With my transfer from 1st Force Reconnaissance Company to Company E, 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, the remainder of my time in country was devoted to training the men of Company E. I no longer took out recon patrols. There was not enough room for Company E at Camp Reasoner, so the new company was given excess billeting in SEA huts within the 1st Tank Battalion cantonment on Hill 35, southwest of Da Nang Airbase. For the next six weeks, we joined new Marines arriving from the States, issued them equipment, and began a rigorous physical training program. We also took them to a local ARVN rifle range where each man test-fired his new M-16 rifle, zeroed his sights on a 1,000-inch range, and fired several hundred rounds at targets placed 300 meters down range to make sure their battle sights were correct. This was done to ensure each rifle was “battle zeroed,” meaning the point of impact at 300 meters was the point of aim. I taught classes on map reading, patrolling techniques, ambushes, immediate action drills, calling and adjusting artillery, the proper employment of the Claymore mine, and basic demolitions, and gave a three-hour lecture on how the NVA operated against recon patrols and how to counter them.
Each day began at 0500 when everyone in Company E fell out in the company street for physical training (PT) with 1st Sgt. Maurice Jacques, the company 1st Sgt. and a legend in the Marine Corps for his bravery and leadership. (He’s even the subject of a biography, Sergeant Major, U.S. Marines, by Maj. Bruce H. Norton, Ivy Books, 1995. His time with Co. E is on pages 309–330.) After a half-hour of rigorous calisthenics, 1st Sgt. Jacques would turn the company over to our CO, Capt. James P. Cahill, who would lead us on a company run in formation. These runs increased from a single mile at a slow pace on our first day to three miles at a fast pace two weeks later. Marines arriving from the States were usually in good shape, but the heat and humidity put a strain on anybody who was unused to tropical weather. We tried to increase gradually both the tempo and duration of their physical training until the new Marines were thoroughly acclimated to their environment. After PT, 1st Sgt. Jacques led us in some additional calisthenics, and then we took a cold shower, dressed, and fell back in formation for a personnel inspection. At 0700, we ate breakfast in the 1st Tank Battalion’s mess hall, where the food was not as good as the food at Camp Reasoner but still far better than the cold C rations we ate in the field. During the remainder of the morning, the officers and SNCOs taught classes. After lunch, there were more classes, followed by another hour of PT before dinner. The time after dinner was free time, during which the enlisted Marines wrote letters, played cards, drank a few beers, or watched a movie in the enlisted club on the cantonment. The officers and SNCOs in our company usually followed Capt. Cahill each evening to the 1st Tank Battalion’s Officers and SNCO club, a very small building no larger than the standard SEA hut. Here we enjoyed each other’s company and the limited selection of libations available. Despite the austerity of the club, it provided a welcome respite after a hard day of physical training and classes. I spent little time in this club, because I had to prepare lesson plans for my classes, and this took up several hours each night. Since Capt. Cahill had no experience as a patrol leader, he delegated most of the planning for our training to Pete Badger and me. Pete had been a patrol leader also, and he brought with him a wealth of valuable patrolling information. He was also a gifted organizer and coordinator, obtaining choice training facilities for us and arranging for the 1st Motor Transport Battalion to take us to the various training venues in and around Da Nang. Between the two of us, we produced most of the training documents for the new company.
Because we were in a forming company and in a training status, we did not have to participate in the normal guard duties for the cantonment, but we did have our own interior guard and fire watch system. Pete Badger drafted our guard orders, and our SNCOs managed the interior guard system. Capt. Cahill was a terrific administrator and a good leader, as well as the kind of officer who instantly elicited loyalty and respect from his men, making him an ideal choice to lead our new company. We were also blessed with an exceptionally strong set of officers and SNCOs, making the difficult task of forming a reconnaissance company from scratch and preparing it for combat a relatively easy one.
The highlight of our training before our departure for Okinawa was a two-day course on rubber boat drills and scout swimming at Nam O Bridge north of Da Nang. These two skills often atrophied for most recon Marines in South Vietnam because the need to focus limited training opportunities on scouting and patrolling often crowded out any opportunity for amphibious reconnaissance training. 1st Sgt. Jacques and the SNCOs were in charge of this training, and everyone enjoyed it with the possible exception of those Marines who had never experienced salt water and surf. For me this time at Nam O Bridge was joyful. Whenever I had the opportunity to swim in salt water, it always reminded me of my childhood swimming in the surf of the Atlantic Ocean at Cape May, New Jersey. I actually felt a twinge of homesickness at various times during this training. Standing on the beach after an hour of swimming in the surf, my body warmed by the sun, and the taste of sea salt on my lips, I felt at peace with the world. As I looked at the steel gray mountains that descended gracefully into the South China Sea to the north, it struck me that this place combined both mountains and the sea, the two elements of nature that most appealed to me. Although there was a war being waged nearby, I could not help but think this place would make a perfect spot for a tropical resort one day.
On Christmas Day, 1967, our company enjoyed a special dinner in the mess hall. Turkey with dressing, sliced ham, mashed potatoes, candied yams, green bean casserole, mixed nuts, and apple and pumpkin pie were on the menu for that day, a rare feast as only the Marine Corps can put on far from home in a war zone. I attended Catholic Mass, and afterward, the chaplain for the 1st Motor Transport Battalion asked me to be the Catholic lay leader for the remainder of my time at the cantonment. Since I had been a Catholic lay leader at Camp Reasoner, I gladly agreed. Although I enjoyed the Christmas dinner and the break from training, the day filled me with an intense feeling of homesickness. I could not help but think of the wonderful Christmas dinners my mother prepared for my family and the delicious cookies and pies she baked at that time of year. Like many children, I often took the love and sacrifice of my parents for granted. This Christmas far from home, I had time to reflect on the many things my parents did for me, especially the way my mother made the Christmas holidays so special for her children.
Despite the wonderful Christmas dinner, I don’t think anyone felt jubilant or happy that day. The incessant monsoon rain, the overcast skies, the mist-shrouded hills, and the ever present mud put a damper on the holiday spirit. I tried to think of the religious significance of Christmas and how fortunate I was to be alive and out of combat, but a lingering feeling of impending danger blocked out all the positive aspects of the celebration of Christ’s birth.
Shortly after Christmas, Capt. Cahill told Pete Badger and me that he had received word that the enemy was planning to attack Da Nang Airbase and the I Corps compound in Da Nang sometime around New Year’s Day. He informed us that a “very reliable source,” which we assumed meant a signals intercept or a spy, had warned of a large scale attack on these targets. According to Capt. Cahill, the enemy would use a rocket attack against the airbase as the signal for the attack to begin. In this way, the enemy did not have to rely on less secure methods, such as written orders or radio transmissions, to signal the attack.
Capt. Cahill told us the enemy would launch their ground attacks using VC and NVA sapper units, small highly skilled units trained in covert infiltration and demolition techniques. Once these sapper units had successfully breached the defenses of these two targets, elements of the 2nd NVA Division would follow them and exploit their success. He then went on to explain how an elaborate American ruse, code-named Operation Claxon, would be used to fool the enemy into making a premature attack. First, Marine recon teams would be positioned along likely avenues of approach for the NVA units while Marine infantry and ARVN units would move to locations where they could ambush the local VC units before they reached their targets. Artillery observation teams in the hills near Da Nang and “Spooky” gunships would be ready to attack any enemy units caught moving toward their attack positions. In order to fool the enemy, Marine engineers had placed demolition charges inside the Da Nang Airbase and would set them off shortly after midnight on New Year’s Eve in the hope that the local VC units would think the airbase was under rocket attack and then launch their attacks prematurely. If they took the bait, it would confuse the enemy’s leadership and cause many of the units from the 2nd NVA Division to move in an uncoordinated fashion.
Pete and I listened with fascination as Capt. Cahill told us about this bold attempt to precipitate an enemy attack. I had listened to several intelligence briefings at Camp Reasoner and at the 1st Marine Division G-2 office that talked about a “large scale enemy attack in early 1968,” but I had thought it unlikely the enemy would be able to mount such a large attack. My thinking, which evolved out of conversations with other like-minded officers at the time, was that the enemy had suffered too many casualties during the summer to be able to mount much of an offensive in I Corps. I expected only a few attacks by fire on isolated friendly positions and a few sapper attacks on targets such as district headquarters. I did not think they had the capability to mount a ground attack against the Da Nang Airbase or Da Nang City. I was wrong.
On New Year’s Eve, the three of us watched as the Marine engineers began to set off their explosive charges at the airbase. From a distance of a few miles, it looked exactly as it was intended to look, like a rocket attack. We saw the yellow bursts of light on the horizon and then heard the sound of the explosions as dozens of charges went off over the space of five minutes. Our cantonment was on full alert, and our company was standing by in full battle gear to reinforce the perimeter if the enemy had us on their target list. We waited in the darkness for several hours, but there was only silence. The ruse had not worked, and Pete and I jokingly talked about how foolish it was to believe the enemy would be able to get through our defenses to attack the airbase or Da Nang. We wondered who it was who informed us of this impending attack and whether he could be believed again. Years later, I was to find out that the source of this information came from a CIA informant who lived in Da Nang. He was a member of the communist infrastructure in the city and had been recruited by the CIA only a few months prior to Christmas. He provided accurate information to the CIA about the targets for the Tet offensive, but he was not able to provide the exact date and time for these attacks until 24 hours before the enemy struck. Still, the information he provided allowed the U.S. and South Vietnamese to counter effectively these attacks and inflict very heavy casualties on the attackers when they struck on 31 January during the Tet holiday.
In early January, it became increasingly obvious that something big was afoot. Recon patrols spotted several very large groups of NVA soldiers moving into positions in the lowlands west and south of Da Nang. One recon team reported seeing an enemy force of 300 well-armed NVA soldiers, and another team spotted 167 NVA troops carrying rockets and mortars. Such large sightings were highly unusual, clearly indicating the likelihood of a major enemy operation. We also heard reports that the rate of infiltration by NVA units from North Vietnam through Laos had increased dramatically during late 1967, another indication that some serious fighting would take place in early 1968.
While most of the press was reporting on the developing battle at the Khe Sanh Combat Base in Quang Tri Province to the north, the NVA launched an attack on the Da Nang Airbase in early January, an attack that was clearly meant to test the defenses of the airbase in preparation for their main attack to follow during TET. A barrage of rockets was launched 3,000 meters southwest of our cantonment and in the middle of 1/7’s TAOR.
The enemy paid a heavy price for this rocket attack because artillery and tank fire responded immediately, inflicting heavy casualties on the NVA unit firing the rockets before they could launch all of them. A reaction force found three bodies, numerous unfired rockets, and a huge amount of abandoned web gear and equipment where the artillery and tank fire impacted. They also found numerous blood trails leading west toward Happy Valley. The next day, Capt. Cahill and I went to an OP near the scene and used our binoculars to observe the mess the tanks and artillery had made. We both agreed that there were probably more attacks coming as Tet approached, but we also felt confident the American and ARVN forces would be able to defeat easily any such attacks. We believed the enemy simply did not possess the forces needed for a serious, sustained attack on any target in the 1st Marine Division TAOR.
My frustration with the actions of our political leaders in Washington, D.C., was growing as I saw the enemy consistently disregard the various truces inflicted upon us. The enemy exploited these truces to speed up their infiltration of men and supplies from North Vietnam, and I could not understand why our leaders were agreeing to these truces when they had no effect on the enemy. In a letter I wrote to my parents on 9 January 1967, I summed up my feelings on this subject: “The NVA moved in a new regiment during the ‘truce.’ The result: several Marines killed and many wounded. If the politicians have one more ‘truce,’ I doubt if the Marines will observe it. Recon has seen too many violations already, and the patrol leaders feel that, even if they can’t get permission to use artillery because of the ‘truce,’ they will open fire on the enemy with small arms. I can’t wait to vote in the 68 election!”
On 14 January, I flew to Okinawa along with a small number of enlisted men from our company. We were the advance party for Company E, and our mission was to prepare the way for the rest of our company, due to depart for Okinawa in a few days. We arrived at Kadena Airbase and took a truck up to Camp Schwab where we immediately set to work on a list of things we needed to accomplish before our company showed up. Our advance party made sure Company E had everything they needed when they arrived: billeting, armory, mess facilities at Camp Schwab, bus transportation from the airbase to Camp Schwab, and clean linen for their first night on the island. I also coordinated with the Operations Officer for the 9th Marine Amphibious Brigade at Camp Schwab and worked on the details of a tentative training schedule for the company. He was very helpful and said he would do everything in his power to make sure we had the highest priority for training areas and resources.
On 18 January, Company E boarded C-130 transport aircraft at the Da Nang Airbase and flew to the island of Okinawa where it was scheduled to complete its reconnaissance training before returning to Da Nang in early March. Soon after the planes touched down on Okinawa, I met Capt. Cahill and the company with busses for the troops and trucks for their personal gear and equipment. Within a few minutes, our convoy was headed north along Okinawa’s winding roads toward Camp Schwab. I had not slept much during my first few days on Okinawa. A combination of worry over the short time our small advance party had to accomplish the many tasks needed before the arrival of the company and the long hours needed to meet our schedule left all of us overly fatigued. The small team of junior enlisted Marines and I had to work some very long hours and to beg for transportation to get ourselves around to the various offices we needed to coordinate with. Due to the lack of sleep and the change in weather between South Vietnam and the much colder Okinawa, we all came down with bad colds. I had arranged with the mess hall at Camp Schwab to serve a late meal for Company E, and the cooks did a great job of preparing a full meal service for the newly arrived visitors from South Vietnam, despite the inconvenience and the late hours. It was after midnight before we finally had all of our Marines billeted in their barracks. Capt. Cahill held a short meeting so the officers and SNCOs could go over the next day’s events, and then I went to my room at the BOQ and collapsed.
I only had a few hours of sleep when reveille sounded at 0500. I had to shake off the effects of my cold and turn out for PT with 1st Sgt. Jacques and the rest of the company. My cold made life miserable for me during that first week of training, but I had no other choice but to endure it. Only Pete Badger, 1st Sgt. Jacques and I had the recent combat experience needed to organize and conduct a training plan for our company, so there was no possibility of my reporting to sick bay or taking a day off. We were the only people in the company who had been on reconnaissance patrols in country. Most of our SNCOs and NCOs had been assigned to us from 1st Marine Division infantry battalions, which meant all of their previous training had been infantry related and not focused on reconnaissance. As a result, 1st Sgt. Jacques, Pete and I found that we not only had to plan and organize the training program for the company but we also had to teach the majority of the classes. We constantly had to refine the training program for the company because the staff officers at 9th MAB headquarters had prepared a reconnaissance training program based upon their understanding of what was needed, but their syllabus was often inadequate or contained training events we did not need for the mission of a reconnaissance company. Of course, every change we made caused consternation among the 9th MAB’s staff because it meant new lesson plans, new schedules, and new demands for training areas, ammunition, rations, and transportation. I soon found that my face was not a welcome sight in the operations office of the 9th MAB.
