Renaissance in the Ranks
(See Cover)
Since Lyndon Johnson's ringing declaration of July 28--"We will stand in Viet Nam"--the U.S. has mounted the biggest, swiftest, costliest military buildup in peacetime history. It has laid supply lines across 8,000 miles of ocean. And the nation has filled them in that time with as many tons of materiel as the U.S. could deliver for the first five months of its North African invasion in World War II. From humming Stateside training camps, where 12,500 recruits a month are being taught to fight, to the beaches and jungles of South Viet Nam, where U.S. servicemen and civilians are rushing more than 40 key bases to completion, America's involvement in the war grows inexorably in potency and resolve.
It will keep on growing. At the time of the President's speech in July, American forces in Southeast Asia numbered 135,000; today they total nearly a quarter of a million. Returning last week from his seventh visit to Saigon since 1962, Defense .Secretary Robert McNamara reported that while the U.S. has "stopped losing the war," it will be a long, arduous struggle. With him he brought the recommendations from field commanders that U.S. forces in South Viet Nam be increased to 480,000 by 1967. If Hanoi responds in kind, say U.S. military planners in Saigon, a commitment of 600,000 Americans may well be necessary in 1967.
Though Air Force and Navy planes pound the enemy daily, and the 40,000-man Marine Corps contingent has fought with distinction, the war in South Viet Nam is fundamentally a battle for terrain, a foot-slogging soldier's war. To replace and augment the men in combat, the draft call--mostly for the Army--has reached 40,200 a month,* twelve times the level of August 1964. To train the ever-swelling flood of recruits, the Army is expanding half a dozen U.S. bases. To supply its fighting men, the Pentagon has stepped up its shopping for almost every conceivable commodity from beans to bazookas, reopened defense plants that have lain idle for a decade, rushed in scarce equipment from units all over the world. With 45% of its strength deployed overseas./- the Army is prepared at the crack of a shot for another Dominican Republic, another Lebanon--even another Viet Nam.
"A State of Mind." The burden of running a global army rests on the cool, thoughtful officer who occupies Room 3-E-668 in the Pentagon. General Harold Keith Johnson, 53, the 24th U.S. Army Chief of Staff--and the youngest to be appointed since Douglas Mac-Arthur--is a team man of austere, probing intelligence in the managerial mold of McNamara's Pentagon. "Like McNamara," says a Defense Department aide, "Johnson is a computer. But he is a friendly computer."
Yet the Army Chief of Staff also represents a breed that is now rare in the Pentagon--the battlefield hero. From infantry combat in the thick of two Asian wars, handsome "Johnny" Johnson came away with a dazzle of decorations and the single-minded conviction that the American soldier must be hardier, wilier and brainier than ever before if he is to win the kind of war that the U.S. faces in Asia today. "Johnson's spirit of intellect and leadership," says the 1st Air-Cavalry's Brigadier General Richard Knowles, "is felt by every private in Viet Nam."
As a 30-year-old lieutenant colonel, marching to prison camp with the beaten remnants of the U.S. Army on Bataan, Johnson swore that no troops he might ever command again would go into battle unprepared for the war they would have to fight. Again, in October 1950, moving among dazed, defeated soldiers in Korea, he vowed not to be bound by the "school solution." In the Pentagon, Johnson has labored devotedly to instill those lessons. Cigar-chomping Army Vice Chief of Staff "Abe" Abrams, an iron-nerved commander who led Patton's tanks to relieve the siege of Bastogne, calls him "the toughest man I have ever known." Moreover, General Johnson expects the other 1,016,920 soldiers in his Army to be equally tough. "What an individual can do depends on his state of mind," he says in a gravelly Midwestern accent. "You can do whatever you will yourself to do."
