Beating Plowshares Into Swords: An Alternate History of the Vietnam War (6 page)

A week later we were back in the Oval Office urging President Johnson to green light Gen. Westmoreland’s request to strike into Laos and Cambodia, arguing that we no longer had reason to fear Chinese intervention. At the time I thought that the “Peking Papers” were a weak foundation on which to make such a risky decision and I made my feelings known to the Secretary beforehand. He thanked me for my views, but his mind was made up, such was the frustration with the course of the war and suddenly you didn’t hear so much about West Berlin or South Korea. There was still considerable opposition in other quarters of the NSC and as a result, what was eventually agreed to was something of a compromise. We would send one infantry division, backed up by a Marine battalion, into Laos in an operation centered on Highway 9, with the objective of cutting the Ho Chi Minh trail and ending the free flow of supplies from the North to the South. It was not to be referred to publicly as an invasion, but as an “incursion,” making it sound like something a lot less than what it was. I had the job of going to Saigon and explaining to Gen. Westmoreland just what the parameters of the operation were.

To his credit, the General saluted and followed orders, the “incursion” was not what he had requested, but the plan was to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail and it would be accomplished with whatever men and material allowed. Our troops deployed into Laos, starting just before New Year’s 1967 in order for us to take advantage of as much of the dry season as possible. For two weeks things went well and a number of key points on the Trail were seized, but then the North Vietnamese came out of the jungle and hit us with everything they had. It turned into the worst bloodbath of the war and all of it played out on the evening news. Over 40,000 men had been committed on the ground to this operation and in less than three months they had suffered over 5,000 casualties. If it was the Communist’s counter-strategy to tie our units down in the jungles of Laos, then they were well on their way achieving success. “I don’t want to hear another Goddamn word about ‘Dienbienphu,’ not another Goddamn word.” Secretary Nixon exploded in the middle of one tense meeting in the Pentagon.

Travis Smith:
In late March, Sgt. O'Mara broke his leg diving into a ditch for cover during a mortar attack and was evacuated, got himself a Purple Heart and a ticket home, but along with the already departed Sgt. Stone, we were left without the two NCO’s who had kept us alive through every fight right from the first day we arrived in country. The instant the helicopter with O'Mara on board left, Captain Elston bumped me up to Sergeant on the spot; it was what they called a battlefield promotion. He soon had me running Bravo Company. Sad to say that a lot of guys whom I had come over with were gone by then, either KIA or wounded, but there was no end of fresh faced recruits to take their place and suddenly it was my responsibility to keep them alive. I counted at least ten of them under the age of 18 in my platoon alone; all of them lied about their age to get in. First thing I had to do was tell them that most of the shit they learned in Basic was worthless out there. The old adage is true: anything worth knowing can’t be taught. I made Spivik a Corporal; the Captain went along with anything I recommended. The kid deserved it, he’d been a big screw up like all of us were when we’d first got to Nam, but he’d worked his ass off and always came through when things got tough.

As Sergeant, it was my job to keep the unit functioning under the most adverse conditions; basically to do the impossible every day. The weather was just as bad an enemy as the NVA, along with the extremes in temperature, the Monsoon season started shortly after we arrived in Laos and we were wet all the time. Those rains that came out of nowhere every day were the worst, there was no way to keep dry and everybody was scared of jungle rot. The air would get so humid and close that we’d have difficulty breathing at times. Then there were the rats the size of small dogs and the insects with the magnitude of foot stools that were our constant companions. Bathing, shaving, or brushing your teeth on a regular basis became a thing of the past; we must have smelt as bad as we looked. When all we could see was jungle and distant mountains in every direction, there is no way that I can overstate the terrible sense of isolation we felt all the time. On top of all that, there were thousands of NVA regulars out in the undergrowth trying their best to kill every one of us, every single day.