Despite these problems, our training program progressed on schedule. The five platoons of Company E were all at full strength as we began our training on Okinawa, and all of our men were volunteers, which meant their morale was high and their motivation to learn was keen. The fact that all of our Marines in the ranks of LCpl. and below had come to the company from the reconnaissance school at Camp Pendleton, California, and already had the basic reconnaissance MOS of 8651 meant each of them had a very good foundation for the more advanced skills we were teaching them. They were a pleasure to train. I also was impressed with the quality of SNCOs in the company. Despite their paucity of recon experience, they were all good leaders, and many of them had previous combat tours in Vietnam with Marine infantry units, giving them a good understanding of the enemy and the terrain. All in all, I thought the men in Company E were highly motivated and well disciplined.
Since I was the senior lieutenant in the company, I was given the job of executive officer in addition to my initial job of training officer. The executive officer of a company is the second in command, and he is also responsible for ensuring the administration of the company is carried out properly. As such, I had to spend a lot of time on administrative duties which took me away from the field training. Capt. Cahill, who was scheduled to rotate back to the U.S. a few weeks before I was, saw that giving me both the executive officer and training officer jobs was too much for one man, so he had me turn over my training duties to Pete Badger. This was a wise decision, although I would have preferred to concentrate on training and not paperwork. In retrospect, I benefited from Capt. Cahill’s decision since it gave me an opportunity to gain some staff proficiency and practical experience with Marine Corps administration procedures. It also allowed me to recover my health since my cold continued to hang on, and it weakened me to the point where I was having difficulty with our daily PT routine.
I soon found out that the job of executive officer was a full-time job. I spent long hours in the company office, usually working from 0730 each morning until late at night. I was fortunate to have an expert in company administration assisting me as my administration chief: Sgt. Schlapp, a Marine reservist who volunteered to come on active duty out of a strong sense of patriotism and gave up a well-paying job in the U.S. to serve his country. I learned a great deal about Marine Corps administration from this man. Although I was no longer the training officer for the company, I found that most of my time as the executive officer was devoted to making sure the training schedule that Pete Badger and 1st Sgt. Jacques developed was properly supported. I had to make sure that little things were done according to plan, such as the delivery of M-16 ammunition to the proper range at the proper time, or the preparation of late rations when the troops came in from the field late at night.
A normal day for me went something like this: after PT and breakfast in the morning, I went to the company office at 0730, where I made a quick check of my in-box to see if any important documents were there. Then at 0745, I held a short meeting with key staff and the platoon commanders to pass on any word pertaining to the training day. After company formation at 0800 I relieved the old Duty NCO and posted the new one. From 0815 to 0930, I read all the directives and messages that were routed to me since close of business the previous day, and then I passed them along to Capt. Cahill for him to read. From 0930 to 1130, I coordinated with the 9th MAB’s staff sections so they would know how to support the next day’s training schedule. After noon meal, I would return to the company office and spend the remainder of the afternoon reading the Marine Corps Personnel Manual and Marine Corps publications, drafting and signing letters, and doing other routine administrative work. At the end of the day, I would attend a meeting with Capt. Cahill and Lt. Badger on the next day’s training, followed by an hour of PT with the company. After dinner, I would return to the company office until 2100, going over the unit diary with Sgt. Schlapp and preparing for the next day’s work. Although the hours were long, I did not find this work stressful, and Capt. Cahill did not over manage me. The work was enjoyable, although not as interesting or rewarding as field work.
The majority of our training took place in the Northern Training Area (NTA) on Okinawa, a large tract of land on the northern tip of the island that had terrain and vegetation very similar to the mountainous jungle of I Corps in South Vietnam. As a result, it was an ideal place to provide practical instruction to the Marines of Company E. We knew the best training for our men was training that was as realistic as possible, so we developed a system of patrols that allowed each platoon to work against each other, a sort of recon team versus recon team training system. First Sgt. Jacques and some of our SNCOs acted as lane graders, going out with the patrols and evaluating them on the spot and providing instantaneous feedback to them as they progressed on their patrols. Pete Badger and I established a radio relay site for the teams and acted as the battalion headquarters, feeding the patrols instructions and recording their SALUTE reports for later evaluation once the patrols returned. Most of the patrols were of short duration, only a day or two, because we wanted the patrol leaders to have as much experience as possible preparing their patrols and conducting them. The culmination of this realistic training in the NTA was a three-day patrol where we had several small aggressor teams dressed as VC soldiers operating against the teams, forcing the teams to evade, use supporting arms, or ambush, depending on the situation. When we returned to Camp Schwab from the NTA, we gathered the evaluators and lane graders and went over each team’s performance, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses and recommending remedial training where it was appropriate. Most of the teams scored well, but a few needed additional work, primarily in the use of supporting arms and the proper way to respond when a team made contact with the enemy. Pete Badger developed an innovative way to conduct this remedial training by setting up several training stations at Camp Schwab where the team members could rotate between each station, accomplishing a set of tasks at each one. In this way, the teams obtained the necessary repetition to achieve proficiency. I marveled at how well both Pete and 1st Sgt. Jacques found ways to expedite and improve training, and I took notes of how they did this so I could benefit from it in the future.
My impression of Okinawa at this time was not a good one. I did not like the seedy bars, massage parlors, and cheap restaurants I saw outside the camp. There was a lot of tension between the Marines and the people of Okinawa, so I did not go out in town more than once during my entire stay there. Japanese communist agitators were prevalent on the island, and they often placed provocative signs outside the main gate or conducted staged rallies near the base against the U.S. presence on the island. Several U.S. lawyers who belonged to the communist front group, The National Lawyers Guild, aided and abetted the communists in Kin Village by assisting in the preparation of propaganda leaflets and the printing of a crude newspaper promoting communist causes in Asia. I felt far more ill at ease on Okinawa than I ever felt in South Vietnam. While I was there, communists infiltrated a fenced ammunition bunker at Camp Hansen and stole several thousand rounds of rifle ammunition. In a letter home to my parents, I told them that the Marine guards at Camp Hansen saw the ammunition being stolen but “were afraid to shoot” because they were “afraid of causing an incident.” The entire time I spent on Okinawa, I felt as if I was in a hostile country.
The event that had the greatest impact on me while I was on Okinawa was the North Korean attack on the USS Pueblo and the capture of its entire crew. When this occurred, it took the U.S. military leadership completely by surprise, and they were woefully unprepared to react to it. Our reconnaissance company was the only ground combat unit on the island, and we were too far away to do anything. On the day of the Pueblo’s capture, we were told to end our training, report to our barracks, and be prepared to move out to the Kadena Airbase in one hour. We were hastily issued chemical, biological and nuclear protective clothing, called MOP gear, and some sophisticated equipment used to monitor radioactivity, but we were not issued ammunition.
We remained in our barracks for a day awaiting orders from higher headquarters, and then we were told to stand down. It is highly unlikely that any serious consideration was given to moving us to Korea, but we went through the drill anyway. As it turned out, the U.S. military forces in Northeast Asia were impotent when it came to responding to this blatant attack on one of our ships. We looked bad in the eyes of the world, deservedly so. An officer in the 9th MAB operations office told me the U.S. had sent a U.S. Navy ship into harm’s way without any adequate means of protecting it. I shared his frustration and anger as he went on to explain that we had compounded our shame by doing nothing to punish the North Koreans for this attack, which constituted an act of war under international law. I felt ashamed as these events unfolded, but worse things were to happen shortly. Again, we would be too far from the action to do anything about it.
On 31 January 1968, the communists in South Vietnam launched a country-wide offensive against dozens of political and military targets in the hope of precipitating a general uprising among the people of South Vietnam. I listened to the radio and television reports that were coming from South Vietnam with incredulity. I simply could not believe what I was seeing and hearing. Despite months of warnings that the enemy was preparing for a major assault in South Vietnam in early 1968, the U.S. and South Vietnamese military were taken completely by surprise. During the first chaotic 48 hours of the communist Tet offensive, the news we received was fragmentary and contradictory. The press corps in South Vietnam seemed to have panicked, and their reporting took on a decidedly negative and defeatist tone. As things began to settle down in South Vietnam and it became apparent that the enemy’s objective of fomenting a general uprising against the South Vietnamese Government had failed, we began to receive daily classified briefings from Marine intelligence officers. These briefings painted a different picture of events from those we read about in the U.S. press or saw on the television news programs from the U.S.
Each day, I attended the 9th MAB intelligence briefing and took notes so I could brief Capt. Cahill and the other officers about the events unfolding in South Vietnam. These notes clearly showed a progression in the analysis of events that initially reflected shock and dismay by intelligence officers inside South Vietnam at the intensity and scope of the communist attacks, but changed over the subsequent days and weeks to a much more sober and realistic assessment of the attack. One daily briefing chart in particular interested me: a list of the primary targets attacked by the enemy and whether or not the targets were still held by the enemy or were contested. This chart showed a dramatic change in the situation in South Vietnam. While the enemy had attacked most of the South Vietnamese provincial capitals and many of the district headquarters during the first few days of their offensive, only Saigon and Hue remained as pockets of resistance a week after the initial communist assaults. The chart also told a dramatic story of the success of the South Vietnamese military forces, who quickly repulsed the communist attackers and reestablished control of their political centers after only a few days of fighting. There was no general uprising as the communists had hoped, and many NVA units which were intended to be used to exploit VC successes either failed to reinforce their communist brethren or deliberately left them to their fate. The Marine intelligence officers were perplexed as to why the NVA forces did not follow up the attacks by the local VC. It began to look like many of the NVA units deliberately chose to stay in their base areas or staging positions despite the frantic cries for help from the VC units leading the attacks. Hue was the only significant exception to this NVA failure.
What began to emerge after two weeks was a picture of massive failure on the part of the enemy to achieve any significant objective while suffering huge losses in the process. I was particularly heartened to hear of how the ARVN had crushed the VC attacks in Quang Nam Province, especially at the I Corps Headquarters in Da Nang. U.S. recon teams had spotted several large NVA units moving toward Da Nang and Hue and devastated them with artillery and air attacks. I felt relieved when I heard these intelligence briefings on the status of the war and hoped we could quickly exploit this enemy defeat with counterattacks into their base areas to clear out the NVA units that were still not engaged. What I was completely unaware of at the time was the impact televised reports of the fighting in Saigon and elsewhere was having on the American public. All the news the American people were receiving from correspondents in Saigon was negative. As they looked at selective and spectacular scenes of the fighting on their television screens and they listened to the breathless commentary of American newsmen in Saigon, the American people received a far different and a far more inflammatory story of the Tet Offensive than the U.S. military and South Vietnamese people heard and saw. The American public saw television reporters claiming a huge victory for the communists, while I saw a huge defeat for the VC and NVA emerging from the reporting from MACV. I found it impossible to understand how the American press and television crews could portray the Tet Offensive as a communist victory when there was so much evidence to the contrary. Unfortunately, this failure of the press to report the results of the Tet Offensive accurately would have a profound impact on American politics in the coming months. It would also have a profound effect on me when I returned home. (For more detailed information, see Peter Braestrup, Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington, 2 vols [Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977] and James Robbins, This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive [New York: Encounter Books, 2010]).
On 23 February 1968, I boarded a commercial plane at Kadena Airbase and flew to Travis Airbase in California. After debarking and going through customs, I took a cab to San Francisco International Airport and boarded a plane for Philadelphia and home. When I arrived at the Philadelphia airport, my parents, my cousin Joe Kelley and his wife, Franny, and my girlfriend, “Jane,” met me. I was overjoyed to be home and happy to see my parents and “Jane” again after a separation of nearly 15 months.
When we reached my hometown of Merchantville, the realization that I was finally home struck me. It was a bright, sunny, winter day when we drove up the driveway of 310 Volan Street, a day that seemed so normal that it almost felt as if I had not been gone for over a year. I was back in this quintessential little American town, a town that embodied all that I loved about my country. My father had the American flag flying on our front porch; aside from that, there were no visible signs that their warrior son had returned. Inside the house, I was reunited with my older brother, John, my younger brother, Bruce, and younger sisters, Nancy and Jean. I sat in the living room of our home talking to everyone while my mother went about cooking my favorite meal of roast pork, sauerkraut, applesauce, and roasted potatoes. I was so overcome with the happiness of being home that I felt almost giddy. That night, I slept in the same bed I had slept in for most of my life. As I drifted off to sleep, I could hear the soothing and familiar sound of the wind blowing through the trees in the front yard. I was at peace with the world and with myself. For the first time in over a year, I felt completely at ease with my surroundings.
For a few days, I basked in the realization that the war I had fought for the past year was far away, and I was now safe. “Jane” and I got reacquainted and spent several days doing the things we both enjoyed doing together before I left for Vietnam. We would take long walks at Cooper River Park and go out to dinner at local restaurants or see a movie at one of the theaters in the area. “Jane” had to return to college in Washington, D.C., and her departure seemed to take the air out of any good feelings I had. I soon found myself alone for most of each day.
Despite the best efforts of my parents and siblings to make me feel at home, I soon became bored with the unstructured routine at home. In addition, nobody in the community came to see me or called me, and this eroded my pleasure in being home. My feeling of alienation increased each night as I watched the evening news on television. All three of the broadcast stations in Philadelphia carried negative news about the progress of the war, filling our home and the homes of every American with stories of defeat and chaos. My parents listened to these news reports every night during my absence. Now that I was home, they did not seem interested in news about the war. I could not blame them. All I saw on television was a dreary litany of defeat and no mention of any victories against the VC and NVA. Commentators such as Walter Cronkite, Daniel Schorr and Dan Rather told the American people that the war in Vietnam was lost. Their comments appeared to suggest that the communists had won the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese people, and this was the reason for the enemy’s success on the battlefield. Of course, I knew this to be untrue, but my comments about the war surprised my parents because all they had heard from our nation’s news media was contrary to what I was telling them. When they asked me why I thought the reporting was biased and untrue, I told them that the American journalists in South Vietnam seldom ventured out to where the fighting was actually taking place. They had made up their minds before coming to Vietnam that the VC were the good guys and the South Vietnamese Government and military were evil, corrupt, and inept. I told my parents that I only saw two American reporters during my entire thirteen months in South Vietnam, and both of them made comments to me that reflected contempt for the South Vietnamese and admiration for the North Vietnamese communists.
