COL (USA,RET) Frank Hancock is putting together a book about how our West Point Class of 1972 helped transform the U.S. Army from the mess it was after Vietnam to the magnificent victors of Operation Desert Storm.
The book includes vignettes about our time at West Point – the United States Military Academy.
This piece is about the ever-present Vietnam War during our time – 1968-1972
Vietnam
The Vietnam War was a landmark event of the Cold War for World and U.S. history. It was a defining dividing line for our Baby Boomer generation. It opened a split across America which came as a shock after our greatest period of national unity ever in World War II.
For us, Vietnam was personal.
We entered at the height of combat operations in 1968 with no end in sight. We expected to serve in the Vietnam War. As Plebes any mistake, any lack of attention to detail, meant, “You just killed a platoon of men in Vietnam!”
We all knew peers or relatives who went to Vietnam. Some who were wounded or killed. While we were cadets, Paul Eaton’s father was shot down and listed as MIA (until later confirmed KIA). Steve Tallman’s father was killed in Vietnam.
We knew Upperclassman who got killed or wounded before we graduated. We saw sad-eyed, very young widows present the class ring of the first graduate killed from the classes before us to the library – each year.
A large wooden plaque was set up at the entrance to the South Thayer auditorium with small silver nameplates for each West Pointer killed in Vietnam. We saw the plaque fill up and second plaque become a third full in our four years.
The aversion to the war is why so few fully-qualified young men applied for nominations in 1968. No one qualified was denied a nomination to the Class of 1972. Only Class ever to be “bottom of the barrel”.
We heard about Vietnam all the time. Every room got the New York Times daily. We had academic military instruction and field training for it. Most of our instructors were Vietnam veterans. One instructor had a hook instead of a hand. I recall a Physics P instantly hitting the deck when a car backfired below the window in Bancroft Hall. He was embarrassed, but we were impressed by his muscle memory.
Perhaps, in 1968, the suicidal gestures and attempts prompted by the intentional brutality of the 4th Class System were an acceptable way to weed out the weak – when 250 or more of our peers were killed in combat every week.
In October 1969, campus protests came to West Point. The nationwide October 15th “Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam” brought a hundred or so co-eds on the same weekday as a normal Double-Regimental parade.
The girls were overwhelmed when classes ended and four thousand cadets streamed from the academic side of Thayer road to the barracks side. The stories of cadets eating flowers or saying things for shock value, like giving a football cheer for killing babies, are now legend. In between practice parade and the actual weekday parade, earnest cadets talked to mostly naïve girls in the stands around The Plain. A number of follow on dates were arranged.
The protest became a large college mixer.
The color guards practiced defending Old Glory with their M14 rifles – and no ammunition. Yet, when the parade started the young ladies took seats in the bleachers and watched politely.
Cadets traveling in uniform or in The City got dirty looks, but no reports of conflict.
On March 17, 1970, USMA Superintendent Major General Koster resigned following the Peers Report on the Mylai Massacre. MG Koster was the Division Commander when 2LT William Calley and others murdered South Vietnamese civilians in 1968. His son, Sam, is our classmate. The Anti-Vietnam War movement painted the whole war with the stain of the massacre.
The Army internalized the shame and set about deliberately never to let it happen again. Soldiers since are schooled deeply and often not to follow “illegal orders”. Officers not to give them.
President Nixon’s incursion into Cambodia in April 1970 set off even more demonstrations. The National Guard’s killing of four protestors at Kent State further inflamed passions. Meanwhile, the “Vietnamization” of the war meant the U.S. was pulling out.
The New York Times magazine’s “Who Wants To Be The Last Man To Die In Vietnam?” featured Cadet John Shull (USMA 1970) on the cover. Cadets had mixed opinions about the war. Each one of us came to terms with the morality of warfighting and the Vietnam War – individually.
When Air Defense Artillery (ADA) branch promised the Class of 1970 that everyone choosing ADA would go to Vietnam for certain, ADA replaced the Infantry as the branch that cadets got “ranked” into – as the last and only choice at branch selection.
Our class saw the demoralization and loss of standards in the Army because of Vietnam and decimation of the NCO corps during our Army Orientation Training (AOT) summer duty with Active Duty units – not in Vietnam.
In the Spring of 1972, MAJ Tom Faley, USMA 1962, told his Social Psychology sections that he got orders for his third tour in Vietnam. He was going to be an Advisor with a lieutenant assistant. MAJ Faley was a highly decorated officer whose eardrums were blown out in close combat. He taught his “Big Squad” with a loud voice. He said he could get anyone from the Class of 1972 to follow him and be in Vietnam as an advisor in late Spring 1973. He was shocked when only two Firsties (Seniors) volunteered. I was one.
The North Vietnamese Spring 1972 Offensive looked like there was a lot more war left. But, not for the U.S. Army. Our graduation June Week the last U.S. Infantry battalion folded its colors in Vietnam.
Our classmate, Walt Siegfried, graduated Finance Corps because of bad knees. He arrived in Saigon in December 1972. He is the only classmate to serve in-country. Classmates who went Air Force flew in theater before the final fall in 1975.
After graduation, our Infantry Basic Course still exercised clearing a Vietnamese village with role-playing soldiers.
In January 1973, during the Mountain Phase of Winter Ranger, the end of the War was announced. A Ranger sergeant gave a Hollywood-worthy, colorful, and heartfelt denunciation of everyone who had anything to do with the War in his anger and hurt over lost and wounded comrades.
Suddenly in April 1975, our 82d Airborne Division Infantry Battalion moved to Division Ready Force 1 possibly to assist in the evacuation of Saigon. Marines afloat got the mission. Classmates deployed with their units to Guam, Wake Island, and stateside locations to assist the refugees fleeing the Communists.
Vietnam was personal for the USMA Class of 1972.
Read James Atticus Bowden at https://jatticus.wordpress.com/ and https://substack.com/@jamesatticusbowden and https://x.com/jatticusbowden
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