Good Morning Jacob...

Letter to my Son
Sunday, 29 September

Ho Chi Minh didn't play golf

Military strategy involves finding the means to victory in a competition of force.  Grand strategy concerns the philosopher king who determines the nature of the peace once victory is achieved.  War has a political purpose and if the political calculations are faulty then defeat can still follow up the victory parade.  Witness the history of the United States in Iraq following the fairly easy overthrow of Saddam Hussein.  Decisions were made without due diligence when planning for the aftermath.

I’m fresh out of high school and bored showing up each day for a minimum wage job.  On an impulse I wind up at my local Marine Corps recruiter and find myself signing enlistment papers.  For better or worse I have now made myself an instrument of my nation’s foreign policy.  Actually, I’m not sure I know what our policy really is.  I may be a total rube but I do love my Uncle Sam.

Vietnam was a beautiful country.  It just needed a few golf courses.  As it turns out most people there weren't interested in golf.  The country became divided over this matter and other issues.  What started as a discussion of honest differences became an exchange of heated accusations that quickly turned into ugly threats.  Now everyone is pissed.  How dare they!   It wasn't long before I was enjoying a plane ride to Danang.

The human being is first and foremost an individual biological specimen.  As such, we do whatever is necessary to retain the magical force of life within the confines of our body.  This is a fundamental rule of existence that has few living exceptions.  The will to survive has some surprising twists when a person with normal, everyday concerns is dropped into an extraordinarily alien circumstance.  The repeated demonstration of violence and its consequences is just one of those circumstances.  The mind must adjust to this new normal.  The odds of survival would improve if only your thought had greater focus and clarity.  Certain human considerations become a hindrance and are discarded as baggage too heavy to tote.  Without asking my conscience’s permission my mind mostly discarded the emotions of empathy and grief.  I’m sure I’m not alone in having experienced my tour with the sensation of feeling strangely numb.  I lived in a state of an abstract Golden Rule because my emotions were indifferent.  They seemed to say what’s good for me didn't apply to others.  I knew better.

Still, people died in unfortunate ways and I stayed silent and distant because any expressions of sympathy would have been viewed as clearly fraudulent.  The idea of my squad being a band of brothers never occurred to me.  It humored me to refer to them as my associates.  People came and went.  Some were only faces.  One was just a remark. 

“Can I be assigned with my friend?”

He had just joined our company after convalescing from a previous wound.  He got his wish and the next day he was gone for good.  I never got a good look at him. 

It was enough to know some people only by their nickname.  ‘Lucky’ thought he had lucked out once again when he went to collect up an NVA flag displayed in a tree line.  It was being used as bait by the sniper that killed him on the spot. 

We called our lieutenant ‘Baby Huey’.  It’s tough for anyone commanding a platoon in a war, especially if you’re barely twenty-two.  He did a lot of growing up in the short time he was with us.  I shouldn't talk, though.  I was nineteen and acted every bit of it.  ‘Baby Huey’ showed real leadership on his last day.

Another lieutenant irritated the hell out of me the way he died.  Sometimes he took pointless risks.  This was one of those times.  It was his third Purple Heart.  Someone volunteered to write to his parents on behalf of the platoon, saying what a terrific guy he was and how we all respected him.  It was true but it wasn't the whole story.  He was wounded once killing a man in a knife fight.  That was pretty impressive.  But then he would stand amidst shrapnel flying about.  It wasn't like he was in the process of commanding anyone.  It was more like he was daring to be hit.  That was the kind of stunt he pulled when he took a bullet in his head.  The fact that he was a good guy made him a jerk for bringing such grief to his parents.

‘Sugi’ was something of a friend to me.  He was a dreamer, too.  One day he talked to me about his plans to be a car mechanic for a racing team in LA.  He was pleased.  It was a good day.  It was going to be hot but the patrol on Hill 189 seemed pretty routine.  Nothing ever happened there.  ‘Sugi’ had the point.  I figure he was still daydreaming when he walked into the ambush.  He was gone.  So was the guy that had a baby bootie attached to his helmet.  You know his wife sent it to him.  Then there was the lanky Hispanic guy from California.  The corpsman wasn't able to save him, either.  Afterwards there wasn't a lot to say.  We talked about ‘Sugi’.  What a career he had.  He came to the company as a corporal and they made him a squad leader.  That didn't work out so they made him a team leader.  Same result.  Finally, he’s walking point – the worst possible job for a daydreamer. 

Some people don’t fit in.  Cleveland Larry could do his job but his good nature was unsettling.  Imagine standing in mud, soaked from the rain and this guy is talking to you with that big smile on his big stupid face.  I’m thinking, “Larry, you don’t belong here.”  It’s a real shame guys like that show up for crap like this.  I’m ashamed I didn't give him more thought when he went.

Roger’s dad was a mortician.  That was bothersome.  Enough said.

The letter from Boston Larry’s dad was a real problem.  It arrived just in time for him to be able to read it.  Dad’s all excited and counting the days because Larry will soon be coming home.  What a celebration there will be and all.  I can get pretty superstitious and I was amazed his dad even talked this way.  It was all really screwed.  Larry stands out because he is exceptionally smart, witty and vibrant.  Now he’s as lifeless as a bag of garden fertilizer from Home Depot.  I dug deep trying to find some emotion when it happened but it wasn't there.  It’s still best to just shut up.