I also told them that it was common knowledge among the American military that these American reporters spent most of their time in Saigon with their mistresses drinking at the Caravel and Continental Hotels and talking to South Vietnamese café politicians who represented a constituency who could easily hold a convention in a phone booth. What most American soldiers and Marines saw in the dangerous areas of South Vietnam were South Vietnamese and Taiwanese photographers and sound men, who gathered film footage of combat and did the really dangerous work for the Americans back in Saigon. When the American journalists did venture to the field, it was usually for a very short visit via helicopter so they could get a good visual in front of some burning hut or wounded GI and then fly back to Saigon to file their story and enjoy the comfort of their air-conditioned offices and hotel rooms. They got most of their stories from staff officers in Saigon who had never heard a shot fired or from malcontents, such as John Paul Vann, who harbored a grudge against the South Vietnamese or the U.S. Government. I tried to tell my parents that most of us had only contempt for the misfits covering the war for the major media organizations. I tried to explain to them that the Western press in Saigon had panicked during Tet because it was the first time their sheltered little world had been rocked by the real war, and they were frightened and disheartened by it. They were also angry about what they perceived to be the mendacity of the American military telling them the war was going well and then finding street battles going on in Saigon. When Tet disrupted their comfortable and secure lives, they went out of their way to convey to the American public that the U.S. military was incapable of telling the truth. Each evening, it became a tiresome ritual of watching the news on television and telling my parents that what they were seeing and hearing was either false or one-sided.
Along with my anger over what I considered biased and untruthful reporting from South Vietnam, I increasingly wondered why no one came to our home to welcome me back from the war. As a young boy, I saw how several local men were greeted when they returned from the Korean War, and their welcome home stood in sharp contrast to mine. For them, there had been block parties with neighbors gathered in their front yards or on porches festooned with red, white and blue bunting, but I saw none of that on my street. I remembered my mother baking a cake for one of these young men, Marine Cpl. Danny Stewart, and going with her to give it to him at his home. In my case, not a single person came to see me or even call me on the phone to welcome me back during the three weeks that I was at my parent’s home. Everyone seemed demoralized by the reports about the Tet offensive and how bad things were going in South Vietnam. Anyone who told the truth about the terrible beating the enemy took during Tet was looked upon as crazy or untruthful.
After two weeks of relaxing at home, reading and working out, I became so bored and disheartened that I began to think it was a waste of time to continue taking any more leave. In some strange way, I missed the tempo of life and the camaraderie of my life in South Vietnam. I found myself longing for my life as a recon Marine. The things that used to excite me and fill me with anticipation and enthusiasm no longer did so. Life had lost its edge, and I had the feeling that I would never recapture any of the feelings I used to have for the life I knew before I went off to war. I kept thinking of a passage from a novel by Hemingway I had read in Vietnam, one that spoke of how men who had hunted men were never satisfied with life after they had done this.
I suppose all of this came to a head when my youngest sister, Jean, a junior at our local high school, told me one day that her history teacher was very much against the war in Vietnam, and he did not share my views on why we were there and how the war was progressing. I told Jean that I would be delighted to visit the high school in order to debate this teacher, and she carried this message to him the next day. I received a call from the principal of the school, Mr. William Flynn, and he told me that instead of a debate, he thought it would be better for me to come to the school and give a talk to Jean’s history class and then answer any questions the students might have. I agreed, and the next day I found myself in a classroom of 16- and 17-year-olds quietly waiting for me to tell them about the war. My talk focused on a series of questions I thought needed to be asked about the war and then I provided answers to these questions, based upon what I had observed during my year in South Vietnam. Standing in the back of the room was the teacher with his arms folded across his chest. It was evident he was not about to let me simply present my case unopposed.
I began my talk by telling the students that the information they were receiving from newspaper and television accounts of the war was either false or misleading, especially those reports that pertained to the recent Tet offensive and to alleged atrocities carried out by South Vietnamese and American military personnel. I explained to them that during my entire time in South Vietnam, I never once saw a television news crew, and I only met two journalists during my year in South Vietnam. Neither of them had spent much time covering the war from the field. I also told them that I never saw an American or South Vietnamese atrocity or even heard of one that I could verify. As I made these statements, I could see the teacher in the back of the room bristle and roll his eyes.
I went on to say I had defeated the enemy every time I came in contact with them, and not a single man in my platoon had been killed in combat with the enemy. I told them that I lost only one man due to an accident, a lightning strike on Hill 452. I wanted to blunt the idea that every operation conducted resulted in huge casualties for American forces.
Finally, I spent several minutes going over my impressions of the South Vietnamese people, including their military and political leadership. I admitted that not every South Vietnamese supported the central government and that in many places the VC actually governed the people instead of the South Vietnamese Government. I also told them that there was a lot of corruption and economic dislocation fueled by the war. I pointed out to the students that the South Vietnamese Government was not similar to the style of government U.S. citizens recognized, but the village and district chiefs I saw in Quang Nam Province were doing a pretty good job of taking care of their people and providing them with basic governmental services. I also told them I had witnessed several large-scale civic action projects carried out by the South Vietnamese government, such as the construction of hospitals and schools. I went on to tell the students about the success of the village elections I had witnessed.
A student raised his hand and asked me if the South Vietnamese military was good or bad. I told him that my impression of the South Vietnamese military was mixed. I felt the airborne, marine, and ranger units were quite good, but some units were poor. On the whole, however, the South Vietnamese soldiers I encountered were brave and competent, but not as well armed or equipped as either the Americans or the North Vietnamese, which made their task of fighting NVA units more difficult for them than for the Americans. I said most of the equipment used by the South Vietnamese military was obsolete World War II American equipment, ill-suited for them or the war they were fighting. As an example, I told the class the South Vietnamese Army was equipped with the American M-1 Garand rifle, a heavy weapon that only fired eight rounds, while the North Vietnamese and most of the VC were equipped with the Chinese or Russian AK-47 rifle, which was much lighter, more reliable, and had a magazine capacity of thirty rounds.
Another student asked me, “We hear that the VC are more popular than the Saigon Government because they are closer to the people and do more for them.” My response to this student made the teacher wince. I said the VC only had the support of approximately 20 percent of the population, and this support stemmed from three factors: terror imposed by VC assassination teams, the promise of land distribution if the VC won the war, and the success of VC propaganda that portrayed the Americans as colonialists similar to the French. I stressed that each of these things had a powerful hold on the minds of many rural South Vietnamese and made the task of winning the war very difficult. At this time, I did not fully understand how pervasive and effective the social organization programs of the communists were, so I did not discuss this important aspect during my talk. It would take me another tour in Vietnam before I fully understood the highly effective means of controlling the rural population employed by the enemy.
A young girl sitting right in front of me asked me if I had seen any atrocities committed by the VC. I told her I had witnessed the results of several atrocities committed by the VC, but none by the NVA, who were more disciplined than the VC. I added that I knew of several instances of VC corruption where VC political officials were involved in extortion, tax-skimming and land-grabbing for personal gain. I admitted that corruption was also a major problem for the South Vietnamese Government, but it was not the major reason for people taking the side of the VC. I could tell that this last idea was new to the students and several of them took notes about it. The teacher had a visibly negative reaction to my comment about VC corruption, one that told me this subject would surely be discussed after my talk concluded.
At the end of my talk, which lasted approximately 40 minutes, I asked the students if they had any more questions. A few tentative hands went up in the air. One girl asked me about what I did to amuse myself when I wasn’t fighting. Another girl asked me how I felt to be home. A boy asked me if I had ever seen any Marines burning the homes of Vietnamese civilians. I answered that I had not seen a home burned. I told him many Vietnamese homes had bunkers in them, and the enemy often used these bunkers to hide in or to fight from, making them targets for destruction whenever the enemy chose to fight inside a village.
Then the teacher asked me a question. He said, “You spoke about only 20 percent of the people supporting the National Liberation Front (NLF). If that is true, why aren’t the U.S. and South Vietnamese more successful? It seems we are losing the war against these 20 percent.”
My reply was rather simplistic, and I regretted making it as soon as the words left my mouth. I said, “As far as I can see, we are not losing the war. The enemy loses every battle. More and more land and people are coming under the control of the central government. We are pushing the VC and the NVA back into the mountains and out of the villages.”
The teacher, a young man close to my age, took on the demeanor of the all-knowing teacher and began to lecture me on why what I had just said “was obviously incorrect.” The gist of his argument went like this:
All we are hearing from South Vietnam is the enemy has attacked all the provincial capitals and struck at the heart of Saigon. It seems to me that it is the Americans who are being pushed out of the towns and into the mountains, not the National Liberation Front (NLF). If they are losing and they only have support from 20 percent of the people, it is highly unlikely that they would be able to do this. I think they have the support of most of the people and that is why the NLF is winning and able to attack everywhere in South Vietnam. What you are describing sounds very hard to believe when we see a totally different picture every day on television. Pictures don’t lie; we are losing this war because we are on the wrong side. The NLF fighters are the true nationalists. As I see it, the NLF people are like our own anti-colonial fighters during the American Revolutionary War when we fought against England. That is why we cannot win, and I don’t think we deserve to win.
I could tell from the expressions on the faces of the students that his words were telling and made sense to them. All I could say to counter his argument was that I had been to Vietnam, spent many months there, had observed the people and their daily lives, and had come to the conclusion that we were winning the war. I felt that our side would provide a better future for the South Vietnamese than the communists. As if to put an exclamation point to my statement, I said it was really a fight between a future based upon democratic institutions and free markets and one based upon one-party, authoritarian rule and a collective economic system. I thought the differences were stark, and the South Vietnamese people would finally decide which future was best for them. On that note, I left the classroom and returned home.
When I reflect on this incident at my old high school I am far less angry and disappointed now with the words and reactions of the teacher and the students than I was at the time. I realize that their views on the war were logical given the way the war was being portrayed in the newspapers and on television at that time. Had I not recently returned from the war and only had the news media reporting to form my views, I most likely would have had the same opinion on the war they had. In early 1968, this encounter filled me with dread because I felt for the first time that the war was being lost in the hearts and minds of the American people, and I knew this was the center of gravity for the enemy’s strategy. Once a people lose faith in the justification for a war, their will is eroded and it is only a matter of time before they are defeated. As I walked home that day, I realized that the people living in my hometown were beginning to lose heart and were even susceptible to the enemy’s propaganda. For the first time, I began to feel the war could be lost.
The next day I called the Marine Barracks, Washington, D.C., and told them I would be reporting for duty a week early. That evening, I told my parents I wanted to get back to work so I would be leaving in two days for my new assignment. They said they understood, and they thought it would probably be good for me to be close to “Jane” again. I packed my uniforms and other personal items in my car and told my parents I would call them when I arrived in Washington, D.C.
Nineteen sixty-eight was one of the most traumatic years in our nation’s history. It was the year of the Tet offensive in South Vietnam, the announcement that President Lyndon Baines Johnson would not run for another term, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy, and the riots at the Democratic convention in Chicago. At times, it seemed as if the nation was coming apart, and civil war might erupt.
There were demonstrations on college campuses against the war and radical groups endorsed violent action against the state. When I returned to the U.S. in February of 1968, I soon found myself engulfed in this national fury, and I was stationed at the epicenter of the political turmoil—Washington, D.C.
I reported on 2 March to the Marine barracks, Washington, D.C., arguably the most famous post in the Corps and the home of the commandant of the Marine Corps. For most Marines, this barracks is more often referred to as “8th and Eye” because it is located at the intersection of 8th and I streets in southeast Washington, D.C. Located just a few blocks north of the Washington Navy Yard, the barracks occupied an entire city block and housed several Marine units, whose primary duty was to support government and military ceremonies. In addition to the impressive living quarters for the commandant of the Marine Corps, the barracks also served as the home for the Marine Corps Band, the Marine Corps Drum and Bugle Corps, the Guard Company, and the Marine Corps Institute (MCI). Its primary function was, and still is, to serve as the public face of the Marine Corps and to provide ceremonial support for various White House, Pentagon, and Arlington National Cemetery functions.
These duties call for perfection in every endeavor, no matter how trivial or mundane. From the Friday night Sunset Parades held each summer on the barracks parade ground to the White House and Pentagon arrival ceremonies or the burial details at Arlington National Cemetery or the posting of the guard each evening on the parade ground, every little detail associated with these ceremonies had to be executed to perfection. Errors or miscues were often punished severely in both official and unofficial ways. The reputation of the Marine Corps was at stake, so any mistakes occurring at these public functions was an embarrassment to the Corps. It was bad enough to make a mistake in front of the general public, but it was a disaster when these mistakes were viewed by the senior political leadership of the U.S. and foreign dignitaries. Any Marine, regardless of rank, was informed of the necessity for perfection from the moment he or she reported on board, and they were held to this exacting standard throughout their assignment to the barracks. The Marine Corps is noted for its ceremonial acumen and its devotion to “spit and polish,” but at the Marine Barracks at 8th and I Streets, these traits were elevated to almost religious significance and observance.
On March 2nd, I departed home very early in the morning so I would be able to report to the barracks at 0800 sharp. My little TR-4 roadster, packed with all of my worldly possessions, made the journey in less than four hours, even taking into account the confusion I found with the street signs in our nation’s capital with their northeast, northwest, southeast and southwest designations. I pulled up to the barracks’ main gate, Gate Number 1, took the salute from the sentry, and then parked my car in the visitor’s parking space at the south end of the parade field. The sentry at the gate told me where to report, and within a minute of exiting my car, I was standing before the duty officer, presenting him with my orders.
I then made an office call to the commanding officer of the barracks, Col. Joe Fegan. Col. Fegan was a veteran of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, with an impressive chest full of medals to attest to his heroism in battle. He was tall, with dark features, and had a face that looked like aged leather. He greeted me warmly, as if he had known me all of his life, and he spoke to me more like a friend than the senior officer at a key Marine Corps installation. He had seen my Officers Qualification Record (OQR) previously because he immediately began to talk about my hometown, my parents, and my experiences in Vietnam. His friendly comments made me feel at home and appreciated. But he had a very serious side to him, and he began to impress upon me the high standards expected of me and the importance of demonstrating to the public the professionalism of our Corps. He told me that many people who viewed our Sunset Parades at the barracks or the evening parades at the Marine Corps Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery would only see the Marine Corps on display at these events once in their lives, and they would carry away from these ceremonies their only impression of the Corps. As such, it was essential that the Corps impress these people, regardless of their position or station in life. Because of this, everything we did at the barracks, down to the minutest detail, must be done with professionalism and the highest standards of excellence. He warned me that I would be spending a lot of time drilling, including many hours of standing in front of a mirror rendering sword salutes, and polishing leather every day. It was often dreary and repetitious work, but it was absolutely necessary if I was to project perfection on the parade ground or at some other ceremony where the public would see me.