Disciplined & Deadly. Under conditions as formidable as any he has ever faced, the U.S. fighting man in South Viet Nam has already proved in battle that he is a disciplined and deadly adversary. "These guys are better trained and better led than ever before," says Sergeant Grady Trainor, a World War II and Korean veteran with the 1st Air Cavalry Division. In part, as Johnson points out, the proficiency of today's G.I. is a product of higher educational levels: 75% of all enlisted men are high school graduates v. 48% in 1952; the same percentage of officers have college degrees. In part, also, the Army in 1965 was prepared for war, as it signally was not before World War II or Korea. Nonetheless, the most important element in his performance is undoubtedly the fact that today's soldier undergoes the most intelligent, intensive preparation for battle in Army history.
By the end of 1966, the Army will have trained 235,000 new recruits--70% of the overall 340,000-man increase in the armed forces set in motion by the President in July. To handle them, General Johnson is opening five new training centers. Three new 7,500-man infantry brigades are being organized. At Fort Riley, Kans., the Army will activate the brand-new, 14,000-man 9th Infantry Division. More than 700 smaller units are taking shape. Twenty-nine additional Army helicopter companies are sprouting rotors. Last week the Pentagon announced plans for at least one more chopper-supported airmobile division.
"Island Campaign." The buildup is qualitative as well as quantitative, and it is aimed at producing a renaissance in the ranks. The Army is turning out a new kind of soldier for a new kind of war. Johnson insists: "Every soldier has to be a follower. Every soldier has to be a leader. And this applies to the private. The ideal soldier must be an intelligent and courageous man." He adds quietly: "The battlefield is a very lonely place."
No desk commander, the Chief of Staff has made three trips to Viet Nam, plans to return there to share Christmas dinner with men of the 8th Cavalry Regiment, the outfit he commanded in Korea. "What we are doing there," he says, "is fighting an island campaign on a land mass." Last week Johnson boarded his JetStar for a one-day visit to the Army's biggest training center, Fort Jackson, in the piney uplands of South Carolina, where 19,655 men are being taught to fight.
Bustling from group to group, Johnson demonstrated his own favorite precept: "Put the personal into personnel." Noting a green inductee crawling awkwardly under a barbed-wire obstacle, Johnson cautioned: "You want to keep your tail down or you'll get shot--and that's embarrassing." To a leather-lunged instructor teaching an assault bayonet course, Johnson observed: "You can't just stand there and yell 'Hurry it up!' The American soldier has to be led, not pushed." Addressing a graduating class of recruits, Johnson said gently: "You are going to be a little scared the first time you get under fire. What you have to do is work at controlling your fear. Nothing makes you an experienced soldier faster than hearing that first one fired in anger."
Sounds of Battle. At Fort Jackson, where live bullets whistle above trainees in mock combat, it sounded like the real thing last week. Grunting recruits learning hand-to-hand combat were practicing kicking an imagined enemy in the groin. Under soughing pines, an instructor yelled: "The spirit of the hand-to-hand fighter is summed up in two words: To kill!" Before him, in an exercise aimed at encouraging them to compete with one another, 260 crew-cut rookies, paired off to simulate fighting stances, roared out a bloodcurdling chorus of "Yah-h-h-h!"
A new Army method of bayonet practice is called "pugil," for its principal instrument, a padded club of about the same length and weight as an M-14 rifle with fixed bayonet. Wearing heavy gloves, football helmets with steel face masks, and Bakelite jockstraps, the trainees parried and thrusted in training pits, then ran an obstacle course over which they had to knock down pugil-swinging attackers.
The bulldog-tempered topkick has been replaced by a new Army institution, the drill sergeant. The DS, a benign version of the Marines' famed drill instructor, is expected to be a blend of father-confessor and den mother to his men. Recognizable by their wide-brimmed, forest ranger-style hats, they are known as "Smoky Bears" if they are Negroes, "Yogi Bears" if white.
Instead of wasting time on spit-and-polish, recruits concentrate on combat and survival under conditions closely approximating those of real-life jungle warfare. They no longer pot stationary bull's-eyes to pass marksmanship tests. Instead, trainees armed with M-14 rifles are rated by the speed and accuracy with which they shoot down multiple targets popping up at random from behind bushes and trees. As a camouflage instructor lectures a class, a concealed soldier with a machine gun springs out of a hole only a few feet in front of them. The instructor points out: "This is the technique the Viet Cong are using today. They're under your nose and you don't know it."
