manpower and morale after tet rather than the us via-- us war in vietnam, did something change? in the months and years that followed, media documented a growing crisis. frequent stories of malaise and desertion, drug use, combat refusal, challenges to legitimate authority along with scandals and atrocities most infinite-- infamous was the massacre. documents tell much the same story. in thinking about what happened after the tet offensive we suggested things were different in the period before 1968. as we start talking about post tet i thought i would give you a quick picture of pre-tran2. the most common claims-- the most common claims that are made within the military and circulated is that in vietnam the united states had the best trained, best equipped, best disciplined force in its history, one of high morale. speaking in may 1966, exceeding my expectations. i have also the journalist peter arnett in 1966 say remount -- morale is remarkably high. here's sla marshall former combat historian from world war ii who is insisting that if morale were bad we would not know about it because the journalists are snooping on stories. more than anything else i wanted to point to the briefing given by the secretary of defense in saigon 1967 in which they claim without exception that morale was at an exceptional high. they left vietnam with satisfaction that they served their country well and-- assisting the vietnamese. what you see here since then, this language is up at the top no matter what the state of morale was but when you look at statistical information, with half 1 million troops in vietnam, the rate stayed at about 2.2% and for the army. this is unfortunately army centric. and the rest of the country they estimated i think improperly that the use of marijuana was one in 2000. they found no evidence whatsoever of heroin use, no mention of racial conflict, there was no mention of combat refusal or any kind of descent. it's impossible to make claims like this post 1968. there is certainly an internal perception as well as external that something had changed. what we are asking here is what actually did happen during this period following the offensive? i want to begin with the first session which is a roundtable monitored by-- chapman university and will feature prof. bill allison, and prof. wilbanks at the u.s. army command and gen. staff college and is happily living in tennessee. >> absolutely. >> we will turn it over to the first session. >> good morning, thank you so much for coming. i want to thanks beth-- think beth for inviting us out in the center of military history for supporting this as well. beth has already introduced this amazing panel so i will let you read it to me as we get started. the best place to start is 1971 and in that summer the armed forces journal published an amazing article. it's a scathing indict-- indictment of the armed forces called the collapse of the armed forces. you can tell this is not an uplifting assessment. the author is marine col. robert final and my guess is he's not excited about what he sees. this is how he opened the art of article. >> the morale discipline and battle worthiness of the us armed force is was lower and worse at any time in the history of the united states. those posers at valley ford had good right? the situation wasn't bad. it was really bad. social turbulence. pandemic drug addiction. race wars, sedition, civilian scape goats, malevolence. barracks, and primed at an armed forces, listen to this, distrusted, disliked, and often reviled by the public. so i will start with you since you are riled. know i'm getting. but actually i think of this as a good base to start this morning. jim i do want to start with you because as beth said we have a great opportunity here to have not just a veteran but a scholar. how did it feel to you in 1971 and 72? did you get the sense that he was onto something here or was he overstating his case? secondly, your views changed as you made the transition from veteran to scholar and delved into this as a historian the last few decades. >> i will preface by saying i was commissioned in 1969 and thought i was going to vietnam immediately. ended up going to germany. if by 1971, if i told you i had read the armed forces journal as a first lieutenant i would be lying because i had no idea there was an armed forces journal. i will tell you that i had a hard time disagreeing at least with his major points. i was in the third entrant infantry division, arrived into a unit that an army that seemed to me, and enlightened second lieut. , and army in disarray. we were understrength at about half the people i was supposed to have. i would submit that the r&b-- army in europe is paying the price for vietnam and it manifested itself in a number of ways. the troops that we had, they were unmotivated. they just wanted to get out of the army and get as far away from it is possible. there was no training for maintenance, the barracks were falling apart and the unit i served, half of our vehicles were in storage because we couldn't man them or fix them and we could fuel them. we did not have the money. it was a bit disconcerting to go out to our position on the german border to defend against the soviets and put up signs that say automatic rifle machine gunner because i didn't have bodies. i had enough people to manage the tracks in my platoon and that was it. the