by Wallis W. Wood
Reprinted with permission from American Opinion, January 1969
Wallis W. Wood, Coordinator for TRAIN (To Restore American Independence Now), is a former news editor for The Review Of The News. He is now touring the country forming local TRAIN Committees to demand that the Administration stop supporting the Communist arsenal of the Vietcong; permit our military to win in Vietnam; and then bring our boys home.
A few days ago, in the small hours of the morning, a cab pulled up to a nearly darkened home in suburban Dallas and a young man stepped to the curb. Specialist Fourth Class Robert Moore was back after seven months of combat in Vietnam. But this young veteran hadn’t gone directly home. He had made a promise, and he meant to keep it. Thus it was that he stopped first, that early morning, at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Ewell Teer.
The Teers were relatives who had kept a small lamp burning constantly in a front window of their home while their own son was in Vietnam—it had remained lit until their boy had returned to turn it off. When young Moore left for Vietnam they had again lit that lamp. And it had burned day and night for Robert Moore—throughout his seven months in Vietnam. Through power failures that left the next street in darkness, through storms that downed every line but one, the little lamp had not gone black. And, it was burning brightly when young Robert Moore returned to turn it off.
The lamp table in the Teers’ home had become a center for daily prayers, as the family fulfilled its promise to ask the Lord to preserve the life of this young husband and father, just as they had prayed every day for their own son.
Robert Moore awakened the Teers, and together they knelt beside that lamp table and joyously thanked God for his safe return. Only then was the lamp turned off, and only then did Bobby Moore go home.
Today, more than half a million families are offering similar prayers for their sons and husbands and friends and sweethearts in Vietnam.
Several weeks earlier, and two thousand miles from Dallas, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Duelk read an announcement in their local newspaper about a young Vietnam veteran coming to New Windsor, New York, to speak under the auspices of a group called TRAIN.* His subject was Leftist betrayal of our men in Vietnam, and what must be done to win the war. Since the Duelks’ only son, a twenty-year-old private, was stationed in Vietnam, they attended that speech. And, when the program ended, they pledged to do everything within their power to help alert their friends and neighbors to the insane rules handicapping our troops in Vietnam, and to the fact that American businesses, encouraged by Leftists in our government, are supplying goods to the East European arsenal of the Vietcong. They asked for more information about TRAIN, and sought to join.
A few days later, two members of the local TRAIN committee called on Mr. and Mrs. Duelk to discuss the various projects sponsored by this nationwide network of local community-action committees, and to explain how they could help. As they talked, the doorbell rang for a second time that afternoon. On the porch was a young lieutenant, fresh from West Point, who had come to notify Mr. and Mrs. Duelk of the death of their son.
To the bright “Liberals” in Washington, young Joseph Duelk Jr., who only a few months earlier had been working in a local supermarket, was just another statistic—one of more than thirty thousand young Americans who had been killed by the Communist Vietcong. To the Duelks . . . well, he was their only son. And life can no longer be the same at the home of Joe and Helen Duelk. Although their little daughter keeps saying, “Don’t cry, Mommy; Butchie will be coming home soon,” they know that he already has— for the last time.
A few months earlier, Mr. and Mrs. Duelk had been proud to learn of their son’s decision to go to Vietnam. “Butchie said he wanted to be part of American history,” Mrs. Duelk remembers. “He was going because he felt it was right. He believed that the Communists had to be stopped.”
A few months earlier, the Duelks hadn’t questioned their government’s explanation that what was happening in Vietnam required “a limited war fought with limited means, for limited objectives.” A few months earlier, Butchie Duelk had been alive.
The combat death of Pfc. Joseph Duelk Jr., by itself, would not have beenso difficult to accept. He was, his family understood, a soldier serving hiscountry in wartime. What has made it so unbearable for the Duelks is not their loss, but their betrayal. “We know now that our son, and the sons of sixty thousand other Americans just like us, have died in Vietnam as pawns of Leftist politicians,” Helen Duelk told me. “Our leaders don’t want this war to end, they don’t want to really defeat the Communists, or they would take the wraps off the military and let them win it. It’s just like Korea, and our boys aren’t being given a chance!”
Mr. and Mrs. Duelk, you see, have made it their business to learn about the deals between the United States and the Communists that prolong the fighting, deals which have made the war in Vietnam the longest military conflict in our nation’s history. They know that our military leaders have said that this war could be won in ninety days or less and have begged for permission to win it. They have read about the plants and plans, supplies and equipment, that we send to the Soviets and their allies, to fuel the Communist war machine. They have seen truce after truce, and bomb halt after bomb halt, end as the Communists are rested, rearmed, and reinforced—ready again to maim and kill.
