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Vietnam War's Battle Scars

The Pentagon Papers pushed anti-war sentiment to new heights.

By TCU Magazine

November 15^th, 2021

by Sheryl Jean

By the time top-secret documents called the Pentagon Papers came to light in June 1971, public support for the Vietnam War was waning. Americans already were weary as the casualty count continued to climb, with no end in sight.

The leaked papers revealed that the U.S. government had misled the public. They compelled more Americans to question the war’s purpose and wonder if it was winnable.

The papers — more than 7,000 pages in all — started as an effort by Robert McNamara, the secretary of defense from 1961 to 1968, to collect war-related government documents.

In the end, the papers unveiled a series of bungled strategies, miscalculations, exaggerations and outright lies from U.S. officials.

Ted Coonfield ’70 (MFA ’72), a key member of TCU’s anti-war movement, said he was “excited the report revealed explicitly the lies” told by U.S. presidents about Vietnam, such as those regarding clandestine warfare and other activities hidden from the public. “It also was another reason to mistrust our federal government and be skeptical of the presidential proclamations of the day.”

The Pentagon Papers revealed that the U.S. government had engaged in secret operations for months before President Lyndon B. Johnson announced in August 1964 that North Vietnamese patrol boats had twice attacked U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. The public was never told about those undercover operations or that there was confusion about whether the second attack occurred. Johnson used the incident to ask Congress for broad war powers. Based on that deceptive information, Congress passed a resolution days later that led to America’s full-scale involvement in Vietnam.

Ending in 1975, the war marked the passing of an era in U.S. foreign policy defined by unchecked presidential war powers. The Vietnam War divided the nation like no other conflict since the Civil War, creating cultural and political rifts that persist today.

As the youngest Vietnam veterans and protesters become senior citizens, many still struggle to comprehend the quagmire that killed up to 3.8 million people by some estimates, including over 58,000 Americans. Fifty years after the Pentagon Papers, what have we learned?

Fort Worth Star-Telegram cartoonist Harold Maples depicted the fleeing Pentagon Papers in this piece titled "Banned in Boston," 1971. Courtesy of TCU Special Collections with permission from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram | Illustration by Harold Maples

“We haven’t learned much” about how not to repeat the mistakes of the past, said Kara Dixon Vuic, a Vietnam War history scholar and TCU’s LCpl. Benjamin W. Schmidt Professor of War, Conflict and in 20th-Century America. “You can’t say that any of the conventional military tactics worked in ‘winning hearts and minds’ as the U.S. military talked about it.”

More medical humanitarian aid to poor Vietnamese civilians and less bombing would have been more effective strategies of nation-building, she said.

Public Perception

The Vietnam War lasted almost 20 years. By 1971, support from a war-weary American public had eroded. A Gallup Poll that year showed 61 percent of Americans thought sending combat troops to Vietnam was a mistake — up from 45 percent in 1967 and 24 percent in 1965.

The number of U.S. casualties kept rising while more young men were being drafted without evidence the United States was winning. And bombings against Vietnamese civilians — 2 million were killed by the war’s end — fueled the anti-war movement back home.

While 1971 welcomed Malibu Barbie and Disney World, the year also witnessed heightened tensions amid protests in the U.S. over its role in Vietnam.

Vietnam marked the first time Americans watched war play out on televisions in their living rooms. Shocking images, such as a CBS report showing U.S. Marines using Zippo lighters to torch thatched huts in a Vietnamese village as women and children fled, also changed public opinion.

“The government would say they’re enemy combatants, but … the more it was in the news, you could see that maybe children and old people weren’t enemy combatants,” Vuic said. “The war starts to not make sense the longer it goes on.”

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, large U.S. protests were common. Picketers chanted, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”

At TCU, the anti-war movement included chapters of Students for Peace and Students for a Democratic Society, underground publications, peaceful protests, some draft-card burning and bomb threats aimed at the ROTC office on campus.

“The war was a very divisive time in America,” said Coonfield, who was at the center of anti-war activities as co-founder of the Vietnam Moratorium Committee at TCU and founder of the Dallas-Fort Worth area’s first draft counseling program. “A lot of people thought student protesters were unpatriotic and un-American.”

A chance meeting with Texas native Johnson at the dedication of his namesake library in Austin in May 1971 provided insight into the former president’s powers of persuasion. “I loathed his foreign policy and his actions … but I was raised to be respectful,” said Coonfield, now a resident of Portland, Oregon. “I cannot remember exactly our brief conversation, but I walked away feeling important, special and heard.”

