CHAPTER 2
Before the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964, the United States might have withdrawn from Vietnam without much furor. Politicians are rarely short of excuses, and if their imaginations let them down there were a couple of handy rationales lying about that were hardly used. President Dwight Eisenhower’s dictum against getting involved in an Asian land war was one. The instability of the rotating governments of South Vietnam was another.
It was unlikely that a “Who lost Vietnam?” question would raise the hue and cry of the “Who lost China?” crowd a decade earlier, but the fact was that 1964 was a presidential election year. Although incumbent President Lyndon Johnson painted Republican nominee Senator Barry Goldwater as a war candidate, Johnson could not appear to be weak. He was a Texan, dammit, with all the pop-mythology baggage that the label carried. He regarded himself as a macho-man. Some months after Johnson’s election, at a small White House meeting, Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg asked the President why we were in Vietnam. Johnson unzipped his fly, pulled out his penis, and said, “This is why.”1 All of this became a moot point after the North Vietnamese appeared to throw down the gauntlet with patrol-boat attacks against U.S. Navy warships in August 1964. Never mind that the United States had supported armed incursions against North Vietnam for a decade and that its Operation DeSoto naval patrols may have violated North Vietnam’s territorial waters.2
The North Vietnamese attacks were seized upon as the perfect excuse to demonstrate just a tiny bit of that good old American military might, to show those North Vietnamese boys who they were dealing with. President Johnson authorized retaliatory strikes against Vietnamese military targets by American carrier-based aircraft. Over the next few months a series of escalating incidents, within and without South Vietnam, raised the profile of Vietnam, to say nothing of the testosterone levels, within President Lyndon Johnson’s administration and brought Vietnam to the margins of American public perception. But the escalating incidents were not the most important legacy of this period. The corner was turned when Lyndon Johnson asked for, and Congress naively gave him, a blank check to conduct an undeclared war in Southeast Asia.3
Not everyone within the administration was sanguine about America’s prospects in Vietnam. As early as 1963, John McCone, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), expressed doubts to President Kennedy about the efficacy of American efforts. His view of the adventure in Vietnam was that it was based on “complete lack of intelligence” and “exceedingly dangerous …” His views were dismissed as “out of step with policy.”4
In April 1964 the U.S. Joint Chiefs authorized a war game, Sigma-I-64, to study the effects of heightened bombing of North Vietnam. Conducted by teams of military officers ranked lieutenant colonel through brigadier general and their civilian counterparts from the intelligence agencies, the results of the game were not encouraging. The conclusion was that the American position would go from bad to worse and would result in two unattractive choices—either a great expansion of the war against the North or an American de-escalation.5 The hawks in the administration did not believe the findings, so five months later a second exercise, Sigma-II-64, was conducted. This time the rank and policy-making level of the participants was considerably higher, and the group included some of the more militant military and civilian players. Among them were Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Earle Wheeler, air power advocate General Curtis LeMay, Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance, and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy. Nevertheless, the results of SIGMA II were no more promising than the earlier version. Shocked by the results, Robert J. Meyer, a CIA participant, wrote a damning criticism of the American effort in Vietnam, questioning not only the effect of air power against the north but also the ability of large numbers of American ground troops to defeat an insurgent enemy with a credible political message.6 The policy makers thought that they knew better and Meyer’s warnings went unheeded.
In the subsequent months, conditions in South Vietnam quickly deteriorated under communist pressure. By the end of 1964 the Viet Cong were operating in regimental strength in several places with little serious challenge from the Saigon government.7 Giap had three full divisions within fifty miles of Saigon, which he hoped to isolate when the time was right. In February 1965 U.S. Army LtGen Bruce Palmer visited all of the four military regions into which South Vietnam was divided. He found that the Viet Cong controlled or had cut railroads, highways, and other lines of communication in major expanses of the country, and threatened normal social and economic life. South Vietnam was poised on the brink of collapse.
General Westmoreland’s deputy, Gen John Throckmorton, visited Danang, the major population center in the I Corps Military Region (I Corps), the northernmost region of South Vietnam, and pronounced it in grave danger.8 Not only was it threatened from the ground, there were fears that the North Vietnamese would use their Soviet-supplied aircraft to stage a strike against the critical Danang base. This base had become increasingly important to the Johnson administration because the President had decided to proceed with Operation Rolling Thunder, a series of bombing attacks against North Vietnam. Danang was to be an important launching site for some of these aircraft.
In order to protect the base against possible air attack from North Vietnam, Westmoreland requested a Hawk antiaircraft missile unit and was given the U.S. Marine Corps’ 1st Light Antiaircraft Missile (LAAM) Battalion. Two Marine infantry battalions, the 3d Battalion, 9th Marines (3/9), and the 1st Battalion, 3d Marines (1/3), landed on March 8 to back up the missile unit and defend the field from ground attack. Marine infantry battalions were deployed to defend the Danang field because their missile unit was already there, and Westmoreland decided that this would preclude inter-service confusion. The Marines’ mission was to occupy and defend critical terrain features and certain facilities to secure the airfield. In no uncertain terms, they were instructed to “not, repeat not,” engage in day-to-day actions against the VC.9 Lyndon Johnson was worried about public reaction to sending in Marines as opposed to men from another service. He told Robert McNamara, “the psychological impact of the Marines are coming is going to be a bad one. And I know enough to know that. And I know that every mother is going to say, ‘Uh-oh this is it!’…. Damned if I don’t know why we can’t find some sort of a policeman beside the Marines, because a Marine is a guy that’s got a dagger in his hand. And that’s going to put the flag up. An Army boy is not so much, and a Navy boy is not so much. But …”10
Lyndon Johnson had his own doubts about the ability of America to win in Vietnam, but they were never publicly stated. He told McNamara on February 26, 1965, “I don’t think anything is going to be as bad as losing, but I don’t see any way of winning.”11
On March 24, just after the first Marines landed in Vietnam, Assistant Aecretary of State for National Security Affairs John McNaughton outlined in a memo to his boss, Robert McNamara, the goals of the American activities in SVN (South Vietnam):
70%—to avoid a humiliating defeat (to our reputation as guarantor)
20%—to keep SVN (and the adjacent) territory from Chinese hands.
