Armed with Abundance

Consumerism and Soldiering in the Vietnam War

Meredith H. Lair

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780807869185
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Vietnam War
• Index: History

Popular representations of the Vietnam War tend to emphasize violence, deprivation, and trauma. By contrast, in Armed with Abundance, Meredith Lair focuses on the noncombat experiences of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, redrawing the landscape of the war so that swimming pools, ice cream, visits from celebrities, and other "comforts" share the frame with combat. To address a tenuous morale situation, military authorities, Lair reveals, wielded abundance to insulate soldiers--and, by extension, the American public--from boredom and deprivation, making the project of war perhaps easier and certainly more palatable. The result was dozens of overbuilt bases in South Vietnam that grew more elaborate as the war dragged on. Relying on memoirs, military documents, and G.I. newspapers, Lair finds that consumption and satiety, rather than privation and sacrifice, defined most soldiers' Vietnam deployments. Abundance quarantined the U.S. occupation force from the impoverished people it ostensibly had come to liberate, undermining efforts to win Vietnamese "hearts and minds" and burdening veterans with disappointment that their wartime service did not measure up to public expectations. With an epilogue that finds a similar paradigm at work in Iraq, Armed with Abundance offers a unique and provocative perspective on modern American warfare.

CHAPTER ONE

Same Side, Different Wars

Grunts and REMFs in Vietnam

Somewhere outside Saigon, a large black-and-white sign stood by the side of the road: “WARNING: You Are About to Enter One of the Most Dangerous Combat Areas in Viet-Nam / A Public Highway / Please Drive Carefully.”¹ This sign, and others like it, used the war as a metaphor to make a clever comment on local traffic, that a Vietnamese public highway represented a battlefield all its own, where military convoys and civilian vehicles fought for position along the road. Separated from its context of reckless drivers and heavy traffic, the sign would seem to demarcate safety and danger, as though the war’s sprawling expanse could be confined to a specific area and labeled accordingly. But the lines between safety and danger were not drawn so clearly in Vietnam.

In theory, hostilities could break out anywhere because the enemy was everywhere. The military wing of the National Liberation Front, also known as the Viet Cong, relied on unconventional tactics to achieve its twin objectives of destabilizing the Saigon regime and forcing an American withdrawal. Prior to the American buildup, acts of terror like car bombings and grenade attacks pressed the war into unusual places: the bleachers of a softball game attended by American military families in 1964, or the sidewalk outside the American Embassy in 1965.² Later, any place where American G.I.’s congregated was a potential target for guerrilla attack; tourist markets, restaurants, bars, and brothels across South Vietnam all saw their share of violence. Viet Cong rockets and mortars also ensured that no American base, no matter how large or how close to Saigon, was ever totally safe, a fact made plain by the 1968 Tet Offensive. In that watershed event, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese units attacked five of six major South Vietnamese cities and thirty-six of forty-four provincial capitals. American bases from the Demilitarized Zone in the north to the Ca Mau peninsula in the south came under fire. So fluid was the nature of combat in South Vietnam, and so complete was the Viet Cong’s hold over the countryside, that one G.I. described life on an American base as living “on an island in a country controlled by the V.C.”³ While life on the island could be quite good, the calculus of terror ensured that soldiers on rearward bases still lived with the gnawing fear that the world might explode at any moment.

And yet, the location of a soldier’s tour and the duties he performed clearly demarcated the borders of the war. The lines between combat and noncombat areas might be difficult to draw in Vietnam, but they were still easily understood by the Americans who served there. “Safety” was a relative phenomenon, and “the rear” was anything behind you. To the infantryman walking point, the rear was the back of the column. To the guys on ambush patrol, the rear was their remote base camp. To the guys whose duties confined them to that raggedy little outpost, the rear was brigade or division headquarters. To headquarters personnel stationed up-country, the rear was Long Binh, Tan Son Nhut, or Danang. And to personnel stationed at those massive installations, the rear was American bases elsewhere in Asia or even the United States itself. Still, the difference between a Saigon street and a trail in the Central Highlands was measurable and real to the soldiers who traversed them. Out in the boonies, fear—the chest-pounding, heart-stopping kind—was a constant companion, and death seemed to lurk in every shadow. In the cities, the threats were more diverse—thieves on motorcycles, fatal traffic accidents, the occasional fragmentation grenade—and violence was less a certainty. Because of this discrepancy, the location of a soldier’s tour of duty profoundly influenced his Vietnam War experience.

