A year ago, none of us could see victory. There wasn’t a prayer. Now we can see it clearly— like light at the end of a tunnel.
GENERAL HENRI EUGÈNE NAVARRE
September 28, 19531
Tom Hagel hated walking point. He disliked going first, breaking bush, knocking aside wet branches, stepping over fallen logs, slipping around leaning, mossy tree trunks, and all the while watching, listening, feeling, smelling, even tasting, seeking an enemy who knew exactly how to blend into the rotting woodwork. The Vietnamese jungle was greener than green, a riotous, enveloping ocean of foliage, the ground layer thick and tangled from the brown loam floor to a swaying mat of vegetation twice as high as Tom’s angular, spare six-foot frame. It made for tough slogging. And that was before somebody took a shot at you.
Tom’s head turned like a gun turret, slow and steady, listening and looking. He reached out, the long fingers on his left hand weaving through leaves and stems, just enough to push aside the abundant greenery. His right hand gripped the trigger region of his black M16 rifle. Eyes, ears, nose, and fingertips sought anything that did not belong there. An oddly broken branch. A Kalashnikov automatic rifle clicking from safe to fire. The sharp tang of human urine. A gleaming trip wire stretched like a garrote. Hagel had to stay alert for all of those telltale signs and dozens more. He had to do it despite the oppressive heat, the cloying humidity, and the pervading gloom. Not much sunshine filtered down through the soaring, thick tree canopy high above. In the fetid, tangled morass that choked the bottom of this rain forest, it was always dusk. Out there in the dim unending sea of vegetation, beyond sensing, lurked dangers past counting. Tom Hagel knew it only too well. There be monsters.
Yes, Tom Hagel hated walking point. But he was good at it. No—he was great at it. He kept his rifle company alive. He made sure they won their fights, because those sharp clashes usually started with him. Woe to the thing that did not belong. With one squeeze of his M16’s trigger, Hagel would level it: rock and roll, full auto, punching out an entire magazine of twenty hot bullets as fast you could snap your fingers. And that would usually do it. The old sergeants, the ones who carried out this brutal business and lived to tell of it, said that he who shot first and in force gained the edge in a murderous jungle ambush. Tom Hagel was all about that edge.
Yet Tom Hagel hated doing it. He detested the war with all his heart. It wasn’t just the dull ache of all combat soldiers in all wars, heartily sick of losing their friends, shaken by taking lives of strangers better left alone, and bone-tired from endless draining hours of hunting and being hunted. Tom Hagel’s disgust went beyond that. He considered the Vietnam War an abomination, an awful deviant strain far removed from America’s best instincts, a pointless bloody scrum on behalf of an utterly corrupt local ally. “It was wrong,” he said later, with characteristic bluntness.2 Still Tom Hagel walked point, and did it well.
He did it not for the flag, nor for the cause, such as it was, but for the other American soldiers who counted on him. It fell to this nineteen-year-old to balance the urgent pressure from his captain to move steadily onward and his own hard-earned wisdom to take care with each step. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. That paradoxical phrase made no sense except to a battle-wary rifleman. Tom Hagel was one. The lives he saved would include his own, as well as those of his mates.
Those favored others started with the man right behind him. The green-clad, helmeted form stepped slowly, head down, checking his compass azimuth and consulting a folded, sweat-stained map sheet. That navigator wasn’t just keeping the long file of riflemen on track. He was also guiding Tom Hagel. Well he should. It was his older brother, Chuck. Sometimes Chuck went first and Tom plotted the course. They formed a really effective point team. Two brothers in the same rifle platoon, trading off at the most exposed post of peril—if Hollywood showed it in a movie, cynical audiences would snort and object, certain that such a thing didn’t happen anymore in modern warfare. The U.S. Army wouldn’t allow it. America’s mothers wouldn’t accept it. There were policies and procedures and safeguards to prevent some poor family from losing two sons in a single flashing grenade blast. It could never occur. Except it did for almost a year, the bloodiest stretch of the war, the awful year 1968. Out front, brothers Tom and Chuck Hagel just kept trudging along.