barracks were falling apart. junior ncos were coming from vietnam with less than a year. the best ones soldiered on and did their jobs. the worst ones put in their time so they could get out a lot of the senior ones do not did not want to confront troops. units were rife with discipline. drug use. high crime in the barracks. racial strife. drug abuse. things got so bad and it will sound melodramatic but i volunteered to go to vietnam to get out of seventh army air. i arrived in 1971 to a different army and it was an army that only had four entry battalions left out of a high of 77 if i remember right. that's not to say that the combat units haven't been fighting because they have. if you track the time the battle of hamburger hill in 69 and cambodia in 1970. when you want to talk about morale and combat effectiveness, consider rip cord where a small unit was -- three medals of honor were awarded for the combat fair. the work continues. we did not go across the border on the ground but did support from the air and in the process lost 107 helicopters. the war continued, the combat units i think felt a sense of purpose because they had to for their own salvation. by the time that i got there there were fractures beginning to show. whether it was to the extent that he mentions or not, it's clear that there were serious problems going on fire based marianne, a few of these incidents. i won't go into specifics though some of our other speakers will. recent scholarships suggest that maybe they're a bit overblown. i came to agree with the major that said 1971, it has become a poison in the veins of the u.s. army, the degree of demoralization is not immediately dangerous. when they have to us troops fight and they fight well. the central question is for an army that begin to wilt, to manage to wilt just a little. i think that's been sort of what i've found in my research. combat units continued to fight but increasingly began to ask yourself who wants to be the last guy killed in the if we aren't going home anyway? >> some really interesting work has been done on military justice in the military justice system so i wanted to ask you. did the case is being prosecuted by the judge advocate course suggest there was a problem here? you state that military crimes were among the more telling indicators of the disintegration of us military forces. how did the case is being prosecuted relate what was going on? >> this goes with what jim just talked about. people where they're doing their jobs and doing them well especially in the battle space. outside of that, as 1969 war into 1970 and people withdraw and that sort of thing, there's a lot of people in vietnam as we will find out later today with some of the other talks, most people in vietnam do not have a gun in their hands. the veterans of the audience will recognize the nomenclature and i will not go further than that. as things wind down you've got a lot of people with a lot of money and materials, a lot of time on their hands. vietnam was a good place to find trouble because there was plenty of it. as far as military crimes, a wall and desertion, willful refusal, willful subordination assault and murder of fellow searchers soldiers usually involving rank which we term as fragging but the other thing that's going on in germany during vietnam. drug use both dealing and using. i like that. [ laughter ] very timely. drug use, illicit act tiffany's, misappropriation of military property, and as jim also mentioned, theft. soldier on soldier theft in the barracks, wherever it is. this is going on in the united states but also in vietnam. and of course the assault and murder of vietnamese civilians. yes the combat situations which you would quant classify as atrocities are worth war crimes, but also in relation to black-market activities currency fraud and things like that. i know it's first thing in the morning and last thing i want to do is hit you with a bunch of data, but beth opened the door because she mentioned court-martial rates and things like that before tet. so real click click for the army and the as beth mentioned because they were the easiest to pull out, 1968 force insubordination of willful refusal, the. 94 cases are tried. 128 tried and 117 convictions in 1969. 1970 you have 152 tried and 131 convictions. i think you can safely double that for the ones investigated and do not go to trial, perhaps even more. desertion rate. awol rate. 57.2 per 1000. desertion 52.7. 1969, a wall 112 per thousand, desertion 42. 1971, 176 per thousand and desertion at 73 per thousand. fragging incidents. 1969 126 incidents with 37 deaths. 70, 271 incidents. 