“I hope to God,” Mrs. Duelk prays, “that not one more American boy will be sacrificed to the Left’s ‘no-win’ war, as was my son.” And a half million families with sons in Vietnam echo her plea, as they wonder whether their doorbell will ring, and they will answer it to face a grim soldier offering the hollow condolences of a President who could end this war in a matter of weeks by simply permitting our military to win it.
Over the past weeks I have traveled from one end of this country to the other, visiting with survivors of the incredible horror our politicians have created in Vietnam. At base camps, in military hospitals, and in their homes, I have talked with ranking officers and with privates, with Staff and with troops. I was not surprised at the fierce consistency of their views. The men who have seen and fought this war know that the enemy can be quickly defeated—and, they cannot understand why victory has been forbidden. Again and again the question was the same: “Why won’t they let us win, and get this damned thing over?”
Stateside, the greatest concentration of wounded Vietnam veterans is at the U.S. Naval Hospital in San Diego, California—the largest such hospital in the country. Located on well-designed, spacious grounds overlooking San Diego Bay, it seems an ideal place to try to forget the hell of anti-guerrilla combat in the jungles of Asia.
Walking through attractive gardens or along the shaded verandas of the Naval Hospital, it is even possible to forget for a moment that you are on the grounds of a military installation. It is not, however, possible to forget it when you enter the wards. As you pass from bed to bed, the scars and wounds of the young men there scream a terrible testimony to the price our troops are paying. Many, I knew, would never walk unaided; some would see the bright sunshine only in their memories; others . . . well others would never rise from the beds in which they lay.
But every veteran with whom I talked, no matter how severe his wounds, was proud that he had served against the Communists in Vietnam. They came from Peoria, and Fresno, and Paterson, and Chicago—and from dozens of other American cities and towns. They were a microcosm of America. They had different backgrounds, had mastered different skills, and had served in different areas. But they all agreed on two points: (1) The only objective that could ever justify the suffering and anguish they had witnessed is victory; and, (2) we are not doing all we can to win.
One young Marine, who told me matter of factly that he would return to Vietnam when the mortar wounds in his leg had healed, spoke for a lot of his buddies when he said: “I believed in what I was doing—not in what the government was doing, but what I was doing. Our political policies are wrong. They stink. We’re running this war in the worst possible way.”
A seasoned naval chief lying nearby estimated that the destroyer on which he served could have been used four or five times more effectively, and much more often than it was. “We’ve got the strongest fire power on our ships we’ve ever had in any war,” he said. “Most of the time, we’re not allowed to use it.”
I asked a young soldier who had served in Vietnam for twenty-six months, and had learned to speak three native dialects, if the Vietnamese people believe we are going to win this war. His answer was emphatic: “No, absolutely not! They hear about the demonstrations in this country and they know about the truces and bombing halts. Hell, they know we’re not allowed to hit the Communists as hard as we can. Dammit, most of the time they’re not even safe in their own villages at night!”
To a man, these recently wounded Vietnam veterans agreed that the war had to be won in the United States before it could be won in Vietnam. Many of them were bitter about the lack of support they’ve received. As one horribly wounded youngster put it:A soldier today, he’s worse than nothing. He doesn’t get any respect or anything. Nobody cares what’s happened to him, or to his buddies. You go out on the street and a lot of people look as though they’d rather spit at you as talk to you! Write about that, mister! Write about that….
Before I could answer, another Marine who had quietly rolled himself over in a wheelchair spoke up angrily: “Look, we know a lot of people support us. But they’re not loud enough. They don’t make themselves heard. How many times do you hear of someone demonstrating for our troops? I know these peaceniks are just a minority. But what about the rest of the people? What are they doing?”
So I told them about what was being done by people who do care. About the meetings and efforts in support of our soldiers. About the TRAIN committee network, and the speeches and films it sponsors; about the petition campaign to Congress that had already collected more than 1,200,000 signatures demanding a halt in all U.S. trade and aid to the Communist arsenal of the Vietcong. They found it hard to believe that so much was being done, yet receiving so little publicity. Or, that it would be enough….
One soldier, most of his body wrapped in bandages, broke in with a laugh that he knew how to end the war, and end it fast. “Just put the Lefty politicians and diplomats and bureaucrats on the front lines for about three months,” he said. “Drop ’em down and leave ’em plenty of ammunition. They’d come back demanding we win this thing fast enough.”
Another wounded vet applauded the idea but said it wouldn’t work—that none of them would get back to tell it like it is. “If Charlie didn’t get them,” he cracked, “the military would.”
There was pain in those wards, terrible pain. And an anger that hung in the air like the smell of alcohol. If I live to be a hundred I’ll never forget one Marine corporal in that hospital— a tough, lean “tunnel rat” who had spent nearly three years in Vietnam and, as he put it, “never came near a U.S.O. show.” He’d been hit during a patrol mission near the Cambodian border when a land mine on the trail had blown up under his captain: Vietcong shells had splintered his legs as he’d gone out to retrieve what was left of the body.
