HOW THE SOLDIERS VIEW VIETNAM
Rosenberger, Dr. John W.
How the Soldiers View Vietnam by DR. JOHN W. ROSENBERGER As the crescendo of dissent regarding the Vietnam war has risen in the United States over the past months, the question of disillusionment...
...An American Army lieutenant told me that such a ratio was obtained by a process in which each commander up the line multiplied the "kill" given in a battle report so that "two probably killed" eventually became "twenty killed...
...Nor was he about to disobey an order...
...Then they discussed how they wanted to get out of the service because "the Army just isn't for me...
...There is no room in the American Dream for an unrighteous war...
...Rather, the individuals in it are moving back and forth from this middle group toward, but not all the way to, either pole...
...But what of his superiors...
...For those unwilling to confront this dilemma it is easier to act as if the dilemma does not exist...
...Each individual in this story was profoundly affected by the other...
...They would deny that the two were related...
...And for the American military man this push, this movement away from forced indifference, must be focused ultimately in the question, "For what am I fighting in Vietnam...
...And such opposition is not limited to draftees...
...Even more important, soldiers who have been directly involved in the war are much more vehement in their opposition than those who have had only peripheral contact...
...An American adviser to the South Vietnamese army told me of a battle reported by a South Vietnamese army unit in which more than a hundred Vietcong were purportedly killed...
...JOHN W. ROSENBERGER is a New York psychiatrist who recently completed a two-year stint as a psychiatrist in the Army...
...Thus, I had a unique opportunity to talk with many military men from diverse parts of the Army in a setting that was relatively informal and unstructured...
...Probably because I am a physician, and not just because I am a psychiatrist, soldiers seemed less threatened in discussing their views with me about the Vietnam war than they did in talking with other servicemen...
...This, I think, is the real point of the story...
...A day or so later he was taken out of training and told to report to his commander, who asked him questions about his "qualms...
...The very nature and form of the Army's question about "qualms" reflects the dilemma posed by the war, the necessarily nameless anxiety it gives rise to...
...Incidents were reported of gross corruption among South Vietnamese politicians...
...Casualty reports, usually giving the ratio of enemy dead to American dead as ten to one, were greeted with sardonic smiles...
...As a veteran discharged in July, 1967, I would like to provide data in the hope of shedding some light on this confusing situation...
...The second, and more subtle, reason given by many of the soldiers with whom I talked was that the Saigon government, the U.S...
...Based on my experience of two years in the Army, it is my opinion that the men in the armed forces feel about the war in a way similar to most Americans...
...Generally, those soldiers who dissented felt their superiors sensed— and perhaps shared—widespread doubts about the war and that they went to ridiculous extremes to combat and reform such "negative thinking...
...Still other, perhaps more official, news sources have indicated that the morale among American troops in Vietnam has been maintained at a high level...
...Other reports on television and in the press have suggested that our fighting men now are more "professional" than they were in previous wars, implying that the "American Spirit," always a heralded element in our military victories in the past, has been replaced by qualities of efficiency and detachment more reminiscent of mercenaries...
...Enlisted men described and deplored the frantic efforts by commanders to maintain the image of an American Army motivated by the righteousness of its cause in the face of obvious, if muted, disillusionment...
...While this group seems to be quite homogeneous in terms of social background and life style, they would probably be hawks in civilian life, too...
...As a doctor I was not in the regular chain of military command and thus I was apparently more accessible...
...units and their South Vietnamese army counterparts, and the pressure from above to produce results, even paper results...
...Finally, there is, as with most Americans, the quiescent, passive majority, silenced not by oppression but by a gnawing ambivalence created out of anticipated guilt...
...Vietnam veterans that the South Vietnamese were opportunists and suspicious of the motives of their leaders...
...To be sure, the majority of soldiers do not have—or do not express—strong views one way or the other...
...They reflect the feelings of a relatively small sample of individuals in the armed forces...
...News reports do not reflect the degree of this dissent because it is minimized or censored by military information officers who understandably are not willing to publicize this aspect of Army life...
...The question still remains regarding the impact of the war on that majority of soldiers who expressed no opinion one way or the other...
...He was an Army warrant officer who was being given advanced training in flying helicopters as part of an artillery reconnaissance team...
...The Vietnam war, more than any other war in United States history, reflects a basic ambivalence in American life between a certain unquestioned confidence in being accepted for our essential "goodness" and a jealous fear that somehow our very innocence will be our undoing...
...then they declared they wanted to quit the service because of chronic stomach trouble or complaints from their wives about Army life...
...He simply stated, in reply to the question, that he would have qualms about some of his duties...
...All this has presented a muddied picture of the feelings of the American soldier regarding the Vietnam war...
...What were they so frightened about, so unsure of...
...To take the finger out of the dike is to be flooded...
...First, those with experience in Vietnam felt that the United States has almost no support from the local Vietnamese...
...My observations of this segment of the military population suggest that there is among them a deep disquiet, a crisis of confidence, which, as an overall impression, is perhaps more remarkable than the audible dissent of the minority...
...He indicated that, yes, he would, if part of his duties involved having to identify a particular Vietnamese village for extinction by an artillery barrage...
...His superiors, as well as himself, represent the dynamic nature of the middle, passive group...
