Beating Plowshares into Swords: An Alternate History of the Vietnam War Read online

  BEATING PLOWSHARES INTO SWORDS:

  AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF THE VIETNAM WAR

  By

  F. C. Schaefer

  Copyright 2013, Amazon edition

  This book is a work of fiction, while many of the characters are based upon historic personages, they are used fictitiously here and all events are products of the writer’s imagination.

  Special thanks to Katrina Joyner for her formatting and Tatiana Villa for her cover art.

  Other books by F.C. Schaefer

  BIG CRIMSON

  CADEN IS COMING

  Check out some of my free short stories at Smashwords.com

  I can be reached on twitter @fsnva

  The following is an excerpt from Plowshares into Swords: an Oral History of the 1960’s, by Frank Shepherd, to be published next month by Harper-Smith.

  Earl Lee Halton

  Brigadier General

  United States Army

  The last place I had expected to be on the first Monday in April of 1965 was sitting in Richard Nixon’s office. I had just returned from two years in Germany as a Brigade Commander with NATO, looking forward to a posting as an instructor at West Point and watching my two children prepare to enter college; while Mr. Nixon had been Secretary of Defense for less than a month. The day before I was scheduled to leave Stuttgart, new orders arrived directing me to report to the Pentagon. Once there, I was directed to the SecDef‘s office, where I found myself across a desk from Mr. Nixon with no idea why I was there.

  Of course in a larger sense the reason both of us were there was because of the ongoing debacle in South Vietnam. At that point in time the situation was this: The Communists had been watching the internal situation in the South deteriorate ever since the over throw of Diem--revolving door governments, political squabbling--and they had decided the time was right to go for broke. On the last day of January they rolled out of their bases in Laos and Cambodia, over 90,000 North Vietnamese Regulars backed up by an equal number of Viet Cong guerrillas. They sure had the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN)’s number; it folded like a cheap card table. In six weeks the Communists had over run the Central Highlands and reached the outskirts of Hue and Da Nang. Saigon was being hit by shell fire at will, almost a half dozen provincial capitals had fallen, and Highway One was in danger of being cut in a dozen places. If that was to come to pass, the entire country would effectively be chopped in half. We were faced with the worst foreign policy crisis since Korea and Lyndon Johnson’s second term was going down the toilet after only two months. The old cliché was true: we’d been caught with our pants down. When it hit the fan in Southeast Asia, somebody’s head had to role in Washington and the unlucky goat happened to be Robert McNamara. I was never sure if he was fired or just resigned, depends on whose book you read.

  I believe President Johnson’s decision to appoint Richard Nixon Secretary of Defense at this moment of crisis to be one greatest acts of leadership in American history. By bringing into his administration the nominal leader of the opposition party and a man who missed being elected President in his own right by only a few thousand votes, President Johnson was sending a message to Ho Chi Minh that America was damn serious about this war and that we still possessed leaders who were able to rise above partisan differences. Sadly, this message was lost on the many individuals right here at home who were quite vocal in their hostility to our efforts to save the free people of South Vietnam.

  Mr. Nixon wasted little time in taking control of the situation and was looking for advice from outside the usual circles; that was where I came in. It turned out he had read a transcript of a lecture I had given at the Army War College three years earlier, where I discussed my experiences fighting the Communists in Asia. He told me that he was very impressed by what he had read and it helped that I had a good recommendation from Gen. Wheeler, the Chairman of the JCS and one of my former COs. So when he learned I was between posts, Mr. Nixon decided he wanted to meet with me. Getting to the point, he told me that he was interested in my extensive service in the Far East and the impressions it had made on me. Prior to my arrival the Secretary had reviewed my record and recited it back to me word for word-my first time under fire on Okinawa as a scared Second Lieutenant a year out of the Point, occupation duty in Japan, then back into combat in Korea as the commander of an infantry company.

  It was my first experience with the Secretary’s phenomenal grasp of detail. I had seen the man on TV many times, but it barely hinted at the intensity he projected in person. He was far more than the five o’clock shadow and jowls caricature of the famous editorial cartoons. There was no attempt at small talk; he wanted to find out just what I knew about Southeast Asia. During our interview, I was subjected the most intensive grilling of my entire military career. Whatever he was looking for he must have seen it in me, because when we were finished I received a job offer. “We are in a desperate situation in South Vietnam” he said, “and I am going to need a man with me who knows which end of the gun the round comes out of. I can get all the advice I want from State Department paper pushers and DOD bureaucrats, but I need a man who can go out in the field and know what to look for and come back here and tell me what is really happening in Vietnam. At the same time I need someone who can go over there and tell Gen. Westmoreland and his staff what is going on in this office. I do not intend to be a prisoner of the so-called ‘regular channels’ when this country is facing such a crisis as we are in Vietnam today. I might add that President Johnson shares my feelings on this.”