Snake Ration. At Fort Jackson last week, Sergeant Woodrow Weaver, a Viet Nam veteran, faced his class, unbuttoned his shirt and casually pulled out a writhing northern pine snake. "Any time you are going through the jungle and come across a nonpoisonous snake," he advised, "pick him up and put him in your shirt. If you find yourself without food, pull him out and eat him." A poisonous snake can also be eaten, said Weaver, "if you cut his head off just below the poison sacs." Pointing out that rattlesnake meat is "considered a great delicacy" (it sells for 350 an ounce), Weaver assured his gagging audience: "Snakes are about the sweetest, tenderest meat you'll find."
The sons of the affluent society tend to be taller, broader and--initially at least--a mite softer than depression-reared Willie and Joe of World War II vintage. Johnson's Army greets them much as he himself might: with a conscious effort to respect their individual dignity. Even more incredible to yesteryear's warriors is the official aura of sobersided respectability that Johnson has tried valiantly to imbue in his men.
Half-Spartan, half-Puritan, the Chief frowns on nearly all the fighting man's favorite foibles, from cussing and ribaldry to boozing and whoring. Johnson, who takes an occasional drink, says with distaste: "I want no pickled brains leading my troops." One of his generals, who got publicly involved with a subordinate's wife, was summoned to Washington and swiftly resigned. In Johnson's jealous view, "The man or wife who will cheat on his partner will cheat on me." A onetime Star Scout, he keeps the Boy Scout Handbook and the Bible in his office. Fortunately for smokers, "Father Johnson," as he is sometimes called, burns up two packs of Winstons and four cigars daily.
In all justice, Johnson believes that the Army should treat its involuntary employees with particular solicitude. A "private's general," he takes pride in the good chow and creature comforts that soften a draftee's adjustment to military life. New men are greeted at reception centers with brass bands. At Fort Jackson, S.C., and Fort Dix, N.J., drafty, double-decker wooden barracks are giving way to modern brick buildings that resemble campus dormitories. They have bathrooms on every level, rooms with from two to eight bunks, telephones, lounge rooms and Laundromats. There are automatic dishwashers and potato-peeling machines for K.P. duty.
But the actual soldiering is tougher than ever. During his eight weeks of Basic Combat Training, a recruit nowadays is automatically "recycled," or forced to repeat any week that he fails. After an exhaustive basic proficiency test, he enters a second eight-week period called Advanced Individual Training. During AIT, the recruit learns further skills based on his aptitude and interests, finally qualifies in one of 950 Military Occupation Specialties ranging from "creepy-peepy" (battlefield radar) to computers (by which warehouse sergeants now tot up rations). In all, today's soldier gets four months' training v. eight to twelve weeks in World War II, and in subjects unimaginable only a few years ago.
Reason for Skepticism. As a final preparation for battle, the fighting man learns the "Code of Conduct for Members of the Armed Forces of the United States," promulgated by President Eisenhower in 1955 after 21 brainwashed American prisoners defected to the Communists during the Korean War. The Code pledges the U.S. soldier to "accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy" and to "make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause." The need for such a reminder of the captive's responsibilities was demonstrated again last week when two.evidently indoctrinated U.S. prisoners released by the Viet Cong parroted the Red line on Viet Nam (see THE WORLD). On other subjects as well, the soldier is encouraged to think for himself. Drill sergeants exhort their classes in metronomic meter: "The. Only. Foolish. Question. Is. The. Question. That. Is. Not. Asked." Johnson himself constantly urges: "Be curious and snoopy. Challenge the assertion."
The Chief has more reason than most soldiers to mistrust the brasshats' easy faith in their own omniscience. A North Dakotan of Canadian descent, West Pointer Johnson served in Manila with the 57th Infantry--the famed Philippine Scouts--for 18 months before Pearl Harbor. Even as the war closed in, with no warnings from Washington, most of his fellow officers took their polo and drinking more seriously than battle training.