In "You Got One for the Home Front?" Fort Worth Star-Telegram cartoonist Harold Maples drew public unrest and Lyndon B. Johnson. Courtesy of TCU Special Collections with permission from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram | Illustration by Harold Maples

Called to Serve

Vietnam veteran Jerome “Jerry” Gladysz ’05 EMBA believed then — and now — in helping suppress communism in South Vietnam.

“I went and I was not sorry that I went,” said Gladysz, who went to college under the ROTC program and joined the U.S. Army after graduation. “I never challenged our right to be there or not.

“North Vietnam was trying to overtake South Vietnam. North Vietnam was a communist business. South Vietnam [was] on our side, and we protected guys who were on our side.”

As a Huey helicopter pilot in 1966-67 for the 1st Cavalry Division, which was featured in the popular films Platoon and Apocalypse Now, he flew into the heart of the beast, dropping soldiers onto mountaintops, resupplying troops and airlifting casualties. He received Air Medals, a Bronze Star and the Distinguished Flying Cross. The second of two helicopter crashes damaged his spine.

Gladysz, who lives in Fort Worth, published a book, Dying to Fly (Fawkes Press, 2020), with many events based on his experiences.

“I come with a firm belief that war is hell,” Gladysz said. “It is brutal, I mean brutal.”

The war is still a contentious topic for many Americans, whose feelings range from “we should never have gone, to government abuse, to we didn’t drop enough bombs,” Vuic said. In 2018, a CBS News Poll showed only 22 percent of Americans thought the U.S. “did the right thing” by entering Vietnam.

Jerry Gladysz joined the Army after graduating from college and served as a Huey helicopter pilot in Vietnam in 1966-67. Courtesy of Jerry Gladysz

For "Escalation," published in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 1967, Harold Maples illustrated a scene of anti-Vietnam sentiments. Courtesy of TCU Special Collections with permission from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram | Illustration by Harold Maples

Motivations for War

Although war in Vietnam began in the 1950s, many historians trace its roots to the 1800s, when the country fell under French colonial rule. After World War II, Vietnam became caught between two developments: a shift toward global decolonization and efforts to combat the spread of communism as part of the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the former Soviet Union.

The fears of expanding communism influenced a reluctant President Dwight Eisenhower to help France, which still was fighting to retain control of Vietnam. That decision set the tone for U.S. policy in Vietnam for subsequent presidential administrations.

In 1954, representatives from nine countries met in Switzerland in hopes of helping end France’s war in Southeast Asia. While the Geneva Accords led to a ceasefire, Vietnam was split in half: The northern part fell under the control of Vietnamese nationalists led by communist Ho Chi Minh, and a government created by the French ruled the southern part. Trouble continued to brew, evolving into the Vietnam War.

Failure to fully understand Vietnam’s colonial legacy put the Americans at a distinct disadvantage because many Vietnamese simply saw them as the new French, said Peter Worthing, associate dean for graduate studies and research at TCU’s AddRan College of Liberal Arts and a Vietnam War scholar.

Vietnam, about the size of New Mexico, became a battleground for conflicting ideologies, but other forces also were at play. The American government sought to protect Asia’s valuable natural resources, such as rubber, tin and oil, and to preserve strategic military bases in the area.

When considering entering into conflicts on any foreign soil, Worthing said, “there’s a fundamental question … that must be asked: ‘Is there a military solution to this political problem?’ In most cases, I think you’ll find the answer is no.”

The United States never formally declared war against Vietnam, continuing a precedent set in the Korean War. Since those conflicts, most U.S. presidents have asked Congress to support resolutions to engage in foreign combat, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, instead of requesting a declaration of war.

U.S. leaders “don’t want the political consequences of having to ask for a declaration of war but want the approval to deploy troops,” Vuic said. “In terms of military strategy, we should learn that you don’t start wars without an exit strategy. We clearly didn’t learn that.”

Peter Worthing and Kara Dixon Vuic, at TCU's Veterans Plaza, are Vietnam War scholars. Photo by Rodger Mallison

Through History's Lens

Before the Vietnam War, “most Americans believed … what their government told them,” Worthing said. “But because of the war, many changed their views on this.”

Keith Miller ’71 (PhD ’84), an English professor at Arizona State University and professor at the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, counts himself among that group.

“I trusted the government; I wasn’t a skeptic at all,” said the son of a minister and World War II veteran. “I was just a regular guy.”

When Miller entered TCU in 1967, he began to read about the Vietnam War and question the government on everything from the number of casualties to the reasons for U.S. intervention. The conscientious objector co-founded the Vietnam Moratorium Committee at TCU with Coonfield, participated in protests and counseled other students on their options regarding the draft.

