Publications - Robert Ankony

The U.S. .45 Model 50 and 55 Reising Submachine Gun and Model 60 Semiautomatic Rifle

Robert Ankony — Mon, 19 Oct 2015 01:08:00 +0000

Deputy Sheriff with Reising Model 50

The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps placed their first order for .45-caliber Reising Submachine Guns in January 1942,just one month after America's entry into World War II. Produced throughout the war, Reisings saw service in both the Pacific and European theaters, with security personnel domestically, and with law enforcement and correctional agencies after the war.

The Reising was a most innovative weapon featuring accuracy, firepower, lightweight and ease of manufacturing. However, poor combat performance and favorable law enforcement use forever mired the weapon in controversy. To properly assess the Model 50 and 55 Reising Submachine Guns, and the Model 60 Semiautomatic Rifle, we must begin with their inventor, Eugene G. Reising, and the circumstances of his time.

HISTORY

Eugene Reising was an excellent marksman and ordnance engineer who believed engineering principals must match actual field needs. Reising practiced his creed by being an avid shooter and by serving in the early 1900s as an assistant to the distinguished firearm inventor, John M. Browning. In doing so, Reising contributed to the final design of the U.S. .45-caliber Model 1911 Colt Automatic Pistol, one of the most reliable pistols in history. Reising then designed a number of commercial rifles and pistols on his own, when in 1938, he turned his attention to designing a submachine gun as threats of war rapidly grew in Europe.

Two years later he submitted his completed design to the Harrington and Richardson Arms Company (H&R) in Worcester, Massachusetts. It was accepted, and in March 1941, H&R started manufacturing the Model 50 full stocked submachine gun. Months later, production began on the Model 55 (identical to the Model 50 other than having a folding wire buttstock and no compensator); and the Model 60 full stocked semiautomatic rifle that also resembled a Model 50, but had a 7.75 inch longer barrel without cooling fins or compensator.

The US Army first tested the Reising in November 1941 at Fort Benning, Georgia, and found several parts failed due to poor construction. Once corrected a second test was made in 1942 at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland. In that test 3,500 rounds were fired resulting in two malfunctions: one from the ammunition, the other from an incomplete bolt locking. Still, the Army didn't adopt the Reising, but the Navy and Marines did, faced with insufficient supply of Thompsons.

The Navy and Marines also viewed the Reising as having several advantages over the Thompson. It was less costly, approximately sixty-two versus two hundred dollars. It was much lighter (about seven v. eleven pounds). It was better balanced. It was more streamline. It was more accurate in semiautomatic fire. And, the Model 55 was more compact (about twenty-two v. thirty-three inches in length--the shortest, lightest and most powerful submachine gun in the world at the time!).

The Reising cost and weighed less because it was made mostly of stampings and had a closed-bolt design, much lighter than blowbacks of its kind that fired from an open-bolt position and relied on weight, rather than locking, to secure the cartridge at time of firing. It was more balanced because the barrel-and-receiver-group rested concentrically within the stock. It had smoother lines because the stock was of conventional shape and the cocking handle (action bar) was placed inside the forearm. And it was more accurate because the closed-bolt only shifted the hammer and firing pin on firing, whereas the Thompson, slammed home a heavy bolt and actuator.

Reising Model 50 as used by the USMC

To the Marines' surprise, as they stepped off their landing craft and their naval fire crept forward, they were met not by Japanese, but by silence and shattered coconut groves that fringed the beach. Advancing cautiously into the dark, musky jungle, they pushed on and took the airfield the following day. But Japanese warships and reinforcements were en route. That night, powerful shell fire swept the Marines as they were suddenly cut off from sea; to be locked in mortal ground combat with the Japanese Thirty-fifth Infantry Brigade, and Second and Twenty-eighth Divisions.

On the same date of Guadalcanal's invasion, the Model 50 and 55 saw action by fast striking, camouflage dressed, First Marine Raiders on the small outlying islands of Tulagi and Tanambogo to the north. Two companies of Marine paratroopers "The Devil Dogs" dressed in olive drab jump smocks also used Model 55s to attack the island of Gavutu, between Tulagi and Tanambogo.

