From Vietnam to 9/11 by John P. Murtha, John Plashal (With)

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FROM VIETNAM TO 9/11

THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Chapter One

My family has had a tradition of military service for several generations. Robert Bell, one of my mother's ancestors, fought in the Revolutionary War. His great-grandson, Abraham Tidball Bell, served in the Union Army during the Civil War. A small wooden box on my desk, where I keep important family documents, contains a letter from him describing his duties: while stationed in Washington, D.C., he guarded the Capitol-the very building I have worked in since 1974. His widow, Mary Bell, lived to be ninety-six. I can remember her telling me when I was a child, "One person can make a difference."

My father's ancestors immigrated from Ireland during the potato famine of the 1840s. The family settled in western Pennsylvania, where my grandfather was involved in coal mining and banking. My father and his three brothers all fought in World War II. I was just eight years old when the United States entered the war. I realized that something of great significance was happening, but I had no concept of the issues involved or the enormity of the war.

A variety of local civic projects were quickly organized to helpthe war effort. I remember going with my mother to fields just outside town to pick milkweed. The down from this plant was used to fill the linings of life jackets to make them buoyant. We collected aluminum foil (we called it tinfoil) peeled from chewing gum wrappers and Hershey bars and empty packs of cigarettes; wrapped into large balls, the foil became raw material for war plants. Many of the housewives in our town went to work in those plants. By the time the war effort really geared up, more than six million women joined the workforce and were employed in the production of tanks, personnel carriers, ships, aircraft, and ammunition. Their contribution to the Allies' ultimate victory was enormous.

One of my father's brothers, Regis Murtha, was in the Army Air Corps. He was shot down over Germany but survived. My father and his three brothers were overseas during the entire war, but they all returned safely. Tom Brokaw was indeed right when he called theirs "the greatest generation." I also remember that so many women who had been staying at home entered the workforce. Three million women worked in industry and made an invaluable contribution producing armaments for the war effort. Millions more served as volunteers for a variety of agencies. Another 350,000 women joined the armed forces.

I was twelve when my father and his brothers came home from the war. I was very curious about what they had experienced, but they had little to say about it. I was to discover that silence about wartime experiences was common among World War II veterans. I was never sure if their reticence stemmed from a sense that a man just had to carry out an obligation to serve his country and then put it behind him, or if some of their experiences had been so painful and traumatic that they simply preferred not to talk about them.

My Decision to Join the Marine Corps

I graduated from high school in 1950, the year North Korea invaded South Korea. In reaction to the invasion, President Harry S Truman, one of the most decisive presidents in our history, decided immediately to send American troops to counter the attack under the flag of the United Nations. I expected it to be a short war. I considered joining the Army, but my mother and grandfather insisted that I attend college. I enrolled in Washington and Jefferson College. A casual observer would have thought I was majoring in football and basketball.

So many young men who ordinarily would have been attending college were in the service that our football team had only twenty-eight players. I was in the ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) and planned to go on active duty as a second lieutenant after I graduated. With so many of my contemporaries in the service, however, I just didn't feel comfortable sitting out the war on campus, and I decided to enlist as a private in the Marine Corps. My mother was furious when I broke the news to her.

I had to wear my civilian clothes for the first two weeks of boot camp. Uniforms were in such short supply that none were available for me. At the end of boot camp, I received the American Spirit Medal award "for the display of outstanding qualities of leadership best expressing the American Honor, Initiative, Loyalty and High Example to Comrades in Arms." Of the sixteen military awards I've received, I'm proudest of that one.