A soldier’s occupational assignment also shaped his tour of duty in Vietnam, sometimes more so than the location of that tour. Infantrymen were sent into contested areas, while support personnel generally did their work in more secure places. Uncertainty abounded, except when it came to combat versus noncombat roles. It was hard to know a safe path from one planted with mines, and it was often impossible to distinguish a Viet Cong guerrilla from a Vietnamese peasant. But every American who served in Vietnam could tell a grunt from a cook, a ground pounder from a pencil pusher, and the airborne from the chairborne. They enjoyed vastly different living and working conditions and endured divergent levels of danger and suffering. These differentials created a profound schism between American soldiers ostensibly serving on the same side in two very different wars. And soldiers’ reactions to these inequities demonstrate how the American way of war failed to provide new recruits with the life-altering experience they expected, hoped, or dreaded Vietnam would be.

All Gave Some, and Some Gave All.
—popular post-9/11 slogan

Approximately 2.5 million Americans served in the Vietnam War. Though the number of American troops who served in combat is not precisely known, military historians generally accept 10 to 25 percent as an appropriate estimate, recognizing that the proportions changed over time. Several factors make determining an exact figure extremely difficult. First, soldiers assigned to combat units might never see combat, while soldiers assigned to support units might find themselves under enemy rocket attack while walking to the P.X. Second, the definition of “combat” itself is elastic, ranging from daily encounters with the enemy to random acts of terror or sabotage. Third, the ratio of combat to noncombat troops varied by branch of service, preventing the division of military personnel into neat categories. Most Navy and Air Force personnel supported pilots and their crews from the ground, and the Coast Guard focused on surveillance and port security that kept its sailors from confronting the enemy directly. The Marine Corps had the highest percentage of its Vietnam forces engaged in combat, and statistics for the Army fall in between. While some Army units took the war to the enemy, the majority of its personnel provided logistical support for the Army as well as the other service branches. Finally, the percentage of American troops engaged in combat operations varied throughout the war; as more troops and equipment were sent to Vietnam, the number of personnel required to support them grew exponentially.

The ratio of combat to noncombat troops drew criticism from the media and some members of Congress. In 1967, reports out of Saigon indicated that only 70,000 of the 464,000 American soldiers in Vietnam at that time were combat troops, raising questions about the efficiency of the American war machine. The following year, Congress debated whether the Pentagon’s budget was too fat, with critics citing Vietnam force structure as evidence. Of 525,000 troops stationed in Vietnam in early 1968, only 40,000 were riflemen, whose numbers were regarded as the primary measure of combat strength for counterinsurgency operations. Critiques of the Vietnam tooth-to-tail ratio were rooted in traditional ideas about war, specifically that combat was its normative experience, though support troops had increasingly outnumbered combat troops since the Civil War. The Pentagon refuted the charge of inefficiency embedded in reports about the ratio, arguing that the figures were based on an oversimplification of military force structure.⁴

Within the military, Pentagon officials explained, troops were divided into three categories, not two: combat units engaged the enemy directly; combat support units provided immediate support to combat troops; and combat service support units provided logistical support to ensure that enough of whatever was needed reached those on the front lines. Even if only 70,000 personnel in 1967 were assigned to combat units (the Pentagon refuted this figure without providing an alternative), tens of thousands of soldiers in combat support units were frequently placed in harm’s way. And yet, Secretary of Defense McNamara seemed to legitimize concerns over American military efficiency when he commented that the situation in Vietnam could be improved by “reducing the ratio of support to combat forces.”⁵ Just the opposite occurred. As troop strength rose until its peak in mid-1968, so too did the percentage of noncombat forces. Then, as troop strength began its decline in late 1968, the proportion of noncombat personnel increased. By 1972, 90 percent of American servicemen in Vietnam were in noncombat roles, and only 2,400 of the 49,000 troops still stationed there were allocated to fight the enemy on the ground.⁶

