TV Recap - The Vietnam War: Episode 3, Part 1
By Mark Light
October 19, 2017
BoxOfficeProphets.com
While comforting in the aspect of this being a typical Ken Burn's touch in a documentary, telling the story of an average citizen, it is also unsettling. Why is the mother speaking of him in the past tense? What was the fate of Mogie Crocker?
The screen cuts to a reel-to-reel tape recorder playing as the credits flash over it. We hear the voices of Lyndon Johnson and his National Security Adviser, McGeorge Bundy. Johnson recounts to Bundy that he couldn't sleep the night before as he kept thinking about Vietnam. He didn't think it was worth fighting for but at the same time he couldn't see a way to leave. Both men express worry about the domino theory without calling it directly by its name. Johnson says, "It's damned easy to get into a war, but it's going to be awfully hard to ever extricate yourself if you get in."
Johnson became President in November of 1963 after JFK's assassination, but he would not feel fully in charge until he won the election in his own right the following year. His hero was FDR, and he had lots of plans for America just like FDR. Johnson's vision was called "the Great Society." During his time as president, he would oversee the passage of 200 important pieces of legislation. These included the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, Medicare, Head Start, and numerous other programs designed to eliminate poverty.
But unlike domestic issues, Johnson felt unsure about foreign affairs. So he retained all of Kennedy's foreign affairs and national security team. "I want the South Vietnamese to get off their butts and get out into those jungles and whip the hell out of some communists. And then I want them to leave me alone, because I've got some bigger things to do right here at home."
The coup that killed Ngo Dinh Diem had made things worse. The Viet Cong felt emboldened by the assassination and were making attacks through out the countryside, including a two week period that saw 400 attacks. The Viet Cong effectively controlled 40% of the countryside and 50% of the population of South Vietnam. The generals who staged a coup had started arguing among themselves. There was then a series of coups with each government less effective than the one before.
In January 1964, General Nguyen Khanh became the head of state. Desperate for some stability in South Vietnam, Johnson ordered public American expressions of support of Khanh. In March, Robert McNamara travelled to South Vietnam. He and Khanh went on a speaking tour of the country trying to win the South Vietnamese populace over. Khanh gave a long speech at one location ending with him repeating (in Vietnamese, of course), "Vietnam, a thousand years." McNamara leaned into the microphone and said the same words of Vietnamese. What he didn't grasp is that Vietnamese is a tonal language with different intonations changing the meaning of words. So to the delight of the crowd listening to them, McNamara said something like "the little duck, he wants to lie down."
Khanh lacked popular legitimacy so he too was replaced in a coup. Between January of 1964 and June of 1965 there would be eight different South Vietnamese governments. With the government in Saigon foundering, so too was the war against the communist insurgency.
In the North, while Ho Chi Minh maintained the popular face of the government but behind the scenes there was turmoil in the government too. Minh worried that if the North took too active a role in the war then the Americans would do so, too. But there were younger, more aggressive voices in the government as well. At the Ninth Party Plenum starting on November 22, 1963, two factions clearly emerged in the ruling body of North Vietnam. The Americans hardly knew anything about this split.
Both sides agreed upon the "liberation" of South Vietnam, which basically meant reunification in their view. But how much involvement and how active a role in the war was debated. To add to this, the North's two communist patrons, the Soviet Union and China, disagreed as well and gave conflicting advice. The Soviet Union wanted to de-escalate tensions with the United States and preferred a more gradual approach in the South. China, however, was committed to a doctrine of worldwide revolution and favored more involvement in the war.
Ho Chi Minh agreed with the Soviets, but he found himself politically outmaneuvered by a group lead by Le Duan. From then on, while "Uncle Ho" would be a figurehead and Le Duan would actually run the government's involvement in the war in the South.
Le Duan pressed for victory in 1964 and had a two phased strategy. The first would be to destroy ARVN with a series of decisive battles. Secondly, a series of attacks upon the cities would foment rebellion against the Southern government in Le Duan's view. Party members who opposed the plan were either denounced, demoted, dismissed or sent to reeducation camps.
