Final years of vietnam and the war. Part of manpower and morale after tet. Its an hour and 20 minutes. Id like to welcome everybody back. My name is Charles Bowery from washington, d. C. Id like to start off by thanking beth and the ku center for military war and Society Centers for hosting this and thanks to our colleagues for their ongoing collaboration in this and other events surrounding the vietnam 50th anniversary. The u. S. Army has more than 500 historians, Museum Professionals and archivists around the world to do their best to ensure the critical perspective and thinking skills are leveraged throughout the army and make the army a learning organization. The army History Program provides ability to results in a more effective future force and im honored to serve as this communitys advocate at this department of armys headquarters level. We had a great discussion about the problems of morale in the first tet offense and today we will built on that and talk about the ways the army and nations military leadership grappled with these issues in manpower and forced management. With that, we introduce our panel for session three. Beth bailey for the university of kansas and the University Medical center and meredith lair an associate professor of history and gary solis, a professor of law at georgetown university. Hello, everyone. Good afternoon. I want to start by saying how pleased i am to be included in todays proceedings. This a very special subject for me. Im honored to be amongst the distinguished historians speaking and attending. I was really an accidental historian. Didnt set out to be one, didnt want to be one. It came to pass. I am very pleased, in 2015 the Army SurgeonsOffice Published my book which is up here being illustrated, which represents some 35 years off and on, of an attempt to put together all the pieces i could find eluding to the morale and Mental Health and i will say crisis we ended up with in vietnam and i hope to illustrate that in the time i have today. So shameless plug, heres the book, if anybody wants to look at it. If not, if youre interested, all the references to what im going to put up here are in the book, so i wont put references in these slides. I do have some cards if youre interested, that have the website to the armys Surgeon Generals office. The book is free online and you can access anything you want you might be interested on. My title is drawdown vietnam from halcion to heroin. That says it all. I am refuting i was going to ask if any of these lights can be brought down at all . I know were filming. Is that a no . Okay. Some of the is there a cursor up here . Okay. I need to go back. That wont do it. Okay. So, i was in vietnam 1970, 71, as a psychiatrist. I was the Commanding Officer for a detachment, one of the two definitive Treatment Centers in vietnam for the army, and i left gratefully in 1971, in october, and really hoped to put it in my rear view mirror for the next decade, surely the army would study the crisis we had there and smarter people than i would come up with answers. After 10 years, i decided, no, they werent going to do it. If anything like that would be done, it was up to me. Fortunately, i was able to get an assignment at walter reeds army research. I spent five years in a back part of the building because they were all interested in world war iii they were sure was going to happen soon but werent that interested in vietnam. To my dismay is the army retained no clinical psychiatric records from vietnam. Any hope we would have primary sources to study these problems evaporated. I ended up trying to find all the psychiatrists who served in vietnam, i was able to do, all those surviving and i ended up with a structured instrument i sent out to them so i ended up asking them all the questions i wanted to know about what they did and saw and how did it work and how did they feel about what they did in vietnam. I had too much data. I left vietnam exhausted professionally and deeply troubled by all the misery that surrounded me and my colleagues as well as dismayed at our corporate failure, the country, the government and army and certainly Army Psychiatry. The book has been, i suppose somewhat of my redemption in all of this to find all the pieces i didnt have. I knew what we saw but i didnt know what the real story, full story was. Its in the book, not a memoir at all. I will show you some findings. Some impressionist and some graphs and some photographs with expressions by the soldiers i think help tell the story. Let me go to the first one. This is the two vietnam wars, as i call it, late war rising rates for psychiatric casualties and psychosis and declining combat intensity. It refers to the wounded rate with troupe strengths. To have it on the scale i instead used the battle death rate. These are not raw numbers, percentages of those deployed. You end up with this totally unprecedented disconnect between the psychiatric issues and the combat stress, as it would be measured, at least by this index. Its really important, i think, to emphasize to yall that military psychiatry is not just another medical specialty that lives in the hospital and it was for patients to show up. Military psychiatry through the last dozens of decades has been involved as much in morale as involved in Mental Health. In fact, following world war ii and then in korea, we placed psychiatrists, we had them embedded and some of their support personnel embedded in combat divisions, and we did that in vietnam. The combat supplied with Mental Health personnel. In any effect, as youll see, the psychiatric indices here are not just measuring psychiatric, acute psychiatric conditions per se. Let me go on to the next one. What this really is is a summary of the psychiatric story in vietnam, and i was to emphasize here, i want to bring into our q what someones called, and id love to know who started this, inverted morale as opposed to just low morale. When troop commitment cohesion is replaced by cliques based on submutinous opposition to military authority. So in vietnam, psychiatric hospitalization rates quadrupled as you can see there the earlier slide. Misconduct, performance