Hopkins drank rat poison with strychnine, knowing Vann would find his body. It took Sheehan 16 years--longer than the war itself--and 385 interviews to unravel this complicated character and the war he took part in. Time has filtered out some of the anguish, and has helped Americans face Vietnam and say: Why?. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. Vanns key military talent was his ability to see the big picture and establish the priorities necessary to accomplish the objective. As the attack continued through the following day, Tan Canhs defenses finally collapsed. A half-century later, the hurt Vann caused the family lingers. Seeing how badly the Diem regime was responding to the ever-growing Communist threat, and the lack of military progress against the VC, Vann decided he had to tell his superior officers, and anyone else who would listen, just how badly things were going in Vietnam. I think we can hold out longer than that." When called to take polygraph tests on the matter, Vann took pills to control his blood pressure, and his responses, and was cleared of the charges. Reasoning that the odds did not apply to him, Sheehan writes, Vann flew his own helicopter while assaults were in progress, defying the enemy gunners to kill him., Part of Vanns own bright shining lie, as Sheehan was to discover in researching his central character, was a troubled youth that produced a defiant adult who, Sheehan writes, followed his own star. Vann spoke little about his childhood, but Sheehan learned he was the illegitimate son of a man called Spry. Sheehan describes Vann as having led more American troops in direct combat than any other civilian in US history. He was often unable to influence the military command but used the Saigon press corps including Sheehan, David Halberstam and Malcolm Browne to disseminate his views. However, there were limits to the Vann family rebellion. He replied that next time hed make goddamn sure theyre old enough., As the oldest, I knew a lot of what went on. Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. His funeral was attended by such notables as General William Westmoreland, Major General Edward Lansdale, Lieutenant Colonel Lucien Conein, Senator Edward Kennedy, and Daniel Ellsberg. One such man was a decorated veteran of the Korean War, Lt. Col. John Paul Vann. In the early 1940s he was attending junior college as the United States entered World War II. At Dads funeral, I had long hair, but I was never a radical. In April 1963, Vann left Vietnam, and it seemed to all the world that the Pentagon was punishing him for speaking out when he resigned from the Army that July. John Vann was my friend, I had known him in those three years I'd been in Vietnam and I'd see him periodically afterwards. Here were all the figures of Vietnam in this chapel. A lot of people could not accept defeat.. ", "The basic fact of life is that the overwhelming majority of the population somewhere around 95 percent prefer the government of Vietnam to a Communist government or the government that's being offered by the other side. The next worst is artillery. He was an early proponent of the war, believing that American policies in South Vietnam were the main thing blocking the Communist drive to control all of Southeast Asia. Initially, the Office of Civilian Operations had been established to manage all U.S. government civilian agencies working in Vietnam under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Embassy. After North Vietnamese troops marched into Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in 1975, Chau was put to . Vann also believed he could count on support from Weyand, who was scheduled to return to Vietnam in the fall of 1970 as the deputy commanding general of MACV, which was now commanded by General Creighton Abrams. Weyand presented Vanns case to Abrams in April 1971. Vann's desire for complete control had its roots in his childhood. In the thick of the anti-guerrilla war against the Viet Cong, Vann became concerned with the way in which the war was being prosecuted, in particular the disastrous Battle of Ap Bac. I set out to write a normal-length book in a few years time, but Vann turned out to be the most extraordinarily complicated man I ever met, Mr. Sheehan, 81, said from his Washington home. I dont see how anyone could survive that kind of childhood without pretending.. He was a bitter soldier when he left the Army in 1963. Perhaps the most appropriate tribute was detailed in a 1988 Washington Post profile by William Prochnau. In the end, the meeting was canceled. Immensely talented, he had been expected to rise to high Army rank. Vann completed his Vietnam assignment in March 1963 and left the Army within a few months, having completed 20 years of service. When he arrived in Washington, he carried with him his final report as a senior adviser a scathing critique of the way the war was being handled by the South Vietnamese armed forces. Wanting to learn the situation firsthand, he flew helicopters into and out of hostile areas, often at risk to his own life. He fought back through the news media, leaking information sometimes through Mr. Sheehan, who eventually was hired by