EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

TET

A Public Institution Graduate (PIG) Looks at History: The Tet Offensive began January 30, 1968 when some units in the South got confused by time-observance differential between North and South Vietnam and kicked it off. The full-scale offensive began 24-hours later. Now here’s the thing: everyone knew all hell might break loose then. I was there, the lowest of the low, barely a month in-country, still in the demeaning “stateside chow” category (Ask a vet), toting an M-14 because M-16s were in short supply and Colt Industries insisted on being the sole supplier. We had already doubled our watches to six hours on and six hours off. We weren’t prepared but we were ready. Despite this, General William Westmoreland, HMFIC, was so sure that the offensive was simply a part of feint to distract him from the battle at Khe Sahn that he took in a round of tennis that first day. It gets worse. Just ask the Marines (150 killed) and ARVN (400 killed) units that were left stranded at Hue because General (Body Count) Westmoreland felt they were overreacting.

Lesson:

Be careful to whom you trust your children.

Additional lesson. Those who are denouncing modern Americans as "Communists" should stop to read an account of the Battle of Hue. They might be astounded to learn how real Communists behave when fate removes the restraints.

Sources:

Bowden, Mark, Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam. , 2017

Sorley, L. (2011). Westmoreland: the general who lost Vietnam. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Sunrise With Schubert: January 30, 2018

Fifty years ago today, I wrote my Sainted Mother a quick letter. She had called me a liar in her gentle way, and I felt the need to respond.

“I know you are not telling me the truth,” she had written. “I know you want me to think you are safe when you really ain’t.”

Late in the day, after returning from a patrol around the perimeter of our base, I answered. As best as I remember, I said, “You wanted to know the truth, well here is the truth. All hell has broken loose.”

And it had. The general chaos that came to be known as “The Tet Offensive,” had started. There is an enduring myth that our military had been totally surprised. Not true. We received warnings for days that the “gooks” might try something on this day. Even the villagers across the makeshift military roads from our base had been acting strangely. Normally, the young ones came out just after daybreak, took a crap, and then stood across from our towers or bunkers. They would “give us the finger,” beg for cigarettes, or both. They formed part of a society with an accommodating mindset, forever flexible.

That day they didn’t appear. Neither did the four or five barbers that worked for the Americans on our base. In fact, they never came back, their bodies perhaps ending up in the piles of Viet Cong corpses stacked like woodpiles and left at major intersections as a warning.

Yes, all hell had broken loose. Turns out that it wasn't that we weren't warned, but that the "Brass" had just ignored the warnings. Now, there was no information available and no order to the chaos. A mortar barrage might start walking towards our base from out toward Marble Mountain, cease, and then be picked up from far away in the opposite directions, bouncing codas back and forth like instruments battling for the theme of an orchestral work.

A short 80 km (50 miles) away, a small and immortal band of Marines and an ARVN unit were catching the Devil’s own fury at Hue. More about that in a future posting.

Between duty assignments that day, we met a group of shipmates that had just returned to base. They were scheduled to go home, having cut the last links from their “short-timer chains” and processed out with their two new medals that would gain them everlasting enmity from the general population and a fair share of their own fellow servicemen. Again, that’s material for a future piece.

Anyhow, these lads had been seated in an aircraft that had taxied the runway, pivoted, and was gunning its engines when the Viet Cong began shelling the runway at the massive air base outside Da Nang.

Yeah, the one General Westmoreland had been assuring the folks back home was secure.

They left country some 27 days later, those lads. During that time, they re-joined us. We still had no idea what was going on. We stood watch for six hours on and six hours off on the towers and bunkers. During the six hours off we slept, went on patrols, strengthened the base security, cleaned our weapons, and cursed those who had gotten us into this mess.

We had it luckier than most. Our area was protected by a mountain to the east, a bay and deep-water harbor to the north, a river to the west, and who knew how many bases and compounds to the south? There was still the threat, taken quite seriously, that some band of zealots might decide to test things at any given second. It was a country of people who had been seeking freedom for over 300 years, so there were many bands of zealots.

We stood guard, watched, rested when we could, and waited.

Sainted Mother knew I carried a weapon, that sailors weren’t supposed to, that the news on TV and in the papers was ghastly, and that it was quite like me to spare her details of what was happening where I was. They say that she would flinch every time the phone rang during that time.

Want to know how that felt? Just keep electing people who think war is cool and profitable.

"Join the Navy," they said.
Ride the waves.

Sailing Inrto Oblivion: June 16, 2017

Shakespeare said it, “… for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” We see it already in this week’s tragedy. Various political viewpoints are already beginning to view it through the prism of their own belief structures. I see it simply as a further step into collective madness. When will it stop?

We see it through the scope of history as well. On January 30, 1068, Viet Cong and NVA forces launched a massive attack on cities throughout South Vietnam. I was just outside of one of those and can testify that it wasn’t a pleasant time.

