnam as an Army officer from June 1968 to June 1969. Returning to Vietnam had been the furthest thing from my mind. I knew Gelbard from his time as the ambassador to Bolivia. I had been responsible for the DEA’s jungle operations in Bolivia and Peru. My job was to deny Colombian drug cartels the coca paste they needed to produce their cocaine. Gelbard, a brilliant guy, was not your typical State Department bureaucrat. He could be as direct with his host nation counterparts as an Army drill sergeant with a raw recruit. That’s what I liked about him. I knew Greene from my first DEA tour in Thailand. As Saigon was about to fall to communist forces in April 1975, Greene, then the narcotics attaché in South Vietnam, was evacuated to Bangkok. I shared my office space with him while he awaited his new assignment. Over the next two decades, Greene moved smartly up DEA’s chain of command and in 1995 occupied its second-highest position. I was excited about being part of the effort to mend fences with Vietnam, but also apprehen-

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wo decades after North Vietnamese troops forced Saigon to surrender and unified North and South under communist rule, the United States and Vietnam gingerly took first steps toward reconciliation. In early 1995, before full diplomatic relations were established, the U.S. State Department set up a liaison office in Hanoi to search for joint projects to foster dialog that might be the foundation for broader cooperation. The two former enemies settled on an international drug control program as a pathway toward normalizing relations. In essence, they decided to join forces in the war on drugs. Like the U.S., Vietnam had a serious problem with illegal drugs—a plague in both their houses. U.S. officials designated Bob Gelbard, the State Department’s top executive for international drug and law enforcement matters, and Steve Greene, deputy administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, to lead the effort. In early June 1995 the two arrived in Bangkok to take a whirlwind tour of Thailand, Laos and Cambodia and then head to Hanoi where the first steps toward normalizing relations would take place. “Normalization of relations” enables countries to establish full diplomatic relations, set up embassies, form business ties and make arrangements for travel between them. I had just taken up my position in Bangkok as narcotics attaché at the U.S. Embassy. I was detailed to accompany Gelbard and Greene on their tour. Vietnam was part of my area of responsibility, but the DEA’s interests in Thailand, Laos and Burma, the “Golden Triangle,” source of much of the world’s heroin, and in Bangkok specifically, the drug’s gateway to interna-

PREVIOUS SPREAD: HOANG DINH NA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES; THIS PAGE: AP PHOTO/TRI HIEU

The first U.S. ambassador to postwar Vietnam, Douglas “Pete” Peterson, meets with Vietnamese Foreign Ministry official Nguyen Xuan Phong, at the Presidential Palace in Hanoi on May 14 1997. Peterson arrived in Vietnam on May 9.

Charles Lutz, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officer, second from lower left, and other American officials negotiate with Vietnamese representatives to develop a joint program to fight illegal drugs. DEA colleague Steve Green is to Lutz’s left.

COURTESY CHARLES H. LUTZ (2)

PREVIOUS SPREAD: HOANG DINH NA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES; THIS PAGE: AP PHOTO/TRI HIEU

sive. If the Vietnamese government accepted our proposal, it would be my responsibility to make it work, which would mean making nice with my former enemy. The Vietnamese would know that I had been an Army intelligence officer and that my service included six months as an adviser to the intelligence staff of the 18th Infantry Division, Army of the Republic of Vietnam. It concerned me that they might hold my prior service against me—making my job much more difficult, if not impossible.

e landed at Noi Bai International Airport on June 14, 1995, and the police escorted our motorcade into Hanoi. I was surprised to find such a beautiful town. There were dozens of lakes, treelined streets with shop-houses and a few old French villas scattered about. Motor scooters buzzed about the streets like swarms of bees. The city is low-lying and protected from surrounding waters by numerous dikes. During the war I wondered why we hadn’t blown up the dikes to flood the city and put the North Vietnamese out of business. After entering Hanoi, I was glad we had not taken such action. We checked into the historic Metropole Hotel, its wooden-floored rooms, shuttered windows and ornate balconies a throwback to French colonial times. The hotel sits on Sword Lake, named for the magic sword that according to legend was loaned by the resident Turtle God to an ancient Lutz escorts a Vietnamese emperor who used it to captured Viet Cong from a helicopter at vanquish Chinese invaders. Xuan Loc in 1969, Our Vietnamese hosts wined and when he served as dined us. They took us on a city tour an adviser to the intelligence staff of intended to leave no doubt in our South Vietnam’s minds that their country had sur18th Infantry vived quite well despite our superior Division. might. They showed us Ho Chi Minh’s tomb, the carcass of a B-52 bomber shot down over Hanoi and the statue of a shackled John McCain erected on a bank of Truc Bach Lake where his Navy jet had crashed after being shot down in 1967. The future U.S. senator spent 5½ years as a prisoner of war. During some free time, I slipped away with Greene, a Marine Vietnam veteran, to pay our respects at the “Hanoi Hilton,” the snide nickname tortured American capA P R I L 2 0 21