A disciplined, compulsively hard worker even then, young Captain Johnson was the 57th's operations officer when the Japanese attacked 24 years ago this week. Ordered to Bataan, his outfit was one of the first American-led regiments to engage the Japanese in World War II, and for a few precious days turned them back. Johnson performed his operations duties with such distinction that he was promoted to major, then to lieutenant colonel and given command of a battalion.
Most Honest Man. "I had it long enough to lose it," he says ruefully. Nine days after Johnson took over,
Bataan's ill-prepared, ill-equipped defenders surrendered to an overwhelmingly superior Japanese force. He and other survivors of the 57th joined the brutal Bataan march. Hobbling along, gnawing sugar cane to ease his hunger pangs, Johnson lived through an ordeal in which 8,150 others died. At a P.O.W. compound in the Philippines, his fellow prisoners elected the junior colonel commissary officer, entrusted him with their own money to buy scarce food. "They needed the most honest man in the camp to handle the food," says a veteran of those days. "There was only one choice--Johnny Johnson."
Building a network of illicit supplies, Johnson kept the camp fed for nearly 21 years despite persistent Japanese attempts to get hold of their cash--$750,000 in all. When his captors insisted that prisoners bow before the camp commander, Johnson refused. "Americans do not bow," he said again and again. "They salute." He kept on saluting.
In 1944 Johnson was one of 1,619 U.S. prisoners who were herded aboard a Japan-bound freighter. Packed shoulder to shoulder below decks in 120DEG heat, they were given neither food nor water, drank one another's urine to survive. While the ship was still off the Philippines, U.S. bombers blasted it, killing some 300 of the American prisoners. Survivors who swam ashore were hauled by boxcars to Lingayen Gulf and loaded aboard another freighter, which was forced to dock at Formosa with engine trouble. Six days later, U.S. planes bombed the island, killing outright 100 more Americans. In the next three days hundreds of wounded men died for lack of medical attention.
Life by Lottery. The survivors finally reached a prison camp at Fukuoka in Japan, where they were greeted by a captured U.S. Army surgeon, Walter Kostecki. Now physician-in-charge at Fort Myer, Va., Kostecki says that "there was no medical reason why Harold Johnson should have been alive." Down to 90 Ibs.--he weighs 170 today--he was wasting away with dysentery. Dr. Kostecki, who had obtained two dozen intravenous feeding kits, held a lottery to decide which of the dying arrivals would receive treatment; Johnson drew a winning number.
In 1945 the group was moved to Japanese-occupied Korea. There, on Sept. 8, six days after Japan's surrender, G.I.s of the U.S. 7th Division threw open the gates of their camp near Inchon. Johnson had been a prisoner for three years and five months to the day. Of the 1,619 Americans who had left the Philippines together, barely a handful survived.
Only a few of the P.O.W.s have ever made a mark in the postwar Army. Johnson, always a deeply religious man, emerged with a heightened faith in God and an almost mystic belief in human will power. As a soldier, he says, he learned the value of "controlled impatience."
It was to stand him in good stead. The postwar Army, led by officers who had roared through the campaigns of Europe or the Pacific, had no place for ex-P.O.W.s versed in prewar tactics. The future Chief of Staff tried in vain to win an assignment at Georgia's Fort Benning, was even turned down as an R.O.T.C. instructor by several universities. So Johnson went back to class himself, toured the Army's ground force schools and spent a year at Fort Leavenworth's Command and General Staff College. Then, in 1950, came Korea--and overnight the Army needed every combat officer it could muster.
Death in the Hay. With a battalion of undertrained rookies, Johnson--still a lieutenant colonel after eight years--was assigned to the Pusan perimeter, where he moved into position as a reserve unit. The next day the Communists overran the front lines. Johnson's battalion fought like veterans--and held. Later, near Tabu-dong, Johnson himself led a counterattack to regain a key sector, earning the nation's second highest award, the Distinguished Service Cross, for "extraordinary heroism in action." As Lieut. Colonel George Allen of Fairfax, Va., then one of his platoon leaders, recalls the battle: "The world was coming apart. Our company commander had been killed. There was heavy firing 100 yards away. Colonel Johnson said we could handle it. He parceled out firepower and called in air strikes. He hadn't slept for three days, but he never used a profane word." It was, however, the only occasion on which his battalion ever saw Johnson in need of a shave.