The New York Times, some of which directly contradicted what was coming out Washington. Weyands hunch paid off. It stars Bill Paxton, Amy Madigan, Vivian Wu, Donal Logue, Eric Bogosian and Kurtwood Smith. Vanns first duty was to organize a supply system for the ARVN forces. Attempting to direct the battle from a light and unarmed observation aircraft, Vann was later awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. I hope it endures as a piece of history to be read again and again. ", "In one fell swoop [President Thieu's Land to the Tiller Program] eliminated tenancy in Vietnam. In the face of enemy fire, far too many ARVN officers and soldiers opted not to engage the enemy and took flight. These 7 Foreigners Helped Win the American Revolution. Vann and Vietnam: at the heart was lies. Ironically, the man who once said the most discriminating weapon in insurgency warfare was a knife or a rifle had now acquired the nickname of Mr. As soon as he left the service in 1962, he went full time with UPI. Vietnamese woman and children surrounded by baskets, ca. Vann had retired from the Army by then. As U.S. forces started to draw down in Vietnam, Vann saw an opportunity to redeem his aborted military career through an alternate path, which was to replace McCown as the IV CTZ senior adviser when McCowns tour ended in May 1971. Soon American troops were patrolling with the ARVN regulars, and American helicopters were providing covering fire on search-and-destroy missions in the South. But at various times, Sheehan came close to being overwhelmed by him. Years later, a few weeks before returning to Vietnam, Vann was staying with Hopkins. For that reason, his new job put him in charge of all United States personnel in his region, where he advised the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) commander to the region and became the first American civilian to command U.S. regular troops in combat. [3] Vann returned to Vietnam in March 1965 as an official of the Agency for International Development (AID). No court-martial proceedings were held, and all charges were dropped. In A Bright Shining Lie, the pain John Paul suffered in childhood somewhat mitigates the pain he caused as an adult, but the relationship with Hopkins was more even more depraved. He devoured details and possessed astonishing powers of recall. Also in attendance were such diverse individuals as Edward Lansdale, Lucien Conein, Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Kennedy, prowar columnist Joseph Alsop, Robert Komer and William Colby. Vann also was highly critical of South Vietnamese tactics, noting a tendency to make excessive use of airstrikes and artillery, rather than putting ground units into VC territory. In April 1963 Vann returned to America. As author Neil Sheehan described the funeral, it was like an extraordinary class reunion. Vann was indiscreet and generally accurate, a journalists dream. [citation needed], On one of his trips back to the U.S. in December 1967, Vann was asked by Walt Rostow, an advocate of more troops and Johnson administration National Security Advisor, whether the U.S. would be over the worst of the war in six months: "Oh hell no, Mr. Rostow", replied Vann, "I'm a born optimist. In May 1971, Vann moved north to become the senior adviser in II CTZ. (speaking of the, "If it were not for the fact that Vietnam is but a pawn in the larger East-West confrontation, and that our presence here is essential to deny the resources of this area to Communist China, then it would be damned hard to justify our support of the existing government. Vann again returned to the battle, where he located and extracted three American advisers. Neil Sheehan has Parkinsons, and his career has slowed down, but he is still writing about Vietnam and was most recently seen in The Vietnam War. His dapper appearance and the Irish lilt in his voice offered a fitting tribute to his writing life. A Bright Shining Lie opens with an incredible scene, Vanns funeral, full of Washington power: Senator Edward Kennedy and the Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg were in the pews; pallbearers included the former commander of United States forces in Vietnam, William Westmoreland, and a future head of the C.I.A., William Colby. The Communist North Vietnamese, acting through their Viet Cong proxies in the South, were wreaking havoc among the populace outside of Saigon. The more Vann came to understand the political situation in Saigon, the more he became disenchanted with the way President Diem was running the country. On June 18, President Richard Nixon posthumously awarded Vann the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian citation, for his ten years of service in South Vietnam. For Ramsey and for all Americans captured in South Vietnam, life would be brutally difficult. From Korea, Vann was sent to Japan to supervise the procurement of supplies for the 25th Infantry Division, based in Osaka. He went to Vanns home of Norfolk, Va., and found out the boy was born out of wedlock to a prostitute whose clients were upper-class men who preferred not to visit the brothel. Vann witnessed firsthand how Diem refused to implement needed