  I realized the opportunity that had just fallen into my hands, but felt I had to protest, saying he could go down the hall to the first men’s room he came to and knock on any stall door and find a more qualified individual for that job than myself “That’s the problem,” Mr. Nixon replied, “I don’t want somebody who’s been commanding a desk for the past year, I need you. Gen. Wheeler thinks highly of you.” With that I accepted on the spot. My official title would be Assistant to the Secretary of Defense and my duties would be whatever the Secretary assigned to me. Of course it was my obligation to accept, that was what my country paid me to do, but I didn’t know what I was getting myself into-none of us did.

  On my first day with the Secretary’s staff, I was given all the intelligence reports and analysis from Saigon and then was asked to give my opinion and breakdown. I did my best to wade through hundreds of pages of reports and memorandums, most of which were “eyes only,” and they painted a very bleak picture of the situation on the ground in Vietnam. Despite heavy bombing by B-52s, the NVA offensive rolled along at will. The worst news concerned the South Vietnamese Army, it was disintegrating under the relentless pressure of the enemy-they had less than three effective divisions left in the field-and no amount of material aide from the US would reverse the situation. Besides advisors, the only men we had on the ground in country were a Marine Brigade at Da Nang. I told Secretary Nixon that based on what I had read; South Vietnam would be forced to surrender by midsummer. The Secretary then dispatched me to Saigon, where I was ordered to give this same assessment to Gen. Westmoreland and his staff. This I did, and was given quite an earful in return from MACV on just what they needed to save the South. “We can’t do this job with 20,000 advisors, pretty soon there’ll be more of them than men left in the ARVN.” I went up in a helicopter and got a good view of the situation around the South Vietnamese capitol-from the horizon, in every direction, I could see smoke rising from fire fights with the Communists who were as close as 20 kilometers in some areas. While I was there, the third shake up
in the ruling South Vietnamese military council in as many months occurred.

  Of course my actions were all part of an effort to pave the road for a decision that had already been made. America needed to go in with ground troops in a big way, it was the message I got from MACV; Westmoreland was about to formally request two Infantry Divisions and that was only the beginning. Secretary Nixon was way ahead them, but he had to convince both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue and after that they had to do the same to every Main Street in the country. In a matter of days we had a formal proposal to take to the White House that would put two Infantry Divisions and one Armored Brigade in South Vietnam in 90 days, with at least two more Divisions ready to be deployed in 6 months. In order to meet the challenge in Vietnam and simultaneously honor our other military commitments around the world, especially in South Korea and Europe, it would necessitate expanding the Army and Navy by at least 500,000 men. This was going to mean some tough choices.

  On the 17th of April, I was part of the group that accompanied Secretary Nixon to the White House to take part in meetings to brief the President and the National Security Council on our troop proposal. This was my first meeting with President Johnson, the single most intimidating individual I ever encountered in my 30 years in the Army, and that includes every top Sergeant I knew. It was amazing to watch Secretary Nixon and the President interact, both of whom were master politicians, and I was never sure if they really trusted or even liked one another, but they both must have recognized that circumstances had compelled them to work together. The President had saved Mr. Nixon from political oblivion and Secretary Nixon would save the President’s Administration from disaster in South East Asia. What was also fascinating was the relations between Mr. Nixon and President Johnson’s other foreign policy advisors, most of whom--Rusk, Bundy, Rostow--had originally been appointed by President Kennedy. Despite their obvious differences, everybody took great pains to be on the same page when came to Vietnam.

  I’m sure from the beginning that the President had already made up his mind to go to whatever lengths necessary to save South Vietnam, but it was another thing to have the dirty business of it laid out in black and white. Mr. Johnson’s face grew pretty grim as the Secretary explained the troop buildup that would be needed and the costs of implementing it. The thing that made most of the men in that room wince was the prospect of massively increasing draft calls and canceling some college deferments, things that would be very unpopular. There was much discussion about this, but the President ended it by saying “This is one hell of a Goddamn mess, but we’re gonna do what it takes to clean it up. I’m not gonna be the first President to lose a war.” “You follow this plan and you won’t be Mr. President.” was the Secretary’s answer.

  I had just made a short presentation concerning manpower needs when the question of casualties came up, that prompted Adlai Stevenson, the U.N. Ambassador, to ask about the possibility of negotiation. Secretary Nixon quickly shot that down, “We must never appear weak; our enemies must never doubt that we mean business. This is the first opportunity to deal the Communists a military defeat since Korea. We negotiated with them there and as a result, a lot of brave men died to achieve nothing more than a stalemate. The brave men we’re sending to South Vietnam deserve better.” (On the way out of the White House, after the meeting, The Secretary remarked to me “We sure as hell knew what we were talking about when we called him Adlai the Appeaser.”) President Johnson concurred with this line of thinking and that was the last mention of negotiations. That was the only other option, other than the buildup, that was discussed in that meeting and I know there have been many so-called historians that will dispute that fact, but I will swear on a Bible or anything else that my recollection is true. As a result of the decisions made at that meeting, President Johnson went on TV two nights later and announced to the nation that we were committing ground troops to South Vietnam.