Me at Marine Barracks, Washington, DC, April 1968.
Near the end of our conversation, Col. Fegan asked me if I was interested in doing some extra work for the Marine Corps that had nothing to do with my duties at the barracks. I asked him what this “extra” work entailed, and he said he had a friend at Headquarters Marine Corps who was doing a study on ground reconnaissance. Since I had recently returned from South Vietnam and had a great deal of practical experience with the subject, he thought I might prove helpful to this colleague of his. As it turned out, I helped with two projects. One was a ground reconnaissance study being done by Maj. Alex Lee and my old friend from Vietnam, MSgt. Clovis Coffman, at the Marine Corps Development and Education Center at Quantico, Virginia. The other was a classified study that was part of “Project Agile,” an effort by the Department of Defense and the Battelle Memorial Institute to develop a system of electronic sensors to monitor enemy movements of men and equipment. In both cases, I spent a day or two working on these studies at Quantico and the Pentagon, respectively. My input involved providing information on how Marine ground reconnaissance operations were conducted in South Vietnam and identifying areas where I thought technological and tactical improvements could be made.
Before I left Col. Fegan’s office, he invited me to attend a Mess Night that evening. A Marine Corps Mess Night is a formal dinner without spouses. I told him that I did not have my Dress Blue uniform pressed for such a formal dinner, but he said he would send someone over to the Center House BOQ, where I would be billeted, to collect my uniform and have it pressed and returned to me in time for the Mess Night in the Band Hall. I thanked him for his kindness, but secretly I wished I did not have to attend a formal affair on my first night. I always felt ill at ease at such formal affairs, and I did not relish spending my first night at the barracks attending a Mess Night.
After my introduction to Col. Fegan, the adjutant showed me to my room at Center House, situated on the west side of the parade ground and the first house north of the main gate in a row of several other identical brick houses. The other houses were homes for the assistant commandant, Gen. Lewis W. Walt, and other senior Marine officers and their families. On the north side of the parade ground was the stately and beautiful home of the commandant, Gen. Leonard F. Chapman, Jr. The commandant’s home was the oldest continuously occupied government building in Washington, D.C., and the scene of many official functions hosted by the commandant for congressional, military, and corporate leaders.
Center House was a unique BOQ. Unlike the usual BOQ on most military bases, Center House was a stately house with a very homelike feel to it. There were only five officers living in it when I reported aboard. I was given a room on the second floor. My room was not like the standard government issue BOQ room with nondescript metal furniture of ancient origin. My room was a large bedroom that one would expect to find in an upscale home. There were a queen-size bed, two end tables, a large mahogany wood desk, a sofa, coffee table, and several large, comfortable leather chairs. There were framed paintings on the walls and large photos of Marine Corps scenes from around the world. The window of my bedroom looked out on to the manicured parade ground and red brick barracks opposite. It was plush, indeed, and I felt very privileged to be living in such splendor and comfort.
Two Marine orderlies took care of Center House and cooked our meals. They prepared breakfast, lunch and dinner for the six of us each day, and they served every meal to us in grand style. If we wanted, the small bar on the first floor would be open at 1630 each day, and one of the enlisted orderlies was there to provide us with our favorite libation. At 1800 sharp, dinner would be announced, and we would adjourn to the dining room where we would sit around a table set with white linen and sterling silver place settings, complete with sterling silver napkin holders with our names engraved on them. We were required to wear either our service uniform or a civilian coat and tie at dinner. Elegant porcelain dishes and crystal stemware were set at each place. An orderly would serve each course from a large silver tray and pour wine for us from a crystal decanter. I felt as if I had stepped into some aristocratic Victorian home whenever I sat down to dinner at Center House, and I was sure no other officer in the Marine Corps enjoyed such luxury and comfort.
The other officers living in Center House with me were Major Herbert Seay, Captains James Cooney, Thomas Campbell, Nick Grosz, and Lieutenant Frank “Ike” Izenour. All of these officers were single, had the infantry MOS, and had recently served in Vietnam. They were also highly decorated. At the Mess Night my first evening at the barracks, I enjoyed the traditional meal of roast beef and the friendly and collegial atmosphere that was a reflection of Col. Fegan’s inspiring leadership style.
During the table conversation, I found out why I had been sent to “8th and Eye” and not to some other post or station in the Corps. It turned out that a year ago an influential congressman had attended a Friday Evening Parade and noted that none of the officers or enlisted Marines on the parade deck were wearing the Vietnamese campaign ribbon or any other decoration indicating they had served in South Vietnam. The commandant took note of this and immediately changed the long standing policy of sending carefully screened Marines directly from basic training to the barracks. Instead, he ordered Headquarters Marine Corps to start sending officers and enlisted Marines from Vietnam to fill the ranks. This policy change resulted in some significant changes in the types of Marines sent to the barracks. For instance, it had previously been the normal procedure to assign only Marine officers who stood six foot two inches tall to the barracks since the commandant wanted to have all of his officers tall and imposing and of uniform height. Since I was only 5'11" tall, under the previous assignment process I would not have been selected for assignment to the barracks. Several other returning Marine officers also did not meet the height requirements, but that did not matter to Gen. Chapman; he wanted Marine officers wearing decorations and campaign ribbons that clearly showed they had been to Vietnam. While this new policy meant the ranks were being filled with combat veterans, it also meant the Marines in the ranks made for a less uniform and imposing appearance.
The next few days were devoted to honing my ceremonial skills. I spent endless hours of sword drill under the careful eye of the 1st Sgt. of Guard Company and several officers. I seemed to learn quickly the distinctive drill maneuvers particular to the barracks, such as the parade flank movement, the rigid hand salute, and the parade gait that made an officer look like he was walking on eggs. After two weeks, I was pronounced ready for basic ceremonial duties.
I was temporarily assigned to the Marine Corps Institute (MCI) at the Navy Yard to help complete one of their correspondence courses called Reconnaissance Marine. This work took only a few weeks to complete, since it was largely finished before my arrival. I amended a few items in the course to reflect some of the lessons learned in Vietnam before it was published and sent to the field. Once my work at MCI was finished, I received my permanent assignment to Guard Company, also located in the Navy Yard. I reported to my new CO, Capt. Barry Beck, and he told me to take over the 1st Platoon.
I shared my new office on the second floor at Guard Company with my platoon Sgt., SSgt. Johnson. He was on his second tour at Guard Company, having served there as a junior enlisted man several years ago. He was thoroughly professional, and knew everything about the duties of Guard Company. We got along well from the beginning, and I came to rely on this seasoned SNCO for his expertise and counsel throughout my time at the barracks. We spent countless hours together in our small office rehearsing the intricacies and nuances of our ceremonial duties and shining leather gear, polishing brass, and ironing our uniforms as we prepared for the ceremonies that Guard Company participated in. Ever the thoughtful SNCO, he would always go over each ceremony with me so I was thoroughly familiar with how it was performed and what dangers lurked for an unsuspecting platoon commander. These duties included the Sunset Parade at the barracks each Friday during the summer and the Evening Parade at the Marine Corps Memorial each Tuesday, as well as White House and Pentagon dignitary arrivals, and Tomb of the Unknown and funeral processions at Arlington National Cemetery.
We also had other duties that did not involve ceremonies, but still required a very high level of professionalism and attention to detail, such as presidential security at Camp David and security for visiting dignitaries staying at Blair House, located across the street from the White House. Before leaving for a ceremony, we would inspect ourselves in front of a large full-length mirror in our office and then turn to face each other for one final visual inspection before we left the office. Each of us spent the last few minutes before departing for a ceremony using Scotch brand tape to remove every speck of lint from our uniforms. This ritual of personal inspection became routine for us and ensured we were both properly turned out. We left nothing to doubt.
During my first month at the barracks, I received a call from Col. Fegan telling me I was to report the next day to a room in the Pentagon to perform some of the “extra” work he had mentioned on my first day of duty. He did not tell me anything about the work, only that it involved my recent experience in South Vietnam and that I did not need to do anything to prepare myself for it. He told me parking was difficult at the Pentagon, so he graciously volunteered the use of his staff car and driver to take me there.
The next day I was driven to the Pentagon, where I soon found out I was to help with “Project Agile,” a Department of Defense study on the use of new technologies to detect and deter enemy infiltration into South Vietnam. At this meeting, I began to learn about the strategic thinking of the military and civilian leaders working on the war. As part of the meeting, I received some background on why my input was needed. The analysts working on the study wanted to have the opinion of officers familiar with the enemy’s infiltration methods so they could use technology to impede the movement of North Vietnamese troops and supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It was very obvious that the civilians at the meeting were keen to get me to endorse their ideas because they went out of their way to be solicitous to me, a mere lieutenant, and to ask leading questions. Their briefing covered how they intended to use “The McNamara Line” to form a barrier running from the South China Sea near Dong Ha in South Vietnam to the Mekong River near Savannakhet in Laos. They explained that the 1962 Geneva Accords on Laos prohibited the U.S. from employing U.S. troops in Laos, and they hoped to get around this problem by using a host of technological innovations to compensate for the absence of U.S. ground troops in Laos. They spent most of their time asking me whether or not I thought these various devices could be covertly placed by indigenous reconnaissance teams working inside Laos and how best this could be accomplished.
After they had briefed me on several of these detection devices and their means of delivery, one of the Army staff officers opined that the entire idea of a barrier to infiltration was fraught with problems, and he did not think a system could be developed that would stem the movement of NVA troops and supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. I could tell the technical people from Battelle and the civilian Pentagon bureaucrats at the meeting did not welcome this officer’s comments. One of the people from Battelle responded by saying, “Then I guess the war is lost, because unless you do something about the Ho Chi Minh Trail, you will never defeat these people.” The Army officer, who represented the Joint Chiefs of Staff at this meeting, countered by saying, “We could build a barrier from the South China Sea to India, but those little bastards would find a way to get around it. Unless you put American forces on the ground in Laos to over watch your electronic systems and have plenty of firepower to back them up, it is futile to believe this will work. We all know the only way to stop them from coming south is to occupy Laos, but we also know State won’t stand for that.”
An Air Force officer began to argue with the Army officer about the feasibility of the electronic barrier, but after a few minutes of hot discussion, all talk ceased when the senior person at the meeting, a political appointee, told everyone to calm down and to stick to the agenda for the meeting, which he said was to get recent field input from Marine and Army reconnaissance operators to ascertain whether or not they thought the equipment described by Battelle would work.
He asked my opinion on two pieces of experimental equipment, and my response was I thought these two seismic detection devices would only be useful if they worked continuously in all types of weather, were constantly monitored, and there was some way to attack the targets they identified quickly. Another recent returnee from the Vietnam War, a U.S. Army Special Forces captain, said essentially the same thing. He added that to be effective, one would first have to know which trails the NVA troops were using, which was not an easy task since these trails often changed or were constantly expanding into new areas. I came away from this meeting thinking some very smart people were devoting a lot of time and money to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, but not everyone was in favor of the solutions put forth and not everyone was confident that there was a solution to the NVA use of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, given the proscription on the use of U.S. ground forces in Laos.
My first month at “8th and Eye” passed quickly and, largely, uneventfully. In addition to working on my drill and other duties, I spent my weekends with “Jane” and attended several social functions she had at her sorority house at George Washington University. We both felt very strongly about each other, and we enjoyed getting to know each other again after the year of separation. Many of “Jane”’s friends in her sorority had wedding plans for June, a fact that became very apparent to me as I listened to them eagerly discuss their impending marriages at the conclusion of their university studies.
“Jane” and I began to discuss our relationship and where it might lead, but our long separation had prevented us from really developing that relationship in a normal way. We had known each other for less than five months before I went to Vietnam and just about everything we knew about each other was drawn from the weekly letters we wrote to each other. We had a lot in common and were very much attracted to each other, but we both needed time to find each other again and have our love mature and grow before we made a permanent commitment to each other. Unfortunately, several events in April damaged our relationship beyond repair and altered my life in ways that would affect me for years to come.
The first of these events took place on April 4th when news reached the barracks that Martin Luther King, Jr., had been shot and killed at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. We were all shocked by this news, but our shock soon changed to revulsion as we began to see a general breakdown of law and order in the capital when many citizens in the African American community began to riot. As the rioting spread, the police force was either unable or unwilling to contain the lawless behavior of the rioters. President Johnson saw that the police were not able to contain the rioting, so he called out federal troops to restore order and protect the government workers and facilities. The Marine Corps Guard Company’s riot company, a 250-man-strong unit, was called out to clear Pennsylvania Avenue of rioters and protect the Capitol Building. The Army’s 3rd Infantry Regiment, a ceremonial unit like the Marine Corps’ Guard Company, was also called out to restore order and to protect the White House. These two federal forces were the first of over 13,000 federal troops called out to quell the riots.
Since I was new to Guard Company and had not drilled with my platoon when they practiced the various riot control formations, I was not called out the first night of the riots. Another officer from the barracks took my place. However, I was told to go along with the company to observe how they operated, so I would be able to take over from this officer when my platoon took up a static defense of the Capitol Building. What I observed that first night of rioting literally sickened me. It seemed the only people doing their duty that night were the Marines and soldiers; the police simply stood around and did nothing to stop the looting and burning going on in front of them. When our officers asked them to help by arresting the numerous people running down Pennsylvania Avenue with looted television sets, clothing, and other items stolen from the stores on that street, the police on Pennsylvania Avenue said they had orders from their police chief and Mayor Walter Washington not to arrest the rioters unless someone’s life was threatened. I could not believe my ears. The police also warned us that we were not to make any arrests because martial law had not been declared, and they still had jurisdiction over Washington, D.C. They invoked the Posse Comitatus Law, a vestige of the Civil War that forbids the use of federal troops to enforce laws.
