Enlisting in the Military

           

                   

  Enlisting in the Military

 

 

            There is nothing stronger than the heart of a volunteer.

Gen. James H. Doolittle

 

 

“Greeting: You are hereby ordered for induction in the Armed Forces of the United States.”  

Thus began the letter sent to over 300,000 American men who were under twenty-five in 1967.  It was their draft notice to report for induction into the U. S. Army at the height of the war in Viet Nam.  There were three types of potential inductees at the time.  Conscientious objectors; those who chose, either legally or illegally, to dodge the draft; and those who felt an obligation to serve their country.

I had been granted a military deferment since I was attending college.  In 1967, I was 27 years old and newly married with my first child on the way. So I was draft exempt, with no legal requirement to join the service.  Maybe I did not have a legal obligation, but what about a moral responsibility to serve my country in the time of war? 

I come from a long line of distinguished military officers who never hesitated to serve their country. They did not try to find ways to sidestep such service like so many others, including most of our politicians today as well as several recent presidents.

Relatives on both sides of my family served their country with honor and distinction.  I wrote previously about my first father-in-law Dick Campbell who was an ace fighter pilot, rose to the rank of full colonel in the Army, and twice escaped from German prison camps. My Dad stayed stateside coordinating military transportation coast to coast for the Army.  Second father-in-law Teddy Solomon was sent by the Army to the South Pacific. My younger brother Jack entered the National Guard for a six-year hitch.

My mother’s brother had quite a navel military career.  In the final months of World War II, Commander Jack Gentry was flying a reconnaissance mission over the Pacific when his flight cameras captured photos of the Japanese flotilla. He made the cover of Life Magazine as his pictures allowed a direct attack on the enemy fleet that sped up the ending of the war with Japan.  He went on to command the battleship USS Enterprise until his retirement from the Navy in the 1960s.

With this strong family military background, I felt an obligation to continue the service to my country. Yes, I’m a patriot and I make no bones about it. I’m a past judge advocate for the American Legion in Louisiana. The American flag flies outside my home 365 days a year. I wear my military dog tags while I broadcast my syndicated radio program each week (NG25520050).  This is not an effort to pat myself on my patriotic back. Like so many other young men who loved their country, it was something I felt a strong obligation to do. So despite the fact that I was draft exempt, I signed up for service in the Army, then stayed for ten additional years in the Louisiana National Guard.

Would I have been so eager to enlist if I had known how mismanaged this poorly planned war would become?  Our military leaders plotted out combat based on strategies where the enemy was recognizable and well defined, a WWII and Korean Conflict mentality.  In Viet Nam, it was quite difficult to tell friend from foe.  We were there to assist and protect the South Vietnamese, but their leaders proved to be incompetent and corrupt.

Presidents Kennedy and Johnson kept telling us there would be a domino effect.  If Viet Nam fell, then other countries all over Southeast Asia would be at risk.  But China and Viet Nam never were major allies, just as they are not today. Our military and political leaders jumped into a quagmire when there was no threat to our national security.

It was a terrible war, fought in jungles and swamps with no defined purpose.  And when combatants have no commitment to fighting for a noble cause where freedom is at stake, bad things happen. They did repeatedly in Viet Nam.  Let me give just one example of how out of control a warzone can become when there is no real purpose to the fighting. It was called the My Lai Massacre. 

The My Lai genocide is certainly a low point in U.S. military gallantry. An Army combat unit of American soldiers charged into an undefended settlement called My Lai, and, over a four-hour period, systematically wiped out the village of some 500 unarmed old men, women, babies, and children. The purpose of the attack was supposedly to weed out Viet Cong solders, but none were there, and no weapons were found.  It was a cold-blooded slaughter.

As the killings continued, an Army helicopter pilot named Hugh Thompson, from Lafayette, Louisiana, flew over and observed the massacre taking place below. I had the opportunity to question Major Thompson several times on my syndicated radio program. His words are as disturbing today as they were when I interviewed him years ago.

We started noticing these large numbers of bodies everywhere, people on the road dead, wounded. And we’re just sitting there saying, “God, how did this happen? What’s going on?” And we started thinking what might have happened, but you didn’t want to accept the thought–because if you accepted it, that means your own fellow Americans, people you were there to protect, were doing something very evil.

Hugh Thompson had a gunner and a crew chief on board with him, and he decided to put down his helicopter to investigate what was happening. “I just figured it was time to do something, to not let these people get killed,” he told me.  He landed, got out of his aircraft, and confronted the American troops.

Then, he did something unique in wartime. He demanded that the U.S. soldiers back off and stop the killing. He bluntly told them that if they continued the slaughter, he and his crew would open fire directly on them. That cooled the confrontation down, and the killings stopped.

Hugh Thompson filed a full report and complaint, but he came under attack from some in the military who felt he should have said nothing. The Army initially covered up the genocide. But an investigative journalist named Seymour Hersh pieced together the horror that took place, and Hugh Thompson’s heroics became worldwide news.  Many historians feel that My Lai was a turning point in the war, causing dwindling support to continue to decline.

After thirty years of ignoring and scorning him, the Army finally acknowledged that Hugh Thompson was, in fact, a hero.  He was given the Soldier’s Medal for heroism.  My Lai is located in the center of Viet Nam on the eastern coast. A museum there honors Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson.

In his book, War Without Fronts: The USA in Vietnam, historian Bernd Greiner concludes that My Lai was “the most shocking episode of the Vietnam War.”  Fifty years ago, a few American soldiers dishonored their country by committing unfathomable crimes. But a young American helicopter pilot from Lafayette, Louisiana had the courage to step and demand that the carnage come to an end. All Louisianans should be proud of Hugh Thompson. He died at sixty-two but remains one of the Bayou State’s very best.

That’s not to cast aspersions on so many young men and women who battled bravely and believed they were fighting the good fight. They trusted that their motives were well intentioned, to oppose Communist aggression and help preserve the independence of the South Vietnamese.  But it soon became an American war, with the people of Saigon and surrounding areas standing on the sidelines.

In 2004, my family and I were vacationing in the Blue Ridge mountains at Linville, North Carolina and I attended a service at a pleasant Episcopal church there. As the sermon ended, I was visiting with friends when I noticed a tall, statuesque gentlemen in his seventies with flowing gray hair.  I immediately recognized General William Westmoreland, who was the commander of American troops in Viet Nam. We visited for a while, and I straight out asked him why our mission failed there.

He told me, “The military do not start wars.  Politicians start wars.”  Then he went on to say that he was never turned loose by Washington to decisively win but was ordered to contain.  “We were never given the necessary support, and our hands were tied. The American people just got tired of what they saw to be so little progress.”

So, should I have enlisted when I was not required to do so?  Probably not.  I was away from my family, and though I ended up as a JAG officer, I really can’t point to any meaningful contribution I was able to make in my service to my country.  I have never received any acknowledgement of my volunteer efforts in service of a lousy war that took the lives of 58,220 American soldiers.  If I could come face to face with any of these brave souls in a later life, I would hug them for their service, but tell them they deserved better—much better—from their country.