1971, 333 incidents but only 12 deaths which brings up interesting concepts about the point and purpose of fragging. >> or the effectiveness. >> fragmentation is really not the-- you know. leslie nonjudicial punishments. article 15. some of you may be too familiar with those. article 15's are things for minor offenses and in my research i found that a lot of times it was probably something that may be warranted a special or summary. but we don't have time, we don't want to do the paperwork, it's easy to take care of this this way with an article 15. this is just for the army. in 1957 46,000, 1968 49,000, 1969 66,000, 70, 64,000, and 1971 by the time jim got there and it's a smaller force, still 41,000 article 15's. numbers don't lie too much i don't think. that tells me that there's a problem. is it a problem in the battle space? i think less so it's a problem of not being in the battle space and having too much time on your hands and this was really affecting all of the servicemen and vietnam. >> what's really interesting is when you go back and read his article, his views on race. as he's talking about racial conflicts, he talked about how they are being sparked by young black enlisted man, and get this, white soldiers were more afraid of getting mugged by darks-- then being attacked by blacks than by enemies. i can ask you to generalize and i know that's difficult to do with vietnam in particular but based on your research, houses part of this conversation on morale after tet? >> my voice is a little raspy today. it's hard to generalize that but ultimately one of the things we need to be thinking about is what is happening at home amongst african-americans and in the community in particular, there's a fracturing of the movement in 1960s. that fracturing then reflects what's happening in vietnam whether they are ncos or enlisted personnel. you see more conservative organizations in the united states like the naacp or the urban league who are hesitant in 1966 or 67 to speak out against vietnam and johnson for that matter. the things happening for soldiers in vietnam, they establish more african-american soldiers who had been for many years touting a lot of the details that the army was a place they could go far and do a lot of things. at the same time there's a young generation both at home and enlisted draftees in the late 60s. may be first time in the military who are really disillusioned by a lot of the problems that they see both in duty assignments, treatments in terms of whether or not they will get article 15, and that's reflected also at home when you have young generations of vests , people like john lewis who are members of core and the humanly against vietnam and speak out quite early. by the time we get to 19 6768 and 69, that perspective has changed across the board starting with martin luther king and 67 speaking out against the vietnam war. you do start to see, followed by whitney young, who starts to get a sense that participation in vietnam has not been good for african-americans. post tet, what is happening amongst a larger group of african-american soldiers which is that they are even more angry and upset and disillusioned by participation and experiences in vietnam and amongst fellow soldiers. that kind of anger and illusion transposes into rioting, radical behavior, more so than we see pre-tran3 for that matter. i think there is a shift after tet but it reflects larger things that are happening in the african-american community at home that we see this not necessarily a fracturing of the movement but a stronger stance against the kind of hope that many held dear to in the mid- 60s, of civil rights legislation and making things all right. it seems that way to begin with but in 1968-- great society. >> there's actually a time article in august 1971 and the title is, i'm sorry, a new york times article in april 1969 titled tensions of black power reach troops in vietnam so you are really starting to see these relationships between what is going on and the war in vietnam. i may open it up to the entire panel and use that as a segue. senior officers in the military after tet specifically talked about permissiveness in american society seeping into the armed forces. for them, that was a main cause of the morale and discipline problems. i wanted to get your take about how much of this permissive society was at the root of the cause of morale problems in the army after tet? >> i should preface this by saying i was an advisor and hardly around few americans almost the entire time i was in vietnam. since i've done quite a bit of research, i find, i don't know if it's permissiveness or not, but after an announcement that the first troops would be pulled out which was a brigade from the 19th division-- knife division and there were increments thereafter,-- ninth division. the question was okay, is this necessary? do we really need to do this? at the bottom, it was the fact that the captain was asking them to conduct a patrol through an area that had mines in it from a previous unit. the question then becomes is that the smart thing to do? is that a mutiny or let's not do something stupid? i think increasingly troops began to question some of their orders but in some cases they probably had a-- question. that's my perspective. >> i guess the question is the term permissiveness. what does he mean by permissiveness? i'm questioning the term. does it mean that we let soldiers do what they want to do or are they pushing back against things they don't agree with that don't make a lot of sense after nixon decided that the drawdown is going to happen? >> it isn't-- it is not an excuse to say there are fundamental problems here with trying to reconcile asking you to sacrifice for a war which we are clearly withdrawing. soldiers logically questioning orders like what you just mentioned. >> i wouldn't put a permissiveness label. i would say basically people begin to question what is the sanity of conducting this operation today if in fact we are going to get in an airplane in three weeks and go home? you have to make a better case for whatever the operation may be and i think some