failures, accelerated and as seen in noncombat fatalities, combat refusals, corruption, and profiteering, racial incidents, judicial, nonjudicial disciplinary actions including defiance and dissent, or especially combat aggression, combat atrocities. Violence or threats against military leaders, including fragging which was mentioned earlier. Suicides then drug use, especially heroin after 1970. Ill have more to say about the heroin situation. But the peak estimates these are Reasonable Estimates based on everything that ive read is 60 in the last couple 60 were using marijuana of all soldiers and 30 were using heroin. Now, that doesnt mean they were addicted to heroin. Perhaps 5 were truly addicted to heroin but 30 were using it at least recreationally. Mental Health System became swamped with disheartened, disgruntled, untreatable soldiers and army psychiatrists performed behavior disorders or personality disorder diagnoses and this was before the regulation thereat insisted the commander could get at least soldiers under certain groupings, 212 discharge from the army, administrative disharndi discharge from the army, they had to have a psychiatrist to take a look at them to see whether they deserved it or instead of medical discharge from the army. As it turned out, it could be a short cut for the commander, who was fed up with certain troops so that they really hoped that they would have a friendly psychiatrist at the other end of this referral line so that they could get these things rubber stamped and accelerate them getting out of the unit and out of vietnam. In the last couple of years, these character and behavior disorders and psychiatric conditions became the most prominent medical problem face bid the army in vietnam. Most prominent medical problem. Voluntary or forced treatment, rehabilitation of heroin users was unsuccessful. We went through all sorts of gymnastics to try to rehabilitate these soldiers without really ultimately any useful effect. So, let me see the last one. Medical evacuation back to the states became the treatment of choice. It was really a remedy, i guess, for huge numbers of soldiers. The medivac rate was 1969, four per a thousand troops per year and grow steadily to reach 130 per thousand by april 72, which meant at that point one out of every eight soldiers was medically evacuated from vietnam, primarily for drug use, primarily for heroin use. So what i want to do in the remaining slides is to some of them, anyway, to let the soldiers speak for themselves here. And what im talking about, or ive paired photographs that i have, for one reason or another happen to have with slogans that i thought were exceptionally poignant and telling of what these soldiers were feeling. And so its not just them, its collectively. So heres the first one. Early war bravado, im calling this. I dont know if youre familiar with that phrase, but i had heard it at walter reed. Throughout the first couple of years the war morale stayed high. Rates for psychiatric were surprisingly low including for combat stress. In fact, they were no greater than a stateside force. I think that was said earlier this morning. The ultimate reality was that winning proved to be far more difficult than anticipated in vietnam. Wont surprise this group. Accompanied by growing alarm that the war was causing unacceptable levels of destruction, collateral damage, and displaced refugees. Now, this didnt end up being a poster, but its the same idea here. I particularly like this one so much that i put it on the cover of the book. This is an antiaircraft weapon that the troops have nicknamed. I dont know if you can see it. The peacemaker. Both sides of it, one of them is the International Peace symbol and the other is the hand slogan for peace. And i dont know if you can see up at the top the machine gun oh, okay, the cursor the machine gun in placement would be, theyve named this the pill pusher. So you might see here some ambivalence. Annual replacement troops primarily draftees, to doubt their purpose and risk the sacrifices, attitudes strongly encouraged by the growing antiwar sentiment within a dispassionate youth movement. Ill show you some slides, some graphs here as we go along. On all of them, the attention is on 1968. This is a gallup poll that it just happens to be in 68 that those who favor the war begin to be lower than the ones who are in favor of the war. Excuse me. The other way around. Those who disapprove of the war exceed those that are in favor of the war. Weve said this phrase several times today. I guess it was the abiding refrain, wasnt it . Ive labeled this also loss of the will to fight. Replacement troops sent to vietnam were increasingly affected by, i parsed it out into five groups here. A radicalized increasingly liberal counterculture youth movement, socalled generation gap, which was in sync with the growing new left. Number two, the Civil Rights Movement, associated incendiary racial polarization. Number three, widespread antagonism toward american institutions, especially u. S. Military. Number four, a spreading often savage antiwar movement. And number five, an expanding youth drug culture which increasingly involved more dangerous drugs. Paralleling the Civil Rights Movement in the state, antimilitary attitudes and behaviors in vietnam found their fullest expression among the large number of black troops increasingly demoralized, disruptive, often violent behaviors by angry young africanamericans became increasingly kplinkree increasingly common. Can you read the slogan . Can you read this one . Foolish for going, wrong for participating, and inadequate for losing the public seemed to condemn anyone connected to the war or military, including those whose duty it was to serve there, as if the only honorable attitude for the soldier was one of opposition and avoidance. Thus, thousands of young men who share the countrys war wariness were sent to vietnam as late war replacements to defend americas cause under circumstances of increasing moral ambiguity. In this slide, it sort of gives you this is worldwide army awol and desertion rates. Theres 1968 again. And is a reminder why you cant lock at