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LEFT RENAULT/RIEGER/GAMMA-RAPHO VIA GETTY IMAGES;RIGHT: NIK WHEELER/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES; PETERSON: AP PHOTO/JOHN DURICKA

HOANG DINH NAM/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

tives gave to the prison that its French builders named Maison Centrale and the North Vietnamese called Hoa Lo prison. During one of my subsequent visits to Hanoi I happened by the compound and witnessed its remaining walls being knocked down to make way for Hanoi Towers, a shopping mall and business office complex. But the gatehouse remained and was later turned into a museum. Hoa Lo had been a prison for many Vietnamese dissidents during France’s almost 100-year rule. Our formal meeting with the foreign minister the next day, June 15, did not go according to the State Department’s script. After some diplomatic foreplay, Gelbard tossed a proposition onto the table: movement toward recognition in exchange for cooperation on international drug control. Before the minister could even open his mouth to reply, President Bill Clinton knocked Gelbard’s diplomatic legs out from under him. That very day, the White House signaled to the Vietnamese government the president’s inten-

A cyclist passes the U.S. Liaison Office building in Vietnam on Aug. 3, 1995, just days before it became the U.S. Embassy. Lutz, as a DEA agent, met there with Vietnamese law enforcement officials.

tion to normalize relations with Vietnam contingent only upon its continued, longstanding commitment to account for Americans still missing in action to the fullest extent possible. No mention was made of cooperation on the drug issue. The normalization policy was formalized in a White House ceremony on July 11, 1995. Gelbard was upset that his proposal had been overshadowed by Clinton’s announcement and wasn’t the historic milestone he had hoped to add to his record of diplomatic achievements. However, he did successfully open the door to cooperation on drugs. The Vietnamese saw no reason not to work with us. Their police would get training and equipment to help curb their own domestic drug abuse problem. From our perspective, a DEA presence in Vietnam would help us gather intelligence on drug trafficking organizations that might be linked to drug gangs in the United States, and perhaps Vietnamese authorities would work with us to intercept Thai trawlers smuggling heroin through their waters to Hong Kong. Over the next three years I continued the dialogue, returning 10 times to Hanoi for various meetings at the U.S. Embassy, which officially opened in August 1995. During each visit I’d schmooze with the national chief of police and local law enforcement authorities to strengthen the relationship. I tagged Special Agent Tom Harrigan, who later became the DEA’s chief of operations, to commute between Bangkok and Hanoi to start building the working relationships needed for any enforcement success. A permanent DEA office was established at the American Embassy in Hanoi the year after my tour of duty ended to continue that work and is operating to this day. I had another asset in this effort, Special Agent Ly Ky Hoang, a Vietnamese-American who accompanied me on each of my visits. Ly had been chief of the Saigon Police Department’s narcotics squad until 1975 and worked closely with the DEA. When Saigon began to crumble, Greene was instrumental in getting Ly and his immediate family evacuated to America. Hired by the DEA as an intelligence analyst, Ly worked his way up to become a criminal investigator. At first I was concerned that Ly’s former status as a South Vietnamese official might complicate matters in talks with the postwar communist government, but his thorough knowledge of Vietnam’s history and culture, his insights into the personalities of government officials and his fluency in the language were invaluable in accomplishing our goals. Clinton named Douglas B. “Pete” Peterson

LEFT RENAULT/RIEGER/GAMMA-RAPHO VIA GETTY IMAGES;RIGHT: NIK WHEELER/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES; PETERSON: AP PHOTO/JOHN DURICKA

HOANG DINH NAM/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

ABOVE, LEFT: The Metropole Hotel, a showcase of French colonial architecture, is a favorite of VIPs visiting Hanoi. RIGHT: The “Hanoi Hilton,” where American POWs were confined and tortured, is now a museum whose arched gate retains the name used when the French held prisoners there.