political and military reforms and how his corrupt brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, rewarded friends in the military. Because a civilian cannot convene courts-martial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Vann was assigned a military deputy, Brig. Vann was informed by the MPs that the girl had told a military chaplain at Fort Leavenworth about the alleged rape. The next worse is artillery. At 14, Vann unburdened himself to Hopkins, who persuaded him to join his Boy Scout troop. Abandoning any pretense of who was really in command of II Corps, he bypassed Dzu and began to issue orders directly to the ARVN units defending Kontum. Along with almost all Army Air Forces officers of the day, Vann faced a key career decision the following year. As the North Vietnamese mounted a massive three-prong conventional attack from the north, Vann planned to defeat the thrust against II CTZ using the mobile defensive tactics he had seen Lt. Gen. Walton Walker use to defeat the North Koreans at the Pusan Perimeter in 1950. Vann also met with the military staff of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and with presidential assistant Roswell Gilpatrick, as well as with CIA operative Maj. Gen. Edward Lansdale, who told Vann he should stick to things he knew firsthand and skip the gossip about what was going on in Saigon. [1] Although the Vann children grew up in near-poverty, Vann was able to attend boarding school at Ferrum College through the patronage of a wealthy member of his church. John Paul Vann was a charismatic lieutenant colonel in the Army who served as a senior adviser to South Vietnamese troops in the early 1960s, retired from the Army in frustration, then came. The discussion was aired on C-SPAN in five 30-minute segments and was the basis for the later C-SPAN show Booknotes. What makes the book particularly compelling is that it is both a broad look at the folly of the war and an intimate portrait of a chillingly Shakespearean character. Sheehan, who makes his home in Washington now, is 52 and silver-haired. More than 58,000 United States soldiers died in the Vietnam War, but in the world of letters, the death of a single American civilian came to represent the entire jungle quagmire. In 1955 Vann was promoted to major and reassigned to U.S. Army Europe headquarters in Heidelberg, where he worked in logistics. In June 1942, Frank Vann officially adopted John. I didnt spend all those 16 years walking around my neighborhood haunted by the book, he said, though neighbors in Wesley Heights say he did often walk around, and he did often look haunted. One of his most trenchant observations was: This is a political war and it calls for discrimination in killing. Although he was a gung-ho warrior type and always believed the Vietnam War was winnable, Vann came to realize the attrition strategy was a failure, the constant bombing of the countryside was helping Vietcong recruitment, and the rampant corruption in the Saigon leadership, funded through American dollars, was devastating to the cause. In 1943, at the age of 18, Vann enlisted in the United States Army Air Force. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy arrived late, but Joseph Alsop, the columnist who so firmly embodied the voice of Americas blue-blood Establishment, was precisely, politely on time. ", "This is a political war and it calls for discrimination in killing. [3] The New York Review of Books proclaimed it "An unforgettable narrative, a chronicle grand enough to suit the crash and clangors of whole armies. Vann and the rest of the influx of Americans were assigned to the newly established U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), then commanded by General Paul Harkins, who during World War II had been General George Pattons assistant chief of staff. You dont have a daddy, she would taunt him as he was growing up, a child of white trash poverty in Norfolk, Va. Just before his 18th birthday, his stepfather adopted him and gave him his name. Weyand managed to convince Abrams that U.S. officers would respond to Vanns unquestioned competence and natural leadership abilities, much as they had in III CTZ in 1967, when Vann first became the CORDS deputy there. Now I realize we were wasting our time., Such turnabouts in opinion make Sheehan all the more convinced that Vann was lucky to die when he did. Maybe the war has been over long enough for us to begin to emotionally come to grips with it. . [9], "John Vann" redirects here. John Paul helped coordinate Cao's unit, the 7th division, one of the most successful South Vietnamese forces. Now it was June 16, 1972, and a military marching band was preparing to escort the coffin to its grave. Neil has a certain anger about certain things, as everyone would, his editor, Robert Loomis, said. He attempted to draw public attention to the problems through press contacts such as New York Times reporter David Halberstam, directing much of his ire towards MACV commander General Paul D. Harkins. He was critical of the U.S. military command, especially under William Westmoreland and its inability to adapt to the fact that it was facing a popular guerrilla movement while backing