10%—to permit people of SVN to enjoy a better way of life. Also—to emerge from crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used.
Not—to “help a friend,” although it would be hard to stay in if asked out.12
As McNaughton’s memorandum makes clear, in March 1965 the main consideration in America’s expansion of the war in Vietnam was not to make the world safe for democracy, not to keep all of Southeast Asia from falling to the Communists, and certainly not to “help a friend.” The United States was getting further in because it would be too embarrassing to America’s interests to get out. By this date 581 Americans had died in Vietnam. This was less than 1 percent of the eventual total.
The landing of the Marines at this point was regarded by the Johnson administration as a one-time affair to fulfill a specific requirement. With his election in the bag and the blank check from Congress in his pocket, the American President could afford to be slightly more aggressive in Vietnam. Nevertheless, his true love was his Great Society program, a series of domestic achievements that would be the capstone of his political career. Vietnam was an irritant, a distraction. Johnson expected that more American pressure would, “nail that coonskin to the wall,” thus freeing him to concentrate on domestic issues.
As they were to do throughout the war, the Americans gravely underestimated the price the communists were willing to pay. The North Vietnamese met escalation with escalation. Most important was their decision to meet increased American presence through the infiltration of regular North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops to the south. Up until the beginnings of the conventional American troop buildup, the Vietnamese communists called their conflict with the southern half of the country and its American arms and advisors a “special war.” Once faced with the challenge of standard American military units, the communist policy evolved quickly into “direct war.” True, the communists would continue to wage an unconventional war to offset the American’s superior firepower and mobility, but they expected to directly challenge American professional fighting units.13
Limiting the American buildup to just two Marine battalions was not to be. Army Chief of Staff Harold K. Johnson, who was in Vietnam during the Marine landings, returned to Washington with the recommendation for deployment of a U.S. Army division. Not yet ready to pay the political price for such a large increase, President Johnson authorized two additional Marine battalions in National Security Memorandum 328, issued on April 6, 1965.14 This document also directed a crucial “change of mission for all Marine battalions deployed in Vietnam to permit their more active use.”
The trickle of battalions into the country was about to become a flood. Along with the deployment of additional Marine units came the deployment of bigger headquarters organizations. The headquarters element of the 3d Marine Division, commanded by MajGen William Collins came ashore to oversee Marine operations. A few weeks after his arrival General Collins left for the United States at the end of his normal tour. His replacement was Lewis W. Walt, who had just been promoted to major general a few days before his assignment and was thus the junior officer of that rank in the Marine Corps.
Lew Walt was a large, barrel-chested man (he wore a size 48-long coat), born in Kansas and raised in Colorado. He had been a football star at Colorado State University and was a war hero from World War II and Korea. He had won the Silver Star Medal at Guadalcanal for recovering wounded Marines under Japanese machine-gun fire. At Cape Gloucester, New Britain, in January 1944, he observed all six members of a Marine 37mm gun crew being killed or wounded as they tried to get their weapon to the top of a hill. Walt unhesitatingly rushed forward alone and began pushing the gun up the hill. Inspired by his action, several other Marines joined him. Upon reaching the crest of the hill Walt and his small group of men held off five furious Japanese counterattacks. He was awarded his first Navy Cross Medal for this effort. His second Navy Cross Medal came eight months later, on Peleliu. When both the commanding officer and the executive officer of a Marine infantry battalion were killed in a violent engagement with the enemy, Lew Walt rushed in and took command, reorganized the battalion, and led it on to its objective under intense fire.
Shortly after his assignment to Vietnam, Walt was promoted to lieutenant general; he would be the architect of Marine operations there for two years. General Walt’s promotion came in the wake of moving the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing (1st MAW) to Vietnam. The combination infantry division and aircraft wing were designated the III Marine Expeditionary Force. A few days later this was changed to III Marine Amphibious Force (III MAF). The change was made because the “expeditionary” title was too reminiscent of the French Expeditionary Force, which had left Vietnam under a shadow. General Walt was the first commander of III MAF.
The makeshift quality of the Johnson administration’s policies on Vietnam was already showing through. Within a few weeks, the United States shifted from a policy to protect an airfield to an “enclave strategy” whose most visible proponent was retired U.S. Army Gen James Gavin.15“Enclave strategy” meant that American forces would deploy in enclaves around major bases from which they would be permitted to conduct offensive operations within a fifty-mile radius. The enclave strategy was favored by many in the Marine Corps as being one of the first steps leading to pacification and population control. General Walt stated upon taking command in Vietnam, “With 100,000 people within 81mm mortar range of Danang, I had to be in the pacification business.” Unfortunately for the conduct of the war, this approach also had a short life.