America’s first ambassador to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Peterson, a retired Air Force colonel, was a prisoner of war for six years. Like fellow POW John McCain, he was a driving force in Washington for normalizing relations. Peterson served three terms as a Florida member in the U.S. House of Representatives but had decided in 1995 not to run for re-election in November 1996. Clinton nominated him in May 1996 for the ambassadorship. Peterson arrived in Hanoi in May 1997. While serving as ambassador, he married a Vietnamese-born Australian, Vi-Le, in 1998, literally strengthening the bonds between the U.S. and Vietnam.

y duties in Vietnam also took me to Ho Chi Minh City, which many locals still called Saigon, to meet with the city’s chief of police. That gave me the opportunity to visit some of my old haunts for the first time in almost 30 years. The city had grown dramatically in the ensuing decades. Its streets were jammed with cars, buses and trucks jockeying for space— the mirror opposite of low-rise, slow-paced Hanoi. The pragmatic socialist government knew better than to mess with the capitalist industry of Ho Chi Minh City, the engine of the nation’s booming economy. Yet Ho Chi Minh City wasn’t without disap-

pointments. The War Remnants Museum boasted captured American tanks and aircraft and spewed accusations of American war crimes, painting us in the worst possible light. Young men roamed the streets, apparently having been sired by American GIs and abandoned by their Vietnamese families. The shell of the old U.S. Embassy in Saigon was left standing as a monument to North Vietnam’s ousting of America. Peterson made its razing a precondition for opening an American consulate there. Many of the venues I remembered were changed or gone altogether. A wooden hammer and sickle hung behind the front desk at the Rex Hotel, a reminder of the era that had followed ours. The hotel’s open-air, rooftop O Club—with $2 steaks and nightly entertainment—had been a favorite of mine during the first six months of my one-year tour of duty. Now the club’s white metal tables and chairs lay on the roof in rusting heaps. Ly and I couldn’t find the Ponderosa, the French villa that headquartered the 525th Military Intelligence Group, where I stayed while working with Operation Hurricane, which was implemented to prepare Saigon’s defenses for another Tet Offensive, following the one in early 1968. Once that likelihood had faded, the operation was disbanded, and I was reassigned as assistant logistics officer of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion in a compound at the foot of Saigon’s Binh Loi Bridge. We couldn’t find that compound either. We drove a rental car east through the boonies to Xuan Loc, about 35 miles from Saigon. It was the former home of the ARVN 18th Infantry Di-

From POW to Ambassador Douglas B. “Pete” Peterson, the first U.S. ambassador to postwar Vietnam, was an Air Force pilot flying an F-4 Phantom II fighter-bomber when he was shot down on Sept. 10, 1966. He was a POW until March 4, 1973. Peterson represented Florida in the U.S. House 1991-97. He was ambassador April 1997 to July 2001.

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Before we left Xuan Loc I bought the entire jar of hard candy at the tiny wooden kiosk that served as the village’s general store and cafe and handed it out to kids who had gathered to gawk. I also left a handful of dong, the Vietnamese currency, with the store’s owner, which Ly told me was enough to buy rice wine for our host, my old comrade in arms and his buddies for a month. Once I found the old airstrip, I was able to locate the MACV compound. It was totally overgrown when we drove by. A guard was posted at the front gate with an AK-47 assault rifle slung over his shoulder. A sign on the gate read, “NO PHOTOGRAPHS.” The building must have been a supply depot, perhaps for weapons or ammunition. Ly thought it best not to stop. Back in Ho Chi Minh City we drove to Ly’s childhood home. His parents, who had immigrated to the United States some years after he did, were allowed to take only one suitcase apiece, leaving virtually everything they owned behind. The woman who now occupied the home welcomed us in to look around. The furniture owned by Ly’s parents was still there, in exactly the same place where they had left it. Ly spotted the tiny

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COURTESY CHARLES H. LUTZ (2)

vision, where I spent my last six months with Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Advisory Team 87. I told Ly the compound where I stayed wouldn’t be hard to find because it sat just across the road from the airstrip where we launched search-anddestroy missions in Huey helicopters equipped with guns and searchlights, called fireflies. I figured by now it would be the town’s airport. When we reached Xuan Loc we were told there was no airport. After driving in circles, we stopped an elderly woman with red, betel-nut stained teeth carrying two buckets of coal on a long pole cradled over her shoulders. She remembered the old airstrip and pointed across a field toward a stand of trees. We parked and walked through the tree line Once I found into a small village where Ly asked the first felthe old low we found if he could direct us to the airstrip. “You’re standing on it,” he told Ly, pointairstrip, I ing to our feet. The locals had built their small was able to village around the abandoned, now crumbled locate the macadam pavement. MACV The man told us he had been in the 18th Incompound. fantry Division and invited us into his grass hut for tea. His old army helmet hung on a stake at It was totally the front entrance, its only decoration. We sat overgrown on the dirt floor as he served us hot tea in tiny when we chipped cups and then proudly took us on a drove by. tour of his mushroom farm.