Several store owners, most of whom were African American, came up to the Marines during the night and begged them to clear the street and protect their businesses which were being systematically looted by hundreds of gleeful, rampaging rioters. Despite the warnings by the police not to intervene, the officers of the Riot Company requested permission from their military chain of command to respond, and soon the entire company of Marines was on line and moving down Pennsylvania Avenue with their bayonets fixed and held at high port. Several rioters made the unwise decision to disregard the Marine officers’ orders to drop the items they had stolen, and these looters were quickly brought to the ground by four-man flying squads and turned over to the police for processing. Those who resisted were introduced to the business end of the heavy, wooden stocks of the M-1 rifles carried by the Riot Company. The gleeful, boisterous attitude of the mob quickly changed to fear as they ran away from the Marines as fast as they could, dropping their ill-gotten goods in the street and adjacent alleys as they fled. Over one hundred looters were captured and turned over to the police that night. Later, owners of several local stores came up to the Marines and thanked them for protecting their property and requested that the Marines post a guard on their stores because they did not trust the police to prevent further looting.
Early in the morning of 5 April, I returned to the barracks to catch a few hours of sleep and some breakfast before I relieved the lieutenant who had commanded my platoon the first night of its deployment against the rioters. When I talked to the officers at the barracks that morning, I found that all of them were shocked and saddened by the deplorable breakdown of law and order and the absence of any civilian control of the situation. They were particularly scornful of the police and the mayor for their lack of courage and indecisive behavior. I also learned that the dry cleaning shop across the street from the barracks, where all of our uniforms were taken for alterations and cleaning, had been looted and burned the first night of the riots, as were most of the other stores in the neighborhood. The sentry on the main gate had seen the rioters break into the dry cleaning shop, but he did not receive permission from the police to respond, so all he could do was watch as the store was looted and burned. Several thousand dollars of Marine dress uniforms were destroyed.
Because the Marines had inflicted some serious injuries to resisting rioters, the mayor’s political friends began complaining to the press that the Marines had overstepped their authority. He demanded that the Marines restrict their presence to the Capitol Building. As a result, the Riot Company was pulled off Pennsylvania Avenue and moved to the Capitol Building where we set up an interior guard consisting of an inner and outer ring of security posts manned 24 hours a day. We also began to conduct squad-sized foot patrols in the streets leading up to the Capitol Building as a sort of “show of force.”
My platoon was given responsibility for several posts on the western and northern sides of the Capitol Building. When my Marines were not on duty at one of the posts, they rested in one of the corridors in the lower floors of the building in the vicinity of several offices belonging to Senate staffers. This led to a rather unpleasant confrontation between me and a staffer from Senator Edward Kennedy’s office. As I was standing on the veranda of the Capitol Building looking out in the direction of East Capital Street, I was approached by a rather officious young man who demanded to know who was in charge of the “soldiers” sleeping in the corridor near his office. He said the Marines sleeping there were “dirty and smelly” and they were “in the way” of his colleagues who had “important work to do.” I told him the men were not soldiers, but U.S. Marines, and the reason they were in the corridor was because the capital police had told us to put them there. I also told him that they had spent the past 48 hours defending him and his colleagues from people who wanted to tear the Capitol Building apart and that this little detail might explain why they had not had the time to shower.
He did not like my answer and began to tell me that the presence of the Marines made his female colleagues “feel uncomfortable,” and he wanted the Marines “removed immediately.” I was trying to suppress a strong desire to rip the man’s face off when the commander of the Marine security force, a colonel from the Marine base at Quantico, came over and told the staffer that busses from the barracks would soon be taking the Marines back to their quarters for a shower and a clean change of uniform. He pleaded with the staffer to have patience until then. He also promised the officious young man that he would locate another place for the Marines guarding the building to sleep. This did not seem to impress the staffer who continued to complain about having Marines in combat gear carrying weapons near his office. Before he left, he hurled what I am sure he thought was the ultimate warning to the colonel when he said, “Senator Kennedy will hear about this, and I don’t think he will like it.” My opinion of the colonel was elevated considerably when I saw him bristle at this last comment and he retorted, “Son, you do that. You tell Senator Kennedy that you are unhappy with the troops protecting him and his staff. I will be glad to talk to the good Senator whenever he would like to see me about this matter.”
The colonel spoke with me after the staffer had left, and he told me not to judge everyone working in the building by the words of this one Senate staffer. I did not. I noticed, however, that during the entire time my platoon guarded the Capitol Building, not a single congressman or staffer thanked us for protecting them. In fact, they seemed to go out of their way to ignore us. The only interest shown to us was that of several journalists who sought out our African American Marines to ask them questions about how they felt about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
On April 9th, my platoon was relieved of its duties at the Capitol Building, and we returned to the barracks. The streets outside the barracks looked like a war zone with burned out shops and stores lining the street and debris everywhere. Police patrolled the streets with shotguns pointing out of the windows of their squad cars. I heard several stories from Marines at the barracks about the vandalism and general lawlessness that had transpired nearby, including one incident where an African American Marine from Quantico who had been assigned to guard a looted store across the street from the barracks was taunted by some teenagers to the point where he hit one of them with the butt of his M-14 rifle, seriously injuring the teenager. I was told this Marine had been taunted continuously for nearly an hour by the teenagers, who were showing off in front of some girls nearby. The Marine took the taunting, including some particularly vicious racial taunts, until one teenager made the mistake of touching the Marine on the chest, daring him to respond. This constituted assault, and thus the Marine was justified in responding as he did. He knocked the teenager unconscious with one blow, and the boy went to the hospital where he was treated for significant facial injuries.
In another incident, a woman was raped in an alley across the street from the barracks. Only half-dressed and bleeding, she came to the main gate asking the Marine sentry for assistance. The sentry called the police, and she went to a local hospital for treatment of her injuries. These tales, and the extensive damage I witnessed to the community surrounding the barracks, sickened me. I could not believe that such things could happen in my country, let alone my nation’s capital.
I blamed the mayor, Walter Washington, and his cowardly police chief, Jerry Wilson, for the 12 people killed, the 900 stores looted, and the widespread devastation visited upon the city, much of which took decades to heal. Their lack of decisive action when the first rioting broke out along the 14th Street corridor on April 4th led to the rapid spread of lawlessness and violence. Their bad decisions forced the president to call out 13,600 federal troops and to place these troops in a situation that forced them to make arrests and protect the lives and property of law-abiding citizens, something they were not trained to do or expected to do when they joined the U.S. Marines.
True to form, the press, who were noticeably absent on the streets of Washington, D.C., while I was there, quickly took up the cause of the mayor and portrayed him as a hero who tried not to overreact and make matters worse. They shamelessly protected both the mayor and his police department. In the days following the riots, my fellow Marine officers and I were unanimous in our condemnation of the actions of the mayor and astounded by the way the press described the riots. My faith in the federal government and in the press was seriously eroded by what I saw and experienced during these riots.
Shortly after the riots, I decided to visit the grave of Lt. Tom Dowd, my good friend who was killed in South Vietnam. My platoon provided a burial detail at least once a week at Arlington National Cemetery, so after one of these burial details, I took the opportunity to visit Tom’s grave and pay my respects. While I looked down on his grave and read his tombstone, I felt a deep sense of guilt. I felt guilty that I had survived the war and Tom had not.
I had spoken to Tom many times before we shipped out for Vietnam, and I knew he never intended to make the Marine Corps a career. He had decided that he would put his personal plans on hold and serve his country. That was his sole motivation for joining the Marine Corps. He had heard the words of President John F. Kennedy, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” and he had responded. In the purest sense, he was a patriot. His life’s ambition was to teach at the university level and, perhaps, coach soccer. He also wanted to raise a large family. Now, he was dead and those dreams died with him. I felt that a fairer outcome would have been for me to die, not Tom. Had Tom lived, I am sure he would have achieved great things in his life. He had all the attributes needed to reach the pinnacle of success in any field of endeavor he chose. Unlike Tom, I did not aspire to any civilian calling, and I was largely ambivalent about marriage and family. For me, the Marine Corps was the sole focus of my existence, and any satisfaction I derived from my life would come from serving my country as a Marine. I wished for nothing else.
I felt that very little would be lost if I died. When Tom Dowd died the world lost a man who had great promise, a man who was destined for great things. All I could do was stand in front of Tom’s grave and promise him that I would not abandon the cause he died for. He believed the Vietnam War as a crusade, an opportunity to give the people of South Vietnam a government based upon democratic principles and an economy based upon the free market. He believed it was immoral to abandon them to the totalitarianism of a communist state and the misery of a collective, command economy. As I walked away from his grave, I thought of Tom’s favorite song, “The Impossible Dream,” and how apt that song was, given Tom’s short life and how he had “charged into hell for a heavenly cause.” I would visit Tom’s grave several more times in the coming years, and I would always think of him whenever I heard his favorite song, “The Impossible Dream.”
Sometime in April, I received a letter from Maj. Dan Keating, my former CO of the 1st Force Reconnaissance Company. It had taken two weeks to reach me. In the letter, he informed me that my platoon had been nearly wiped out during the Battle for Hue and was now listed as “combat ineffective” due to casualties. He did not tell me how many had been killed and wounded, but he told me the platoon had been part of a hastily formed reaction force that was used more like a standard infantry platoon. They had been hit either on the bridge leading to the Hue Citadel or immediately on the north side of the Perfume River. The lieutenant who had taken over my platoon was one of the wounded.
My heart stopped when I read his short letter with its chilling story of my platoon’s demise. I felt both sorrow and rage. Here I was, sitting in my comfortable room at Center House, waiting to eat a steak dinner with wine prepared and served by orderlies, safe and secure, living in luxury while my men were being killed and wounded in Hue. I felt remorse at their loss and guilt that I had left them. I felt that had I been there, this terrible thing would not have happened; I would have found a way to save them. Nothing terrible like this had ever happened while I commanded my platoon, but now they had suffered because I had gone home and left them. It is impossible to know if I could have avoided the disaster that my platoon suffered, but I had taken my platoon into some very dangerous situations before and always found a way to overcome the obstacles we faced. My platoon was not trained or experienced in urban combat, so they were at a distinct disadvantage when they were employed in an infantry role in Hue against heavily armed NVA troops. At the very least, I know I would have questioned the rationale behind using a lightly armed recon platoon of only fifteen men in an urban combat scenario.
As I was reading Maj. Keating’s letter, Lt. “Ike” Izenour came into my room to tell me it was time for dinner. He saw that I was upset, so he asked me what was wrong. I looked up at him, and suddenly I began to weep. I blurted out, “My platoon is dead, wiped out, because I left them.” Ike, always a jovial and upbeat man, looked really concerned and just stood there in the doorway with an odd expression of concern on his face. I showed him Maj. Keating’s letter and then he simply said he was sorry about the bad news, but I should not feel guilty over it. He tried to console me, but his efforts were to no avail. He went down to dinner, but I remained in my room. I did not want my fellow officers to see me in such an emotional state. I reflected on the news of my platoon’s destruction and, no matter how hard I tried to rationalize the information contained in Maj. Keating’s letter, I still came to the conclusion that this terrible event would never have happened if I had remained in South Vietnam with them. That night I decided that I would ask to be reassigned to South Vietnam immediately.
The next morning, I told my CO at Guard Company, Capt. Beck, that I wanted to go back to the war, and he needed to find a replacement for me. Not surprisingly, he was shocked by my decision, and he asked me why I wanted to go back when I had just recently returned to the U.S. He asked me if I was unhappy with my job as a ceremonial guard officer, or if I had some personal problem that motivated me to take such a drastic step. I told him several things had made me reach my decision. First, I told him I was sickened by what I saw during the riots in Washington, D.C., and this was undermining my faith in the U.S. government and the society I was sworn to protect. I then told him about the recent destruction of my recon platoon in South Vietnam and how I felt guilty that I had not been there to prevent their tragic fate. These two things taken together, along with the irony of my living a life of luxury and relative ease while my comrades in South Vietnam were suffering, made it impossible for me to continue to live in the U.S. while there was a war going on. Capt. Beck, who was married to one of President Johnson’s personal secretaries, had already decided to leave the Marine Corps to pursue a law degree in Texas. He found it very difficult to understand my decision. He tried to talk me out of it, but I remained adamant. He then said I should wait a day or two before calling my assignment monitor in the Personnel Department of Headquarters Marine Corps so I could weigh all of my options. I told him I would wait a day, but I didn’t think it would make any difference. I thanked him for his advice and left his office.
An hour later, Col. Fegan’s secretary called me and asked me to come up to his office at the barracks that afternoon. Shortly after noon, I was standing in front of Col. Fegan’s desk. He asked me to sit down, and then he stood up from his desk and walked to his window that overlooked the parade field. He was silent for a moment, and then he said, “What’s this I hear about you wanting to waive your overseas control date and go back to Vietnam?”
I told him the same thing I had just told Capt. Beck, and he listened intently, never taking his eyes off me. After I had finished speaking, he was silent for a moment, pausing several times to look out his window, as if weighing what he would say to me. I think he sensed that I was very serious and he needed to choose his words with care. As far as I was concerned, no words of any kind would deter me from returning to Vietnam.
He began by telling me he shared my disgust with the riots and that he understood how bad it felt to know one’s comrades had been killed and wounded. He told me about his own experiences as a young lieutenant during the Battle for Iwo Jima and how he was so upset with the chaos and incompetence he saw there that he thought seriously about submitting his resignation from the Marine Corps. I could tell he was trying to find some way to dissuade me, some line of argument that would cause me to change my mind.
He then surprised me by asking me if I intended to make the Marine Corps a career or not. I told him I had never wanted to do anything else but serve in the Marine Corps. I had no aspirations to do anything else with my life. When I told him this, he changed his demeanor, relaxing a bit and leaning back in his chair. He then told me that the normal tour of duty at the barracks was three years and, if he wanted to, he could prevent my transfer until then. However, he said he had no intention of doing that. Instead, he asked me to stay at the barracks until the parade season was over in October. If I would agree to stay until then, he would approve my request to leave the barracks and return to Vietnam. I agreed to Col. Fegan’s terms because I really had no other alternative. I also knew that it would be difficult to replace me on short notice during the parade season. I had faith in Col. Fegan, and I knew he was a man of his word, so I decided to take his advice and remain at the barracks until the parade season ended before going back to Vietnam.
When I informed “Jane” of my decision to return to Vietnam, it ended our relationship. She was the daughter of a naval officer and understood my commitment to the Marine Corps, but she said she was not prepared to go through another year of separation so soon. She doubted my sincerity, telling me that it was unfair to her to make her wait another year or more before making a decision on marriage, and she had no intention of doing so. She thought my decision meant I lacked any true feeling for her, and I was using the decision to return to Vietnam as a means of putting off a decision on marriage. I tried to explain to her how strongly I felt about the need to return to the fight, but I knew she did not believe me. I realized I was being unfair to her, but I knew I would never forgive myself if I did not return to Vietnam while the war raged on. I told her it was impossible for me to get on with my life while the war was unresolved. The war had become my mission in life, and I did not want to abandon it until I was sure the U.S. had achieved victory. We both agreed that, given my convictions, it was best to end our relationship and allow “Jane” to find someone else who could give her the life she deserved. She married someone else six months later.