of the senior officers did not want to make a case. they wanted to give in order. >> one other thing. i think for kind of the militant group of african-americans, although percentages are much smaller than in reality, i think out of permissiveness, it might reflect the fact that a lot of african-americans, even if they don't subscribe to something like black power or to promote black power, are really starting to understand that the military for them was not the place they thought we were going to make such big strides. it had been promoted as a place to kind of highlight pushing for rights at home and by 70 7172 it certainly was not that place any longer for many, not all, but many. that's why i think maybe the pushback of why am i here fighting for this when i'm still dealing with a whole host of equality even after 64 and 65 civil rights legislations have passed? xd eight civil rights legislations have passed. why am i still here dealing with this when my family still can't live basically? >> i think one thing important to remember is who the senior leaders were. they are often, there world war ii veterans. career veterans. they are lifers. to a degree i think they see the problems they want to see about what's happening. that lends clouds, like it does for everybody, how you see things. it must have been unbelievably jarring for those officers to see what was happening, and also to be stuck in a war that was at the point that it was compared to their previous experience. that's hard to get a handle on, i think. >> it's interesting crystal what you said, there's a sense of failed expectations more generally that this is not the man making experience that i want it to be. if you read memoirs, there's an expect tatian that i'm going to fulfill my patriotic duty and become a man in those expectations by this time when senior leaders and young draftees are coming in, they are both seeing expectations not come to realization. if it's not fully about the permissiveness of society or the problems in american society, how much did the policy affect morale? maybe there are many americans on the ground who don't want to sacrifice their lives and be the last one killed for a war in which we are leaving, how much of that policy is having an impact on issues of morale and discipline? >> i think it has a tremendous impact. if you are conducting combat operations and you see people going home, 50 clips away getting on an airplane and going home and these are happening in chunks of 35,000 you begin to ask yourself what the are we doing here? -- what the are we doing here? why conduct that operation tomorrow? that being said, when there was contact made with the enemy the us forces equipped themselves very well. when they had to fight, they did. should we be fighting? i read lots of memoirs from guys who were there before my period. there were 125,000 left and 7000 people still in the field and they were all advisors. it was a way different army and a way different via non-when i got there than say it was in 19 to 5. i think you don't see that ambivalence. that's a different army. by 1970 that army is decidedly different and beginning to ask questions as they say see people going home. why are we still doing combat operations? and then to come out and say we are in the defensive mode. it doesn't feel defensive if you are running a-- against a different regimen. i think that does have an impact. >> someone said a while ago the less combat there is, the people there are in rural areas and they have time on their hands. you know, look at the black black-market numbers. they skyrocketed in 1970. everyone is trying to get-- not everyone, but everyone is trying to get their take for this is over. there are people there doing their jobs and doing what they're supposed to be doing and not involved in these activities but they see them and see them being allowed to continue and they are involving officers and enlisted of all ranks. that's got to affect your morale. it's got to make you ask questions about what is it that we are doing here. but you can find that situation in almost any conflict especially as it winds down. especially in world war ii i would wager there's probably more of this going on recently. >> there's an interesting racial component with the relationship between americans and vietnamese. there's one soldier quoted in newsweek saying if nixon is going to withdraw by this time clearly it has been almost a full year since withdrawal has begun. let's all go home now. i don't want to be killed by time by the--. there's a sense of racism within the vietnamese asian-- vietnamesation. if it has not gone well it hasn't gone well because of them so there's blaming going on from the americans placing the blame on the via. is that a-- as well? or that the morale is going to inherently drop? >> there's got to be a little bit of both of that. last night, where's the memorial you were showing us? westminster. the american g.i. and urban g.i. standing together but facing in different directions in the american g.i. clearly standing down from an active role. he has his helmet >> little saigon in california. american soldiers, they've got a helmet in his hand, i think the american has a rifle over his shoulder. so clearly suggesting some thing. i think in the specific context of that them memorial from an outside observer looking at it as it is, you can