By all accounts, American and South Vietnamese forces were victorious. The Viet Cong never recovered from their losses and it took a long time for the NVA to regroup. For the otherwise hapless South Vietnam forces, it was their finest hour. They fought like demons alongside us. I saw piles of dead bodies, purportedly Viet Cong, piled like tree branches along key intersections, warnings I suppose.

It didn’t matter. The press, tired of the reports from our generals that all was going according to plan, was incensed that an attack of this scope could occur under the very noses of those generals. Their voices, thereafter, ranged from wariness to opposition.

The American people, quite frankly, war-weary already, began to realize that too many of their young men would die in that far-off place. It was time to bring them home.

Even the ones fighting wondered what was happening.

In North Vietnam, they treated it as a setback and regrouped. The VC melted into the jungles and dug in to wait.

In Washington, men just scratched their heads, and a president decided to call it quits.

Why was I involved in this mess? I don't recall having ever believed the reasons they me.

Each actor in the event viewed the results differently. There is even the lingering belief by some Americans that we could have “won” that war. In the words of Ernest Hemingway, “Isn’t it pretty to think so.”

How sad. As hard as we might believe in the successes, it didn’t matter. Had we stayed another 20 years, the VC and NVA would still have been fighting us, just as the Taliban will be fighting us in Afghanistan 20 years from now.

It just doesn’t matter what we believe. The facts don’t care. They flow beneath our loyalties, prejudices, and predispositions like a weary river, “headed somewhere safe to sea.” No, the facts don’t care what we think. Nor, anymore, do the victims.           

That time of our living greatly? It sure as hell wasn’t 1968.

The photograph that proved violence
is not always effective, That it can prove
to be counter-productive, in fact.

Morning Thoughts: Carnage

On this day in 1968—let’s see, that will be 50 years ago next year—I was standing gate duty as part of the Naval Security Forces at a former French base outside Da Nang, Vietnam when orders came that we were on full alert.

It seems all hell had broken loose. That’s all we knew at the time.

Our unit immediately moved to “six on and six off.” Every six hours we stood guard somewhere and every six hours we slept, fortified our areas of responsibility, went on patrols, or observed “other duties as required.” We were to stand that duty for the next 26 days.

Since I had been on gate duty, my armament consisted of a 45-caliber semi-automatic pistol, called “the weapon responsible for more accidents than any in the history of our military,” despite having three separate safety devices. I treated it with respect and was happy the day the Federal Government confiscated it from me. My other armament was a sawed-off pump 12-gauge shotgun that stayed at the post. It tended to command a lot of attention. But I carried no other weapon than the pistol.

Directed I was, therefore, to report to the armory to be issued an M-16 rifle for the duration. I had carried it for three days when a gunner’s mate decided that, instead of sleep, we need to fill a six-hour respite with some target practice. There had been some reports of poor marksmanship during this dust up, forever to be known as “The Tet Offensive.”

At a makeshift range, I proceeded to miss every target, to the hoots of my shipmates and the consternation of the gunner’s mate. “Give me that goddam thing,” he requested of me. Then he proceeded to miss every target.

Seems something had caused the barrel to bend, no telling what. We often received our weaponry second-hand from infantry units. They, the Navy, issued me another weapon that shot straight, and, because I was a strapping six-footer, made me an “M-60 man.” Well shucks. I was to carry both the M-16 and the additional responsibility for the remainder of my tour, as I later left for a mountaintop base on Monkey Mountain, a 3,000-foot landmark on the south side of Da Nang Bay.

I have many more memories of that hellish period, but this one involved no carnage and serves the current purpose. But, to this day, when I hear someone use that word—carnage—flippantly, I’m tempted to say, “Jocko, you have no idea what carnage is.”

If you feel you must vote for a
candidate who proposes a land war
in a foreign country. Don't.

Haircuts

About this time of year in 1967, I was busy settling in on my new job with the U.S Government. All around me, freedom fighters were getting ready for the Tet Offensive, a little over a month away. They were ready to die by the thousands. I was concentrating on staying alive for another 11 months. Goals are important.

I’d gotten a little shaggy upon arrival at the new assignment, so the gendarmes sent me to the base barber shop for a haircut by one of the “guest workers” there. I think maybe there were three or so barbers therein, all Vietnamese locals. It had to be a real military haircut, complete with shaving around the neck with a straight razor. Appearances are important.

I visited the shop a couple of more times before the end of January. Then all hell broke loose. During the Tet Offensive, the base was closed to local nationals, and no one had time for haircuts anyway. After the Tet Offensive, none of the barbers returned. The story went around that they had all been freedom fighters. For some reason, I think about this every time I shave. Memories are important.

Steady there. Steady. I'm from the
government. Come to help.