COURTESY CHARLES H. LUTZ

Lutz stands beside a statue of shackled Navy pilot John McCain on the bank of Hanoi’s Truc Bach Lake, commemorating the spot where the future U.S. senator’s jet crashed after being shot down in 1967. Lutz also visited other warrelated sites including Ho Chi Minh’s tomb.

lacquered table where he ate as a child. With tears welling in his eyes, he asked me to take some pictures for his parents. I realized then that even those who escaped the communist takeover had paid a heavy price.

COURTESY CHARLES H. LUTZ (2)

COURTESY CHARLES H. LUTZ

ith rare exceptions, the Vietnamese people themselves seemed to hold little animosity toward Americans. The only instance I personally observed occurred in late 1996 when I spoke at the graduation ceremony for the DEA’s first international training course in Hanoi. I had just started my remarks when there was a scuffle in the back of the auditorium and one of the students was escorted from the room. Afterward, the director-general of police apologized profusely, explaining that the officer, whose brother was a North Vietnamese soldier killed in the war, had become emotionally distraught. I can only imagine that after a week with DEA instructors he was having second thoughts about closer ties with the Americans. I had taken my wife with me on that trip. In the evening we attended a banquet hosted by the interior minister to thank the training team for its work. In a government hall along Sword Lake they set out an array of local delicacies fit for an emperor. There were rounds of toasts to each other’s organizations and to the improving relationship between our two nations. After raising our glasses, the hosts had us interlock arms with theirs and say in English, “Bottoms up,” before tossing down each shot of cognac—the national drink, another legacy of the French. The toasts went on for some time. I don’t remember getting back to the hotel. My three years working to improve relations with the Vietnamese government forced me to put aside any ill will that I may have held for my former enemies and gave me a different perspective on the war, one that crystalized while sipping a Vietnamese-made “33 Beer” at the Americanowned R&R Hanoi Tavern. A Vietnamese guy sitting next to me struck up a conversation. He spoke English pretty well, and I’m certain he just wanted to practice a bit. At one point I asked him what he thought of the war. “Which one?” he replied. His response got me thinking. For most Vietnamese people living today the war with the Americans is just another chapter in their history books after wars with China, France and Japan. They paid a dear price during the protracted war with us. Some estimates put total human losses at more than 1 million during that era. Yet, for the most part, they had moved on. The United States paid a high price as well.

More than 58,000 Americans lost their lives taking a stand against communist aggression in South Vietnam during the Cold War. It took 20 years before we were finally able to move on. During the 20-plus years since the beginning of that joint effort in the battle over illegal drugs, the relationship between our two nations has blossomed, despite Vietnam’s poor human rights record, and we are allied in another concern: China’s ambitions in Southeast Asia. There has never been any love lost between Vietnam and China, even though China supported the communist Hanoi regime during the war. This time the Hanoi government could be on our side. Maybe the Vietnamese could get that Turtle God to loan us his magic sword. V

Charles Lutz was commissioned an Army intelligence officer through the ROTC program at Pennsylvania State University in December 1967. He deployed to Vietnam in June 1968 and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for meritorious service with MACV Advisory Team 87. Lutz concluded his active duty at the Continental Intelligence Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, before beginning a 32-year career as a special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration. He lives in Salem, South Carolina.

Wife Joy Lutz stands at Hoan Kiem “Sword Lake,” named for a magic sword loaned by a Turtle God to an ancient emperor in Vietnamese lore. Turtle Tower is in the background. BELOW: Lutz and a Vietnamese law enforcement counterpart toast improved cooperation between the two countries as Vietnamese-American DEA agent Ly Ky Hoang looks on.

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FROZEN FOREVER IN THEIR YOUTH CARRYING A CAMERA ALONGSIDE HIS RIFLE, AN INFANTRYMAN DOCUMENTED THE DAILY LIFE OF SOLDIERS AT WAR

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PHOTO CREDITS

After hacking through triplecanopy jungle for about 200 yards, photographer James Allen Logue’s Alpha Company halts to rest, and Nick Knowlton enjoys a Coca-Cola.

