America's War in Vietnam America's War in Vietnam A SHORT NARRATIVE HISTORY Larry H. Addington Indiana University Press BLOOMINGTON AND INDIANAPOLIS This book is a publication of Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA http://iupress.indiana.edu Telephone orders 800-842-6796 Fax orders 812-855-7931 Orders by e-mail [email protected] © 2000 by Larry H. Addington All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses' Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Addington, Larry H. America's war in Vietnam : a short narrative history / Larry H. Addington. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-253-33691-0 (cloth : alk. paper). - ISBN 0-253- 21360-6(pbk.:alk. paper) 1. Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975-United States. I. Title. DS558.A33 2000 959.704'3373-dc21 99-41326 959.704'3373-dc21 99-41326 3 4 5 05 04 03 02 01 Contents PREFACE vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix SOME ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE TEXT xi 1 The Geography of Vietnam and Its History to World War Two 1 2 The Career of Ho Chi Minh to 1939 15 3 World War Two and America's Collaboration with Ho 20 4 America and the Indochina War, 1946–1954 29 5 Eisenhower and the Road to America's War in Vietnam, 1954–1960 46 6 Kennedy's War: Counter-Insurgency and the Fall of Diem, 1961–1963 57 7 Johnson's War, I: To the Brink, 1964 69 8 Johnson's War, II: The Year of the Plunge, 1965 80 9 Johnson's War, III: Moving toward Defeat, 1966–1967 97 10 Johnson's War, IV: The Turning Year, 1968 113 11 Nixon's War, I: The Strategy of Withdrawal, 1969–1970 127 12 Nixon's War, II: The Final Round, 1971–1972 139 13 The Paris Peace Accords and the Fall of Indochina, 1973–1975 148 14 Aftermath and Summing Up 160 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 175 INDEX 185 Maps Map 1. Southeast Asian Kingdoms, A.D. 1400 4 Map 2. French Indochina after 1893 11 Map 3. Southeast Asia, 1939 21 Map 4. Northern Vietnam, Indochina War 32 Map 5. First Gulf of Tonkin Incident 73 Map 6. South Vietnam: Corps Areas and Ho Chi Minh Trail 89 Map 7. Battle of the la Drang Valley, November 1965 92 Map 8. The DMZ and Northern Quang Tri Province 103 Map 9. The Final Offensive: The Central Highlands, March 1975 155 Preface This work is intended to be a short, narrative history of America's war in Vietnam: its origins, course, and outcome. I have written it in hopes of making clearer to students and general readers alike, without exhausting their patience in the process, what happened to Americans in Vietnam and at home during the war. As explained in the acknowledgments, I have drawn heavily from my experience in teaching the history of the war to both graduate and undergraduate students, and, as almost every teacher knows, one learns as much from student reactions and contributions as from course preparation about what to teach and how to teach it. I have tried to make this book benefit from that experience. For readers who struggle with foreign names and terms, I have pro- vided some guides to pronunciation in the index, though these should be treated as functional rather than as definitive. I have also included a list of abbreviations at the front of the book for quick reference so that the reader will not drown in the "alphabet soup" that is inevitable in military and political environments. As the literature on America's war in Vietnam has become so voluminous, the bibliography indicates only some of the works consulted, but it will provide a starting point for readers who wish to delve more deeply into particular aspects of the story. As America's war in Vietnam cannot be really understood without some knowledge of Vietnam's earlier history, I have devoted the opening chapters to Vietnam's historical evolution, the effects of the French colo- nial presence there in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, America's alliance with Ho Chi Minh in the Second World War, and the events and politics that led up to American involvement in the French Indochina War (1946-1954). As I also believe that an understanding of the motivation and tenacity of Ho Chi Minh and his followers is essential to understanding both that war and America's war in Vietnam, I have tried to give some insight into the origins of Vietnamese communism. Finally, I have tried to place the Vietnam experience within the frame- work of the American perceptions of the larger Cold War, perceptions that so powerfully influenced American involvement in what was essentially a civil war among Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians. And although I have given some description of French, American, and communist mili- tary operations in respect to tactics and strategy, in the main I have selected viii | Preface a few particular military events to illustrate military trends, problems, and turning points. Wars are, after all, conducted by fighting, and in my view too many texts give too little attention to the sequence and impact of military events. On a personal note, throughout the war years I was a professor of history in a military college far away from Southeast Asia. Yet I could not escape some of the war's more direct effects. Among these was the loss of former students whom I remember as fresh-faced cadets but whose fate it was to die as fighting men in a faraway land. But my greatest personal loss was a friend, a professional army officer, whom I had known since child- hood. Therefore, I have taken the liberty of respectfully dedicating this book to the memory of Captain Don York, U.S. Army, killed in action in June 1962 while serving as a military adviser to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. His death was among the first four hundred of nearly sixty thousand Americans deaths in the longest, as well as the most controver- sial, war in American history. LARRY H. ADDINGTON CHARLESTON, S.C. Acknowledgments In writing this book, I owe a great debt to the many veterans and non- veterans who addressed my class on America's war in Vietnam at The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, over the years before my retirement. Directly or indirectly, they influenced the account given in this work, but space allows for only a few to be mentioned by name. Though many people made a contribution for which I am grateful, I alone am responsible for the presentation and interpretation of events. My special thanks extend to Colonel Myron Harrington, USMC, Ret., whose account of his company's experience in the eye of the storm in the battle for the Citadel at Hue in 1968 was riveting; to the late Larry Dring, Army Special Forces, who informed us about his experiences in fighting alongside the Montagnards; to Brigadier General Larry Wright, USAF, Ret., for his account of fixed-wing air transport in Vietnam and, humor- ously, the problem of carrying a white buffalo by air to appease a Mon- tagnard chieftain. And to General William Westmoreland, USA, Ret., who was seated next to me at a dinner long ago and who informally answered my questions about his estimates of communist strength in South Vietnam just prior to the Tet Offensive. I also owe thanks to my former colleagues in the History Department, including Colonel David White, USMCR, for reading the manuscript, relating his experiences in the siege of Khe Sanh, and putting at my dis- posal extensive papers regarding the episode; to Professor W. B. ("Bo") Moore Jr., who read parts of the manuscript relating to events in America during the war, who made useful suggestions, and who provided a "Baby Boomer" perspective; to my former student Colonel J. W. "Bill" Gordon, USMCR, who shared with me his experiences of serving in Vietnam as a company-grade officer; and to Jane Bishop, who gave my classes the per- spective of an anti-war protester. I also owe thanks to Bob Sloan, my spon- soring editor at Indiana University Press, who originated the idea for this book. And, finally, my gratitude to my wife Amanda, who was again made a "computer widow" while I struggled with research and composition, and who has patiently and supportively borne it all.