Chuck didn’t hate the war. He volunteered for it. He asked for the infantry, the most difficult, most dangerous, and most thankless of duties. Like Tom, Chuck grieved for lost comrades and found no pleasure in pulling the trigger. But he did it. “We had a job to do in Vietnam,” he said later.3 Chuck understood only too clearly that his brother had turned on the war effort. For his part, Tom knew Chuck still believed. Walking point together was their truce, their armistice, their way to set it aside day after day and night after night. Trying to stay alive rightly consumed their full attention.
Behind the intent brothers shuffled an extended conga line of sweating, stinking American soldiers. These dull-eyed, exhausted men had long ago learned to trust Tom and Chuck Hagel. They didn’t care which one supported the war or which one did not. They just hoped that those two guys out front kept the rifle company on the right route, avoided the booby traps, and got the drop on the bad guys. It would have been nice to see the sun now and then. But as the American infantrymen picked their way through the dim bottom reaches of the Vietnam jungle, the veterans had long since given up on that. In the depths of this endless tunnel of smothering vines, twisted tendrils, and rain-slick fronds, only a few rookies still expected to see the light.
IN AN INSTANT the bulbs snapped on, brilliantly white, dazzling, bathing him. General William Childs Westmoreland had seen that kind of intense light on the tank ranges, when the massive armored brutes snapped on their big xenon beams and pinned their targets in pure, whiter than white illumination. Now it was all around him. The smothering luminous blaze seemed almost tangible, more than the warmth of the intense lamps, but almost a breath, a whisper in his face. Wasn’t there something to that, the actual force of light? Perhaps it called up a random impression from some half-forgotten physics session from three decades ago, back at West Point. Maybe so.
The curtain of vibrant luminosity cut him off from the great room. It marked a boundary between him and them, those out there. Although the hall was well lit beyond the phalanx of television klieg lights, the crowd had receded into relative darkness. He could hear them though, a lot of them, their presence signaled by steady, vigorous clapping. That certainly had a physical pressure; a swelling wave approached him and then washed over him. It held for a bit, and that said something, too, something positive. In such a place, in such a time, he could be forgiven if for a moment he felt like the pope on the Vatican balcony, Lou Gehrig in his final bow at Yankee Stadium, or Caesar up there along the Rubicon River, addressing the XIII Legion.
But these were not loyal soldiers in the house. No, in the great gulp beyond the light barrier slouched the rough beast of the American press. The auditorium at the National Press Club brimmed with reporters, editors, and columnists, and even some of those aggressive television news people. More than a few thought ill of him. He knew that. In later years, his successors might hear vulgar catcalls or rude chants, but not yet, not in the America of November 21, 1967, when men still wore coats and ties to lunch, and applauded with customary respect when a famous general came to speak.
As the applause died away, he calmly touched the pages of his speech. This was his time, with the brilliant light shining on him like that of Valhalla. And so to work. “I would like to give you today,” he began confidently, “a short progress report on some aspects of the war in Vietnam…”4
HE LOOKED THE PART. God knows he sure did. Tall, upright, shoulders squared, jaw thrust forward, he radiated purpose. The army called it bearing, and he had it. There wasn’t an extra ounce on him. His handsome face was chiseled, his crew-cut hair still dark at the top, graying on the sides, and barely white at the temples. Bright brown eyes—regulation olive drab, even—glittered beneath dark, bushy eyebrows. When he looked at you, those eyes locked on like lasers. His handshake was so firm, so strong, so decisive, it sent a jolt up your forearm, like you’d grabbed a live electric cable.5 If on some old movie lot David O. Selznick had dialed up central casting and barked, “Send over a general,” this was the guy who would have shown up.