The doctors had already told the Corporal that he would never again be able to walk without crutches, and he was angry because he would not be able to return to Vietnam. What burned at him most, however, was his concern that our politicians were about to abandon the Vietnamese people to the Communists. Fighting back tears, he said:
Look, I love America and the American people more than anyone else in this world. And I say this sincerely and with all my heart. But, as much as l love America—and I fought for it proudly and almost died for it—if America, my country, just pulls out of Vietnam, I’m leaving. I’ll go someplace else to live. I won’t stay in the United States anymore.
The whole ward had become silent. I looked around the room and the other patients were shaking their heads in agreement. As the Corporal clenched and unclenched his fists on the arms of his wheelchair he concluded:
I’ve seen a lot of guys get dusted —get killed—guys I’ve gone through training with. I sit here and I think of McGrath and Shields and others— I could sit here and remember names all day. To think that they died, and America would just forget them, just write them off as “limited casualties” in a “limited war.” My God, are they all dead for nothing? For nothing…. My God….
A mist came into the eyes of that Marine, and a cloud in his throat, and he could not continue. No one else could think of anything to add.
I wanted to assure them all that America would not abandon another country to the hell of Communistslavery, that Americans were waking upand getting involved, that there are enough people in the country who really care. I wanted to tell them that. To shout it, in fact. But I don’t think they would have believed me. And, to tell the truth, I wanted to get out of that room before anyone there saw the tears streaming down my face.
II
FOR THE LAST two and one-half years of his active duty, General Paul D. Harkins was Commanding General of our military forces in Vietnam. In mid-November I flew to Dallas, where he is now living, to talk with him about the conduct of the war since his retirement in 1964. I asked General Harkins about these “no-win” wars against the Communists, and why our men are being asked to die but not permitted to employ the force necessary to win and get out.
“I don’t understand it,” he answered gravely. “Frankly. I agree with MacArthur: ‘In war, there is no substitute for victory.”‘ And, the General added: “To win, there has to be a change in the rules. It can’t be done the way we’re doing it now.”
After that opening, it was apparent that leading questions would be unnecessary with this former commandant of West Point. Lean, hard, and straight, General Harkins is every bit the military commander. He was both I angry and direct:I don’t see how we can make South Vietnam safe if we’re going to guarantee the Communists that we won’t bother supplies going to North Vietnam. If we send 550,000 G.l.s to fight, I think we owe it to them to bomb anything that might hurt them. We have to back them up—I don’t see how we can do anything else.The faster you move in a war, the fewer casualties there are, and the sooner the fighting is over. This war could be won in less than three months, but not the way it is being fought now.
Why haven’t our troops been given permission to fight to win? The General says he isn’t sure, but that he knows these decisions aren’t being made by the military: “I don’t know what is behind the orders our men are given. I don’t understand it and I don’t like it. Our soldiers are well-trained and well-equipped. Nobody is going to defeat them. But the rules of the politicians are against them. If we lose the war, it will be lost right here, on this side of the ocean.”
Nor was he very optimistic about the outcome of the “peace’, talks in Paris. He looked through me and into his own experience, and his jaw tightened as he remembered his own encounters with the Communists. Harkins knows the Communists all right — and, he knows what those Paris talks mean:
Part of their strategy is to fightand talk at the same time, so don’t get too encouraged by any negotiations. Remember the lesson of Korea —the talks lasted two full years. And I was there, I helped sign the agreements. The fighting continued all during the “peace” talks, and we suffered more casualties after the negotiations started than before they began.
General Harkins emphasized again and again that the history of our experience with them has proved the futility of seeking anything less than victory against the Communists:We didn’t really win World War II, the Communists did. And now we have 250,000 to 300,000 troops in Europe. We didn’t win in Korea, we still have 50,000 soldiers there— and move of them are being killed every month. The American people just have to say, “Let’s stop having a ‘no-win’ policy!”
I asked General Harkins what had to be done here in this country to get the politicians to change the rules. “You have to get more people involved,” he replied. “We must all come to the support of our soldiers—writing to the Congress, speaking out as often as anyone will listen, informing others….”
And this distinguished General practices what he preaches. He is himself serving as a sponsor of the Dallas TRAIN committee, and is lecturing widely for TRAIN.
There are other military greats who are also speaking out, loud and often. Brigadier General Robert L. Scott Jr., World War II ace and author of God Is My Co-Pilot, left the ease and comfort of his semi-retirement to lecture throughout the nation for TRAIN. General Scott had discovered for himself how disastrous and costly our military policies in Southeast Asia really are. “I went to Vietnam four times,” this former commander of the legendary Flying Tigers told me. “I went to visit thirty-three wonderful men whom I had taught to fly. They are generals now, and colonels, and lieutenant colonels. They are in command positions in Vietnam. And they told me this war could be won in three to thirty days.”