During the bloody withdrawal from the Yalu River, Johnson ordered his men to pile up stacks of hay in the fields before their line of fire. When bugle-blowing North Koreans swept down in a night attack, Johnson's machine-gunners set fire to the haystacks with tracer bullets. In the heat, glare and confusion, the attackers were wiped out.
Jumping 43. Decorated four times in Korea, Johnson was promoted to full colonel in 1950, to brigadier general in 1956. He was named Chief of Staff of the U.S. Seventh Army in Germany in 1957, proved so capable an administrator that in two years he was picked for the high-powered job of Chief of Staff of NATO's Central Army Group in West Germany. In 1960 he returned to the U.S. as boss of his alma mater, the Staff College at Leavenworth. Three years later, Johnson was ordered to the Pentagon, became deputy chief of staff for military operations, a post in which he helped pave the way for the buildup of 1965.
In nearly a decade of decline, the Army had been starved of funds and allowed to dwindle to 862,000 men. But President Kennedy was not merely wary of "massive retaliation" as the chief U.S. military doctrine; he wanted to have a "flexible response" to any form of attack. Under a $9 billion rebuilding program, Army manpower was restored, its organization streamlined, its equipment modernized--and it was allowed to expand its own air arm.
Johnson brilliantly handled his role in the reconstruction under Chief of Staff Earle ("Bus") Wheeler, who was named Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in 1964. That July, reaching down past 43 three-and four-star generals with greater seniority, Defense Secretary McNamara chose Johnson as Army Chief of Staff. Johnson was awarded his fourth star.
The Army chief and his wife Dorothy, an Aberdeen, S. Dak., girl whom he married in 1935, moved into Quarters No. 1 at Fort Myer, the columned, red-brick Victorian house on Generals' Row that became the Chief of Staff's official residence soon after the post was created in 1903. The 66-year-old house boasts an elevator (installed by the Douglas MacArthurs), a magnificent view of Washington (thanks to Mamie Eisenhower, who cleared away trees and shrubbery blocking it), a barbecue pit (the Matthew Ridgways), and a hotel-size kitchen (the Lyman Lemnitzers).
The Johnsons' only regret is that the twelve-room house would have been ideal when their three children still lived with them. Son Harold Keith Jr., 27, works for the National Security Agency in Washington; Daughter Ellen Kay, 24, is married to a U.S. Army lieutenant stationed in Germany; Son Robert James, 19, is a cadet in his second year at West Point.
Manpower Accordion. Johnson puts in a 17-hour day, six-day week at the Pentagon, and lugs two black briefcases home in the evenings and on Sundays. "We used to schedule briefings around Max Taylor's tennis game," says one old Pentagon hand. "Not with this guy. He's all work." Johnson faces a different and in many ways a more challenging task than did his predecessors. While the Administration lays down the broad strategy in Viet Nam, and General William Westmoreland, the U.S. commandant in Saigon, makes the day-to-day tactical decisions, it is Johnson's job to man and supply the Army's outposts from Bien Hoa to Berlin. Apart from 150,000 National Guardsmen and reservists who have been alerted for "possible commitment to combat," his chief manpower reservoir is that old American standby, the Selective Service System, headed today, as it was a quarter-century ago, by doughty Lieut. General Lewis B. Hershey.
As the Pentagon calls the tune, Selective Service expands and contracts as smoothly as an accordion. More and more American men are facing the music. Orders have gone out for 1,529 doctors up to age 35--with or without families--350 dentists, 100 veterinarians to help with human needs such as hygiene and proper food handling. On the President's order, half a million childless married men have lost their delayed call-up status. The nation's more than 4,000 draft boards are tightening deferments on college students who fail to maintain acceptable grades.