My first assignment was as drill instructor at Parris Island, South Carolina, molding new recruits into Marines. I took and passed a four-year college equivalency test and was offered a chance to attend the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. I declined in favor of the Officer Candidate Screening Course at the Marine Corps base at Quantico, Virginia. There I had an opportunity to become an officer if I successfully completed a vigorous regimen. It was a demanding course, both physically and mentally, designed to eliminate candidates who could not do well under stress. The training involved long marches, familiarization with weapons, being awakened in the middle of the night for surprise training exercises, and constant assessment of initiative under a variety of challenging circumstances. When we gathered on the parade ground on the last day, we were told that each man was to join a group on either the right or the left when his name was called. We knew that one group was graduating and the other was not, but we weren't told which was which. As the names were called, it seemed to me that some of the most capable candidates were told to go to the left. I had been told to go to the group on the right. The presiding officer finally announced that the group on the right had passed and had become second lieutenants. We then took the Officer Basic Training Course, which transformed civilians and enlisted Marines into officers. During the course I gained increased confidence in my leadership skills. Upon graduation, I volunteered to go to Korea and received orders to do so, but the truce ending the war was signed shortly afterward and my orders were canceled.

I still had two years to serve, and during that time I was lucky to have a crusty career Marine-Major Wilson-as my mentor. As a platoon commander and an assistant operations officer stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, I was involved in a wide variety of training and operations. Major Wilson instilled in me a simple four-word credo that has stuck with me ever since: "Pay attention to details." It is a basic approach that has served me well over the years.

While I was stationed at Camp Lejeune I met Joyce Bell (no relation to my maternal grandmother), who lived in the nearby town of Richlands. We started dating, and when I was transferred to the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, outside of Washington, D.C., Joyce moved to the Washington area with two of her girlfriends. We were married in Alexandria, Virginia, not long afterward. Soon we had three children-twin boys, John and Patrick, and our daughter, Donna. The birth of the twins was a surprise. When Joyce was pregnant, she went to the doctor every month but he never detected any sign of a second child. I remember thinking in the last two months of her pregnancy that this was going to be a big baby. After John was born and scrubbed down, the doctor removed his surgical mask and told the nurses that he was headed for his next appointment. One of the nurses, who had just immigrated from Scotland, said in her Scottish brogue, "Doctor, how aboot the other baby?"

As we began to raise our family, I attended the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown while working forty hours a week at the car wash and gas station my father had bought. Dad had a long battle with alcoholism, and he was neglecting the business. When it began losing money, I had to take over its operation. My family responsibilities and the long hours I spent running the business forced me to drop out of college. My mother and Joyce were very upset by my decision, but eventually I went back to the University of Pittsburgh part-time, majoring in economics, and received my degree.

During those years of working and attending school, I continued to study military matters and read a lot of military history. I also had an insatiable interest in foreign affairs. In 1954, I followed the news about France's defeat in its effort to regain control of French Indochina, now Vietnam. I read that the Vietnamese had to haul their heavy weapons by hand up the mountains around Dien Bien Phu, where the climatic battle took place. I saw on newsreels the tenacity of the Vietnamese troops and the sacrifices they made. Although the United States provided the French with about $1 billion to assist their war effort in Indochina, President Eisenhower turned down their request for close air support for their embattled forces at Dien Bien Phu. The tide of history was running against colonialism. As I watched those newsreels, I had no idea that twelve years later I would be in Vietnam, fighting against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces. The head of North Vietnam's forces while I served in Vietnam was General Vo Nguyen Giap, the very commander who had defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu.

After I finished my active duty, I joined the Marine Corps Reserves and became the commanding officer of the 34th Rifle Company in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Serving in the Reserves required one weekend of training a month and two weeks of active duty each year. During those two-week periods I had a variety of assignments, from the jungle warfare school in Panama to a guerrilla warfare school at Camp Pendleton, California. Undergoing this type of training and becoming an expert in those areas seemed especially practical, in view of the victory of Mao Tse-tung's guerrilla forces over Chiang Kai-shek in mainland China, the victory of the Vietnamese in their war against the French, and the ongoing guerrilla wars elsewhere in Asia.