And that was a good thing. Westmoreland was America’s top field commander, the four-star general at the top of U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, MACV in print, Mack-vee when spoken. Westmoreland was COMUSMACV to his multitudinous staff, Childs to his family back in South Carolina, Westy to his military peers (he had a few), the general to his troops, and the Man personified to those who opposed the war. By the autumn of 1967, many Americans did. But for the majority who still supported the ongoing war in Vietnam, Westmoreland was their general. He was the one leading our boys out there on the far side of the world. And he was up to it. Just look at him!
Many did, then and since. In 1968, biographer Ernest B. Furguson called his book Westmoreland: The Inevitable General. By 2011, West Point graduate, army officer, and Vietnam veteran Lewis S. Sorley went with Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam. Both titles rang true.6 And both books left you with the feeling that this striking, impressive figure must have something missing on the inside, some “it” that good generals have and he lacked, all appearances aside. Between those two books stood the tragic American failure in Vietnam.
Westmoreland’s record before Vietnam was a succession of achievements: Eagle Scout, First Captain—top cadet—at West Point, brilliant commander of the 34th Field Artillery Battalion and then hard-charging chief of staff of the 9th Infantry Division in World War II, dashing commander of the elite 187th Airborne Infantry Regimental Combat Team in Korea, a brigadier general by age thirty-eight, and then two, three, and four stars in quick succession, always in the spotlight. Major Otto Kerner, Westmoreland’s immediate deputy in World War II, remembered the troops calling his commander “Superman,” a reference to his tireless work ethic and “his deeds and capacity for deeds.”7
Now came Vietnam. In Washington, President Lyndon Baines Johnson expected results from Westmoreland and his Americans. “I want ’em to get off their butts,” urged LBJ, “and get out in those jungles and whip hell out of some Communists.”8 It wasn’t exactly the approved format for a mission statement. But it sufficed.
Vietnam was Westmoreland’s war. Ideally, he’d go north and smash the foe there, taking the enemy capital, Hanoi. That option never got serious consideration.9 President Johnson and his inner circle feared Chinese intervention, like the surprise mass offensive that wrecked the attempt to unify the Korean peninsula in 1950. Only U.S. airpower would go north, and the bizarre on-again, off-again targeting directives from the White House ensured America’s aerial offensive, although punishing, proved indecisive.10 There’d be no victory from the skies. So be it. Sooner or later, Westmoreland knew, the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) must come south and the VC (Viet Cong) guerrillas were already there. Fine—good enough. Fight ’em where they were. Westmoreland believed he could win this war in South Vietnam.
The general executed with his customary energy and dedication. “The U.S. military strategy,” he wrote later, “dictated by politicians, was essentially that of a war of attrition.”11 His job was to kill VC and NVA, a difference with little practical distinction, as each passing month found more northerners in the south as both regulars and guerrillas. Regardless, Westmoreland intended for his troops to find the hostiles and kill them.
Starting in 1965, Westmoreland brought in large numbers of U.S. troops to do the job. He explained his approach in his memoirs:
Phase One: Commit those American and Allied [Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand] forces necessary “to halt the losing trend” by the end of 1965.
Phase Two: “During the first half of 1966,” take the offensive with American and Allied forces in “high priority areas” to destroy enemy forces and reinstitute pacification programs.
Phase Three: If the enemy persisted, he might be defeated and his forces and base areas destroyed during a period of a year to a year and a half following Phase II.12
Along with the 23,000 or so advisers and support units already in country, Westmoreland estimated it would take 175,000 more U.S. troops to get started, and then at least 100,000 more. But he warned that based on what the VC and NVA did, additional forces might be required. Notably, the strategy didn’t count much on the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the South Vietnamese). They would handle that pacification stuff, sweeping up the wreckage, restoring order in South Vietnamese villages after the United States ran off the enemy battalions. In fact, when some asked if he wanted to command South Vietnamese forces, as the Americans did in Korea, Westmoreland demurred.13 Behind his rationalizations, the truth was obvious. He didn’t think the ARVN were up to the job. The Americans would do it.