read volumes. i think it's both. >> i've taught to very few veterans who thought us units have much good to say about the army. so, i think there was some of that, is it worth dying for these people that want fight for themselves? i think that's a perspective that comes from lack of familiarity. i saw that some were good, some were good and some are-- some were good, some were bad, some were mediocre like american soldiers. us soldiers that did not work with them i think has an impact. do i want to be the last man to die in vietnam? we been fighting there were now it's time for them to fight their war. since 1956 off and on. i think the anti-vietnamese feeling has a part to play in terms of morale with us continuing operations in the field. >> for the question of racism, certainly the use of the word suggests racism but highlighting and in time be vietnamese feel affecting morale in general. >> we did our part but the vietnam a vietnamese are not doing their. it's unfair but very much prevalent. what about senior leaders? in each of the areas you've spoken on this morning, how do they perceive what's going on? were they different from soldiers in the field? were they similar? was there some generational component that you alluded to earlier, having an experience in world war ii or the lexicon of between lifers and draftees. did you get that there was a different understanding of these problems based on whether you were in a higher leadership position or in the field seeing in dealing with dealing with it? >> simulators not only in vietnam but back in washington, a good example. being alive scared the out of them. the immediately, especially when the trial was going on, this concern that there could be 1000 other, whatever. you can understand the immediate reception to that. clearly the data doesn't support that. he kind of refutes the concept of the dumb lieutenant but from a manpower and personal perspective and officer training perspective, it got their attention. how that played among lower ranks with people still out there, i'm not sure. the chief of staff of the army commissions a professional study run by the army war college in 1970 i believe. >> i think i said this a little bit but in terms of morale there is if among staff. they tend to be more conservative, have longer careers, they are concerned about morale but in a different way than people entering the military for the first time out in late 60s and early 70s. they tend to err on the side of being quite supportive and trying to figure out how do we make the situation better? how do we improve morale, not necessarily acknowledging that there is a problem, and how do we deal with this to improve overall effectiveness? i think that relates a lot happening in the civilian world among some of the older generation african-americans who again are coming from a different generation and who have been dealing with world war ii and korea afterwards. who just have a different per spec this. >> i love the idea of the hot line to your commander. the commander of the post-you know? wow. that's got to say something that they were trying whatever they could to at least open lines of communication literally but also in a military organization that seems unfathomable to a large degree. jim? >> i think in terms of frame of reference the troops and senior officers are on different planets. troops are going to ask questions. in that particular generation, they're going to ask questions. wide trail through that particular area? to guys like westmore you give in order and people respond in the idea that you would say is this a good idea? maybe there's another way to do it i think the lieutenants and company commanders learn how to deal in that environment senior officers are on another planet and have no frame of reference as far as that goes. it's-- that anyone would question in order at any time for any reason but that's a different army than the one that the grew up in. >> was there a crisis? a scholarship weather on combat performance or the impact of drug use that suggests maybe there wasn't, and yet this collective memory persists that there was a major problem so what do you think? was there in fact a crisis here after tet? >> yes. >> good answer bill. >> i think so. clearly we are debating degrees of the reality of that crisis versus its perception. there are a couple of lawyers in the room but perception like possession is 9/10 of the law and perception matters. when you've got those riots, the marine riot at okinawa, senior officers? i don't think they had a clue what to make of those things, of why those things happened, what was going on, it's just unparalleled. there are too many indicators and yes we may have made more of it through popular culture and post-vietnam looking at all this but they certainly believed it at the time. i think at all levels they saw it at the time and i think that matters. >> in terms of racial tension, you can look at these not only in vietnam but okinawa. there's a race riot or racial incident in alabama. >> in the navy. so the answer i think is yes. i think they were recognizing in terms of racial tensions that needed to be dealt with in various ways. the military tried to deal with it through the late 70s and early 80s. >> i think there was a problem. we can argue about the degree but certainly, and i'm covered my experience in europe, there were