STRADDLING THE THRESHOLD OF TWO WORLDS: THE CULTURE OF AMERICAN SOLDIERS IN THE VIETNAM WAR, 1965-1973 Joshua Kyle Akers A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History in the School of Arts and Sciences. Chapel Hill 2018 Approved By W. Fitzhugh Brundage Joseph T. Glatthaar Jerma Jackson Wayne E. Lee Kathleen DuVal Heather Marie Stur ©2018 Joshua Kyle Akers ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Joshua Kyle Akers: Straddling the Threshold of Two Worlds: The Culture of American Soldiers in the Vietnam War, 1965-1973 (Under the direction of W. Fitzhugh Brundage) The Vietnam War is often portrayed in postwar popular culture as a conflict fought primarily by reluctant draftees who, donning peace symbols, listening to Rock, and smoking marijuana, held values incompatible with achieving military success there. These generalizations point to the entanglement of societal and soldier culture during the Vietnam War. This dissertation argues that rapid communications and travel collapsed the timeframe for people, news, cultural trends, and popular culture to reach the war zone and penetrate the rank-and-file mass culture, thereby making possible the entanglement between American society and American soldiers in Vietnam. The “soldier culture” that evolved in Vietnam was shaped not only by soldiers’ immersion in mass culture, but also by the twin priorities of surviving a one- year tour of duty and returning to civilian life. The troubling behaviors that military commanders noticed in Vietnam’s final years—“fraggings,” combat refusals, and drug abuse—were logical conclusions of a rank-and-file whose intent on surviving merited an entirely different set of norms, values, and behaviors from those who were alternatively focused on securing success. This dissertation is organized into two parts that emphasize an ethnographic approach to understanding soldiers’ culture. The first half of this dissertation traces how and why soldiers fashioned their own cultures during the war. The second half describes how soldier culture was not singularly determinative of what soldiers thought or how they acted. Two chapters focus on black soldiers, explaining that as they consumed mass culture and read letters from home, their iii worldview was influenced by their constant negotiation and renegotiation of their liminal position between societal and soldier culture. Vietnam-era soldier culture continues to have enduring power in American popular culture and was also emulated by future generations who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan during the twenty-first century. As veterans communicate elements of soldier culture to civilians in the postwar period, they become the connective tissue that allows the so-called reality of warfare to shape how societies subsequently create or modify discourses about war. iv To Ashley, Oliver, and Emerson v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There were many people and organizations who provided crucial help to see this project completed. First and foremost, I would like to thank UNC’s Graduate School for providing a year-long Dissertation Completion Fellowship that gave me needed time away from teaching to finish writing the manuscript. I would also like to thank the U.S. Army’s Military History Institute for providing a generous General and Mrs. Matthew B. Ridgway Military History Research Grant to plumb the archives in Carlisle, PA. UNC’s Faherty Fund, UNC’s History Department, and UNC’s Southern Oral History Program also provided funding to complete certain aspects of this dissertation. Many of the core ideas in this dissertation were tested and refined thanks to organizations who put on conferences, including the Triangle Institute for Security Studies and the Society for Military History. Several professors read parts of this dissertation, but my adviser W. Fitzhugh Brundage deserves special recognition for reading and rereading the entire manuscript during “crunch” time and providing substantive and timely feedback that made final revisions possible. I also had the privilege to work for Professor Brundage as a research assistant for 15 months that provided my family with extra income and allowed me to step back from a part-time job that I held throughout my graduate school career. I was truly fortunate to be his advisee. The rest of my committee provided insights and keen revisions for parts of the dissertation, including Jerma Jackson, Wayne Lee, and Heather Marie Stur. I am also grateful to John Kasson, Harry Watson, and Jacquelyn Dowd Hall for their intellectually stimulating seminars that fostered many of the ideas that matured during the course of writing