What’s wrong ? Let General Scott tell you in his own words:The ablest Americans, the best-trained and best-armed men the world has ever seen, are being sent to fight and die in a war we will not permit them to win. Even more incredible, we are actually aiding the arsenal of the Vietcong, by sending food, clothing, machinery, equipment, and information to Communist regimes that supply arms to the enemy.
We are not letting our troops win. World War III is what we’re afraid of starting, but World War III started before World War II ended. We’ve been in it for a quarter of a century and seem to know less about it now than when it began.Today, we are fighting exactlywhere the enemy wants us to fight, on the real estate he picks out himself, with the weapons he selects for us, and at the time he chooses. We are violating every maxim of war.
The Communists started this war deliberately and they will continue it as long as it is to their advantage. It is to their advantage now. Nowhere in all history can a parallel be found, where a nation has subsidized its own mortal enemies. Itcouldn’t all be accidental.
Even the disciplined Georgia drawl of this man cannot be made to cloak his disgust with national leaders who have ordered our military to war but forbidden them to win. As the fire in him roared up in his eyes, it was easy to see why General Claire Chennault selected Robert Scott as his fighter commander. Both a man of action and a scholar, he emphasized that: “History will repeat itself, if we refuse to learn its lesson. Ours would not be the first nation to be betrayed from within. More than two thousand years ago, Marcus Tullius Cicero faced a similar situation as he fought against the subversion of the Roman Republic.”
The tall, gray-haired General said he believes Cicero’s declaration to his fellow Senators is appropriate to our time, and quoted him from memory:You have encouraged treason and have opened the gates to free the traitors. A nation can survive its fools, even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.
He repeated the word treason with distaste. “The war in Vietnam will be won or lost right here in America,” General Scott told me, “and right now our politicians are losing it.” Speaking quietly in the measured tones of tempered conviction he said:
Our threat is not from abroad. It’s not outside the gates. It’s right here in the midst of our homes. The danger is internal, and the solution can only be internal. Every American must once again accept responsibility for what is done in his name. We are still the strongest nation on earth. Once enough Americans raise their voices, nothing can defeat us.
One leaves the presence of General Scott with the strong impression that, with a handful of men like him standing at our national Thermopylae, the Republic would be invincible. Then his words sink in, and one realizes that the enemy is at our backs—that a handful of men are standing at Thermopylae and being cut down from behind.
Another military leader who has also had the courage to stand up for America is General Curtis E. LeMay. Although President Harry Truman chose General LeMay to create our nuclear striking force, the Strategic Air Command, and both Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy entrusted him with even greater responsibility as Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force and then Chief of Staff, his brilliant record of responsible service was ignored by the media when he dared to publicly oppose our Leftist policymakers. The enemy was, indeed, at his back.
As we sat comfortably in the study of General LeMay’s beautiful home, overlooking Los Angeles, the General reflected with heavy irony on the abrupt change in his “image” created by the Press when he agreed to run for Vice President on the ticket of the American Independent Party. “Suddenly,” he said, “I was the big bomber General, with a thunderbolt in one hand, a nuclear warhead in the other, and a kind of wild gleam in my eye.” I had to laugh at the Left’s mad caricature of this man, who is among the most controlled and disciplined Americans I have ever met. Taciturn and powerfully intellectual, one gets the feeling that every inflection of his voice is carefully reasoned out in advance. While he is clearly a sensitive and warm human being, one cannot enter a room with him without knowing immediately that he is in command.
“I got into this election for just one reason,” General LeMay told me. “Because I know what war is like, and I don’t like any part of it. Our national policies are being shaped by men who have forgotten—or perhaps never knew —the horror of war. They act as though what’s happening in Vietnam is some sort of game.”
If it is a “game,” it is one with fearful consequences for those young Americans on the front lines. As General LeMay put it: “The only reason American soldiers are bleeding and dying in Vietnam today is because our leaders have tied their hands behind their backs. The only reason we haven’t had victory in Vietnam is because our leaders have done everything possible to avoid it.”
The General spoke quietly, shaking his head solemnly, but there was a slow, hard anger in his voice. “The average person simply wouldn’t believe the kind of limitations that have been placed on our men in uniform,” he said. “There they are, fighting for their lives because we’ve asked them to go, and they aren’t allowed to win.”
And General LeMay told me he believes that the situation is rapidly going from bad to worse:This last bombing halt is the sorriest thing I ever saw. I can’t see any difference in this bombing halt than any of the others. The Communists have used every lull to resupply their troops and get ready for increased activity. Every time our fighting men have hit them hard, the politicians give them a chance to recover. And this only leads to increased casualties for our own troops.
