The Pentagon would be pleased – Nelson Demille – Word of Honor
Vietnam was the most devastating and controversial event of America in the 20th century. More than the events of World War II that united the Nation, Vietnam was the singular event that divided America. Vietnam divided America politically, socially, morally, economically, educationally, and militarily.
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy (JFK) shattered the naivete of America in the 1960s.
After World War II the USA trusted in Government to a fault. The Nation was nurturing the Baby Boomers and enjoying extraordinary social and economic pleasures. America believed in ABC, CBS, and NBC – the Big Three media providers that enjoyed an overwhelming and uncontested journalistic monopoly. PBS and ‘independent’ media on UHF television channels were rogue outlets.
When Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) became President following JFK’s death in November 1963, America believed everything uttered by the mainstream media – comprising most print, video, and radio formats. This would become both a blessing and a curse as America’s age of innocence was ending.
Little was known at the time about Vietnam. American Special Forces teams were fighting in 1959 in Northern Laos along the Red River border with China. But no one told the American public.
In the early 60’s JFK authorized and sent American ‘advisors’ to assist the South Vietnamese government fighting an internal conflict with its Northern Vietnamese neighbor. Advisors were the newly elite Green Berets of the Special Forces. Vietnam involvement slept until the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964 when North Vietnamese gunboats allegedly attacked US Naval vessels. LBJ immediately seized the event and began military escalation and intervention in South Vietnam. The war was now real.
The ’build up’ began immediately after the 1964 general election. The 71st Assault Helicopter Company (then Co. A, 501st Aviation Battalion) departed the USA in late November 1964 for Bien Hoa (Saigon), South Vietnam. The 71st would remain in Vietnam until late 1972 making it one of the longest, continuously serving combat units involved in the conflict.
Other key Army units would soon follow. With the arrival of these larger units, a substantial life support and infrastructure was essential. Military bases were constructed to support the wartime effort. Airbases with lengthened runways, roadways, housing, storage, and vehicle and aircraft maintenance facilities were all required to operate and sustain the massive influx of the American war machine. America’s military was moving from a peacetime military posture into an operational combat force half a world away.
To fulfill LBJ’s war requirements the Selective Service began drafting 35,000 individuals per month in mid-1965. Eighteen-year-old males were suddenly subject to involuntary conscription for service in a distant conflict. The local draft board classified young men according to educational, marital, medical, or employment status.
Deferments were available and offered marginal shelter against the 1-A category – single, unemployed, not enrolled in college level schooling guaranteed you would become the military’s first involuntary choice. To supplement the needed increase for inductees, the 100,000 Program provided mostly cannon fodder from the non or unproductive members of America’s population. Nicknamed ‘McNamara’s Morons’ they scored in the lowest percentile of military qualifications, given combat duty, and suffered three times the loss of other combat soldiers. Stealth slaughter.
With the expanded draft conscription came the resentment and rebellion of college students. The mainstream media now had improved communication systems and provided real time reporting to the American public. Increasingly the public neither liked nor enjoyed the nightly images of war broadcast into their homes.
Students, longtime friends, families, co-workers, were all affected by America’s involvement. Protests, demonstrations, and the disgrace of an American Presidency were all victims of the war. Some agreed with the war, others opposed it – most however supported the troops fighting it. The divisiveness in America was beginning with this first jolt of the Vietnam war.
Politicians decide the wars, soldiers fight the wars. But it was LBJ, and his whiz kids lead by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara who believed the war was best directed and fought from the White House Oval office. Washington restricted the rules of engagement and directed the field commanders strategy and tactics.
‘Body count’ was determined as the measure of winning. Survival became the name of the game for the combat soldiers on the battlefield. For other support personnel – keep doing your duty. Survive the tour so everyone might return Home.
The war would grind on for over 16 years until a Vietnamization program was employed in 1970 forcing the ARVN to fight its own battles. In 1974 Congress stopped appropriations to South Vietnam – this lack of funding and loss of morale contributed to collapse of the South Vietnam government in April 1975.
As early as 1966 advisors posited the ‘war’ as unwinnable. The reasons for its continuation are still elusive as most were afraid to acknowledge the truth. The war consumed massive amounts of American funding, materials, supplies, and tragically the loss of lives.
Unwilling to admit fault, the bureaucracy permitted the war to continue on autopilot. The South Vietnam government was hopelessly corrupt, the North Vietnam government wanted reunification, but America refused to retreat from the internal politics of these two sovereign nations.
President Richard Nixon finally liberated America from its Vietnam bondage in 1973. Peace with Honor was achieved but not before over 58,000 Americans would lose their life in and over the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
America and her hometown neighborhoods were never the same. Families and communities lost alarming numbers of sons, uncles, fathers and others to the ‘war. In the small St. Louis, MO parish of St. Catherine of Siena, Allen Green and Robert Bowdern would die from combat wounds in 1968.
Both Allen and Bob were always causing trouble in grade school – Allen a Marine and Bob an Army rifleman. Both killed within three weeks of each other. Mike Blassie, a 1966 high school classmate and Air Force Academy grad (1970) was killed in 1972 flying along the Cambodian border. He was initially the Vietnam ‘Unknown’ but whose remains were later identified and returned to interment in his hometown at Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, MO.
The aftermath of the war continued torturing families for years with some never recovering from the loss.
Saigon fell on April 30, 1975 as NVA troops seized the Saigon American Embassy. U.S. military helicopters evacuated hundreds of Embassy staff and limited numbers of South Vietnamese loyalists. Those left behind were at the mercy of the conquering Communists. It wasn’t good.
50 years after the final troops departed Vietnam 1,584 American servicemembers (including twenty-eight civilians) remain unaccounted for in Southeast Asia.
(c) Copyright – 2023 – Vic Bandini