PHOTO CREDITS

By Gary D. Ford

PHOTO CREDITS

hen he humped the boonies as an infantryman in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970, James Allen Logue carried a rifle, a rucksack and a Nikonnos 35 mm camera. He dropped his camera as firefights erupted, but in camps, in villages, in sunshine and rain he snapped images of the countryside, civilians and fellow citizen-soldiers of Alpha Company, 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 196th Light Infantry Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division (Americal). In the field and on a mountaintop base, Landing Zone West in northern South Vietnam’s Quang Tin province, Jim shot more than 2,500 black-andwhite and color images that decades later would help save his life when he and I embarked on a long journey together. After Jim’s four-decade photography career, his Vietnam photographs, long filed away, helped drive back the mental creep of post-traumatic stress disorder. Upon advice from a Department of Veterans Affairs counselor, Jim excavated his war photographs and saw them for what they are: images of a brutal conflict, now just harmless captives to a computer screen. But what about those warriors of Alpha he froze forever in their youth? That question sent us on a nationwide odyssey. We kissed our wives goodbye and crossed America to interview all of the Alpha soldiers we could find and who would agree to speak with us. We found 70. Over coffee at kitchen tables, many of the veterans began, “I’ve never talked about Vietnam.” Then they spoke for hours about their lives before, during and after the war. With Jim, they laughed and cried, and all said they were proud to serve. Their words and mine, with Jim’s remarkable images, were compiled into a book, Rain in Our Hearts, published by Texas Tech University Press in Lubbock, near the campus home of The Vietnam Center and Sam Johnson Archive. APRIL 2021

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Frozen in Their Youth

A A Capt. John A. W. Wilson leads Alpha into a village on May 14, 1970, after a four-day march without food. Resupplied, the company marched out and was ambushed. One American was killed. B Logue displays contact sheets of exposed 35 mm film. He liked to use Kodak Tri-X, a “fast” film for capturing motion and shooting in low light. C Medic “Doc” Pruett, wearing a peace symbol necklace, uses his tweezers to feed a newly born bird that has fallen from its nest. D Alpha looked for enemy supplies in outlying hooches. If nothing was discovered, GIs enjoyed the shade and shared candy with youngsters. If they discovered enemy supplies in hooches, the “Zippo Squad” set them afire with one click of a Zippo cigarette lighter. Families were sent elsewhere. E The enemy fired at Alpha from this hooch, where soldiers advanced and discovered munitions. The Zippo Squad burned it.

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D E

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Frozen in Their Youth

More photos and stories of Alpha Company are in Rain in Our Hearts, by James Allen Logue and Gary D. Ford, Texas Tech University Press, 2020 ttupress.org

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PHOTO CREDITS

F Logue calls this his “all-time favorite” picture, showing men with whom he formed a lasting bond. In this jungle clearing, Wilson, the company captain, center left, addresses Alpha. G Only decades later, when Logue enlarged this image, did he notice one youngster was clutching a grenade. H In “front row” seats, Alpha watches jets pound enemy positions. I Members of Alpha Company and others fly to the field aboard a CH-47 Chinook helicopter on April 29, 1970, to battle the North Vietnamese Army’s 2nd Division.

PHOTO CREDITS

APRIL 2021

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Frozen in Their Youth

J K

J Donut Dollies often helicoptered onto firebases and brought with them Kool-Aid and games to socialize with the GIs. Donut Dollie Katharine Beckwith visits with Sgt. Ben Perry. K Richard Thimmig provided much of his squad’s firepower with an M60 machine gun. He earned a Bronze Star for bravery on May 14, 1970. L Spc. 4 Nathaniel Donaldson was known for his abilities as a point man and stylish attire: boonie hat and sunglasses. 58

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Jackpot! Hoard of 1883-O Morgan Silver Dollars Found & Secured Mintage accounts for only 1.33% of all Morgan Silver Dollars Struck!

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Pilots in scout helicopters, small choppers used for reconnaissance work, flew into enemy areas to draw fire and reveal the location of units that could be destroyed by larger U.S. gunships. These helicopters are at Bien Hoa Air Base outside Saigon in January 1973.