In 1964, Harold Maples' "Out of the Depths" depicted the origins of the Vietnam War. Courtesy of TCU Special Collections with permission from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram | Illustration by Harold Maples

“The more I read, I thought the war had no justification at all and that we had no right being over there,” Miller said. “Now I tend to look at conventional wisdom in American politics and see where it might be wrong.”

The Pentagon Papers revealed that the U.S. had created propaganda, including leaflets, videos and exaggerated news reports of battles, designed to spur patriotic sentiment at home in support of the war.

The documents also showed how early the political scheming began. In his book The Pentagon Papers (Quadrangle Books Inc., 1971), Neil Sheehan wrote that the Johnson administration “intensified the covert warfare against North Vietnam and began planning in the spring of 1964 to wage overt war, a full year before it publicly revealed the depth of its involvement and its fear of defeat.”

Even Congress thought U.S. leaders went too far. By 1971, Congress had repealed the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution that had given the president the right to “take all necessary measures” against aggressors.

In Vietnam, hubris and egos also played a role in strategy. “The result was just carnage on both sides,” Worthing said. On the U.S. side, “Johnson took this war personally.”

And President Richard Nixon said he didn’t want to be the “first president to lose a war.”

Peter Worthing, associate dean for graduate studies and research at TCU’s AddRan College of Liberal Arts, said the American people started questioning the government more because of the Vietnam War. Photo by Rodger Mallison

U.S. leaders feared the fall of Vietnam to communism would destabilize the area, creating a domino effect across Southeast Asia and beyond. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Johnson, in particular, were concerned about the U.S. image globally — how failure in Vietnam might influence how leaders in other Asian, African and Latin American countries regarded U.S. dependability and resilience.

“American policymakers often consider issues of American credibility on the world stage,” Worthing said. “In the Vietnam War, there was a lot of focus on ‘if we fail, our enemies will be emboldened.’ I always thought that was overestimated, overplayed with regard to the Vietnam War. Similar concerns have been expressed about Afghanistan and Iraq and even today.”

When newly elected Nixon, for example, began U.S. troop reductions in 1969 to achieve “honorable” peace, he already had approved secret bombings of Cambodia and Laos, and as late as 1972 ordered the Christmas bombing that killed some 1,600 Vietnamese civilians.

Harold Maples drew President Richard Nixon's burdens in "Needs Some Sawing and Shaping," 1968. Courtesy of TCU Special Collections with permission from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram | Illustration by Harold Maples

By 1971, even U.S. veterans of the Vietnam War were questioning the U.S. government. Navy lieutenant and future senator John Kerry, then 27, made a powerful impression that year with his anti-war testimony to Congress.

“We are probably angriest about all that we were told about Vietnam and about the mystical war against communism,” said Kerry, representing the group Vietnam Veterans Against the War, during his testimony. “We found that not only was it a civil war — an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberty from any colonial influence whatsoever — but also we found that the Vietnamese … were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from.”

Testimony from Vietnam veterans like Kerry, combined with some vets throwing their military medals onto the Capitol steps, were “powerful moments,” Worthing said. “It’s one thing for college students to protest; it’s another thing for veterans to come back and say those things.”

Cartoonist Harold Maples drew "Mission of Peace?" in 1969 as President Richard Nixon planned the first troop pullout in Vietnam. Courtesy of TCU Special Collections with permission from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram | Illustration by Harold Maples

Harold Maples, cartoonist, showed the challenges of post-war Vietnam refugees in 1978. Courtesy of TCU Special Collections with permission from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram | Illustration by Harold Maples

A New Vietnam

When the war ended on April 30, 1975, Vietnam was left in shambles physically and economically. Bombs, mines and chemicals like Agent Orange had ravaged the land and the Vietnamese people. Soon after, the victorious North took over the South, but fears of a communist fortress never manifested, even though the U.S. lost the war.

Conditions were so bad that Vietnam, a land of rice paddies, had to import rice to feed its people. For the next two decades, over 1 million Vietnamese fled to seek a better life elsewhere.

The first wave of refugees, many of whom worked for the Americans during the war, were airlifted out of Vietnam in 1975. Many subsequent refugees fled in ramshackle boats, earning the term boat people. By 1979, five neighboring Asian nations said they were overrun and couldn’t accept any more refugees. The United Nations called on over 20 countries to address the humanitarian crisis. Since then, many Vietnamese have made their way to the U.S.

Ann Tran ’20 counts boat refugees among her extended family in North Texas. They helped Tran, then 7, her parents and sister emigrate from Ho Chi Minh City in 2005.