The complexity suggested by the Pentagon’s three-tiered force structure and historians’ inability to settle on a uniform set of statistics ignores the simplicity of the war’s map, as soldiers understood it at the time. There were contested areas, and then there was every place else. In combat zones, war zones, “the boonies,” or even “Indian Country,” infantrymen, or grunts, probed the countryside looking for North Vietnamese regulars and Viet Cong insurgents, suffering injuries from snipers, booby traps, mines, and all the non-combat-related mishaps that occur on heavily armed hikes through untamed wilderness. Combat itself drew even more blood, and remote outposts dealt with the constant threat of mortars, rockets, and direct enemy attack. In contrast, rear echelon personnel in noncombat areas held down the fort and provided the arms and amenities combat soldiers needed to stay in the fight. At some unknown time and place, the acronym REMF entered the Vietnam vernacular to describe these men. The dearth of affection and respect implied by the term, which stood for “rear echelon motherfucker,” only begins to suggest the tensions evident between factions of the United States armed forces.

Identifying REMFs was easy, especially compared with infantrymen. Their fatigues might be green and crisp, their boots retained a shine, and they often sported paunches resulting from rich mess hall fare and sedentary duty. When infantrymen returned from the field, they presented a marked contrast to the permanent residents of rearward bases. The grunts were lean and grizzled, the dirt of the trail resided in every crevice of their bodies, and their uniforms and boots were bleached white from scuffs and sun. A soldier’s appearance demonstrated his tenure in Vietnam, veteran Joe Dunn explained, so “an infantry private with months in the field felt quite justified in looking down on any newly arrived officer of any rank clad in the tell-tale greenish fatigues.” Airman Tom Yarborough confessed in his memoir to tuning out his first in-country briefing because he was thinking about how to modify his uniform. “I may not have been a combat veteran,” he recalled, “but I sure wanted to look like one.”⁷ Because of their access to laundry and new fatigues, and because of commanders’ greater scrutiny of rearward troops’ appearance, REMFs might always look freshly minted, no matter how long they had been in-country. Some newly arrived soldiers felt so self-conscious of looking like REMFs that they tried to distress their uniforms, especially the boots, to blend in with battle-hardened troops. Combat veterans were also aware of how their appearance transmitted experience; veteran George Watson recalled one infantryman who refused to replace his bleached fatigues during a second tour as a REMF because, he claimed, “he had a reputation to uphold.”⁸

Grunts may have felt superior to support personnel, but they were certainly outnumbered by them. The modern American war machine is a sophisticated affair, requiring enormous resources not only to subdue the enemy but also to sustain the troops. There was so much war work to be done in Vietnam, as the list of Military Occupational Specialties (MOS) attests. Supply personnel drove trucks into contested areas to bring ammunition to combat troops. Armaments personnel repaired the rifles, machine guns, and grenade launchers used by the infantry. Communications specialists relayed the messages that “kept the shooters talking,” and construction engineers paved a literal road to victory, or at least to stalemate, building ports and airfields along the way. Data processors compiled the information used to determine how the war was going, and staffers for the command historian conducted interviews and logged details that would one day become the Pentagon’s official record of the war. In the meantime, reporters and editors for unit newspapers with circulations ranging from 95 to 95,000 published informative articles about local units, helpful reminders about military policies, and breathtaking pinups of budding starlets. Feeding the troops required a legion of butchers, bakers, and ice cream makers, and keeping them entertained required legions more. Librarians shelved the books in base libraries, American Forces Vietnam Network (AFVN) television and radio technicians kept the airwaves filled with programming, entertainment specialists planned morale-boosting field trips and talent shows, specially trained escorts shuttled celebrities around the war zone, craft shop attendants minded the kilns and darkrooms, and lifeguards kept watch at the pools and beaches. Military-run retail outlets and bars employed even more personnel to stock the shelves, pour the drinks, book the bands, and count the slugs in the slot machines. Every occupation imaginable was represented in the ranks of the U.S. armed forces somewhere in Vietnam.