Taking Fire!: Memoir of an Aerial Scout in Vietnam

By David L. Porter McFarland, 2020

Undoubtedly, most Vietnam War helicopter pilots would consider any mission they flew without drawing enemy fire to be a resounding success. But not David L. Porter and his fellow U.S. Army aerial scout pilots flying daring “hunter-killer” combat missions. They would deem missions with “no enemy fire” to be dismal failures. The scout pilots’ raison d’etre was to tempt enemy ground troops and anti-aircraft gunners to fire at the vulnerable scout “hunter” light observation helicopters, or LOH, thereby exposing enemy positions to attack by the scout’s “killer” partners—typically heavily armed AH-1 Cobra helicopter gunships. In effect, aerial scout helicopters were the hunter-killer missions’ “juicy bait” dangled tantalizingly in front of enemy ground troops to get them to “bite” and unleash streams of automatic weapons fire. Seeming to defy common sense (not to mention self-preservation), MEDIA “success” for scout pilots literally DIGEST meant “taking fire.” Porter’s excellent Taking Fire!: Memoir of an Aerial Scout in Vietnam is a concise, detailed and well-written 174-page account of his experiences as a young scout helicopter pilot during a 1969-70 combat tour in Vietnam with the air cavalry troop of the famed 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, the “Blackhorse Regiment,”

based in Quan Loi, between Saigon and the Cambodian border. During his 364-day tour in Vietnam, Porter flew “around 200” aerial scout missions while assigned to hunter-killer team duty. He describes those missions’ tactical concept: The Hunter-Killer tactic was developed over time because of the requirement to find and destroy an elusive enemy in terrain that masked the enemy from traditional reconnaissance techniques… The operation stipulated two basic tactics: finding the enemy; and, once he was found, fixing and fighting him. The Hunter-Killer Team was designed around two aviation components: 1) The Hunter— one OH-6 Scout LOH flying at low-level, searching for VC, reporting his observations to the overhead Cobra; and 2) The Killer—one AH-1G Cobra flying at altitude, providing cover for the Scout below, reporting scout observations, and if necessary, reacting to enemy contact. The capabilities of both aircraft meshed perfectly to support Hunter-Killer work. The LOH was small, quick, hard to shoot down, and elusive. The gunship was lightning-fast, heavily armed, and lethal. Hunter-Killer operations drew heavily on the skills of the pilots involved and demanded extraordinary team work and trust from both participants. Porter’s hunter-killer team missions were in-

AP PHOTO/NEAL ULEVICH

‘FLYING BAIT’

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AP PHOTO/NEAL ULEVICH

herently dangerous. Each was potentially fatal. Porter’s four Distinguished Flying Crosses and Air Medal with a “V” for valor device attest to his courage. As a bonus for Vietnam War history buffs, Porter’s book goes beyond his combat adventures to also recount his experiences in the Army from induction in 1968 through the end of his Vietnam tour, including his time at the U.S. Army helicopter flight school in Fort Wolters, Texas, and Fort Rucker, Alabama. It is a fascinating, firsthand account of military service in that era. There is an exceptionally detailed rendering of “daily life” in Vietnam for a first lieutenant in the 11th Armored Cavalry’s air cav troop—in-country processing; living and working conditions; infrequent but potentially deadly surprise mortar/rocket attacks; good and bad interactions with subordinates, peers and superiors; leadership lessons gained by direct experience; and—perhaps predictably given the American GI’s propensity to attract pets, primarily canines—a description of the “unit dog,” a mongrel pooch inevitably named “Scout.” (My field artillery battery’s pet dog, “Frag,” unfortunately met an ironic end when a nervous infantryman standing perimeter duty one dark night tossed a fragmentation grenade at some suspicious noise outside the wire. It was “Frag” wandering around sniffing discarded C-ration cans.) Porter’s memoir is a solid account of a combat assignment in Vietnam that has too often been overlooked. This reviewer’s only complaint is the number of minor errors of the type that occur frequently in today’s publishing business and which should have been fixed by publisher McFarland’s editor. These small but nonetheless irritating mistakes unnecessarily detract from his otherwise excellent narrative. For example, the French Southeast Asian empire was in “Indochina” not “InVIE-210400-002 John Black.indd donesia;” the standard Viet Cong/North Vietnamese Army mortar was the Soviet/ Chinese “82 mm” not “81 mm”; the 1972 Battle of An Loc was during the failed NVA “Easter Offensive” not “the final collapse of South Vietnam” in 1975. However, these editing mistakes should not detract from Porter’s superb and informative memoir. —Jerry D. Morelock

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Peace Negotiator Became Communist Prisoner