I have to include the strange kid that killed a small boy and then deliberately blew himself apart two nights later.  Mom and grandma were wailing something horrible as you would expect.  The kid starts crying.  There’s greater misery on Earth somewhere but this just about topped it for me.  I just felt anger.  Some people kill because they are sick.  This kid wasn't that way.  I’ll never come up with a reasonable explanation for what happened. 

The hard-ass sergeant from third platoon and his radioman Scotty went up together in a geyser of sand one afternoon.  The sergeant asked not to be moved and he died as peacefully as you can under the circumstances.  I always thought of him as a real professional.  He was a poster Marine in the best sense of the word.

Most of us made it back.  We put in a couple of years and then moved on.  People weren't much concerned with Lyndon Johnson or Robert McNamara or the shape of the negotiating table in Paris.  Most everyone was thinking about someone special back home.  I’m sure it worked the same way for the guys on the other side of the divide.  There are always friends, lovers and family to fill your mind.  What’s Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong or Leonid Brezhnev in comparison to that?  Seriously.  People just wanted a letter from home.

That whole bit was a lifetime ago for all of us.  Still, there are the faces and, occasionally, a name to go with it.  Once I left I never had the interest to find out what happened to anyone.  Did Tom marry his high school sweetheart?  Did Oz and Bunny make a life together in B’more?  Did Jerry ever allow his wife to go down on him?  Who knows?

Love,
           Dad

Strategic Bombing

Ploiesti

The rapid development of airborne machines following the end of the First World War soon enabled a military force to circumvent its enemy’s ground defenses in order to destroy industrial targets critical to any modern army’s success.  The concept of strategic bombing was developed during the course of the Second World War, first over the skies of Britain and, later by bombers of the Western Allies, whose strikes on German industrial choke-points attempted to strangle that nation’s war effort.  Success required knowing the economic vulnerabilities of one’s opponent and the optimal order of attack.  Obtaining sensitive information about an enemy’s infrastructure proved nearly impossible during wartime.  Sketchy data obtained by Allied intelligence sometimes led to targets like the ball-bearing factor at Schweinfurt, a costly effort with dubious results.

The strategic role of air power to force the defeat of an enemy, without having to gain a decisive victory in battle, requires understanding the economic basis of military power.  The easy questions seem obvious.  What industries have military importance?  Where are they?  Are they well defended?  In other words, is the cost worth the effort?  Strategic targets must be prioritized to achieve meaningful and timely results using the limited resources at hand.  There is no point in bombing a factory that is part of a surplus of industrial capacity for that commodity.  Even if the factory is critical to production the question that must be asked is, “How easy will it be to repair or replace?”   Another question important to planners of strategic bombing has to do with how quickly results affect battlefield performance.  The reward for destroying a manufacturing facility may be negligible if there is already available a sizable inventory of its product.  The Allied bombing of the Ploiesti oil refinery in Romania was delayed until August, 1943 due to the mistaken belief that Germany sat on an oil inventory of several months.

Successful strategic decision-making requires accurate and timely information that is often unavailable.  Even intelligence breakthroughs such as the British Ultra project, which tapped into German military communications, proved of little value because it contained almost no references to German economics.  Information related to targeting is only part of the equation.  You also need information to evaluate the effectiveness of your operations in relation to your overall strategic objectives.  Are your efforts providing the needed results?  If not, what alternative options should you be considering?

German documents made available to the Allies following the conclusion of the Second World War revealed the limited effectiveness of a campaign whose design relied on scarce information and often incorrect assumptions.  Mistakes in planning are understandable given the fog of war and the use of disinformation by one’s enemy.  What is less forgiving is to distort fundamental principles of military planning in order to adhere to preconceived assumptions based on ideological agendas or untested political goals that often result from wishful thinking.  An easy example that comes quickly to mind is the air campaign waged over North Vietnam by then Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara.  He was considered a hard data man, someone who believed decisions should be based on objective cost-benefit analysis.  With this in mind it is hard to comprehend McNamara’s contribution in the air war over the heavily defended North.  

Operation Rolling Thunder had little to do with achieving military objectives and more to do with bringing leaders of the Communist North to the negotiating table through political pressure.  Had US goals for the air war been otherwise it would have been difficult to justify risking pilots and jets in order to place bomb craters in dirt roads or to destroy the occasional, pesky truck rambling along, kicking up dust.  Even highly sophisticated jets are vulnerable to withering ground fire coming from all directions when they make their close to earth bombing run.  The US dispersed its effort in the air beyond the 17^th parallel in order to gain marginal results militarily in the South.  An appropriate alternative to this strategy might have been to focus one’s military weight on shutting down the North’s distribution channel to its forces in South Vietnam – the various jungle highways through Laos known collectively as the Ho Chi Minh Trail.  Shutting off the supply spigot south would have made political considerations by Northern leaders irrelevant to the hard fact that military impotence would prevent them from working their will.

The military argument over whether the US had the capacity to cut the North’s supply channel south seems preferable to the political task of justifying waging war on civilian targets in the North.  Warfare is never clean and neat, no matter how one may choose to cook the numbers.  The choice to achieve one’s political goals by way of coercive military force requires decision makers to make an honest attempt at scrubbing clear the ideological tint in which they normally view issues and adopt the hard, unsentimental stare required of anyone attempting to analyze and unravel the competing scenarios to find the most truthful version possible of the real world.

Related Topics:

Early Industrial Warfare

Confronting Nuclear War 

21st Century Air Force

Pacific Theater:  1941