The film goes back to the reel-to-reel tape and Lyndon Johnson's voice is heard again. In this conversation, he is asking Robert McNamara to name a new military man to head up the US efforts in South Vietnam. Johnson's view was that the US needed a new plan as it seemed to be pursuing the same plans it had since 1954.
Johnson increased the number of troops in South Vietnam from 16,000 to 23,000. He replaced Henry Cabot Lodge as Ambassador to South Vietnam with General Maxwell Taylor. He then selected General William Westmoreland to head up the US military effort.
The new plan was to force North Vietnam to abandon its support for the guerillas in the South by increasing the military pressure on them. He authorized US pilots to bomb North Vietnamese troops in the neighboring country of Laos. He also gave the go ahead for South Vietnamese shelling and raids on North Vietnamese islands and coastal bases. All of this was to be conducted in secret, hidden from the American public.
It was an election year and Johnson resisted more aggressive suggestions from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, such as actual bombing of the North and US combat troops in the South. He did not feel there was enough public support for the actions. He did, though, ask his aide William Bundy to draft a congressional resolution to authorize more involvement in the war if the time was reached when Johnson felt he had sufficient political capital.
On July 30th of 1964, one of the most controversial episodes of the Vietnam War began. South Vietnamese ships were shelling North Vietnamese islands under US direction in the Gulf of Tonkin. The North Vietnamese Navy went on alert. On the afternoon of August 2nd, the destroyer USS Maddox was moving through international waters gathering intelligence to support further South Vietnamese attacks. The commander of a North Vietnamese torpedo squadron moved his boats in position to attack. The Maddox opened fire and missed, the North Vietnamese torpedos also missed. Carrier-based US planes, however, damaged two North Vietnamese boats and left a third dead in the water.
Ho Chi Minh was shocked to hear his navy actually attacked the Americans. The officer on duty was officially reprimanded for impulsiveness. But no one knows who actually gave the order to attack. To this day, even the Vietnamese can't agree on who gave the order. Some point the finger at Le Duan.
In Washington, the Joint Chiefs wanted immediate retaliation against North Vietnam. Johnson refused and issued a severe warning to North Vietnam. On August 4th, US radio operators mistranslated a North Vietnamese command and felt a new operation was imminent. The actual message was for North Vietnamese torpedo boats to be ready for a new South Vietnamese raid.
The Maddox and another destroyer, the Turner Joy, got ready for an attack. No actual attack happened, but sonar operators on the Maddox and the Turner Joy convinced themselves that one had happened. They deemed the phantom North Vietnamese attack "probable but not certain." Since the attack "probably" happened, Johnson felt compelled to follow through with the consequences of his warning. Johnson ordered airstrikes against North Vietnamese targets.
Johnson sent the resolution he had drafted to Congress. The Tonkin Gulf resolution is passed on August 7th, 1964 by a vote of 88-2 in the Senate. Not one congressman in the House opposed it. Johnson had the authorization for force that he wanted and his approval for his handling of Vietnam jumped from 42% to 72% a few months before the election.
Le Duan wanted to escalate before Johnson got US combat troops into the South. He began, for the first time, sending North Vietnamese Army regulars down to the South. On November 1st, the Vietcong shelled Bien Hoa airbase. Five Americans were killed and five US planes were destroyed while 15 more were damaged.
Johnson decisively won re-election to the presidency. He then began what was called a "graduated response." This included limited air attacks on North Vietnamese troops on the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos and retaliatory airstrikes upon North Vietnamese targets for attacks in the South. He refused sustained bombing of the North until a stable government.existed in the South.
The film then picks up the story of Mogie Crocker again. He wanted to enlist in the Navy, but he was 17. His parents refused to sign the consent form and insisted that he go to college instead. He then ran away from home and stayed away for four months until he struck a deal with his folks. He would return if they gave their consent for him to join the Navy.
Le Duan launched his plan for decisive battles to destroy ARVN. Two thousand North Vietnamese regulars and Viet Cong were slated to seize the strategic hamlet of Binh Gia and destroy the South Vietnamese forces that would be sent to retake it. Heavy weapons had been smuggled onto the coast to aid in this upcoming battle. The scale of this plan had never been attempted by the North before.