Peace and Prisoners of War: A South Vietnamese Memoir of the Vietnam War

By Phan Nhat Nam Naval Institute Press, 2020

A handful of strict constructionist historians will not touch memoirs that are written years after the fact. Human memories fade after many years, even memories of momentous and life-changing events. Memories also may change over decades because the mind tends to alter events as they are replayed—kind of like a kids’ game of telephone where you repeat something over and over and the exact details of what happened morph into something different. Former airborne officer Phan Nhat Nam’s Peace and Prisoners of War: A South Vietnamese Memoir shows the value of a first-person account written soon after the heat of metaphorical battle. Nam wrote the words in his book in 1973 and 1974 following the signing of the Paris Peace Accords on Jan. 27, 1973, ending direct American military involvement in the Vietnam War. During that period, Phan Nhat Nam—“a battle-hardened, thirty-year-old soldier,” in the words of Vietnam veteran and former U.S. Sen. James Webb, who wrote the introduction—was a South Vietnamese representative in diplomatic negotiations with his enemies, the North Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong. It was not a pleasant experience. Nam spent his final active-duty time as a firstrate war correspondent and wrote the dispatches published in Peace and Prisoners of War soon after the events he described. That fact and his skill as a writer bring a strong sense of immediacy to Nam’s testimony and make the book a more valuable historical document than a memoir written for a 21st century reader. After countless hours across from his enemies at negotiating tables, Nam had few good things to say about communism and Vietnamese communists, in particular. He all but demonizes virtually every enemy negotiator he encountered. He writes that one Viet Cong colonel, for example, had the temperament “of a sadist enjoying the sight of a victim writhing under torture” and the “absolute inhumanity and coolness of the likes of Goering and Rudolph Hess.” Another looked like “a beast waking up from a doze after a bloody meal.” Nam characterizes communist military lead-

ers in general as people who were “affected with mental disorders of a debilitating nature” and acted “under the guidance of some satanic power, and I would even identify them with plain murderers.” Nam also had little tolerance for anti-war activists in his country and the United States. He “looked with rage” upon “‘anti-war’ people who were clamoring for peace in the streets of Saigon or in the parks of America, blindly following the hot pants of the strip-actress Jane Fonda, and joyfully insulting our dead.” He also disdained the Paris peace agreement, calling the work of U.S. national security adviser Henry Kissinger and top North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho “a disgusting deception against the 15 million people of South Vietnam.” The word “prisoners” in the title refers to the long, tense, bitter negotiations Nam conducted with the communists over the logistics in the exchange of tens of thousands of prisoners held by both sides. Not long after those words were written Nam was seized by the communists and held in so-called “reeducation camps” for 14 years. His imprisonment included eight years in solitary confinement—ironically and tragically presaging the book’s title. In 1993, Nam was allowed to leave Vietnam and move to the United States. Very few first-person accounts of the high-level negotiating that followed the signing of the Paris Peace Accords have been published. That fact alone makes Peace and Prisoners of War a valuable addition to the Vietnam War historical canon. —Marc Leepson

Gold Stars Over the Red River: The Fighter Regiments and the Aces of the Vietnam People’s Air Force

By Kirk R. Lowry, Aviation That Guards Press, 2020

There has been a proliferation of information on the North Vietnamese air force in the past few decades, mostly culled by Hungarian air force doctor and aviation enthusiast István Toperczer. The latest entry, however, is the work of Canadian

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Kirk R. Lowry, who has compiled a comprehensive history of a North Vietnamese aviation expansion that ultimately grew to four fighter regiments with 36 aircraft each (provided that all were present or accounted for). Gold Stars Over the Red River: The Fighter Regiments and the Aces of the Vietnam People’s Air Force was originally published in Vietnam, but there is now a Canadian-printed, English-language version updated in late 2019. Lowry offers a chronology of events and biographies of virtually every North Vietnamese pilot who made a claim on an American airplane, helicopter or drone. He includes—whenever the information could be ascertained—the identities of the pilots shot down, the date and the location where they were forced to eject (in some cases more than once) and whether they were killed in action. All of this can be useful to anyone seeking to identify and verify American air-to-air combat claims. Gold Stars not only covers the operations of the North Vietnamese 921st, 923rd, 925th and 927th Fighter regiments but also sheds more light on the training process that made a formidable fighter force of people who seldom had exposure to the technology of a tractor. That training was provided by foreign advisers from multiple communist countries, including Korean War ace of aces Soviet pilot Nikolai Sutiagin (22 victories). Only one country, North Korea, supplied combat pilots to supplement North Vietnam’s air defenses. The North Korean unit, called Force Z and led by Kim Chang Xon, rotated 87 pilots in and out of one MiG-21F-equipped company of the 921st Fighter Regiment and two companies of Shenyang F-5s (Chinese-built and exported MiG-17s) in the 923rd. Flying combat missions from 1967 to 1969, the North Koreans claimed 26 victories and a loss of 14 pilots though, oddly, North Vietnam acknowledges only eight of the claims and 12 Force Z-flown aircraft lost, which are listed in the appendix. Illustrated with 50 photographs, Gold Stars Over the Red River makes a useful VIE-210400-001 Mystic Stamps.indd resource and provides insight into the air war’s “other side.” —Jon Guttman