  Now came the hard part. The plan was to introduce at least 150,000 personnel into South Vietnam in less than three months and then we learned that the country did not even begin to have the infrastructure to support that kind of force. The first problem was the lack of port facilities and air fields. The only places ocean going vessels could unload was Saigon and Cam Ranh Bay. Therefore, I spent a month in the Pacific helping to hire every contractor in Thailand, South Korea, Japan, and Australia who could have a crew in Vietnam before the end of June; because they were going into a battle zone, Uncle Sam had to pay some of them more than four times the going rate. A lot of money also went to employing every independent cargo ship in the Pacific in order to move 50,000,000 tons of supply and material to the Philippines, there to await disbursement to the battlefront. It was money well spent; by early October we were able to start moving several million tons annually through Cam Ranh and Da Nang and had a dozen new air bases, six of them capable of handling jets. Every professional soldier is taught that whoever masters the logistics, wins the war, but in time we were to find out that the North Vietnamese had learned the same lesson, and learned it very well.

  We did catch a break that summer of ‘65 because the North Vietnamese offensive ran out of steam in late May. With the onset of the rainy season, they dug in and prepared to hold on to their gains, which at that point consisted of well over 50% of all South Vietnamese territory. I believe that if they had kept up the pressure, we would have been looking at something like a Dunkirk in the South China Sea. Starting in mid-July, American troops began pouring into the South, and with their arrival came the first large scale engagements with the enemy, which in turn led to the first casualty lists. That meant coffins coming home to a lot of small towns and big city neighborhoods and every one of those coffins only raised the stakes higher. Nothing less than “victory” will redeem the supreme sacrifice and as MacArthur stated, there is no substitute for it. Simultaneous with the troop arrivals in Vietnam were the increase in monthly draft calls, which were more than doubled to 40,000 a month in July and then increased by an additional 7,000 in September.

  This necessitated the canceling the deferments for all first year college students, the first of many politically unpopular decisions that had to be made. This of course created an atmosphere of resentment on many campuses that was used by opponents of our efforts to save South Vietnam among college faculties and the so-called intellectual elite. That individuals are still required to make sacrifices for their country was a notion alien to this ilk and I’m sorry to say they mislead many young people. That they would compare the American President to Hitler was particularly repellent to me. It is amazing how many rotten apples nearly ruined an entire generation.

  In early November American forces in Vietnam went from a defensive posture to an offensive one and we had great success initially. The pressure was taken off Hue and Da Nang and shells were no longing falling on Saigon, but as they pushed into the Central Highlands and toward the Cambodian border the resistance stiffened considerably. The North Vietnamese proved to be skilled jungle fighters and I have to admit that our boys were pretty green and they paid a severe price for their inexperience. Entire Companies were ambushed and the losses were severe. Of course in warfare some things cannot be taught, they must be experienced, I saw the same thing in Korea. These unpleasant facts of war can be hard to explain to the public and this brought even more criticism of our policies, especially in the Congress. It was only a matter of time before our superior numbers and technology would wear the enemy down, but nobody seemed to have any patience.

  I accompanied Secretary Nixon to Saigon in mid December for a progress report. There has been some controversy about the meetings there between the Secretary and Gen. Westmoreland. It has been purported that the Secretary of Defense compelled the General into committing himself to end the war by a fixed date and promising him a blank check on whatever additional men and material that would be needed to achieve it. I personally sat in on every meeting that occurred and can attest that no such discussion happened. If such a conv
ersation occurred privately, then the Secretary never mentioned it to me or acknowledged it officially. The 75,000 men that arrived in January 1966 was part of the original troop commitment. As I had originally believed, our superior numbers, coupled with the lessons of real combat, began to pay off in the early months of the new year when the enemy began to yield ground in the Central Highlands, where most of the major towns and strategic real estate were recaptured.

  By early March the North Vietnamese seemed to be in full retreat back to their sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia; in many provinces they had just melted away. At the Pentagon, the assessment was that the war was virtually won; Secretary Nixon believed it was no longer possible for the Communists to win militarily and it was time to declare victory. President Johnson was prepared to present his terms to the North Vietnamese for ending the conflict.

  It turned out that old Ho and Gen. Giap were far from beaten, they’d only strategically retreated and regrouped. They had also done a lot of infiltration behind our lines, making the most out of their greatest advantage: the ability to blend in with the South Vietnamese population. No matter what, our boys would always be white men in a yellow man’s country. On the opening day of the North’s counter-offensive, a Viet Cong demolition team breached the security of the US Embassy in Saigon and destroyed half of the building, a terrible humiliation for us. But that was hardly the least of it, they were also able to seize part of Saigon and it took the Marines three weeks of house to house fighting to route them out. The enemy struck in nearly 30 provincial capitals from the Delta to the DMZ and hitting most American bases, barracks and supply depots. Especially hard hit were Quang Tri, Hue, Kontum and Pleiku. I’ll give the Communists credit, their Great Spring Offensive was very well organized and coordinated; they stopped us in our tracks and for the second time caught us with our pants down. Much more, they had given plenty of new ammunition to the opponents of our policy from one end of the political spectrum to the other. The worst aspect was the casualty rates; we lost over 350 men a week at the height of the offensive.