Meanwhile, says the General, our policies of doing “business as usual” with the Red regimes that arm and supply the Vietcong can only help the enemy grow stronger. “I don’t understand it,” General LeMay remarked. “I just don’t understand it. I have always said that we shouldn’t trade with the Communists. Their doctrine is world revolution and world Communism. Now as long as they have that doctrine, we are at war with them—and it doesn’t make any sense at all to help them grow stronger.” As I looked at the trophy cases filled with ribbons and medals, and the walls of his study lined with citations from our grateful nation and its allies, General LeMay spoke of the changes that have come over America. His voice deepened and he struck the table for emphasis as he said:The real war mongers are righthere. They are the men who needlessly prolong the war, by failing to win it. They are the men who make future wars inevitable by appeasing and aiding those who, wage wars today.
And, like every other member of the armed forces with whom I have spoken about Vietnam, General Curtis E. LeMay could see only one hope and one solution: “It is,” he said, “up to the American people to blow the whistle on this whole incredible situation.” And, as he spoke these words, we both looked down at the front page of the Los Angeles Times on the table before us. The headlines read: No Foreign Policy Shift, Nixon Vows. And, McNamara Flies To Moscow For Secret Meetings WithKosygin. And, Deaths Rise In Vietnam.
III
Our military leaders, men like Generals LeMay, Harkins, Scott and others, fully realize that the most important battles of the War in Vietnam are being waged right here in the United States. That realization is rooted firmly in every Vietnam veteran with whom I have spoken. While all are grateful to be back alive, many are determined not to stop fighting until this war is won.
Each man fights in his own way.
For example, after fourteen years of active duty in the U.S. Army, Paul G. Erickson recently resigned his commission as Lieutenant Colonel when he had witnessed for himself the murderous restrictions on our men in Vietnam. Eighteen years earlier he had entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point because he believed he could best serve his country as part of what Douglas MacArthur had called “the long grey line.” Paul Erickson now says that, for him, this is no longer true. “I had taken an oath to preserve and protect my country,” he told me, “and I can no longer do that by fighting blindly to support the bloody decisions of Leftist politicians who seem intent on destroying all that I hold dear. Our men in Vietnam are being betrayed by Leftists in Washington. I resigned because I just couldn’t be a part of betraying them.”
Lt. Col. Paul Erickson learned in Vietnam that the price of failing to defeat the Communists, a failure toward which our politicians are leading us, is too monstrous even to contemplate:Before I left Saigon, I visited a government photo lab. There they had more than 500,000 photographs of Communist atrocities against the Vietnamese people. I saw pictures of the charred bodies at Dak Son, where the Vietcong had turned flame throwers on several hundred defenseless men, women, and children.There were others of the crippled bodies of children who had been on a street, or in a bus, or near a building when the terrorists struck.Many were of mutilated priests and nuns and hamlet chiefs, since the village leaders are always a major target of the Communists. There were thousands of photographs of men who had been disemboweled, their eyeballs popped out, and their throats cut in front of the entire populace. Nuns had been raped repeatedly by the Communists, and then Christian villagers were forced at gun point to participate before the Sisters were murdered.I visited hospitals and refugee camps and wept at the sight of little children with a stump instead of an arm or a leg. These are people who have never known peace, just pain— horrors intentionally visited upon them by a Communist enemy our politicians refuse to permit us to defeat.
But while these and hundreds of similar atrocities are known to every Vietnamese—and, to our men in Vietnam—the American Press remains silent about them. “Mutilated Vietnamese mothers and children,” Mr. Erickson says, “don’t make news. Raped nuns aren’t ‘Liberal’ copy. The apathy of the American public might be disturbed.”
“Our soldiers have seen first-hand the results of Communist terrorism and they have a healthy hatred for the Communists,” Erickson continued. “Our men know that they are themselves the last chance for hope and freedom in Southeast Asia. And, while it isn’t an ‘intellectual’ thing with them, they know they’re being sold out. When you’re in a rice paddy dodging bullets, or tramping through the jungle watching for booby traps, mines, punji pits and poisonous reptiles, you don’t think about the ‘meaning’ of our policies in Vietnam. But when our politicians tie your hands with everything from bombing halts to outright trade with the enemy—well, our men know they are being betrayed.”
Like untold thousands of other officers before him, Paul Erickson would settle for nothing less than victory over the Communists. “I have left the Army but I have not left the fight,” he emphasizes. “I returned to this country as a civilian because here is where this war will be won or lost, and it is up to every American to fight it to win!”