I was promoted steadily and attained the rank of major in the mid-1960s. By that time the United States' commitment to South Vietnam had begun to escalate. At the end of President Kennedy's first year in office, there had been 3,200 American military personnel in Vietnam, primarily as advisers. After Kennedy's assassination and Lyndon Johnson's succession to the presidency, LBJ swamped the Republican candidate, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, in the 1964 presidential race. President Johnson was determined not to be the first American president to lose a war. As our commitment to South Vietnam escalated, so did the level of our casualties. From January 1961 to July 1965, 503 Americans were killed, 2,270 wounded, and 57 missing or captured. By mid-1965 the scope and stakes of our involvement in Vietnam had begun to change radically. The numbers of North Vietnamese regular troops infiltrating into South Vietnam were increasing significantly, and in July 1965 President Johnson ordered the U.S. forces there increased from 23,000 to 125,000. And for the first time they were to be used in direct combat.

I Return to Active Duty

I decided to volunteer to serve in Vietnam. As a thirty-three-year-old with three children who had previously served on active duty and now was serving in the Reserves, I was not eligible for the draft, but I felt strongly that it was my duty to serve. The family business was doing well by this time and the profits from it plus my Marine Corps pay ensured that Joyce and the children would be taken care of during my absence. My brother Charles ran the business while I was gone. It was an emotional moment when I discussed my decision to return to active duty with Joyce, but she agreed.

When I informed the Marine Corps of my intentions, they sent me a telegram saying I could replace an officer at Camp Lejeune, freeing him to go to Vietnam. I told the Marine Corps my intention was to go to Vietnam myself, not to serve Stateside so that somebody else could go. Soon I received orders for "Ground Forces, Vietnam" and I packed my bags. It was a damp, blustery day when I bade an emotional farewell to my family.

I flew to the Treasure Island Naval Base in San Francisco, filled out some paperwork, and flew on to the island of Okinawa, south of Japan. The officer I reported to said, "We'll keep you here on Okinawa, at least for a while." I protested and showed him my orders: "Ground Forces, Vietnam." After the military and civilian bureaucrats shuffled papers for a day or two, they sent me on to the war zone.

The flight from Okinawa to Vietnam was on a World War II-vintage C-47 transport. I vividly remember the last few minutes of that flight. I was sitting next to a chaplain and we were looking out of the window as we flew over the sea on the approach to Da Nang. The foliage was glistening from a recent rain and the seacoast was a spectacular panorama with the waves breaking on a vast white sandy beach. Everything appeared to be peaceful, exotic, and beautiful. I remember saying to the chaplain, "How could a war be going on in a country of such breathtaking beauty?"

South Vietnam was divided into four military regions and the large air base at Da Nang, where we landed, was the most northern of the four. It was referred to as I Corps, and 41,000 Marines were there in 1966. Two of South Vietnam's largest cities, Hue and Da Nang, were located in the I Corps.

The officer I reported to at division headquarters wanted to transfer to another location in Vietnam and asked me to take over his job. He did administrative work in the G-I section. I argued with him, pulling out my orders one more time and pointing to the words "Ground Forces, Vietnam." I was getting the feeling that the major obstacle to my serving in the field in Vietnam was the Marine Corps itself.

Colonel Crossfield, the chief administrative officer, heard us arguing and came over to ask what the problem was. When we told him, he decided he did not want to train a reserve officer with no background in administrative work to become his chief administrative assistant. Since I was a senior major by that time, it was difficult to place me because there were few slots for that rank in the First Marine Regiment. Colonel Crossfield decided I should be assigned as the First Marine Regiment's intelligence officer. The regiment had three main missions: destroy the military and supply infrastructure of the Viet Cong guerrillas and their North Vietnamese allies in our tactical area of responsibility (TAOR), protect the Da Nang Air Base from attack, and develop friendly relations with the local Vietnamese people.

I took the intelligence slot with the understanding that if a command position opened up for my rank, I would get it.

Continues...

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Excerpted from FROM VIETNAM TO 9/11 by JOHN P. MURTHA with JOHN PLASHAL Copyright © 2003 by The Pennsylvania State University
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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