desperate problems there. desperate. someone who had six people in jail for major felony offenses at one time in my platoon and out of 18 people those are good percentages. i have less anecdotal evidence vietnam but was aware of it because by the time i got there there were 125,000 troops. there were four infantry battalion units left and about 7000 advisors. everyone else was on cam ranh bay, all of these bases as you so aptly point out, with lots of time, lots of money, and not much to do. there was all kinds of opportunities playing the racial tension and all the other things. certainly the ready access to drugs. i know the scholarship suggests that the problem wasn't that bad , i don't believe it. in my experiences it was extremely bad and that was even on the advisory team there were evidence is there. so yes, i think there was a problem. was it what the panel describes in the way that he describes it? maybe unfortunate his choice of words i think, but yes. >> it's important to note that the fact that he has six of 18 soldiers in jail does not say anything about lieut. wilbanks's leadership. [ laughter ] >> or it might come you never know. >> my last question before i'd like to turn it over to engage with our panel, we seem to be in agreement that there was at least a problem is not a crisis. how much of these problems that you've identified this morning, how much do they have an impact and an effect on the ongoing war and whether or not americans achieved the three perhaps in quotation marks in south vietnam? did this have an impact in terms of the result that americans saw coming out of vietnam? >> it's kind of a chicken or the egg thing because yes there were problems before we decided , if you want to phrase it this way, that we were going to win but then once that decision was made and trickled everyone down like who wants to be the last guy as john curry put it, the last person to die for a mistake ? i don't know. it's hard to pinpoint one or the other as the cause, pre- existing versus the situation. they both certainly feed off of each other pretty and gently i think. >> certainly there's some cause and effect but not the determined cause. i think the determined cause was the decision that we were going to withdraw regardless. if you look at the announcement in may 1969 about the withdrawal and the result, it was always going to be predicated on what was going on in the battlefield, how we were doing, how the arvn were doing in terms of vietnam icing-- vietnam -- itself, it was like eating salted peanuts. once you did one you had to announce the next one and then it became irrelevant what happened on the battlefield. when the easter offensive was over and the south vietnamese prevailed with massive amounts of air power, nixon now has his opportunity to declare victory and go home. whether morale has anything to do with that decision is questionable. in my mind the decision should have been made regardless of morale and other issues and problems. and of course once we are gone, it's the problem of the arvn . >> do you want to have the last word on how it ended up? >> any questions from the audience? >> i had a comment. leadership and troops, the defendant-- emphasizing the need for understand the troops because the troops perception is those pastors about the platoon, and i think that's the only-- that's the only way to describe it. >> i'm sure they will be more than happy to take your questions. i appreciate the conversation and look forward to spending the rest of the day with you. [ applause ] on tuesday mark morgan the acting commissioner of u.s. customs and border protection testifies on migration issues along the us southern border. he will speak before the homeland committee. also coming up on tuesday the senate armed services committee holds a confirmation hearing on the nomination the atty. gen. if confirmed he will replace general paul silva who retires at the end of july. the hearing airs live at 10:00 eastern on c-span3. he is comfortable with ideas. he understands the power of ideas. and with that kind of foundation, that kind of intellectual foundation, a political leader can do all kinds of marvelous things. >> author and historian lee edwards will be our guest on in- depth sunday from noon to 2 pm eastern. mr. edwards is the author of just right, plus a collection of biographies on william f buckley, and ronald reagan. during our live conversation with your phone calls, tweets and facebook questions. watch in-depth with author leave edwards live sunday from noon to 2 pm sunday. watch live coverage of the 2019 national book festival on saturday, august 31 on book tv. the all-day conference on military manpower and morale after the 1958 tet offensive in vietnam continues now with a discussion on the u.s. draft and enlistment rates of college graduates. we also hear about defense secretary robert mcnamara's plan to recruit soldiers who previously did not meet some mental or physical standards. the university of kansas, this is about one hour 15 minutes. we will begin our session on morale and in order to mix up, we're having this time, a series of short presentations. short talks by participants. and they will sit in front to answer questions. our participants, jaclyn witt and associate preceptor at u.s. army war college tried to leave from harrisburg yeda

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