a corrupt regime. He was accepted into the Army Air Forces training program that June and took his initial training in Rochester, N.Y. Moving from one base to the next, he finally was accepted for pilot training. But the questions alone were enough to block Vanns promotion to general, and Vann was too ambitious to remain in the service without attaining the highest rank. This page was last edited on 28 September 2022, at 11:11. An officer evaluation report he received from Colonel (later General) Bruce Palmer Jr. described Vann as one of the few highly outstanding officers I know.. John Paul Vann (born John Paul Tripp; July 2, 1924 - June 9, 1972) was a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army, later retired, who became well known for his role in the Vietnam War. The stories were hearing describe someone monastic. Dzu was happy to support Vann, but the whole plan almost derailed when South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu reshuffled the ARVNs corps commanders in August 1970. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Vietnam Magazine today. But before it could reach Kontum, the NVA had to take a series of ridges and high ground to the north, to which the outpost at Tan Canh was the key. For additional reading, see Neil Sheehans A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam,and David Halberstams The Best and the Brightest. ", This page was last edited on 25 February 2023, at 15:43. [2], Vann married Mary Jane Allen of Rochester, New York in October 1945, at the age of 21. Accompanying ARVN helicopter missions throughout the northern Mekong Delta, Vann made contact with the local tribal chiefs and monitored the fighting progress of the ARVN troops. In 1942, Aaron Vann officially adopted him. In 1954 he was assigned to the 16th Infantry Regiment in Schweinfurt, West Germany, to command the regiments Heavy Mortar Company. Foreign Service reserve officer John Paul Vann as senior American military adviser to Army of the Republic of South Vietnam II Corps (coterminous with much of South Vietnam), c. 1972. . It had become obvious to some of the Americans at MACV by late 1962 that the war on the ground was not going right. Tripp married Aaron Frank Vann in 1929, and young John took his new fathers name. John Allen avoids contact with his sister and one of his brothers. The best weapon for killing would be a knife, but I'm afraid we can't do it that way. During this period, he earned an MBA from Syracuse University in 1959 and completed all course requirements for a PhD in public administration at the university's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Yet, Sheehan added, Vann fascinated me because of who he was, but also because it made him an even better metaphor for the war., Sheehans book weighs heavily toward the early years of the war, with only about 50 pages devoted to the period after the Tet offensive in 1968 until 1972, the year Vann was killed. Although an enormous number of people were killed, the die was cast., It is probably no coincidence that Sheehan all but dismisses Vanns views in the post-Tet period as those of an angry fanatic who could not accept the death of the war. He remained on the ground and tried to rally the demoralized ARVN soldiers. He could not admit that Tet had written a finis to it., From 1968 on, Sheehan said, Vann began to rationalize things. The reconciliation and reflection that started with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in 1982, and helped Platoon win the Academy Award for best picture in 1986, opened up the public conversation surrounding Americas first losing war. This article was written by Peter Kross and originally published in the April 2007 issue of Vietnam Magazine. Other duties were the distribution of food and supplies to Vietnamese peasants and training community-defense teams. By the time of his death in Vietnam in June 1972, Vann had taken on the highest military authorities in Washington and had earned the respect and trust of a small group of newsmen whose reporting of the war began a general public questioning of how and why the conflict was being fought. He would have been very unhappy with the Paris peace accords. Vann, the hero, the hell-raiser, the knave and the performer, Sheehan said, didnt miss his exit.. Four presidential administrations and a societal shift in recognizing Vietnam veterans later, Vann, a former lieutenant colonel and the first civilian general to lead American troops in combat, was memorialized in Neil Sheehans masterpiece, A Bright Shining Lie., Thirty years on, Sheehans book hasnt lost any of its astonishing power. The corrupt South Vietnamese regime of Ngo Dinh Diem asked for and received American military advisers to help fight the ever-growing insurgent attacks. In the run-up to the Tet Offensive of 1968, Vann was one of the few Americans besides Weyand who saw and correctly interpreted the intelligence patterns that indicated a massive VC/NVA assault on the SaigonLong BinhBien Hoa area. Nonetheless, Vann exercised de facto operational command over all U.S. military forces in his sector. The ambassador and the commanding general in South Vietnam were telling the Kennedy