They never gave up, no matter times they were bombed, strafed or napalmed, and were constantly changing their tactics. For days the North Vietnamese would come in and hit us just before dawn, inflict as many causalities as they could and then quickly fade away before the sun was up and just when we learned to anticipate them at daybreak, the bastards would switch to attacking in the middle of the night. If they weren’t hitting us on a regular basis then we were being sniped at or mortared any time of the day. No matter what, you always had that fear, not just of violent death, but of horrible injury in your mind. There was this constant debate in the back of your brain over what would be worst; to be instantly blown away or to sustain some horrific wound like having a limb blown off or being paralyzed for life. Every time you saw something happen to one of your buddies, you’d mentally put yourself in his place. It was always in the back of your head and if you let it, that fear would destroy your will to fight and Charlie knew it.

That’s where I had my work cut out, trying to keep those kids alive and ready to return fire without hesitation on a moment’s notice. The most important thing they learned from me was to keep their M-14s clean and ready at all times and for this we learned to improvise. I can still see the looks of horror on the faces of two new replacements, less than a week in country and just off a Huey, when I handed them a couple of condoms to use as a muzzle seal in order for the barrel to stay clear. Turned out both of them had gone straight to Basic from some Catholic school in Wisconsin, couple of altar boys, and they thought their immortal souls were going to burn in hell just for touching those things. Their tough luck, usually we used duct tape, but we’d run out. Some of us had a good laugh at their expense, ridiculing the fresh meat was our chief source of amusement, but we all became good friends when it was learned that those Wisconsin boys had shaken hands with Vince Lombardi and had met Paul Horning and Bart Starr. A lot of boring hours were spent reliving the recent glories of the NFL.

Gen. Earl Halton:
Even worst news came for us in March, when intelligence reports revealed that men and material were still seeping through to the South despite all our efforts. At least 30% of the flow was still reaching NVA units in the Central Highlands and the Saigon area. Anybody who is proficient in logistics knows that regular forces can remain effectively in the field on greatly reduced supplies, not to mention a guerrilla force that enjoys some support among the native population and can live off the land. This was borne out when a Ranger Company was ambushed and nearly wiped out near An Loc, only a few miles from Saigon, in the first week of April. Still, as early as Feb. 20, President Johnson had proclaimed the Ho Chi Minh Trail effectively closed and now everything he said was being undermined by events beyond his direction.

In fact our entire Vietnam policy was being undermined in the early spring of ‘67 and not just by the usual group of malcontents and agitators. The Administration was feeling the heat from many former allies in the media and in Congress, who in their wisdom had concluded that despite all of our efforts in South Vietnam; it was time to make a deal with the North Vietnamese. Within a two week period that spring,
The Washington Post
,
The New York Times
,
The Los Angeles Times
and
Life
all ran editorials strongly questioning our conduct of the war and calling for negotiations with the Communists. All of this only encouraged the anti-war movement that seemed to have infected most of America’s institutes of higher learning. Scores of colleges from one end of the country to the other suffered through major disruptions as the lunatics took over the asylum.

Worst of all was the effect that the high casualty rates were having on our supporters in Congress, who were constantly hearing from constituents back home, many of whom were the parents of draftees or those who were in line to be called up and were frustrated and fearful of a war that had been going on for two years with no end in sight. When the President of the largest bank in the smallest county in Arkansas calls his Congressman and expresses his doubts about what was happening in South Vietnam- that has much more impact than any editorial in
The New York Times
. Not even the staunchest hawk in the House or Senate could afford to ignore sentiments such as those. Many of my colleagues in the Pentagon took great pride in dismissing such civilian opinions, but I knew otherwise. Had they forgotten that you cannot fight a war without public support?

We were losing the people we needed the most in spite of the optimistic face the Administration showed the public. Exasperation and frustration reached the highest levels as I was to learn for myself on a Saturday afternoon in late March. I received a call at my home in Arlington from the White House operator with a request from the President that I come down there immediately. I thought there must have been a major disaster in Vietnam if the President wanted me there on such short notice, but upon arriving I was ushered into the Oval Office where I found President Johnson sitting by himself. Although I had participated in many meetings with the President, this was the first time I had been alone with him. You could see the strain the ordeal of war had been for him, it was written on his face, mirrored in his eyes.