From her childhood in southern Vietnam, Tran remembers shacks of corrugated metal right next to new five-story buildings. She wore a red handkerchief around her neck in school, singing songs each morning to honor Uncle Ho, the Vietnamese nationalist movement leader Ho Chi Minh, but she doesn’t recall how it felt to ride on her father’s motorbike or what her favorite Vietnamese soup tasted like.

The only thing Ahn "Jimmy" Tin Mai has from his home country Vietnam is a piece of art made with rice. Photo by Mark Graham

“I feel that’s part of my own story as a Vietnamese American who is constantly caught between two worlds — that of which I can faintly remember and the one I live now,” she said.

As a second-year PhD student in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, Tran studies how Vietnamese identity and culture have been preserved or reinvented, such as the creation of Viet-Cajun crawfish by immigrants in Texas.

“I don’t think the memories in my head are anything what [Vietnam] is like now,” Tran said. Her mother, she said, returned from a 2019 visit to Vietnam saying “everything had changed.”

Since 1986, economic reforms have transformed the 98 million-strong country. Vietnam’s economy is one of the fastest-growing in Southeast Asia. Today, the country makes many products — from electronics to shoes — common in American homes. City skylines rival Dallas’, and a large middle class has risen as poverty has plummeted and education and health care have improved.

Over 85 percent of Vietnamese people were satisfied with their country’s economy and direction in the mid-2010s, according to Pew Research Center data.

Vietnam today has museums and war memorials, and the day the war ended is an annual national holiday. Many Vietnamese people, however, choose to look to the future, not the past.

In Vietnam, “no one talks about the war anymore,” said Anh “Jimmy” Tin Mai ’11 (MAc ’12) of Mansfield, Texas, one of the first Vietnamese students at TCU in 2007. People 30 and younger consider it a historical event and not a topic for discussion, he said.

Ahn "Jimmy" Tin Mai was one of the first Vietnamese students at TCU. Mai, who returns regularly to Vietnam to visit family, says, "No one talks about the war anymore." Photo by Mark Graham

The War's Legacy

That 1971 is ancient history in Vietnam is not surprising: Nearly 40 percent of Vietnam’s population in 2021 is age 24 or younger.

At TCU, the Vietnamese student population has steadily grown since the early 2000s to represent the largest group of international students today.

They’re attracted to the large Vietnamese community at TCU and in North Texas and the university’s generous financial aid, said Karen Scott ’82 (MS ’92), TCU’s director of international admission. “Vietnamese students have been very happy at TCU, and they’re spreading the word back home, resulting in family and friends applying.”

Texas is home to over 270,000 Vietnamese people, the nation’s second highest concentration after California. Dallas-Fort Worth’s more than 96,000 Vietnamese people rank the region fourth among U.S. metropolitan areas.

“There are Vietnamese people around me; I feel like I have support,” Minh Ly, a senior business information systems major, said from his Ho Chi Minh City home, where he was studying during the coronavirus pandemic. His sister, Tien Ly, is a sophomore business major at TCU.

Ly, Mai and Tran said they didn’t learn much in school in Vietnam about the war, and their families don’t talk much about it. Through their U.S. studies, including Worthing’s Vietnam War history course, they gained a broader perspective in understanding the complexities before, during and after the war.

Young Vietnamese people in America must balance their knowledge of Vietnam inherited from parents and grandparents with new opportunities in their fast-growing ancestral home.

“When I first came to the U.S., almost every Vietnamese student … wanted to find a job here and stay here,” said Mai, 32, who regularly visits Vietnam. “Today, I hear from younger kids that they want a U.S. degree because it’s so valuable and [then] go back to Vietnam.”

Ly, for example, said he may work in the United States first and then perhaps return to Vietnam. “There’s a lot of opportunity for me.”

Young Vietnamese people in America acknowledge that life goes on after war even if questions remain. Collective memory and historical consciousness can change over time.

“What does it mean now that we have a generation of political leaders most of whom haven’t served?” Vuic asked. “Part of the popular narrative of the war will change when there are no more veterans of the war — for better or worse.”

Harold Maples

Harold Maples was editorial cartoonist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram for 27 years. From 1954 until his death in 1981, Maples drew more than 7,000 cartoons for the paper's editorial page. TCU holds the Harold Maples Collection, which consists entirely of original published editorial cartoons. The drawings measure approximately 11x17 inches and are done in pencil on heavy paper. Maples gave brief titles and dated most of the drawings.

No subject was too mundane or too important for Maples. He addressed local, national and international topics such as the beginning of a new school year, threats to world peace, the Cold War, LBJ's Great Society, the Fort Worth Stock Show, the Vietnam War, race relations, the Nixon impeachment hearings and the Texas weather with equal humor, skill and imagination.

Harold Maples' work appears courtesy of TCU Special Collections with permission from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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