Lt. Col. Erickson has joined many other veterans of Vietnam in speaking out, whenever and wherever he can, urging Americans to recognize that the policies of their own leaders are an even graver threat to our troops in the field than is the Vietcong. Whether speaking for a TRAIN committee or getting a petition filled, working twelve hours a day to tell Americans what is happening, Paul Erickson knows he is still at war.
Another Vietnam veteran, former Lieutenant Robert G. LoPresti, has learned that the most brutal memories of war are those of needless suffering and death. Bob remembers working in vain with obsolete and worn-out equipment in Vietnam, with no spare parts, trying desperately to produce enough oxygen for a field hospital near Pleiku. “I stood by, powerless to help, as Marines died because we lacked some critical component. Try as we did, with every resource we had, we could not produce the desperately needed gas.”
Returning to this country, he was horrified to discover that our government was supplying our Communist enemies with huge quantities of the same equipment and parts which he had lacked in Vietnam. “The same machinery I couldn’t get,” he told me, “the same equipment that would have saved the lives of those Marines, was declared ‘non-strategic’** and shipped to the very countries that supplied the rifles and bullets that are killing our men!” Yes, Bob LoPresti has a lot to tell the American people, if they will only listen:
I remember visiting the Sixty-Seventh Evacuation Hospital in Qhi Nhon. Walking through the intensive-care ward, I saw dozens of soldiers who had been maimed and mutilated. They had lost arms or legs, they were covered with plastic and swathed in bandages stained deep red by their own blood. Most were in agonizing pain or under heavy sedation. I knew that many would not live and others would be crippled and disfigured for life.Seeing this bitter fruit of our government’s madness I wondered how much of this could have been avoided, how many lives would have been saved, if our forces had been permitted to fight for victory. And I wondered how our politicians would try to explain to these men about sending “non-strategic” items to an enemy that has pledged to destroy us.
Like Robert LoPresti, there are now many others who are speaking out, frequently and effectively. Across the country, as angry and alarmed veterans expose the betrayers who would substitute defeat for victory, grateful wives and parents, brothers and fellow-servicemen come forward to thank them—and to ask how they can help. There are no television specials devoted to this Crusade, and the leading magazines turn a deaf ear to pleas that they report this side of the story. But these men are no longer alone. And they WILL be heard.
Right now, tens of thousands of concerned Americans are laboring day and night to help build the kind of army that General Harkins and General Scott and General LeMay say we need to win this struggle. People like the Duelks and Bob LoPresti and Paul Erickson, and retired generals and men who were privates, and housewives, doctors, bankers, and bakers—are all working to persuade enough of their fellow citizens to demand a halt in all aid and trade with our Communist enemies and an end to the restrictions tying the hands of our military. They are an army working to create the groundswell of public awareness that will put an end to this sellout.
Joining their efforts in local citizen action groups such as TRAIN, or through their civic clubs and service organizations, and sometimes by themselves, such Americans are quickly mastering the weapons that must be used in this strange new kind of warfare. Petitions, letters, discussion groups, literature and speaking engagements. news releases and personal contact, are now the arms and ammunition in the battle to win the war where it must be won first—the battle to defeat thefriends of the Vietcong right here at home.
As in any important endeavor, there are sometimes serious disappointments. Most discouraging is the timidity of many of these groups that should be signaling the “charge,” yet are already swarming in retreat.
An American Legion post in the Midwest, for example, recently refused the use of its building by a thoroughly responsible Vietnam veteran for an address to a public meeting—because the directors were afraid that the speech, calling for victory in Vietnam, might be “controversial” and lead to the revocation of their liquor license. In a large Southwestern city, not long afterward, the local chapter of the D.A.R. refused to permit one of its members to offer tickets for a similar speech by another Vietnam veteran. These Daughters of the American Revolution—all descendants of the men who helped to secure the freedoms we now hold so precariously—did not want the placid comfort of their tea parties disturbed by an appeal for action.
Such a negative response, thank God, is far from typical of the D.A.R. or the American Legion. The overwhelming majority of Americans are on our side in this struggle—most of them simply don’t know that the war is being waged here and now. And it is up to us to convince them. It is up to us to overcome their apathy and ignorance, their confusion and neglect.
Of course, it is not apathy that leads our State Department to promise the Communists that they may ship war materiel with immunity to Communist North Vietnam while at the same time the chief suppliers of the Vietcong—the Soviet Union and its Communist satellites—are each month receiving millions of dollars worth of goods and equipment from the United States.‡ It is not ignorance when the Defense Department threatens to court martial any pilot who dares molest a ship, a train, or a plane transporting weapons of war to Communist North Vietnam. And it is not confusion when our politicians call a “time out” after every important Communist defeat by our military—a bombing pause which enables that enemy to dispatch more weapons, more supplies, and more support to its forces. These things have been secured for the enemy by men who fully realize that neither victory nor peace is possible in South Vietnam, so long as Communist North Vietnam remains a haven and sanctuary for waging war.