When I called my monitor in the Personnel Department to tell him that I wanted to waive my overseas control date and schedule my departure for South Vietnam as soon as the parade season ended, he was at first incredulous. I had only been back in the U.S. for less than three months, and I was not scheduled to go overseas again for three years. I convinced him of my sincerity, and he said he would send the paperwork over to me to sign in a day or two. I later found out that he called Col. Fegan to confirm the feasibility of allowing an officer to leave “8th and Eye” after less than a year on station. Col. Fegan told the monitor that he thought I would change my mind, but he would not stand in my way to leave if that was what I wanted to do.
Since I had seen how happy my parents were now that I was safely back in the U.S., I did not immediately tell them of my intention to return to South Vietnam. I told them that “Jane” and I had decided to break up, but I did not tell them the real reason for this development. They had driven down to see me and attend an award ceremony at the barracks where I received a Navy Commendation Medal. They seemed to be happy for me during the ceremony on the parade ground and the reception following it in Center House. I could tell they basked in the glow of the entire event. I did not share in their enthusiasm and felt very awkward having the entire Guard Company fall out on the parade ground, along with the drum and bugle corps, for an award ceremony in my honor.
I declined another award ceremony later on when my “end of tour” Bronze Star medal arrived at the barracks. This did not go down well with Col. Fegan, who felt it was necessary for the Marines at the barracks, many of whom would be going to South Vietnam after their tour of duty at the barracks ended, to listen to an award citation given for heroism in combat. I told Col. Fegan why I did not want even to accept the award, and the forcefulness of my explanation had its effect on him. He reluctantly allowed me to receive the award in a private ceremony in his office with only Capt. Beck and one other officer in attendance. I think he was surprised by my contempt for “end of tour” awards and the entire Marine Corps awards system. I suppose my vehemence had an effect on him because he told me he intended to take the matter up with the 1st Marine Division CG, Gen. Robertson, a personal friend of his. That award was the last personal award I allowed the Marine Corps to present to me. I even turned down a retirement award when I left the Corps 23 years later.
When I first arrived at the barracks, I discovered that I was replacing Capt. Charles “Chuck” Robb, who had recently married President Johnson’s daughter, Linda. Capt. Robb was also a ceremonial guard officer, and one of his additional duties at the barracks had been that of a White House social aide, a job that meant he often assisted with social and ceremonial events at the White House. Through this position he met Linda Johnson, dated her, and eventually married her. I found out that there were only four Marine officers assigned the additional duty of White House Social Aide, all of whom came from the Marine Barracks at “8th and Eye.”
One night, shortly after the riots, Capt. Cooney, a fellow bachelor officer who lived in Center House with me, came into my room and asked me if I was interested in taking on the additional duty of White House social aide. He explained that both he and Capt. Robb were vacating their positions, and he offered to recommend me for one of the opening slots. After a brief description of the duties entailed and his assurance that he thought I could handle the job, he informed me that I would only get the job after I had successfully passed a screening interview with the White House social secretary, Mrs. Bess Abell. Naturally, I was flattered that I would be considered for such a prestigious job, so I readily accepted his offer to take on this extra duty.
Capt. Cooney and I later went over what I needed to do during the interview to ensure that Bess Abell would be favorably impressed. He said she would light up a cigarette during the interview, and if I pulled out a lighter and lit her cigarette, I was a shoo-in for the job. If I did not, or made some other social faux pas, then I would not be accepted. It all depended on impressing Mrs. Abell with my social skills and manners. He followed up his advice with a strong injunction never to speak about what I saw or heard while working in the White House since discretion was essential in this job. If I talked to the press or anyone else about what was going on in the White House, it would result in a lot of embarrassment to the Marine Corps and my immediate dismissal from the White House Social Aide detail.
A week later, I traveled to the Social Office of the White House. I was dressed in my best Summer Service A uniform. I tucked a brand new cigarette lighter in my sock so nothing would crease my uniform or appear as a bulge in my pocket. When I entered Mrs. Abell’s office, I was struck by her elegance and beauty. However, this initial impression lasted only a minute or two. Mrs. Abell was a force to be reckoned with. She did not get her job because of her beauty and charm, and this was clearly evident after speaking to her for only a minute or two. Her explanation of how important social contacts were to the president and the role protocol played in his ability to grease the machinery of politics in Washington demonstrated to me that she was an extremely intelligent and capable woman. Everything about her exuded intelligence, education, style and breeding.
She asked me to take a chair in front of her desk, and I waited for her to seat herself before sitting down myself. She then began to ask me questions about my background, education, and family. It was obvious that she was gauging my experience with social situations similar to those I might encounter in the White House. She asked me what I thought was the most important thing I had done in my life. I answered immediately and without reservation: leading Marines in combat in South Vietnam. She asked me if I supported the war, and I told her I did. I added that I thought the policies of President Johnson were correct, and that I was disappointed the president had decided not to run for reelection. She seemed satisfied with that answer, and then she reached across her desk to a wooden box and retrieved a cigarette from it. I immediately rose from my seat and moved quickly to light her cigarette for her. She asked me if I smoked, and I said I did not. She then asked me why I was carrying a cigarette lighter and I told her, “Because I may encounter a lady who might have need of one.” After taking a long draw on her cigarette, she rose and told me that she thought I would make a good social aide, and she would soon arrange for the president’s military aide to send orders to the barracks asking that I be assigned to her office.
Throughout the summer months of the parade season, I carried out my duties as a Guard Company officer, but I was often called upon to work at the White House, usually during the evening hours, but on occasion during the day. During parade season, I participated each Friday in the Sunset Parade at the barracks and each Tuesday evening at the Marine Corps Memorial outside the Arlington National Cemetery. I also participated in the other ceremonies and events commonly performed by Guard Company, such as funerals and wreath-laying ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery and arrival ceremonies at the White House and the Pentagon. In between, I often went to the White House in my capacity as a White House social aide to help with ceremonies there, usually State dinners for visiting heads of state or legislation-signing ceremonies where the president would sign important legislation into law before national television cameras in the company of the congressmen who were responsible for the legislation.
My time as a White House social aide was short, less than seven months, but I had several interesting experiences during this time. On 11 September 1968, I was assigned by the White House Protocol Office to assist at a State Dinner in the White House in honor of the prime minister of the Barbados and his wife, who were visiting the country. It was an elegant and very formal affair that required careful timing and perfect execution. The social aides were responsible for ensuring the entire event went flawlessly, from greeting the guests and organizing the receiving line to shepherding the guests into the dining room and being available to dance with the female guests if the president decided that dancing following the dinner was appropriate. As the guests for the dinner began to arrive, the social aides escorted them into the White House and began to mingle with them, making small talk and ensuring they were given drinks. These guests represented a literal “Who’s Who” of Washington’s political and social elite, as well as influential people from around the country. It was pretty heady stuff for a 24-year-old lieutenant, and I must admit I felt very privileged to talk to congressmen, journalists, entertainers, and leaders of American industry. At this particular State dinner, I had the opportunity to escort Senator and Mrs. John J. Sparkman of Alabama, Senator and Mrs. Mike Mansfield of Montana, and the famous Broadway singer, Mr. Gordon MacRae and his wife. I also spoke briefly with the actress Merle Oberon and was struck by how beautiful she was and how young she looked even in her sixties. However, as I went about my duties I began to feel that I was looked upon by the guests as someone filling the role of footman on some aristocratic estate. Some of them would even ask me to obtain items like ashtrays or pens for them, treating me more like some ornately dressed servant than a military officer.
As I was going about my job of making these guests feel welcome and at ease, Mrs. Abell came up to me and Lt. Ike Isenour with a rather worried look on her face. She said, “Thank God you are here. I have a mission that only the Marines can handle.” She then went on to explain that a married couple had arrived at the White House drunk, and they had loudly insulted Senator Symington and others. She told us we had to make sure this man and woman, two major contributors to the Democratic Party from New York City, were not seated at dinner, but were diverted somehow when the other guests moved into the East Room. She pointed out the couple and told us to figure out some way to prevent these people from doing any more harm. Ike and I had not anticipated such a problem, and for a moment we simply looked at each other as if to ask, “Well, what do we do now?” After a moment of reflection, we decided we would tell this couple they would be eating dinner with the social aides in the White House’s Navy Mess, instead of the East Room. In order to carry out this plan, we enlisted the aid of the senior Mess attendant and two members of the Secret Service detail. I asked the wife, who was less inebriated than her husband, if she knew where they had parked their car, and she told me she did not. I asked for a description of their car and the license number, and requested she give me the keys to the car, which she obtained from her husband, who appeared completely oblivious to why she was rummaging through his trouser pockets. I informed the Secret Service detail they needed to bring the couple’s car around to the West Wing entrance as soon as they located it. I gave them the car keys and hoped they would find it quickly. I made small talk with the couple while Ike saw to it that name cards for the couple were placed at the table in the White House Navy Mess and two extra meals were laid out for them. Since the social aides always ate their meals in the Navy Mess during a State dinner, I knew the meal we ate would be identical to the one served to the guests in the East Room, minus the wine. We were confident the inebriated couple would not be disappointed with the fare provided. I escorted them downstairs to the Navy Mess and sat them at one of the tables and had the Filipino mess men serve them their meal. While they were eating, the husband kept asking where the president was, while his wife tried to keep him from noticing that they were definitely not in the East Room. She saw what we were doing and wanted to avoid any more embarrassment, so she went along with our game and actually kept her husband from running upstairs to look for the president. After ten minutes of awkwardness, the Secret Service returned and informed me that they had the car waiting by the West Wing, and one of their agents would drive the couple to their hotel. A few minutes later, we had the couple in their car and on their way. Later that evening, Mrs. Abell came up to me and Ike and thanked us, adding, “I knew I could count on the Marines.” Mrs. Abell was always gracious and kind, but she was sparse with her praise. Ike and I felt we had done a good job that night and prevented a situation that had the potential for real embarrassment to the president.
On two occasions at the White House, I got into trouble. The first occurred during the State dinner described above. As the guests assembled for cocktails prior to the dinner, I saw a journalist from the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper dropping cigar ashes on the new and very expensive rug in the Green Room. I found an ash tray and came over and presented it to him saying, “Sir, I think you may have need for this.” He was embarrassed, and I found out later he complained to Mrs. Abell about my “rude comment in front of the other guests.” In this instance, Mrs. Abell saw fit to forgive me, probably because she indicated the man in question was not to her liking and should not have been dropping ashes on the rug. Still, she scolded me and told me to never embarrass a guest again. The fact that Ike and I had helped with the drunken guests from New York City that night may also have had a softening effect on Mrs. Abell’s chastisement.
My second, more serious, blunder occurred during a bill-signing ceremony in the East Room of the White House. President Johnson was signing an environmental bill, and my job during the signing ceremony was to make sure no one to the president’s right was in the wrong position. Another aide was positioned on his left. In front of the president’s desk was a bank of microphones, several still photographers, and three television cameras. Mrs. Abell had instructed us prior to the ceremony that under no circumstances should we allow anyone to come between the president and the cameras during the signing. Since the president used nearly fifty pens to sign the bill, the actual signing of it took nearly five minutes to complete. He would sign only a small portion of his signature and then turn to present one of the pens to each congressman who had had some role to play in the bill’s passage.
I thought this would be an easy task, and for a moment I forgot what my role was at such a function. I became distracted by the cameras and the act of the president signing the bill, and I neglected to observe Senator Stuart Udall moving in front of the president’s desk to receive his pen. In so doing, Senator Udall came between the president and the television cameras, exactly what Mrs. Abell had warned us about no more than 30 minutes before. It happened very quickly, making it impossible for me to do anything about it once the Senator moved. As he took the pen, I immediately came to his side and guided him back to his position and made sure that no one else followed his lead when retrieving their pen.
When the ceremony concluded, a civilian staffer came up to me and told me to report to Mrs. Abell’s office immediately. My heart sank because I knew I had made a serious mistake, and one that she had explicitly told me not to make in her briefing to the social aides prior to the signing ceremony. As expected, once I was in her office standing at attention in front of her desk, she commenced to berate me for my lack of attention to duty during the signing ceremony. Ever the elegant and correct lady, she did not resort to expletives or raise her voice, but she let me know in no uncertain terms that she was very disappointed in me and she expected much better from a Marine officer. She then said that under normal circumstances my assignment at the White House would be terminated, but she wanted to speak to Capt. Tom Campbell, the senior Marine social aide, before making a decision on whether or not to fire me.
I was dejected and embarrassed when I left the White House and drove back to the barracks. When I got there, Tom Campbell was waiting for me, and I fully expected he would tell me that I was no longer a White House social aide. He started out by giving me the normal kind of “ass-chewing” a Marine officer could expect from his senior on such an occasion. After a minute or two of strong language and expressions of intense disappointment in me, he told me that he had talked Mrs. Abell out of firing me and that I would continue as an aide at the White House. He cautioned me that normally there were no second chances for mistakes. I must never allow my attention to wander again, or I would surely be fired and probably receive a letter of reprimand in the bargain.
I owed my salvation to Tom Campbell, and I was grateful. I also knew I was obligated to him for going out on a limb on my behalf. He had spared me from the humiliation and the consequences of reporting to Col. Fegan and telling him I had been fired from my social aide job. That evening at dinner, Tom acted as if nothing had happened. He did not tell anyone else at the barracks about my less-than-stellar performance at the White House that day. Tom Campbell was a class act in every respect and throughout my career I admired this man for his professionalism, courage, and intelligence. To this day, I do not know why he came to my rescue. I certainly did not deserve it. Nonetheless, I am grateful and will always be grateful to Tom for his act of kindness to me.
While my time at the barracks entailed less than nine months and my service at the White House less than seven, both jobs afforded me some unique insights into the last year of the Johnson presidency. One example of this occurred at Camp David, the presidential retreat.
The Marine Corps, along with the Secret Service, was responsible for presidential security at Camp David. Camp David is a highly secure Navy facility that has been used as a presidential retreat since 1939. It is located 60 miles NNW of Washington, D.C., in the Catoctin Mountains near the town of Thurmont, Maryland. In 1968 one platoon from Guard Company provided the exterior guard force for Camp David, which meant that for two weeks out of every six, my platoon would travel to Camp David for this duty. We would be responsible for guarding the main gate and the perimeter fence, conducting security checks along the perimeter road every two hours, and maintaining a quick reaction force to reinforce the Secret Service.