Administration that everything was going well and that the war was being won., Vann believed then and continued to believe that the war could be won if fought with sound tactics and strategy, Sheehan recalls. When the Korean War broke out in 1950, he deployed back to Korea with the 25th ID and was stationed near Pusan, where he oversaw the loading and unloading of the massive amount of supplies required for the military buildup. John Paul Vann went down in a helicopter crash on June 9, 1972. His position was the equivalent in responsibilities of a major general in the US Army. Seated up front were Vanns widow, Mary Jane, and his four sons. Richard M. Nixon, the President, sent Secretary of State William P. Rogers. In June 1942, Frank Vann officially adopted John. What nobody knew at the time, Mr. Sheehan included, was how much more there was to the story. He returned to the United States in 1957 to attend the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Vietnam Questions (NSSM-1) . Sheehan first met Lt. Col. John Paul Vann, the man they had all come to bury, in Vietnam in 1962. John Paul Vann was a charismatic lieutenant colonel in the Army who served as a senior adviser to South Vietnamese troops in the early 1960s, retired from the Army in frustration, then came back . John Allen Vann, who went on to have a successful investment banking career, spent many years in therapy to break the cycle of violence. By 1988, the family was $295,000 in debt to his publisher, Random House, and The New Yorker, for which he wrote regularly and which had lent him money (as magazines did back in those days), keeping afloat through fellowships, teaching gigs and Susan Sheehans freelance work. Working in the ARVN III Corps area, where he had served his previous tour, Vann was so successful that within a year he was chief of the civilian pacification program in all the provinces around Saigon. In his first tour of duty early in 1962 as military adviser to the South Vietnamese, John Paul Vann took exquisite pains to fortify the soldierly kidney and gloss the image of General Huynh Van Cao, commander of the Seventh ARVN Division, author of the autobiography He Grows Under Fire, and so prone to shrink under it that he once called off an Only a few U.S. journalists were in Vietnam at the time. But he had what is cornily called charisma, Sheehan said. [5][3], Vann was voluntarily assigned to South Vietnam in 1962 as an adviser to Colonel Hunh Vn Cao, commander of the ARVN IV Corps. But by 1965, he was back in Vietnam, this time as a civilian adviser. Instead of learning from mistakes or correcting the situation, many of the senior officers around MACVs General Harkins had begun to rein in any officers who were deviating from the playbook. A Bright Shining Lie was published to great acclaim. Bio by: Linda Davis . When the Army Air Force separated from the Army in 1947 to form its own branch, the United States Air Force, Vann chose to remain in the Army and transferred to the infantry. A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. With only a handful of U.S. military advisers and troops on the scene, Americans believed the war seemed easily winnable. These men suffered from disease He certainly never took the feelings of his wife, Mary Jane, into consideration. Tripp married Aaron Frank Vann in 1929, and young John took his new father's name. He was an ardent critic of how the war was fought by the Saigon regime, which he viewed as corrupt and incompetent, and increasingly, on the part of the U.S. military. ", "These people may be the world's greatest lovers but they're not the world's greatest fighters. Among other undertakings, CORDS was responsible for the Phoenix Program, which involved neutralization of the Viet Cong infrastructure. Vann was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Vanns major test as a field commander came during the Easter Offensive of 1972. Right away Sheehan and his wife Susan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who is on staff at the New Yorker magazine, where a four-part excerpt of the book ran last summer, wanted to discount early and persistent rumors circulating among their peers that chronic writers block gripped Sheehan throughout the project. Vann shared his misgivings with them, and they in turn filed news reports of alleged ARVN ineptitude. His approach made him an ally of US operatives such as Edward Lansdale and John Paul Vann, . Vann submitted a 17-page rebuttal to the charges filed against him, but he also studied ways to beat a polygraph test, and he coached his wife on how to beat the machine when she testified on his behalf. We all felt a pride in dad for standing up for his beliefs, because he was having a wonderful military career that was cut short, says his eldest son, John Allen Vann, now 69. Vann decided to remain with the Army and transferred to the infantry branch. Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter with top stories from master historians. Dad allowed him to be around his sons unsupervised. He became a starved shark whose only goal was to trash and conquer blindly.. Women were to be conquered. 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