Our leaders in Washington are aware—although the American people are not—that Communist documents captured last year during Operation Cedar Falls contained clear instructions from Hanoi on the strategy of “conquest through negotiations.” The instructions to Vietcong officers from Communist North Vietnam specified:
Peace talks and military operations will be used to serve in a practical manner our political strategy during the crucial struggle beginning in 1968 for control of South Vietnam.
Governments of South Vietnam and the U.S. will be brought under strong domestic and international pressure to cease all military operations above the 17th Parallel in exchange for negotiations on our conditions.Our strategy will be to exact concessions for an agreement to open talks, but without a cease-fire in South Vietnam. While negotiations drag on, every effort will be made to erode the positions of the U.S. and South Vietnamese government with continued military operations. The objective is to force the acceptance of our peace conditions in the south.
This Communist timetable has been followed to the letter—by their side and by ours.
The day before the latest bomb halt was announced, Sergeant Jerry L. Turner, just back from the war zone, told the Chattanooga Free Press that “stopping the bombing would be suicide for the men in Vietnam.” Waving an empty sleeve, he explained that he had a special stake in trying to prevent such a sellout of our men. “I have an arm invested over there,” he said.
While American servicemen were horrified and dismayed by the President’s decision, it is not surprising that Communist leaders throughout the world hailed his Halloween bombing halt—granted without confirmation of any of the concessions from the Communists that the President had earlier specified as absolutely essential to such a move. On November second, Ho chi Minh even called the bombing halt “a victory of very important significance for our people’s great struggle.” And, he added: “It is the sacred duty of our entire people to increase our determination to fight and to win…. As long as there is a single aggressor in our country, we must fight on to sweep him away.”
The Soviet Union and the Vietcong’s National Liberation Front promptly echoed Ho’s delight. The Comrades were ecstatic as they prepared to advance their strategy of “fight and talk, talk and fight.” General Vo nguyen Giap, the Communists’ military boss in Southeast Asia, even described this procedure as “the highest form of warfare.”
Nor is it surprising that, less than two weeks after the latest bomb halt began, Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford was forced to acknowledge that the Communists had already violated every one of the “conditions” the United States had set for ending the bombing: supplies were flowing to the South at an increased rate, Communist attacks were being launched from the so-called Demilitarized Zone, and the civilians of South Vietnam’s cities and towns were being shelled by Red terrorists. And as more Americans and South Vietnamese died because of the bombing pause, Clifford maintained: “I think the talks can still be productive.”
Of course they can, Mr. Secretary. The question is, for whom?
Meanwhile, the Insiders have again moved quickly and, they hope, convincingly, to reassure trusting and gullible Americans that the fighting will soon be ended. From Robert McNamara’s fraudulent claims four years ago that victory was “just around the corner,” to the truces in 1966 and the false hopes that “the enemy is getting reasonable,” to the negotiations and concessions in 1968, the consequences of the “sellout” policy have always been the same. While our men in uniform know they could win quickly and easily if permitted to do so, the promises of our Leftist politicians end only in death and defeat.
What changes can be expected in 1969? Soviet leaders have steadily boasted of their support for the Communist war effort and show no sign of change. Indeed, shortly before these lines were written, Soviet Communist Party chief Leonid Brezhnev bragged that Hanoi “would have been unable to keep up its heroic struggle against the forces of the world’s largest imperialist power for so many years without the active and effective assistance of the Soviet Union, Poland, and other Socialist countries.” Such support was made possible, alas, because our leaders have insisted on sending aid and trade to these same Communist regimes.
No, the Communists will not stop fighting so long as we continue to make it profitable for them to continue.
Will the new Administration that takes office this January finally permit our men to win? Will President-elect Nixon remove the restrictions that our military leaders have said are sending American troops into battle with one hand tied behind their backs? Will the assistance North Vietnam must have to continue waging war be cut off at its source in the United States?
While millions of Americans are praying that the answers to these questions will be an emphatic and determined “yes,” Richard Milhous Nixon has already said “no.” In fact, in a November eleventh meeting in Washington with President Johnson, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and other top officials of the Johnson Administration, Mr. Nixon pledged his full support for the Johnson Administration’s foreign policy.
No, these policies will not be changed until enough Americans demand a change. They will not be changed until, as General LeMay has said, “the American people blow the whistle on the whole incredible operation.”
Thankfully, Americans all over the country are realizing that it is up to them. And thousands of them are meeting this challenge and responsibility.
The two most successful campaigns are the petition to Congress, demanding a halt in all trade and aid to our Communist enemies, and the nationwide network of ad hoc committees called TRAIN. Both were launched originally by The John Birch Society, and both have grown far beyond this base.