Running the timeline, it all amounted to a plan to win the war with about 300,000 U.S. troops by the end of 1967. Later Westmoreland tried to walk it back, because he didn’t exactly say when Phase II would end and when Phase III would start. It was rather imprecise for a lifelong artilleryman. But back in Washington, Johnson and his team heard what they wanted to hear. Give this general the tools—300,000 Americans—and he’ll finish the job, probably by the end of 1967.
The American buildup went very rapidly. Protected by a steady flow of combat battalions, engineers, logisticians, and contractors erected a network of new bases, ports, roads, and air fields. By the end of 1965, there were already 184,310 U.S. troops on the ground. A year later, there were 385,300. By the end of 1967, 485,600 served in Vietnam, with about 40,000 more en route.14 What the general wanted, the general got. And he wanted a lot. The U.S. passed the initial 300,000 estimate during 1966 and didn’t even slow down. The pace of deployments developed momentum. The Americans were committed.
As U.S. troops surged into the country, the North also had to change course. Any idea of a war-winning push went out the window. Rather, the Hanoi leaders reverted to their long game. It was right out of the Mao Zedong guerrilla playbook:
Enemy advances, we retreat.
Enemy halts, we harass.
Enemy tires, we attack.
Enemy retreats, we pursue.15
The NVA and VC still fought, all right. But in most cases, they chose the time and place. By one reliable estimate circa 1967, the enemy initiated 88 percent of ground contacts.16 Put another way, the opposition, not MACV units, held the initiative. The foe let the Americans chase and chase, walk and walk, search and search, and then… enemy tires, we attack.
Finding the elusive Cong stymied MACV. As an artillery officer, William Westmoreland understood well what to do in war, to include this kind of war: x (weight of explosives) divided by y (targets) equals z (kills). It was all about solving for y. The Americans tried and tried. Unable to pinpoint many targets, they went hard after those they did find. They bombed, brought in attack helicopters, shot artillery, and banged away with rifles and machine guns. But as one MACV intelligence chief later put it: “The VC/NVA refused to defend any terrain feature. They would abandon even their base areas under a United States attack.”17 Sometimes the Americans got lucky. Now and then, a VC or NVA unit stumbled. But typically, if a fight occurred, it happened because the opposition wanted it.
By 1967, there had been fighting, lots of skirmishes and smashups in remote areas as Americans sought to find, fix, and finish NVA and VC units. The enemy backpedaled, with the NVA regulars withdrawing into the border wilderness fronting Laos and Cambodia and the VC in black pajamas melting into the village woodwork. American troops hunted NVA battalions, and caught them now and then. But the enemy units were bloodied, not destroyed. Enemy advances, we retreat.
U.S. firepower took its toll, all right. In a 1969 interview with Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, the great NVA commander Vo Nguyen Giap admitted to 500,000 dead. Hanoi gutted through that horrific cost—for the North, this was total war, victory or death. But Giap also knew the United States had not embraced total war, not at all. For the Americans, each week brought what Giap termed “coffins going home,” to the tune of 19,641 killed and nearly 134,000 wounded from 1965 through 1967.18 Those were high prices to pay for limited success in a limited war.
Was that the master plan unfolding? Was that winning? In his Saigon headquarters, in between daily trips by helicopter all over the country, Westmoreland studied the comparative numbers. He did his artillery calculations—x divided by y equals z—and convinced himself that his troops were approaching, and might have even passed, the crossover point: the fabled juncture when we killed more of the hostiles than they could replace. Well, that all depended on the number of enemy. MACV, the Central Intelligence Agency, and various Washington agencies could never quite agree how many there were: 300,000? 400,000? 500,000?19 How many were arriving each month in the South after marching down the Ho Chi Minh Trail? And how many were dead? Hanoi refused to tell. It sure wasn’t obvious on the ground.
One of Westmoreland’s best commanders reached his limit. He vented anonymously to CBS reporter Martin Fromson, who shared it with New York Times reporter R. W. “Johnny” Apple Jr. “I’ve destroyed a single division three times,” the general said. “I’ve chased main force units all over the country and the impact was zilch.” He also offered that “the war is unwinnable” and that “we’ve reached a stalemate and should find a dignified way out.” He summarized: “Westy just doesn’t get it.”