While at Camp David, I routinely conducted a “no notice” drill each day for the reaction force. This normally involved having the reaction force move by foot from their quarters to several locations near the president’s lodge, code-named “Aspen.” We took this job very seriously, as did the Secret Service detail assigned to the camp. Each quick reaction response was treated exactly as if there was an actual threat to the president’s security. For each drill, the Secret Service personnel on duty in a small guard shack outside of “Aspen” would call me and use a password to tell me that the president’s cabin had been breached and they needed the reaction force immediately. I would call the Sergeant of the Guard and order him to respond, again using a code word, to deploy the reaction force. From the time we received the call from the Secret Service, we were required to have a dozen heavily armed Marines at their positions outside of Aspen in less than one minute.
President Johnson seldom spent time at Camp David. He preferred his ranch in Texas if he wanted to relax, but his family members and members of Congress often spent time at Camp David. I recall only one time President Johnson visited Camp David while I was on duty there, and his stay was a short one. On this one occasion, I nearly had a serious problem involving presidential shotgun ammunition. The day before President Johnson was due to take his helicopter, Marine One, from the White House south lawn to Camp David, SSgt. Johnson came into my room at Camp David and told me he had a “small problem” that needed my immediate attention. I could tell that he was worried and the problem was not “small,” but serious. After I told him to stand at ease, he informed me that all of the shotgun ammunition used by the president for skeet shooting was gone. The presidential skeet-shooting range was located next to the Camp David helipad, and on the rare occasions when President Johnson visited Camp David, he would often take an hour or so to enjoy shooting skeet. I did not see this as much of a problem because I knew that the Navy, which was in charge of Camp David, had a generous budget for such items. I told SSgt. Johnson to go to the Navy Chief in charge of purchasing supplies and get a purchase order to replace the ammunition. SSgt. Johnson then went on to explain that the reason the shotgun ammunition was gone, all 500 rounds of it, was the Marines from the barracks had used it for their personal entertainment several weeks earlier and had told no one about it since it was not authorized for them to use the president’s ammunition stocks.
Now the magnitude of the problem was dawning on me. The president of the U.S. was less than 24 hours away from a visit to Camp David and all of his shotgun ammunition had been used up by Marines from the barracks. I saw great embarrassment to the Marine Corps and a major dent in my next fitness report if the president decided to shoot skeet and was told he could not do so because the Marines had used all of his personal ammunition.
Like all good Marine SNCOs, SSgt. Johnson had an answer to my dilemma, but his solution was about to lighten my paycheck substantially for that month. He told me there was a general store in the town of Thurmont at the bottom of the hill leading to Camp David, and that store sold shotgun ammunition. If I hurried, I could purchase the replacement shotgun ammunition before the store closed. I looked at my watch and saw I had a little over an hour to cash a check, drive down to the general store, and buy the ammunition. I rushed out of my room, checkbook in hand, and went to the Navy paymaster, who allowed me to cash a personal check. I then got into my car and raced down the hill to the store where I found the owner in the process of closing for the day. I told him I needed his best skeet-shooting ammunition, and he produced the last of his stock, six boxes containing 25 shotgun shells each. I hurriedly paid for all six boxes and said a little prayer that the president would not want to shoot more than 150 clay pigeons.
That evening I gave the ammunition to SSgt. Johnson and he took the shells and placed them in the empty boxes with the presidential seal on them. Fortunately for me, the ammunition that I had just purchased was identical to the Winchester Arms Company ammunition used by the president. As it turned out, the president did not choose to shoot skeet during his visit, much to SSgt. Johnson’s and my relief. The day after the president’s departure for the White House, we placed an order with the Navy for new presidential ammunition for the skeet range; however, I never recovered the money I spent.
Because Marine officers at “Eighth and Eye,” especially those assigned as White House aides, were often working with or around senior staffers at the White House, we often overheard sensitive conversations and rumors. Discretion was key. A White House social aide had to keep his mouth shut. We never signed a nondisclosure agreement, but we learned that anything we heard or saw there was not to be repeated outside the walls of 16 Pennsylvania Avenue. I took this injunction seriously and never talked to anyone about what I observed or heard while I worked in the president’s residence or at Camp David. We heard many rumors about the president, but I have no personal knowledge of their veracity. What I did see of the president leads me to dismiss these rumors as nothing more than idle gossip. I will relate two things I overheard as a result of my work at the White House but only because I think they may be of some interest to a historian.
The first were the comments by several military and civilian workers at Camp David concerning President and Mrs. Kennedy. I often heard these people, many of whom had worked at Camp David on multiple assignments, talk about how friendly President John F. Kennedy was to the military personnel when he stayed at Camp David, often speaking with them in the mess hall or on his walks around the perimeter. He was, in their words, “military friendly.” While they spoke highly of President Kennedy, they were very negative toward Mrs. Kennedy, whom they described as “very aloof and openly hostile toward anyone in uniform.” They told me that she would refuse to eat in the mess hall if she saw anyone in uniform there, even the Marine helicopter pilots who flew Marine One for them. These Camp David workers had very warm words for President Johnson and his family, especially Lady Bird Johnson, the president’s wife. From what I observed while I was in the White House, I would echo their sentiments about Mrs. Johnson.
Although I was often present in the same room in the White House with President Johnson, I never had an opportunity to talk to him. As a White House social aide, I was instructed never to speak to the president unless he spoke to me. We were also told not to salute him or greet him since this might burden the president by forcing a response. We were told we were in the White House to help the president conduct certain protocol events, and that was all. Although I never had a conversation with President Johnson, I was often present when he was conducting official duties, and I did observe his interaction with his immediate staff. I also overheard several conversations he had with both his staff and visitors. What I noticed most about the president was the duality of his demeanor. When he was with his staff in private, he was rather stern and, at times, profane. But when he was in front of a group of people or the television cameras, he adopted a very charming, folksy demeanor, probably honed from many years of political campaigning. It was difficult for me to see which of these personalities was real and which was contrived. Perhaps both were real.
One incident that gave me a strong, positive impression about President Johnson occurred while I was helping with a State Department dinner. I was mingling with the guests in the Green Room when I noticed a young couple standing in a corner looking rather uncomfortable and shy. Since part of my duties involved making the president’s guests feel welcome in the White House, I went up to them and introduced myself. They told me their names and said they were from Texas. I said, “Are you friends of the president?” and they replied that they were not friends but employees on his ranch. They were both 19 years old and were on their honeymoon in Washington, D.C. I asked them why they had chosen Washington, D.C., for their honeymoon venue, and they excitedly told me that they had not planned on a honeymoon at all. The president had said they should spend their honeymoon in the White House, and he would pay for everything they did for a week.
I was surprised by this information and impressed that the president would do such a nice thing for one of his employees. I told them not to feel nervous, but to enjoy themselves. Everyone felt a bit ill at ease at the White House, so they were not alone. They smiled, and I could tell they were worried about what to do and say at such a formal dinner. Until the dinner was served, they clung to me and only spoke to other guests when I introduced them.
The young man told me he was a cowboy, and his deep tan and rugged features clearly identified him as someone who worked hard outdoors. I could not help but notice when he shook my hand that his hands were huge, nearly twice the size of mine. His wife was a lovely young woman with a smile that set the room alight. She told me that Mrs. Johnson insisted they attend the State dinner even though neither she nor her new husband had any formal attire. President Johnson arranged for the rental of a tuxedo for the cowboy and a beautiful gown for his new bride. This thoughtful and kind gesture on the part of the president left me with a very warm impression of the human side of him and told me that, despite the many cares and concerns he had running the country, he still had time to provide a honeymoon in the White House for a cowboy who worked on his ranch.
Some of the most controversial things I heard while I was working as a White House social aide came from one of the domestic political advisors on the White House staff. This political appointee had been working with the president for a few years, and he was intensely loyal to him. He was, as one would expect, an ardent Democrat. I first met him in early June during a coordination meeting in the White House for a State dinner in honor of the Shah of Iran. He asked me about my service in Vietnam and mentioned that he was personally unhappy that President Johnson had decided not to run for reelection. He attributed LBJ’s decision not to run to the need to concentrate on the president’s domestic agenda and negotiations to end the Vietnam War, although he admitted the president’s poor showing against Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary was a factor.
I told him I was also disappointed that the president would not be running for reelection. We did not have a lot of time to talk on that occasion, so we agreed to meet later when we could continue our conversation. Since both of us had very busy schedules during the week, we decided the best time to talk would be on a weekend evening. He initially suggested we meet for dinner at a restaurant he liked near the White House, but I said such a venue might impede our conversation. I suggested it might be more relaxing and more conducive to privacy if we met at Center House. He agreed, and that weekend he joined me and the other bachelor officers at Center House for dinner.
After a pleasant dinner, the two of us adjourned to the small bar for an after dinner brandy and the opportunity to resume the conversation we had started in the White House. He told me again of his disappointment with the president’s decision not to run for reelection. He personally thought the president’s decision was a mistake. He contended that he did not think the primary reason for the president’s decision was based upon the showing of Senator McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary or the president’s fear of a presidential bid by Robert Kennedy, two reasons commonly alluded to by the Washington press corps at that time. Instead, he believed the president was motivated entirely by his desire to end the war in Vietnam and the president’s belief that he could not negotiate effectively with the North Vietnamese and run for president at the same time. He described the president’s decision as “courageous but unnecessary.” He was convinced that the president could defeat any opponent in either party and still manage the war.
He lamented the advice the president was receiving on the war, especially the reports he was getting from the U.S. State Department and the CIA, which he described as “bad news on top of bad news with absolutely no ideas about how to reverse the negative trends.” He also was very critical of Gen. Westmoreland and the Joint Chiefs of Staff for “constantly asking for more troops and more money, but offering little in the way of new advice on how to win the war.” He referred to Robert McNamara, who had resigned the year before as “a real back-stabbing son of a bitch and an incompetent defeatist.” He even went so far as to accuse McNamara of being a source of leaks to the press that made the president look weak and ineffectual.
Since he seemed to know a lot about the big picture and was privy to classified material that was not available to me, I decided to ask him about his ideas on whether or not the U.S. had a coherent strategy for winning the Vietnam War. He said military strategy was not an area he felt comfortable discussing, but he told me he had read enough classified information about the war to form the judgment that the U.S. military was not fighting the war correctly and the North Vietnamese were. I told him that my experience in South Vietnam told me the North Vietnamese were losing every battle, but I had to admit their losses on the battlefield did not seem to be having the effect we thought they would. I then told him I did not think the strategy of “graduated response” was a good one since it did not seem to have any effect on the will of the North Vietnamese to continue the war. He asked me if I thought the bombing halts initiated by President Johnson would have any effect, and I told him I honestly did not know. After all, I was just a lieutenant, and I had no idea how our bombing raids on North Vietnam were affecting the communist leadership in North Vietnam. I did say I had seen some very dramatic evidence that the enemy had taken advantage of the various bombing halts to increase their infiltration of men and supplies from North Vietnam, a fact that did not make my job any easier on the ground in South Vietnam.
He went on to say the president was getting conflicting advice on the bombing campaign as to its military and political effectiveness. He said the State Department and the CIA thought the bombing was ineffective, while the military thought it was effective, at least in terms of hurting the enemy logistically. However, the military seemed to be also saying the bombing was not effective politically because it was “not applied aggressively or broadly enough.” He complained that it was impossible to obtain any definitive information on the effectiveness of the bombing, aside from the knowledge that the bombing did not seem to have much effect on the level of violence inside South Vietnam. As an aside, he mentioned that Harry C. McPherson, a good friend of the president and his special counsel, and Bill Moyers, the president’s chief of staff, were strongly opposed to the bombing campaign against North Vietnam and were constantly advising the president to halt the bombing.
I then asked him whose advice the president most valued on the conduct of the war, and he replied, “Averell Harriman has the most influence on the President. LBJ doesn’t trust the judgment of the Kennedy team, and I cannot understand why he still keeps any of them on. They treat us like Red Headed Step Children. You would not believe how arrogant those bastards are. He doesn’t think much of the professional soldiers either and for good reason. They lie to him all the time.”
I wanted to draw him out on the specifics of the lies the military were telling the president, but I did not get the chance because he changed the subject and began talking about his frustration with the Kennedy administration holdovers working in the government. He used the word “traitors” several times when describing them. He also attacked the Washington press corps and accused them of working with the “Kennedy wing” of the Democratic Party to undermine President Johnson. He even went so far as to describe the press as “the running dogs of the Kennedy wing of the Democratic Party.”
In retrospect, I wish I had discussed in greater detail with him why the President valued the advice of Averell Harriman on the Vietnam War. I knew very little about Averill Harriman at that time. I knew he was our chief negotiator at the Paris peace talks, but aside from that, his name simply registered as another Washington insider to my unsophisticated mind. Since my friend was so irate about the Kennedy administration holdovers, I asked him if Mr. Harriman was part of the Kennedy cabal still working as a key advisor to the president. My friend confirmed that Harriman was, indeed, part of the Kennedy team, but he was not working in the Johnson administration. I later found out that Harriman left the State Department in 1963, five years earlier, so my confusion as to why Harriman was so influential only deepened. I never did find out from my friend what it was that made Harriman so influential with President Johnson, especially if he was part of the hated Kennedy administration.
Since the riots in Washington, D.C., were fresh in my mind and a source of great anguish to me, I changed the subject and asked him his opinion on the matter. I wanted to see if he would reveal how the president felt about them. I was shocked by this White House staffer’s response. With a voice tinged with passion and anger, he told me that Martin Luther King, Jr., “lied to the president and reneged on a promise to support the president in exchange for legislation that would eliminate the Jim Crow laws.” He made a forceful defense of LBJ’s commitment to the cause of civil rights, telling me that no one in America was a stronger or more effective advocate for the civil rights of African Americans. My friend told me that Dr. King and his supporters “turned on the president” after all the president had done for them. He went on to say that LBJ understood how slavery and racial prejudice had scarred our nation, and the president was determined to do whatever he could to correct these injustices. He reminded me that LBJ had ignored the advice of his own party’s leadership and worked hard to get the Voters Rights Act of 1964 passed, an accomplishment that my friend said could not have been achieved by any other president.