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FORCED THE ENEMY TO FIRE ON HIM By Doug Sterner Donald Sidney Skidgel craved excitement and adventure. Born in Caribou, Maine, on Oct. 13, 1948, and raised in a rural area of Plymouth, he loved the outdoors and became an avid hunter. Bored with school, he dropped out at 16 and worked in Connecticut but returned to rural Maine in his free time to speed over rough, dirt-covered roads on his motorcycle. At age 18, Skidgel married and started a family. Still seeking adventure, he tried to join the military in 1967. However, at that point in the war neither the Army nor the Marine Corps wanted a married man with one child and another on the way. That changed with the communist Tet Offensive in January 1968 and the consequent buildup of U.S. forces HALL OF in Vietnam. One month before his second daughter was born, Skidgel received his draft notice. VALOR After basic training, he began advanced training as a tank crew member at Fort Knox, Kentucky. He volunteered for airborne training for the adventure of jumping from an aircraft and the extra $50 a month to support his family. By the time Skidgel finished training in August 1968, he and his wife had divorced. She was pregnant with their third child. The following year Skidgel was sent to Vietnam and arrived there in May 1969. Now a sergeant, he was assigned to an armored personnel carrier in a reconnaissance unit of Troop D, 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). On Sept. 14, 1969, Skidgel was serving as a reconnaissance section leader when elements of his troop were operating as a security force for a truck

Doug Sterner, an Army veteran who served two tours in Vietnam, is curator of the Military Times Hall of Valor database of U.S. valor awards.

DPAA

DONALD SKIDGEL TO SAVE OTHERS, A SERGEANT

convoy on a remote road north of Saigon near the Cambodian border. A battalion-sized enemy force waited until the 2½-ton trucks came into range and then opened fire from tall grass and fortified bunkers along the road. As the trucks swerved and careened to avoid a hail of fire from small arms, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, Skidgel ordered his driver to go off-road, directly into the center of the enemy ambush. Atop his vehicle, he poured machine-gun fire into the enemy ranks, silencing at least one enemy position. As the battle raged and trucks tried to push past the kill zone, Skidgel grabbed his M60 machine gun and dismounted. He ran alone and unprotected across 65 yards of bullet-riddled terrain to a vantage point where, in his exposed position, he rained deadly fire on enemy troops for 15 minutes, forcing them to turn the bulk of their fire on him, which enabled the remainder of the truck convoy to organize a resistance. When his ammunition ran low, Skidgel raced back through the enemy fire to his vehicle. Remounted, Skidgel learned by radio that the convoy’s command vehicle was taking heavy fire. He ordered his driver directly into the enemy, continuing to man his machine gun from atop his mount and again drawing enemy fire upon himself. Braving the fusillade, he destroyed several enemy positions before a rocket-propelled grenade exploded into his vehicle. Skidgel was wounded in the explosion and knocked from his gunner’s seat onto the rear fender. The battered and bloody Skidgel staggered to his feet and returned to his gun. The driver, aware of his sergeant’s multiple wounds, implored him to quit, but he would not. Urging his driver forward, Skidgel continued his assault, again drawing the enemy’s attention and relieving pressure on the command vehicle. In the onslaught of enemy fire, he was mortally wounded. The sergeant’s heroic and selfless actions enabled the command group to withdraw to a better position without casualties and inspired his comrades to destroy the enemy. Skidgel was buried with military honors at Sawyer Cemetery in Plymouth. A posthumous Medal of Honor was presented to Terry Skidgel, the 3-year-old son Skidgel had never seen. Vice President Spiro T. Agnew made the presentation in Washington on Dec. 16, 1971, in the presence of Skidgel’s family. V

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