Horrendous Backups. The Army is better equipped than ever to transport its growing manpower. Two weeks after it was ordered to Viet Nam from Georgia, the 1st Air Cavalry Division landed 16,000 men, 477 aircraft and 19,000 tons of supplies on Qui Nhon beach. Logistically so far, the only big Mickey Mouse, in G.I. parlance, was a brief shortage of canvas-and-rubber jungle boots (leather footgear rots in Viet Nam's steamy climate); they were flown in directly from Stateside manufacturers.
Since July, the pipeline has poured in 80 million Ibs. of B rations, 2,000,000 cans of evaporated milk, 700,000 cans of sweet potatoes, 182,000 cans of instant orange juice, 870,000 Ibs. of sugar, 1,200,000 packets of instant coffee. To keep up the flow, 95% of which travels by sea, the Army has employed every kind of freighter from demothballed World War II rustpots to the sleek Louise Lykes on her maiden voyage.
Nonetheless, the rapid troop buildup has caused horrendous cargo backups, which in turn limit the number of fighting men who can be supported in Viet Nam. To the dismay of field commanders, replacement troops have to be based in Okinawa and other reserve areas far from the front. With an average of 100 ships a day standing off their harbors, South Viet Nam's six biggest ports can at present handle only 17. As many as 40 ships at a time have been diverted to Japan, Okinawa and the Philippines to await docking space in Viet Nam; hundreds more have been held up in U.S. West Coast ports. Vital war materiel has no priority over commercial cargoes. An ammunition ship recently waited 23 days for a berth in Saigon, whose port facilities are hardly a match for those of Castine, Me. Viet Nam critically lacks warehouse space and distribution facilities. Last week 9,000,000 cans of beer and soft drinks were stacked up on Saigon's wharves.
Cam Ranh Bay, destined to be one of the world's biggest ports, will ease the bottleneck when it is completed next year. McNamara last week ordered 10,000 additional logistical and engineering and support troops to Viet Nam to help relieve the jam. Meanwhile, as a Saigon logistics officer puts it, "trying to handle this buildup is like a juggler on a tightrope trying to drink from a firehose."
"Sub-Invasion." Far and away the most formidable problem, of course, is the Communist buildup in South Viet Nam, which has reached the point where U.S. officers refer to it as a "sub-invasion." Regular troops from Hanoi have been infiltrating at a probable rate of 2,500 monthly since mid-1965, and intelligence sources in Saigon expect the Ho Chi Minh government soon to increase the flow to 4,500 a month. There are now 30,000 North Vietnamese troops in the South. With the Viet Cong, the "hard hats" from the North form a tough, dedicated fighting force of 250,000. Though American and South Vietnamese troops are outkilling the enemy almost 3 to 1, some guerrilla war experts maintain that the ratio is not nearly high enough to bleed the Reds into retreat out of South Viet Nam.
The Ultimate Weapon. Meantime, in remote, malaria-ridden jungles and mountains, squinting down gunsights at their fanatic foe, General Johnson's alumni are proving their mettle. Draftees now comprise more than one-fifth of Army strength in Viet Nam, and account for one-third of the average 1,000 monthly replacements. Each morning's headlines tell the story of their courage.
It will take time for any final evaluation of their prowess, for a soldier--however well-trained and motivated--only learns to fight by fighting. There should be no lack of opportunity in Viet Nam where, as the Chief of Staff has repeatedly warned, American fighting men may be engaged in combat for many years. As an old soldier, Johnson has also warned repeatedly of negotiations, which the Communists would use as a means to victory on the battlefield.
Nonetheless, American ground troops have already vindicated the nation's need for a strong, flexible army. From the training grounds of Fort Dix, where a massive statue of a charging infantryman is respectfully known as The Ultimate Weapon, to Viet Nam where kid infantrymen moved into a solid sheet of fire last month on a single word from a platoon sergeant, Johnny Johnson's soldiers exude a new confidence. They know they can win.
*Half the Korean peak (80,000), one-tenth World War IIs highest level. /- Other countries with major U.S. Army units: West Germany 225,000, South Korea 50,000, France 16,000, Dominican Republic 7,000, Italy 5,000, Japan 4,000.
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