As I have already noted, more than 1,200,000 signatures have been collected on these petitions; more than 1,000,000 were delivered to Senators and Representatives in the last year, and that figure should be doubled in the coming months.
This amazing record has been compiled without fanfare and without publicity. The nation’s “Liberal” Press, as the wounded Vietnam veterans with whom I spoke noted, has said hardly a word about this massive public referendum. It is a result of plenty of hard work by concerned citizens who have rung doorbells, distributed leaflets, and organized booths at shopping centers and county fairs for just one reason: to help our men in Vietnam. And you had better believe our men appreciate it. Here is a report from one such worker in western Illinois:
This drive really boosted our morale! Shy members found themselves out in the aisles, collecting passers by. Our TRAIN booth was by far the most striking, with flags set in brass shells from my husband’s destroyer on each side of our billboard, which read: “Why Fight ‘Em In Vietnam And Help ‘Em Everywhere Else ?”One young man on his way to Vietnam took a petition and returned fifteen minutes later with it filled with the signatures of his buddies. A Vietnam veteran—half of his face scar tissue—signed the petition and was so thankful we were doing something that tears came to my eyes.An older, well-dressed man read it carefully and signed saying, “And every word is true!” Single girls and several young expectant mothers looked serious as they read and signed our petition.For us who staffed the booth, as for those who read and signed, we were all grateful that we could do something.
This campaign can produce support from some unexpected quarters as well. At a banquet for the Marine Corps League just before the election, petitions were presented to everyone present— including three U.S. Congressmen who had voted against stopping aid to the Communists. All three signed without batting an eye. One wonders whether their change of heart will last through the next roll call on this crucial issue. The signing Congressmen were New York Democrats Emanuel Celler, Hugh L. Carey, and John M. Murphy. But few reports can match the significance and impact of this one, from a twenty-three-year-old soldier who enclosed three completed petitions, bearing fifty-one signatures:We of the 25th Division, 4th Battalion, 23rd Infantry, Mechanized Reconnaissance Platoon, Cu Chi, Vietnam, believe wholeheartedly in this petition. God bless you in all your work.
There are now 550,000 other such Americans in Vietnam, just as concerned about winning as this young man. They are fighting in the mud and jungles and swamps of South Vietnam— fighting a war they are not allowed to win—while our Leftists at home help their enemy grow stronger. These men are looking to us—and, mister, we had better not fail them.
I have talked with steel-spined generals, men who have often laughed at death and laughed last, but who had tears in their eyes as they discussed the restrictions and handicaps that have sent 33,000 Americans to their deaths in a war where the rules are rigged against them by Leftist politicians playing the enemy’s game.
I have talked with soldiers and sailors and Marines who could have been my younger brother—except they have stumps instead of legs, and empty sleeves where their arms should be. They told me again and again to write it like it is. And always their message was the same: “We need help. We need support. God help us if we don’t win this thing, and fast.”
So now I’m talking to you, mister. Yes, you. You who hesitated to voice an opinion, because you were afraid of becoming controversial. You who have responded to every plea for help with the thin reply, “Keep up the good work —but don’t use my name.”
Yes, and I’m talking to you who have tried to brush off every disturbing fact about Vietnam with a complacent shrug and the remark, “You’ve got to have more trust in our leaders; they must know what they’re doing.”
Well, I’ve got news for you. They do. After seven years and 250,000 casualties, you can be damned sure they know precisely what they’re doing.
And, if this country of ours means anything at all to you, you’d better get busy and help stop them.
* * *
* TRAIN (To Restore American Independence Now) is a nationwide network of hundreds of local citizen-action committees formed to restore traditional American principles to our foreign policy. TRAIN’s immediate projects include offering moral support to our servicemen, demanding victory in Vietnam, and urging Congress to halt all aid and trade to the Communist enemy supporting the Vietcong.
** The list of items that our government has declared “non-strategic” for shipment to the Communists includes diesel fuel, iron ore, aluminum, industrial chemicals, ground and marine radar, synthetic rubber, scrap iron, airborne navigation equipment — yes, and even rifle-cleaning compounds. The Department of Commerce has said that these materials and hundreds more “may be freely exported [to the Communists] without any risks to the United States national interests.”
‡ In the first six months of 1968, U.S. exports to the Communist-bloc countries of Eastern Europe surpassed 5100 million. While it is known that more than eighty percent of these goods consisted of highly sophisticated technical equipment—food and clothing accounting for less than S20 million —it is impossible to learn exactly what military products were sent. The Administration has classified this information as “Top Secret,” and a supine Congress has yet to challenge this censorship. Even more alarming is the steady increase of technical specifications, industrial blueprints, and scientific data being sent to the Communists.