Because many American bases were comparable to cities in the United States, they required similar services. Military maintenance personnel worked to ensure that everything ran smoothly; an army of plumbers, electricians, and refrigerator repairmen kept the water running, the lights on, and the drinks ice cold. Military policemen guarded the gates, set speed traps on the highways, and even ran a central prison for American servicemen who violated civil or military laws. Air traffic controllers monitored thousands of fixed-wing flights each day at jet-capable airfields throughout Vietnam, which were some of the busiest airports in the world. At in-processing centers, military personnel welcomed new arrivals, and at out-processing centers they searched the bags and processed the forms that allowed short-timers to return home. In between, soldiers could serve in a variety of helping professions, including social workers who assisted Vietnamese civilians with self-help projects, medical and dental assistants who provided inoculations and checkups to Vietnamese civilians and American soldiers alike, and veterinary technicians who maintained the teeth and coats of sentry dogs, scout dogs, mascots, and soldiers’ personal pets. The U.S. Army even employed specially trained canvasmen who reupholstered the seats and soft tops of military vehicles. Working in this capacity, one lucky private got to spend part of his 1969 tour of duty restoring the ragtop on a Russian scout car that was being refurbished by his unit as a gift for South Vietnamese president Thieu.⁹ Regardless of how they served, all of these military personnel and thousands more stationed offshore on naval vessels, many of whom never went ashore in Southeast Asia, are called by the same name: “Vietnam veterans.”

Of all support troops in Vietnam, clerks were archetypal because their sedentary living and working conditions were usually furthest removed from conventional notions of war. Military clerks came in several varieties: stenographers, court clerks, postal clerks, personnel and administration clerks, supply clerks, finance clerks, chaplain’s assistants, and medical records specialists, among others. The MOS 71B, or clerk-typist, was found in every Army office in Vietnam. According to the Army’s handbook of Military Occupational Specialties, the clerk-typist had to have high verbal and reading abilities and the ability to type. His duties included organizing and typing reports based on verbal and written instructions, filing regulations and correspondence, and operating office equipment like mimeographs, copiers, and adding machines.¹⁰ Depending on the security situation and the amenities on his base, the clerk’s war work might be indistinguishable from a stateside deployment.

Clerks were so ubiquitous because the U.S. military modeled its occupation force on the modern corporation. Uniformed and civilian bureaucrats directed the war from air-conditioned offices in and around Saigon, and legions of clerks stationed throughout the war zone did their bidding. Managing what went where generated thousands of pages of documentation, and assessing the success of combat operations—through body counts, kill ratios, and weapons captured, among other metrics—required thousands more. So massive was this cumbersome bureaucracy that, by the late 1960s, the American military presence in Vietnam constituted the third-largest command economy in the world, behind the centralized bureaucracies of the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union.

Despite their number, clerks received very little attention from journalists covering the war because their duties did not make for good copy or compelling photographs when compared with the exploits of infantrymen or pilots. Mark Jury was one of the few photographers who bothered to capture what he termed “the paper-clip war.” In his photo essay The Vietnam Photo Book, Jury assumes a wry but belligerent antiwar posture when describing the strange world of the war as he encountered it in 1969 and 1970. A series of captions and pictures depicts “a typical day at Army headquarters: a draftee with a college degree listens to Simon and Garfunkel as he types the endless stream of paperwork. The colonel’s driver grapples with his latest hot rod model. And the sergeant major, who’s earning over $10,000 a year from the U.S. taxpayers, pushes on with his all-consuming project—reading through the Encyclopedia Britannica.” Jury did not deny that many Americans experienced deprivation and danger in Vietnam. Rather, by focusing on the paper-clip war, he paid subtle but bitter tribute to them: “For [support personnel] the killing and dying war is just something to read about in Stars and Stripes.” To underscore the disconnect between the two wars, Jury included a photograph of the Posthumous Awards office at U.S. Army Vietnam Headquarters, where staff determined appropriate commendations for the fallen. Fluorescent lights, file cabinets, and mound...