By late fall of 1967 hundreds of flag-draped coffins containing the bodies of dead Americans were returning to the United States each month for burial. An estimated fifteen thousand soldiers had been killed since the beginning of the war. Violent clashes were erupting between antiwar and prowar demonstrators on college campuses, city streets, and even the grounds of the Pentagon. Led by students and civil rights activists, the peace movement was gaining momentum. President Johnson and his military advisors were adamant that America was winning the war in South Vietnam and bringing stability and security to the region. But that assessment would be shattered abruptly after the new year. On January 21, 1968, Communist forces—which, according to President Johnson, were on the verge of collapse—blitzed the heavily fortified marine base at Khe Sank and, nine days later, launched massive, coordinated attacks throughout the South. Twenty-nine-year-old Lt. Ray W. Stubbe, a chaplain with the navy reserves, was one of six thousand troops pinned down by the North Vietnamese at Khe Sanh. Stubbe knew his parents in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, would soon learn of the assault, and on January 21 he sent the following:
Dear Folks:
First, I’m OK, not even a scratch. The casualties have been comparatively small. So don’t worry.
I wrote my last entry in my log beginning Dec. 1st. Since our post office was hit this morning, I gave it to one of the pilots of one of the planes to mail via registered mail. I don’t know if it will ever get home, but there’s a lot in it; it’s very important to me. So I hope it gets home. Please write me if it does. It’s a green record book diary, covering the period 1 Dec. to today, plus a lot of personal papers.
We are, as you probably hear on the news, under attack. It’s the scariest thing I’ve ever had to face. I awoke at 5 o’clock to the sound of incoming rockets and mortars exploding just outside my hooch! They hit our ammunition dump, and rounds of ammuntion were flying all day long. Practically half the base is in ruins, but the casualties were very few because everyone got in bunkers. The only casualties were from the lines on the perimeter of the base from Hill 861. I am writing this as the sun is setting today. I don’t know if you will ever receive this, but I must write it anyway.
The base is quite safe. The airstrip wasn’t harmed, and planes keep coming and going. We still have our artillery for counter-mortar attacks. My hooch’s well-built, sturdy. We have a lot supporting us. So don’t worry.
I feel I’m needed here. I give my every waking moment for these men. They are basically good men, but not particularly religious as such, although I’m quite sure many prayed today! Yet I love them all, and give my daily life for them, and I do it not for personal satisfaction or companionship or a sense of personal accomplishment, but because I feel this is God’s will.
You of course know my love for you both and grandad and all—Peg and Jeane, Jackie, Henry—everyone, but especially you and grandma. I have not always been a good son and I know I’ve caused you grief at times, unsureness and anxiety at other times. But I’ve always loved all of you very deeply.
Well, there’s really not too much more to say in this situation—I’ve recorded all the details of everything in my log.
Love,
Ray
Unbeknownst to Stubbe, the 21st marked the beginning of an eleven-week seige that would leave hundreds of Americans dead and 1,500 to 2,500 wounded. Haunted by the specter of the French defeat at Bien Bien Phu in 1954, President Johnson ordered that Khe Sanh be held at all costs. Tens of thousands of American and South Vietnamese troops were rushed to the marine outpost, and the North Vietnamese were repelled in early April. (Ironically, the base was closed only months later.) After being safely transferred from the base in March, Stubbe described the experience in a letter to his parents:
So many things happened at Khe Sanh—it’s good I didn’t write earlier—practically anything I might write would either sicken or scare you. But that’s all past now. I must say the good Lord was very merciful and gracious. I didn’t even receive a cut or bruise. But there for a while I was having very close calls every day. One noon, while eating brunch in my hooch, an incoming round went into my wall—through four feet of din, 3 feet of sandbags, and bent my steel walls held up by u-shaped engineering stakes—it was a dud!
One evening at midnight, a rocket round—100 pounds—exploded just 2 feet from my hooch entrance. One day I was walking through an excavated trench about 10 feet deep, a mortar round exploded on the top edge, just above….