Like most Americans at that time, I was shocked and saddened by the murder of Dr. King, so I felt very uncomfortable hearing this White House staffer speak so disparagingly of such a beloved civil rights leader. I tried to get him back to talking about the Vietnam War, but he was so angry my efforts led nowhere. He told me that political freedom was not enough for Dr. King; he wanted economic equality also. My friend said President Johnson also wanted to correct the economic injustices that made the poor suffer, and he had fought hard to have legislation passed that would improve the economic situation of all Americans, even if these actions posed great political risks to himself and his party. According to my friend, this wasn’t good enough for Dr. King. Dr. King was impatient for change, and he wanted expensive welfare programs immediately, he did not want to hear about the cost of the Vietnam War, inflation, or anything else he considered an excuse, not a reason, for taking action. Dr. King wanted the money that was being spent on the war spent on the poor. Because LBJ was not forthcoming, Dr. King turned on the president and did everything he could to undermine the president on the war. He went to the president’s political enemies and told them that he would throw his support behind them if they would cut off spending on the war and divert that money to “The War on Poverty.” The president knew that Reverend King had broad support among African Americans and the rest of the country, so this turn of events was a serious threat to LBJ’s hopes for reelection. According to my friend, the foundation of African American political power in the U.S. was in their churches, and the ministers in these churches could turn out their flocks in solid voting blocks. The president knew he could not win a national election without strong support from African American voters, so when Martin Luther King, Jr., turned against him, he knew his reelection chances were greatly diminished. In order to win the support of Reverend King, President Johnson would need to find some way to end the war in Vietnam as quickly as possible, so the money saved could be devoted to helping the poor with increased welfare spending and other programs.
These remarks shattered any illusions I had that President Johnson would take the actions needed to win the Vietnam War or that any Democratic candidate for the presidency in 1968 would support the war. It was apparent to me, for the first time, that the Democratic Party was intent upon finding the quickest way to end the American involvement in the war, and to do so even if it meant negotiating from a position of weakness, not strength. My friend was a fervent, partisan Democrat and a political appointee who was extremely loyal to President Johnson. Since I worked in the White House as he did, he assumed I was also a member of the Democratic Party. I do not think he would have shared his candid thoughts with me had he known I was not a member of his party. I had told him I liked President Johnson, supported his policies, and would have voted for the president had he chosen to run for reelection, all of which were true; but I never told him I was a Democrat. I think he used our conversation as a means of venting his frustrations, and I had no doubt his comments were sincere. However, I wondered then, and I continue to wonder to this day, why he chose me to talk to about such sensitive subjects. I do not know if they were accurate or whether they truly reflected President Johnson’s views. All I can say is they reflected the views of a political appointee working on the personal staff of the president during the summer of 1968. (According to this White House staffer, secret negotiations with Dr. King and several of his advisors were held periodically in Texas and Georgia to discuss the coordination of White House policy with them and to gauge their support before these policies were announced. He led me to believe that he attended these negotiations and was a leading participant. President Johnson never attended these meetings, but received briefings about them from this domestic policy staffer. It was very clear to me that this individual was highly sensitive to racial issues in the country and was a strong advocate of all of President Johnson’s legislation that advanced the civil rights of African Americans and other minorities. I have not revealed his name because he made me promise never to reveal his identity.)
After my dinner guest had left, I immediately went to my room and attempted to write down the essence of our conversation. I wanted to share his comments, anonymously, with my friend, Robert Asprey, whom I had been corresponding with ever since he had helped me with my senior year research paper at the Naval Academy. Mr. Asprey, who was writing his two-volume history of guerrilla warfare, War in the Shadows, in Oxford, England, at this time, often would solicit my input on the Vietnam War and, on occasion, send me rough drafts of his chapter on the war for me to read and comment upon. Whenever I thought I had some information he might find useful or interesting, I would write to him. Up until this time, my correspondence with him had been totally focused on guerrilla war tactics and strategy, but I thought this political information was so important I sent him an airmail letter the next day giving him the essential details of my conversation. A week later he called me from England. He told me that he thought the president had decided to not run for reelection because he wanted to devote his energies completely to finding a way out of Vietnam and that Martin Luther King, Jr., had nothing to do with the president’s decision not to seek another term. He also disputed the idea that Averell Harriman was the most influential advisor to President Johnson on the war; he felt Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, and Dean Rusk had been far more influential. He blamed the president and his advisors for fighting the wrong war in Vietnam: that is, using conventional forces and conventional tactics to defeat a revolutionary, guerrilla enemy. I respected Mr. Asprey and considered him one of the foremost experts on guerrilla warfare in the world, so I took his analysis of the president’s motivation not to run for reelection as correct. Still, the comments of the White House staffer haunted me and convinced me that even at the highest level of our government, there was no clear understanding of how to win the war in Vietnam.
I met this White House domestic policy staffer several more times before I left for my second tour in South Vietnam, but on those occasions we seldom had time to talk about anything of substance. The last time I saw him was at a White House lawn barbecue dinner that the president put on for his staff. According to my friend, “The President had always wanted to have a real Texas-style barbecue at the White House,” but had been dissuaded by his staff because of concerns about how such an event “might be viewed by the Northeast establishment and the press.” His advisors feared that a Texas-style barbecue with informal dress and Southern country entertainment would be ridiculed by the press and viewed by some as a step down from the more formal affairs held at the White House, thus offending some invitees who expected formality, pomp and ceremony at such functions. I was told that Bess Abell had finally convinced the president to hold this event. Despite the success of this White House barbecue, it was a singular event, never repeated. I considered it the only event at the White House I truly enjoyed.
During this alfresco barbeque, I had a very pleasant conversation with Linda Johnson Robb as she mingled with the Marine aides, even joking about her pregnancy saying, “See what you Marines have done to me,” and pointing at her burgeoning stomach. Linda always presented herself as self-assured, yet very approachable and friendly. Although I only spoke with her on a few occasions and never about anything serious, it was obvious she was extremely intelligent and confident, as well as poised and charming. She was clearly a favorite of the social aides who worked at the White House.
The comment of another White House staffer, a young woman who worked in the social secretary’s office, added to my loss of faith in President Johnson’s willingness to win the war in South Vietnam. One day in the fall of 1968, this young woman was put in charge of a small event at the White House honoring the Future Teachers of America. It was held in the Lincoln Library for approximately 30 high school students who had been invited to hear a short speech by Mrs. Johnson and to receive some White House mementos of the occasion. Since it was a small event, there were only two White House social aides handling the protocol for it, along with the young woman from Mrs. Abell’s office. About a dozen reporters were also invited to cover the event, among them a young Connie Chung and the seasoned White House reporter Helen Thomas. The First Lady’s press secretary, Liz Carpenter, was also in attendance to make sure the gaggle of press were kept on a short leash.
Once the students and Mrs. Johnson were seated in the library, I noticed there were no chairs for the press. Helen Thomas came up to me and asked me if there were any chairs for the press to sit on, so I asked the young woman in charge of the event if I should go across the hall and bring some chairs in for the women reporters to sit on. The young woman gave me an icy stare and told me to forget about getting any chairs for the press. Her words surprised me and told me a lot about the administration’s relations with the Washington press corps. She said, “Andy, those people are not our friends; they can stand until their legs give out.” This young woman, who was the epitome of grace, charm and exquisite manners, surprised me with the venom in her voice. When no chairs were forthcoming for the press, Helen Thomas spoke up in a voice that everyone in the room could hear. She said, “That’s all right, lieutenant, we are used to this sort of treatment around here.”
After the brief ceremony concluded, I lingered for a while in the Lincoln Library and struck up a conversation with the young woman, trying to find out why she was so angry with the press covering this event. When I broached the subject, she immediately became very agitated and cut me off short. It was obvious she did not want to discuss the matter with me. Instead, she took a deep breath and said, “I just heard you are going back to Vietnam. Didn’t you just return from there?”
I suppose it was the directness of her question and the lack of time I had to reply that forced me to tell her honestly why I had decided to go back to Vietnam. I blurted out that I did not feel comfortable with what I was doing in the U.S. and needed to be back where Marines belong during wartime. My answer to her question produced a quizzical look on her face, one that told me she did not understand the logic behind my answer. She asked me why I felt uncomfortable, so I told her it was a combination of things, including my work at the White House. The quizzical expression remained on her face: it was obvious she was having difficulty comprehending why I would give up the chance to work at the White House to go back to the war. I read her unspoken words immediately and started to explain to her why I felt compelled to do what I was doing. I told her that in peacetime I would enjoy all that I was doing, but in wartime it was impossible for me to enjoy things I considered so trivial in comparison. Putting on parades for the public, conducting ceremonies around Washington, D.C., escorting people at the White House and talking to political leaders and celebrities, all of this would be thrilling if there wasn’t a war being fought. I told her I felt guilty about the lifestyle I was leading while other Marines were fighting and dying. This young lady, who had recently been married, listened intently to what I had told her, and then said, “I think you are making a mistake. I just can’t understand why anyone would leave their family and go off to fight in a hopeless war if they did not have to. You realize, of course, that you could very easily get killed and your death would be just a terrible waste? Surely, there must be something you can do better with your life.”
Her words jolted and angered me. I assumed that since she was a member of the president’s staff, she supported the president’s war, but her words gave away her true feelings. It was an awkward moment for me since this young woman’s words hurt me deeply, and I really did not know how to reply to her. I simply said what came into my mind at that moment: “It really isn’t something I choose to do; it is something I must do.”
After the parade season ended, Col. Fegan made good his promise to let me return to Vietnam. I packed all of my belongings into my car, bid farewell to my fellow officers and the men in my guard platoon, and stopped off at Colonel Fegan’s office to thank him for allowing me to leave his command early. As usual, he was both friendly and cordial to me when I entered his office. He gave me some advice on the importance of supervision and the need to ensure every precaution was taken to prevent needless casualties, and then he shook my hand and wished me luck. A moment later I was driving out the main gate and heading north to my hometown and my parents.
As I sat in my parents’ bedroom in the gathering darkness of an autumn afternoon, I looked at my mother, desperately searching for the right words. A month earlier, I had written to my parents to inform them that I was volunteering to return to the Vietnam War. I was now home for a month’s leave before departing, and I knew I owed them an explanation about why I felt compelled to return to the war. They were disappointed with my decision, a fact my father explained the previous evening. During this stressful conversation, he told me that my choice to return to the war was having a traumatic effect on my mother. While he did not argue with my decision and seemed satisfied with the rationale I provided, he reminded me that I was not the only one affected by what I was doing, a subtle way of telling me I was both selfish and unsympathetic for not considering how my family might feel about my return to the war. He even quoted from the poem, “No man is an island,” to make his point. He insisted that I talk to my mother and help her understand what motivated me.
My mother sat on the edge of my parents’ bed only a few feet in front of me. Seeing her sitting in the shadows and outlined against the window behind her, I thought back to the time when I went to her on a similar autumn afternoon as a crying child. I told her then that I was unable to remember how to say the Apostles’ Creed, a prayer the nun in my catechism class would test me on the next day. My mother had sat on her bed, and we recited the prayer together several times until I memorized it. When she saw that I had mastered the prayer, she told me to pray to God that night so I would remember it when the nun called on me to recite it. That night, I repeated the Apostles’ Creed until I drifted off to sleep, content in the knowledge that I would be able to repeat it again in my religious education class the next day. Many times after that autumn afternoon, I would turn to my mother for her assistance and guidance and remember her advice always to pray to God for His help. As I thought back to that day when I was six years old, I felt a lump in my throat. Struggling to maintain a check on my emotions, I began to explain to my mother why her son was risking his life when no one was forcing him to do it. In a slow, deliberate voice I began:
Mom, I am not sure the words I choose to explain my decision will satisfy you or Pop. I realize I did not consult either of you when I made this decision, and that was wrong of me. I think I did that because I was afraid you might talk me out of it. I realize it doesn’t make much sense to either of you that I would voluntarily give up a plum assignment in Washington, D.C., to go back to a war that everyone here seems to think is lost. All I can say is I think that is where I belong. I have wanted to be a Marine ever since I heard that Marine recruiter speak to me at school, but my decision goes far beyond my calling as a Marine. I took my reconnaissance platoon through nearly a year of danger without losing a single man and having only a few wounded. I think I am good at the job of fighting, and there are Marines who need me. I think I can keep them safe and not make the kind of mistakes that get good men killed. This is not arrogance on my part. My recon platoon was nearly wiped out soon after I left Vietnam, and I cannot help but think that had I been with them they would not have suffered the casualties they did. I know that experience in combat saves lives, and it is selfish for me to stay in a cushy job like the one I have now while Marines need experienced combat leaders. I don’t think I could live with myself if I did not return to the fight. I would be ashamed.
My mother’s face seemed to disappear as the room darkened, but I could feel that she was tense and was choosing her words carefully. After a moment of silence, she clasped her hands tightly together and said, “You are an adult, and you know better than anyone else what you want to do with your life. I am curious, however, as to why you cannot wait until your tour of duty in Washington, D.C., is complete before going back to the war. After all, you told your father and me that you wanted to go to graduate school if you had the time, and you certainly won’t be able to do that if you go back to Vietnam. I just don’t understand why you are rushing back after such a short time.”
“Mom, do you remember when I was in high school and I told you and Pop that I wanted to go to the Naval Academy in order to become a Marine officer so I could serve my country? Well, it was more than that. I felt that I was not an exceptional person, but I needed to do something for the people in my hometown, to protect them, I guess. More than anything, my desire to have the people of Merchantville respect and love me motivated me to choose the path I am on. If we lose this war, I don’t think I could ever face the people of this town again. America has never lost a war. If we don’t do something soon, we will lose this war. I must go back and try to win the war. It sounds crazy to you, I know, but I must do this. I must do everything I can to win this war, and I can’t do that living the easy life back here in the U.S.”
My mother sat in silence for a moment and then she got up, came over to me, leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek. As she walked out of the bedroom, she said, “It is almost time for dinner, and I need to get started on it.” As she left, I touched my cheek, and I felt the tear she had left there. My parents never mentioned my decision to go back to the war again.
A few weeks later, my parents took me to the Philadelphia International Airport just as they had done when I first departed for the war. No one else was with us to see me off. At the airport, I shook my father’s hand and kissed my mother. They both asked me to write often and to be careful. For my sake, they tried to be cheerful, but I could see quite clearly that they were very worried about me. I walked to the boarding gate and glanced back to wave one last time before boarding the plane. I saw my father had his arm around my mother, and she was crying. I waved goodbye and boarded the plane. I did not realize it at the time, but my second tour in South Vietnam would last nineteen months and give me an entirely new understanding of the war. Although I knew the risks I would be facing and regretted the anxiety I caused my parents, I felt truly at ease with myself for the first time since I had returned from the war. I was now going back where I belonged.