awol and desertion rates in vietnam as a measure of anything. There was nowhere to go in vietnam, if you went awol or deserted. So you have to look for broadly than that to see what the morale of the military was, the army and then, of course, in vietnam was only worse. This is my favorite one. We are the unwilling, led by the unqualified, doing the unnecessary, for the ungra ungrateful. There it is. I hear that. Somebody say there it is . There it is, yeah. Okay. So, to me, this is representative of inverted morale and the loss of the will to serve. Troops were reacting to an intolerable feeling of feeling purposeless, as the war effort was waning, confined, bored and isolated. Vulnerable as the ranks thinned in vietnam. Shamed due to the publics condemnation of the authority. Debased and oppressed by the american authority. And their sacrifices and hardships were not justified or appreciated. This is worldwide all branches, not just the military. I didnt have access to otherwise from 1968 on. Administrative discharge rates. For maladaptive behavior. They would end up in the psychiatrists office for evaluation, i said. The institution of the army was simultaneously impaired. Obviously. Vietnam dont mean nothing. I dont know if you can read the le left. Late drawdown denial. Dont mean nothing, of course, is blowing things off, but it also, to me, represents a wish to deny and disassociate from your circumstance, and the best way to do that was with drugs, was with heroin. And this indigenous heroin market began in 1970 early and the soldiers found this very a very popular way to try and get through the year in vietnam. It eclipsed other medical and psychiatric problems. By late 71, more soldiers were being evacuated for vietnam for drug use than for war wounds. In july of 72, i already said one of eight soldiers was evacuated back to the states. Okay. It was a problem for which the army and Army Psychiatry had no answers. And thats a story in itself. Its the biggest chapter in the book. But what was disputed until the end was whether the heroin use was a psychiatric problem, a medical problem or discipline problem. And all the authorities from each of those sections fought over what to do, whose problem it really was. Oops, i didnt mean to get there that fast. This slide is similar to that other one. This time im using wounded in action rate, showing nonjudicial punishments over time right till 1972 where it drops off just like psychiatric outpatients drops off. The reason it drops off, now were evacuating people out of the theater. Thats the orange line there. As well as courtmartialing them. This is [ laughter ] there it is. There it is. Anyway. That speaks for itself. Real quick, this is the race for fragging and overdose deaths. Notice, there is no 1968 or before that, because there werent any to speak of. No one was counting them anyway. We start to have the fragging incidents and narcotic overdoses. Suicide rate jumping up in 1968. Takeaway, ill finish with this. After 68, growing antiwar, antisentiment, produced widespread psychiatric dissent, including heroin use, assassination threats and attempts on superiors and increasing institutional dysfunction. These failed to yield to efforts to strengthen military leadership, troop commitment and cohesion or conventional psychiatric approaches, thus a Public Health crisis and potential military disaster. Thank you. [ applause ] hello again. I am working on a book that is about how the u. S. Army as an institution tried to manage what it often called during this period the problem of race during the vietnam era. And so im really interested in the question behind this panel, not how whether or not there was a problem of race or how people claimed racial equality or rights but how did this massive institution in the middle of a very difficult and increasingly unpopular war, address what its leaders identified as perhaps the central problem of morale that the institution faced, a war within a war that had become so violent and disruptive that many army leaders identified it as a threat to combat readiness and combat effectiveness. So, how does this army war, given its current mission, institutional culture, its logic, its circumstances, try to neutralize what most people begin to agree is a highly disruptive force, the problem of race . So, to begin, its really key to remember that in the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 60s, in general in the United States, including among africanamerican leaders, the u. S. Military was widely heralded as a success, including by africanamerican leaders. I want to emphasize that one more time. And as the United States military and the army, im looking in particular, moved into vietnam, it got an awful lot of attention to the issue of race. And thats in part because the war in vietnam was the first u. S. War that was fought by a fully, intentionally integrated armed force. But it was also because it was coinciding with the beginning of a lot of racial uprising in american cities. So the violence at home was being contrasted with the comity being found at least in the combat troops in vietnam. You see this whole flood of articles in the press, heralding how well the u. S. Army, the military in general, is doing. You get this constant refrain. I see only one color and thats olive drab. I could have given you another dozen. I have some fabulous pictures but wasnt able to get permissions ahead of time, so youre going to have to cope with text. Theres only one color and its olive drab. Its not that theyre wrong. In many ways, even though there was plenty of individual and institutional racism that africanamerican soldiers and other people of color in the military had to cope with during this era. I can say that another 20 times just to reinforce it. Compared to civilian society, the u. S. Military really did, in general, offer better opportunities for people of color than did their civilian counterparts. And racial conflict among combat troops in vietnam was relatively rare, even if it was rarely as much of a warborn racial understanding and love fest as the public media often portrayed. They got really sacrin at tim