Things were very ghastly. I stayed one night at a hooch on the perimeter. It was a bunker for the men manning a 106 gun. One afternoon they took two incoming rounds—only one lived; all the rest were killed. One man’s head was never found—pieces of finger, hand, flesh, blood, all over. One man came into our medical area. He’ll lose both legs, his right arm, and be blind. Our medical area took quite a few hits, but fortunately no one there was hurt.
The slogans the men have on their helmets and flak jackets changed from “KILL, KILL, KILL” and “In many a strife we’ve lost our life and never lost our nerve,” etc. to “mom and dad forever,” and “you and me, God,” and “Please, Mr. Cong, I don’t want to die,” and crosses.
Many times our water supply would get shot up and we’d go several days without water.
There was always fear of incoming—it might come in anywhere; it might land anywhere. No place, no bunker, was absolutely safe….
The initial attack on Khe Sank was only a preamble to the most sweeping Communist offensive of the war. On the eve of Tet, the Vietnamese lunar new year observed at the end of January, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers swarmed out of the jungles and struck airfields, military installations, and over a hundred towns and provincial capitals throughout the South. American and South Vietnamese troops—many of whom were on furlough to celebrate the holiday—were caught entirely off guard. In a move more symbolic than tactically significant, Viet Cong commandos infiltrated the courtyard of the American Embassy in Saigon and blasted a hole through an embassy wall. Hue, the ancient imperial capital, was entirely overrun. The liberation of the city would take weeks and was one of the bloodiest battles of the war. Fifty-two-year-old Lt. Col. Gerald W. Massy III, a reconnaissance pilot with the “Antique Airlines” (the name a group of older U.S. airmen flying in Vietnam had affectionately chosen for themselves), wrote frequently to his eighteen-year-old daughter Lynn about his service. During the Tet Offensive, Massy provided Lynn with an eyewitness account of the firestorm raging outside his base.
2 Feb 68
Dear Lynn,
I have just sent a message to Mama through MARS, the only fairly rapid means available to me now, that I am okay and I assume she’ll phone you. I know that you are all worried and I’m sorry that you must suffer such anxiety, but you understand, of course, that I am only one of a half million American troops, plus many State, AID and other American personnel, who are caught here in this all-out attack by the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese—all supported by Russian and Red Chinese arms, of course. We all have anxious families and are all in the same boat—we cannot get word home yet. But MARS told me that the message, which is a standard message and I cannot personalize it, will reach Mama in one to thirty-six hours. It’s the best I can do, though I have written to Mama since the attack began. Heaven knows when she will get the letters. No mail has entered or departed here since the attack and that’s understandable, since conditions are such that other, more urgent cargo must now be handled by the greatly reduced airlift capacity now available to us.
I am now on Tan Son Nhut, living in an unfinished barracks, with no screens, windows, doors, sills, or lights, except emergency lighting in the halls. And there is no operational latrine. I am sleeping on a mattress without bedding, on the floor and there is no furniture. I have devised a table from a door (not yet installed) laid across two high saw horses and am seated on a small step ladder and that is where I am typing now. We were evacuated from our off-base BOQ late yesterday, after 36 hours of small arms fire near by, often within a block. We had no phones and no weapons at first, but managed to get some M-16 rifles and pistols late Wednesday, so that Wednesday night we could mount an additional guard to supplement the Chinese Nung guards who are hired by the Air Force to guard our quarters.
Last night, after we arrived on base, the enemy attacked the base again from all directions and there was much gunfire. I spent much of the night at my open window, pistol drawn, expecting an attack on these and nearby barracks, for gunfire within a block of us erupted frequently and our Army and Air Force security guards, in flak vests, helmets and full battle gear, were moving about in darkened vehicles, or on foot, crouching and darting from cover to cover, looking for the enemy. Flares filled the sky and helicopter gun ships roared around at rooftop level. Now and then a furious gun battle would erupt, then subside, with only occasional, sporadic light arms fire to punctuate the silent darkness.