Although Tulagi and Tanambogo were each secured in a day, the fighting was fierce. Japanese firing from caves and beach dugouts destroyed many of the raider's assault craft before touching shore. At day's end, the raiders suffered 234 casualties from a 750 man force. The paratroopers fared worse. Of the 377 men who assaulted Gavutu, 212, roughly two-thirds were killed or seriously wounded, many because escorting warships couldn't provide close fire in the uncharted waters, and bombers sent to assist the paratroopers, dropped their ordnance short killing their own men.

Following six months of intense fighting, Guadalcanal fell to the Marines on February 7, 1943, at a cost of 6,000 wounded and killed Americans as well as 20,000 dead Japanese. Guadalcanal's capture marked the beginning of the end of the Japanese Empire. For other than minor moves in Burma and China, the Japanese were continuously pushed back toward their homeland.

Two months after the Guadalcanal victory, the island served as the staging area for one final mission. On April 18, 1943, eighteen U.S. Army P-38 Lightnings flew off Guadalcanal and swung northwest to Bougainville, the largest island in the Solomons. Acting on information gained from deciphered Japanese codes the Lightnings intercepted a flight of Japanese aircraft and downed two twin-engine Betty bombers killing everyone aboard, including Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the chief architect of the Pearl Harbor attack.

Moving ever northward, the Third Marine Division landed on Bougainville, November 1, 1943. Pitted against members of the Japanese Sixth Division, Marine raiders made flanking attacks. In Flags of Our Fathers (James Bradley, Bantam Books, 2000) a camouflage dressed, Sergeant Mike Strank, Third Marine Raiders, is shown holding a Model 55 on Bougainville. Sergeant Strank survived that battle known as a Marine who gave his all to protect his men. But in 1945, after helping to raise the American flag on Iwo Jima, he died on a rocky, windswept plain there; a victim not of the Japanese, but of American naval fire.

On the other side of the world, in Europe, Reising Submachine Guns saw service in early 1942 when a large contingent of U.S. Marines relieved British troops on Iceland to prevent a German takeover. Two years later, June 4, 1944, the US Navy captured the U-505, a German sub with all hands on the North Atlantic, and wartime films show American sailors armed with Model 50s leading the captives down a gangway into Great Britain.

ISSUES OF RELIABILITY

Disassembled Reising Model 50

H&R was justifiably proud of the Reising. But the weapon's close tolerance and delicate magazine proved unreliable in the mud and sand of the Solomons--unless kept scrupulously clean. Quickly despised by front-line Marines, Lieutenant Colonel Merritt A. Edson, Commander, First Marine Raiders, ordered that Reisings be flung into Guadalcanal's crocodile infested Lunga River, as his troops resorted to reliable bolt-action Springfield rifles.

There are other reasons for its failure. Foremost was the Reising's complex design of many small pins, plungers, springs and levers. Disassembly and assembly was difficult even under normal conditions. Simple maintenance was problematic as there was no bolt hold-open device. Chambering a cartridge was awkward as the action bar was hard to grasp in the forearm and could be obstructed by the sling. Worse, the safety/selector switch couldn't be sensed by feel at night if it was in the safe, semi, or automatic position.

"Filing-to-fit" of certain parts during production limited interchangeability. The exposed rear sight had no protective ears and was vulnerable to breakage. The adjustable front sight could be lost if the retaining screw wasn't tightly secured. The weapon was susceptible to jamming if grime clogged the bolt's locking recess in the receiver. The magazine guide retaining pins and receiver stud holes were tapered allowing disassembly and assembly only from one direction--right to left for disassembly, and left to right for assembly (try remembering that in combat!). And, if the retaining pins were inserted too much or too little, the receiver might not fit back into the tight confines of the stock.

In spite of these shortcomings, the serviceability of the Reising must be questioned if elite Marine raiders, as witnessed by Sergeant Strank, were still using the weapon in November 1943--fully one year after the invasion of Guadalcanal when M1 Rifles, Carbines, and M1 Thompsons were by then available. Indeed, Reisings were issued to sailors and rear echelon Marines throughout the war, and to Navaho code talkers who assisted front-line Marines by giving instant radio communications in native tongue.