He had called me there, he explained, because he had come to value my opinion after observing my work with Secretary Nixon. “It’s always the man who sits at the right hand of the top guy that knows what’s really going on” he said, “ and you’re always at Nixon’s side, so I figure that when it comes to Vietnam, you know the difference between shit and shinola. I figure you can tell me if we’re get’n set up for another Din Bin Phoo.” With that he spent the next thirty minutes questioning me about what I had seen during my trips to Vietnam and what my impressions were of the people over there. During the course of our conversation, the President unburdened himself to me concerning his worries about the course of the war and his fear that continually widening the conflict would result in a confrontation with the Soviets, but the more he talked, the more it became clear that his greatest concern was the situation right here in America and what the war was doing to the country. “This bitch of a war has really poisoned the well, a lot of college professors and big Eastern liberals-all part of the Bobby Kennedy fan club- with their toadies in the press have all been busy turning the country against me. They can’t stand anybody who’s not one of their own ilk. I had so many plans for a great society in America, to really fight poverty...but they were jealous of what I had achieved and used Vietnam to try and kill my Administration.”

This was very revealing, I had no idea how deeply the President was wounded by the anti-war faction. Of course I had to be very careful with my answers, I never forgot that I was talking to my superior’s superior and every word I said would likely be repeated back to Secretary Nixon. After some length of time, I made a point of telling the President that it didn’t matter what his critics said or did, what we were doing in Vietnam was right and the only course of action possible was to finish the job. With that, the President made me a stunning offer: “Tell you what I’ll do Halton, I can kick Westmoreland upstairs to the Joint Chiefs and I’ll promote you up to his job, you know what needs to be done over there. You can be the man to do it, take over and straighten out that mess and bring our boys home with the coonskin nailed to the wall. You do that and I swear you’ll be sitting right here in my chair...you can be President of the United States.” I didn’t know what to say to this, it was not possible for him to be serious. “All it’ll take is for me to make a phone call to Nixon right now and put the whole thing in motion.” Finally I was able to stammer out a firm decline and asked to be excused. To this day I’m not sure just how serious the President was; anyway, at least the country was spared the Presidency of Earl Halton. The next day I repeated every word of this conversation to Secretary Nixon, who found it very revealing concerning the President’s mood.

Despite these doubts and fears, we were faced with making serious decisions to escalate the war in the spring of ‘67. In the second week of April, Gen. Westmoreland took the ball and ran with it by sending a report to the Pentagon stating that the “incursion” had met with only partial success in cutting off the flow of supplies into the South and that in order to isolate and destroy the Communist forces in South Vietnam, operations would have to be expanded further into Laos. This was followed up by a formal request for more troops-which would have brought our total commitment up to 800,000-and permission to occupy all of Laos and Cambodia from the South Vietnamese border to the Mekong River and if necessary, lower half of North Vietnam. This included a proposal to assemble a large force in Thailand to hit the Communists from the west. Almost immediately the Joint Chiefs got behind Westmoreland’s plan, which then landed like a lit stick of dynamite in the laps of Secretary Nixon and ultimately the President.

Both of these men were the two best politicians of their generation and the fully grasped the ramifications of this escalation. First of all, it would finally require the President to call up the reserves, a move he had resisted for over two years because it was so potentially damaging politically. On top of that, once they adopted Westmoreland’s plan, the war was sure to last another twelve months, well into a Presidential election year where the enemies of the Administration’s war policy would surely come out of the wood work. At that point in time, Washington was full of rumors that Bobby Kennedy, the President’s bête noire, was being urged on a daily basis to challenge the President for the Democratic nomination the following year. In that situation, it would be impossible to be Commander-In-Chief and candidate for re-election simultaneously. If the President understood this, the Secretary also understood it in spades. Thus we were under the gun to come up with an alternative to Westmoreland’s plan of escalation. At no time did we seriously discuss using thermonuclear weapons on North Vietnam, despite what some members of the Administration have claimed after the fact. Also I categorically deny that I was the author of the Neutron Bomb option. The first time I saw this idea laid out was in a memo written by Mr. H. R. Haldeman, Secretary Nixon’s chief civilian assistant, which had been drafted at the Secretary’s direction.