this dissertation. vi I am also indebted to Eric Michael Burke, a fellow graduate student with whom I had countless conversations about this topic for three years, including a sixteen hour round trip driving from Chapel Hill to Louisville. His insights on organizational culture, human behavior, and his willingness to share stories about his own experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan were extraordinarily helpful when writing about the Vietnam War. I would also like to thank Joshua Tait, Joseph Stieb, Daniel Morgan, Robert Colby, and other graduate students who listened patiently to my ideas and gave me useful feedback and leads on sources. The History Department staff were also encouraging and helpful as I navigated the many hurdles of graduate school. A special thanks to Joy Jones, Diana Chase, and Renee Mcintire for their timely assistance with printing teaching materials, preparing paperwork, and generally making life a little easier. Finally, and most importantly, I must thank my family for their patience, emotional support, and assistance during my arduous journey in graduate school. My wife, Ashley, worked full-time for years so that I could focus solely on school and, then, when we had children worked tirelessly to ensure the home fires were always burning despite my many absences during research trips and writing marathons. I am also grateful for the emotional support that my two children, Oliver and Emerson, provided in only the ways that a toddler and infant could. I also could not have completed graduate school without the support of my parents, Jeff and Becky, and my in-laws, Charles and Betty. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER ONE: “WAR IN THE HEAD”: SOLDIERS’ PRECONCEPTIONS OF VIETNAM AND THE GENESIS OF SOLDIER CULTURE ............................................... 26 CHAPTER TWO: STRADDLING THE THRESHOLD: THE PROCESS FOR REPLACEMENTS TO EMBRACE SOLDIER CULTURE IN VIETNAM, 1965- 1972............................................................................................................................................... 67 CHAPTER THREE: THE BOUNDARIES OF SOLDIER CULTURE: INHERITED CULTURE AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF ALFRED FOWLER, JR. IN VIETNAM, 1968-1969 ................................................................................. 114 CHAPTER FOUR: EPHEMERAL BROTHERHOOD: SOLDIER CULTURE, THE INTEGRATED ARMY, AND THE EMERGENCE OF BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS IN VIETNAM, 1965-1973 ........................................................................ 163 CHAPTER FIVE: SOLDIER CULTURE EVOLVES: VIETNAMIZATION AND THE RISE OF AN ANTI-AUTHORITARIAN ETHOS AMONG THE RANK-AND-FILE, 1969-1973 .................................................................................................. 214 CONCLUSION: THE PERSISTENCE OF VIETNAM-ERA SOLDIER CULTURE, 1973-2011 ............................................................................................................... 262 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 270 viii INTRODUCTION In Tim O’Brien’s novel of the Vietnam War, Going After Cacciato, Lieutenant Sidney Martin is a platoon leader who recently graduated from the United States Military Academy. He is overconfident and too draconian in his enforcement of orders that the soldiers in his platoon perceive as unnecessarily risky. Even worse, Martin replaces a well-liked lieutenant whom the men trust. While traversing rugged terrain, the platoon discovers the entrance to a Viet Cong tunnel complex. Martin, following orders from his battalion commander, orders two men to enter the tunnels and search for the enemy. However, the men had long before collectively decided that they would not undertake the supremely dangerous task of searching and clearing tunnels. Instead, they agreed to simply drop fragmentation grenades into the entrance, blow it shut, and move on. However, Martin insists and two soldiers obey his orders and shimmy into the tunnel. Within moments gunfire erupts and both Americans are killed. The following day, men in the platoon gathered and decide to murder Martin by tossing a hand grenade into his quarters at night.1 In O’Brien’s fictional account, Martin attempts to govern his platoon through a set of “Standard Operating Procedures” that establish officially prescribed actions for solving problems encountered in the field, including how to handle enemy tunnel and bunker complexes. While these “formal SOPs” were disseminated by higher commands, O’Brien's narrative reveals another set of rules, “informal SOPs,” that became more important than the Army “Code of 1 Tim O’Brien, Going After