...Nevertheless, this combination of significant anxiety and a seeming indifference regarding the Vietnam war, which I saw in many soldiers—not patients—suggested to me that the average American soldier is caught in a terrible conflict...
...To admit that the expressed dissatisfaction is related to feelings about the war itself is apparently perceived as a denial of a greater commitment: to his country...
...It drives many to one pole or the other, to becoming a militant dove or a militant hawk...
...Without further explanation he was relieved of his duties and sent to another base where I saw him (on a referral from his commanding officer to determine if he were mentally ill) and where he was awaiting further orders...
...My particular duties included consultation with officers and high-ranked enlisted men concerning such problems as morale, soldiers with adjustment difficulties, and the evaluation of policies for handling matters of discipline...
...The story of a young man I met perhaps will dramatize this and the dynamics of such movement...
...To move to the dove position makes one, seemingly, deny his country...
...It leaves the majority with a mixture of quiescent anxiety and a forced indifference...
...Is there an appreciable movement in the armed forces against the war, and is the lack of reports about such G.I...
...disaffection simply the result of "managed news...
...He is now engaged in private practice and is enrolled as a fellow in the program of Community Psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University...
...Thus, in a real sense the great tragedy of this war is that those involved will not, cannot, allow themselves to feel its tragedy...
...Administration, and the Army hierarchy in particular, were manifesting more and more hypocrisy in an attempt to justify the American position in Vietnam...
...News stories concerning a few American soldiers, sailors, and airmen who left their units and sought asylum in neutralist countries have led some to wonder if open rebellion might be a genuine possibility in the military...
...Career soldiers—both enlisted men and officers, including several West Point graduates—voiced their opposition to the war to me and described why they felt that way...
...He maintained that he still did not consider himself a dove, but he admitted that he was profoundly disillusioned and confused by the behavior of his superiors...
...There is no doubt that there is a significant number of soldiers who are against the Vietnam war...
...Raised on the American Dream and sincerely patriotic, he cannot allow himself to feel the doubts the Vietnam war provokes...
...In any case, I generally found that a simple readiness on my part to listen revealed the eagerness with which some of the soldiers wanted to talk about Vietnam...
...He is finding it increasingly difficult to answer this question...
...He emphasized to me that he was not, then, against the war...
...Such information and interpretations are not the results of an opinion poll...
...They do not speak out publicly for obvious reasons, until they get out of the Army...
...The conversations I had were not only with patients, and they were not always initiated by me...
...Although medical confidentiality does not exist officially in the military, soldiers seem to carry over from civilian life the essential openness inherent in the doctor-patient relationship...
...The veterans did not connect the two...
...It is the ambivalence behind the Puritan ethic...
...They did not relate these feelings to the war in Vietnam...
...Vietnam veterans talked about killing Vietcong and having to cut off the ears of the dead to establish a body count...
...The large group of the silent and passive is not a static group...
...In general, it was the opinion among U.S...
...JOHN W. ROSENBERGER As the crescendo of dissent regarding the Vietnam war has risen in the United States over the past months, the question of disillusionment with the war among members of the armed forces has become the subject of increasing speculation...
...Career soldiers and West Point graduates talked about the bitter political machinations that occur between individual U.S...
...Or is the "American Spirit" still alive and the American soldier genuinely convinced of the Tightness of the war, thus making the reports of dissent exceptions to the rule...
...Reasons given in explanation of this opposition fall into two broad categories...
...Later his informal investigation showed that it was a sham battle which had never occurred...
...To move to the hawk position makes one, seemingly, deny that for which his country traditionally stands...
...There are also a number of hawks in the Army who presumably would feel comfortable in this setting but who seem in reality to be rather defensive when their position is challenged...
...One West Point officer told me that when he and ten of his classmates in that particular area got together for an informal reunion one evening, all ten of his friends, it turned out, were trying to resign from the Army...
...Forces inherent in the conflict, the personal conflict, are pushing the individual American more and more toward one position or the other...
...In the course of his training he was asked on a routine questionnaire whether or not he would have any qualms about carrying out his duties...
...I spent my two years in the Army as a psychiatrist at a training base in the eastern part of the United States...
...This man had not, in spite of himself, completely lost his sense of the tragic...
...they generally involved black market operations...
...Many soldier-trainees talked about the training procedures—having to shoot their rifles at human silhouettes and yell "kill" as they plunged their bayonets into dummy targets—with a sense of dismay and self-reproach...
...It is difficult to interpret silence...
...I am a psychiatrist who, like many doctors these days, entered the military following a medical program obligating me to two years of service after I finished my specialty training...
...However, those who do are largely opposed to continuing the conflict...
...Each, bothered by a nagging anxiety and trying to remain unmoved, was pushed a little farther toward taking a position on the Vietnam war...
...It became clear from these conversations that there is a significant number of men in the Army who are opposed to the Administration's position on the war...
...Unhappily, this is the stuff out of which hawks are made...
...He was told by his superiors to mind his own business...
...The Vietnam war, somehow, does not fit...
...He replied that he would do as ordered, that he liked the Army, and that he intended to continue his career in the Army, but that, yes, he was bothered by what he expected he might have to do in Vietnam...
Vol. 32 • March 1968 • No. 3