Confronted with Johnny Apple’s damning article, Westmoreland dismissed it as a journalistic fabrication. “No general of mine would ever have said that,” he wrote in a message back to Washington.20 Four decades passed before this unknown soldier identified himself: Major General Frederick C. Weyand, a man who led the 25th Infantry Division and then II Field Force, the corps-level contingent shielding Saigon. Weyand later rose to four stars, commanded MACV in its final days, and served as the U.S. Army chief of staff. But he knew it wasn’t working and said so.
Like Fred Weyand and a lot of others in country, the great minds in Washington, DC, smelled failure. Korea had been bad enough. That whole thing ended up as a fumbling, embarrassing effort for the superpower that had just crushed the Germans and Japanese so handily five years before. Instead of an abject surrender by foes literally with hats in hand, Korea resulted in a tie at best, with the enemy holding fast to half the country and laughing at us across the most fortified “demilitarized zone” on earth. Yet, by 1967, confronted with the morass of Vietnam, such an unhappy outcome would have been taken and banked by President Johnson and his coterie.
LBJ’s administration leaders on the Potomac, the McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara types, the ones David Halberstam labeled the “best and the brightest,” the peerless Ivy Leaguers whom Southwest Texas State Teachers College graduate Johnson sometimes categorized as “you Harvards,” well, they were headed for the tall grass. If you were looking for a Vietnam War cheerleader in Washington by late 1967, you’d have had little luck. The polling on the war had gone sour. Sure, a majority of the U.S. people still backed the effort, about 60 percent to 40 percent.21 The trend looked bad, though, bending down. And that 40 percent opposed was getting noisy, gaining strength as 1967 was grinding on. There was a crossover point in America, too. It was getting closer by the day.
Thus Johnson turned to the one man who certainly still believed. At the president’s direction, Westmoreland returned to America, put on his dress greens, and made the case for impending victory. He spoke to a joint session of Congress on April 28, 1967.22 He made the rounds in Washington again in July. Finally, in the big one, on November 21, he went into the lion’s den at the National Press Club. There he saw the light. He did his best to help others see it, too.
BASKING IN THE LUMINESCENCE, Westmoreland spoke confidently. His text was dense with qualifiers and heavy with policy-speak. It included laundry lists of achievements and a lot of numbers. But the money lines sure stood out. Reporters with notebooks wrote them down. Cameras rolled tape. The man was on the record, all right.
“I am absolutely certain,” the general intoned, “that whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing.” He went on: “There are indications that the Viet Cong and even Hanoi know this.” After reviewing various logistical and operational efforts, he offered that “we are making progress.” Then in his boldest prediction, he offered not just a forecast, but an assurance: “With 1968, a new phase is now starting. We have reached an important point when the end begins to come into view.” Westmoreland was talking about victory. He concluded: “It lies within our grasp—the enemy’s hopes are bankrupt.”23 George Patton would have been shorter and earthier, but the message came through. We’ve got this. It’s almost over, not quite two-plus years and 300,000 troops, but good enough. A win is a win.
In years after, many Americans thought the general referred to light at the end of the tunnel, the same fateful phrase once spoken by General Henri Eugène Navarre in the autumn of 1953, not long before France’s catastrophic, war-ending defeat at Dien Bien Phu. Despite contentions by some, Westmoreland never uttered those words aloud. No light and no tunnel were mentioned. But the image seemed to fit the moment.
Maybe the light at the end of the tunnel wasn’t the dawn of victory glimpsed by Westy Westmoreland, hoped for by Lyndon Johnson, prayed for by so many Americans, in and out of uniform, all weary of this bloody rinse cycle of attrition. No, it wasn’t sunrise up there in the tunnel mouth, but the glow of a smoldering pyre, a flame that, when it flared up, went rolling down the chute as an all-consuming fireball. It would burn them all.