The enemy has apparently launched a massive, all-or-nothing assault on all our major installations throughout South Vietnam, timed to coincide with the Vietnamese New Year, called TET. He has achieved some initial successes, but is now being driven back with huge losses and I think the critical danger has passed. There is still danger, though, and we have seen a remarkable demonstration of what the enemy can do. Hue Phu Bai, where I was recently stationed for a couple of weeks, may have been overwhelmed. I am not sure at this moment, but I do know that all the troops of my outfit there were successfully evacuated to Danang and subsequently to Nha Trang.
I am finding it a bit difficult to type, for I burned myself with hot grease quite severely on the head, right hand, right arm, and right leg just hours before this attack began. If I must use my pistol, it will have to be in my left hand and I have been practicing holding and aiming it that way, steadied by my bandaged right hand. The burns are bad and painful, but not crucial and I’ll be back flying in two or three weeks.
Your letter expressing concern about the latest development in Korea reached me a couple of days before the attack and I understand your feelings, while at the same time I am glad to hear you express faith in your country. You ask for my opinion for guidance and I am glad to give it. I want first to point out that American history is filled with dark moments when the odds were great and we have never failed to meet each challenge. The present situation is no more urgent, or filled with danger, than was the attack on Pearl Harbor, nor is this moment in history any blacker for us than it was at Valley Forge, or Gettysburg, or Bataan, or the Alamo.
There is one big difference now, and this is the area of our greatest concern: In those days Americans were not so adept at wringing their hands despairingly as seems to be the case with many of our countrymen now, young and old. If fears were felt in years gone by—and you can bet they were—people had less trouble concealing them because it was the unpopular thing to show fear, or conversely, not to appear brave and resolute. Today, in some circles, it appears to be the thing to do to reject our previous ideas about the virtue of personal courage. In my judgement, these people are more dangerous as enemies of our country and our liberty than the Nazis or Communists ever were.
Our national anthem has a line which is appropriate to quote here: “The land of the free and the home of the brave.” The two go hand in glove. If we are not brave, we soon will not be free. No nation, or person, ever achieved greatness, or even success, without courage.
I would hate to think what would happen to America if all those of us who are now in Vietnam, in the face of this attack (which is more real and personal to us than all the academic discussions on all the campuses of America) were to turn tail and run. Can you imagine such a thing? Neither can I—so why should comfortable civilians back home quit in despair?
Maybe some do not appreciate America. Let them visit many other lands, as I have, and they will thank God for the blessing of being an American. Maybe some fear the nuclear weapons of the day. You die just as dead from a bow and arrow. And in numbers just as great from pogroms by Ghengis Khans, or Hitlers, or Stalins, or Maos.
You are growing up, Sweetie, and more and more you will come to know that life rewards the strong and punishes the weak. So does history. The greater the heights of achievement, the greater the strength and resolution demanded. America is now the greatest human achievement in history, in spite of some of the weak among us (can you suppose that they contributed to our greatness?), and the length of the shadow which we cast into the future depends on how tall we stand now, just as it always has.
Don’t worry about our country and don’t worry about me. I’m not afraid, so don’t you be either. And you might recommend this kind of attitude to any of your friends who could profit from it.
Your loving,
Daddy
The Tet Offensive reverberated like a thunderclap throughout Vietnam—and the United States. Militarily, it was a disaster for the Communists, who failed to maintain a foothold in a single town or city and lost up to half of their troops engaged in the assault. But politically it was catastrophic for President Johnson. Accused of misleading the public that the U.S. military was decisively winning the war, Johnson watched his approval ratings plunge. He was burned in effigy in rallies throughout the country as protesters chanted “Hey! Hey! LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?” Challenged by antiwar candidates Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy, Johnson announced at the end of March a partial halt to bombing raids on North Vietnam, as well as an offer to begin peace talks, and, most dramatically, that he would not run for reelection. General Westmoreland’s request for an additional 200,000 troops (there were over 500,000 in Vietnam at the time) was rejected, and although denying it was related to recent events, Johnson relieved Westmoreland of command and appointed him army chief of staff. Richard M. Nixon, the Republican candidate for president, hinted he had a secret plan to end the war and would bring “peace with honor.” Nixon was elected president in 1968. American troops continued fighting in Vietnam for four and a half more years.