On December 28th, the Vietcong advance elements overran the hamlet. Two South Vietnamese ranger companies went in the next day. They were ambushed and shot to pieces. More troops were sent in the next day and the Vietcong withdrew to outside of the village. An American observation helicopter was shot down and all four advisors were killed.
The next day an entire battalion of South Vietnamese troops was sent in to retrieve the bodies of the four Americans. The lead company was ambushed and they had twelve of their men killed. A helicopter flew in and picked up the bodies of the Americans but refused to pick up any of the South Vietnamese dead. The South Vietnamese stayed with their men as the light started to go away in the jungle.
Despite the urging of an American advisor, Phillip Brady, the South Vietnamese stayed put. They then were subjected to a heavy shelling from the North Vietnamese who attacked after the shelling stopped. In desperate fighting, 26 South Vietnamese and Americans broke out and 11 of them made it. The North Vietnamese/Vietcong picked up their casualties and shot any South Vietnamese wounded still left on the field. Tran Ngoc Toan, one of the film's interview subjects, was wounded and left behind. He played dead until the Vietcong left and then he began to crawl towards Binh Gia. He would not be found until three days later.
In all, five Americans had been killed in the battle of Binh Gia. 32 Vietcong bodies had been left on the battlefield. Two hundred South Vietnamese had been killed and 200 more were wounded. An American officer said of Binh Gia that the big thing is how a thousand or more enemy troops "could wander around the countryside so close to Saigon without being discovered. That tells you something about this war."
The North was jubilant. Ho Chi Minh called it a little Dien Bien Phu. Le Duan saw it as confirmation that his strategy would work. It was their most significant victory since Ap Bac.
Shortly after the battle, Lyndon Johnson was inaugurated as President. A week after that, McNamara gave Johnson a memorandum. It said the current strategy was not working and if an independent South Vietnam was to survive, the US needed to act fast. The US could try to negotiate a face saving settlement or it could use more of its military power to force the North to give up its goal of uniting the country. Bundy and McNamara favored the latter option.
Less than two weeks later, the Vietcong struck an American helicopter base at Pleiku. Eight American advisors were killed and over 100 more were wounded. Johnson had a North Vietnamese army barracks bombed. On February 10, 1965, the Vietcong blew up a hotel in Qui Nhon, killing 23 Americans and 21 more were trapped beneath the rubble. Johnson ordered another airstrike.
This created tensions around the world. France, of all countries, called for an end to all foreign involvement in Vietnam. Even in private, members of Johnson's own political party opposed widening the war. Vice-President Hubert Humphrey sent Johnson a private memorandum warning him that escalation could undercut the Great Society, damage America's image, and ruin hopes of closer relations with the Soviet Union. Johnson didn't respond.
On March 2, 1965, the US began a systematic bombing of targets in North Vietnam called Operation Rolling Thunder. It intended to destroy morale in the North and bolster morale in the South. Then the plan went that the North Vietnamese would begin to negotiate a settlement. But a fallacy underlay that strategy. The North Vietnamese were not going to give up their ideal of reunification with the South.
The whole enterprise was to be kept secret from the American public, they were not to know that the government had switched from retaliatory bombing to systematic bombing. General Westmoreland called for two battalions of Marines, 3,500 soldiers, to protect the American airbase at Da Nang. General Taylor, who once wanted ground troops, now objected: "Once you put that first soldier ashore, you never know how many more are going to follow."
Johnson felt he had no choice but to give Westmoreland his troops as he would be blamed for the further deaths of any more American advisors. In March, 1965, the US began to put ground troops in South Vietnam. The government of South Vietnam was not even consulted. Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton said that the US's goals were "70% to avoid humiliation, 20% to contain China, and 10% to help the Vietnamese."
On March 8th, 1965, three battalions of Marines landed in Da Nang. Sam Wilson, one of the film's interview subjects who was working in the US diplomatic corps in Saigon, pinpoints that day as the day we crossed the river Styx.
Part two will cover the second half of the episode leading us through December 1965.