Thousands more Reisings were purchased by the U.S. Coast Guard or sent to our British, Canadian, and Soviet allies under our Lend-Lease plan. And hundreds (mostly Model 60s) were allotted to security personnel at manufacturing plants, power stations, supply depots and bridges throughout the U.S.

MODEL CONFUSION

Reising Model 50s

While there's not one factor that distinguishes the so-called commercial from the military model, the commercial model is usually blued. It commonly has a fixed front sight and a rear sight with no retaining screw. It often has 28 fins on the barrel, a one piece magazine release, no outward flanges on the safety/selector switch, and no sling swivels. Lastly, the commercial model commonly has a smooth take-down screw, a two-hole trigger guard, and serial numbers ranging from one to 20,000.

Military Reisings are usually parkerized. They often have an adjustable front sight with an Allen screw and a rear sight with a retaining screw. They routinely have 14 fins on the barrel, a two piece magazine release, outward flanges on the safety/selector switch, sling swivels, stock ties (crossbolts through the forearm), and a knurled take-down screw. Finally, the military model commonly has a three-hole trigger guard, proofmarks like "PH" or "Pm2" above the chamber, and serial numbers ranging from 20,000 to 120,000.

There are three types of H&R magazines. The first and second models are both smooth body, are blued, and are twenty-shot double column. The first model is distinguished by five cartridge peep holes on the left side, a feature eliminated on the second model to prevent mud and sand from entering. In contrast, the third model is parkerized, has two long indentations on the sides, and because of feeding problems experienced with former models, is a twelve-shot single column magazine.

PRODUCTION

Production of the Model 50 and 55 submachine guns ceased in 1945 at the end of World War II. Nearly 120,000 submachine guns were made of which two thirds went to the Marines. H&R continued production of the Model 60 Semiautomatic Rifle in hopes of domestic sales, but with little demand, production stopped in 1949 with over 3,000 manufactured.

Reising Model 50 as used by police

H&R sold their remaining inventory of submachine guns after the war to police and correctional agencies across America who were interested in the Reising's selective-fire capability, great accuracy and low cost relative to a Thompson. Faced with continued demand, however, production resumed in 1950 and then sputtered to a halt in 1957 with nearly 5,500 additional Model 50s manufactured. But just when the Reising story seemed to end, a foreign order was received in the 1960s for nearly 2,000 more Model 60s, but that order was finally the end.

Decades later, in 1986, H&R closed their doors and the Numrich Arms Corporation (The Gun Parts) purchased their entire stock. Acquiring a number of Model 50 receivers, Numrich assembled them with parts. These weapons all have an "S" preceding the serial number and were sold domestically in the early 1990s after reparkerization and mounting on newly manufactured walnut stocks. These stocks are distinguished by their wider than normal sling swivels and buttstocks, by the fact they have no stock ties, and have H&R marked plastic buttplates (originals were unmarked metal).

CURRENT VALUE

As with all machine guns, Reisings have skyrocketed in value. Especially weapons designated Curio and Relic (C&R) as Reisings are by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. This designation makes Reisings marketable not just to licensed machine gun dealers, but to C&R licensees and to private citizens in many states (a onetime $200 transfer tax must be made to the IRS and a police record check and signature obtained).

A little more than a decade ago a Model 50 in very good condition could be had for a few hundred dollars. Today, the same weapon would fetch $5,000, a Model 55 in similar condition $6,000, and a Model 60, $2,000. Consistent to the spiraling cost, an original H&R twenty-shot magazine costs over a hundred dollars and a twelve-shot magazine about eighty.

SUMMARY

Reisings are mired in controversy. Their shortcomings are many but so are their positive features. Acclaimed as one of the most accurate and lightest submachine guns in their day, they faithfully served thousands of law enforcement officers for over a half century. A weapon with rich walnut stocks, a number of machined parts, and a unique history, they'll provide fun for any shooter and prove a superb investment for any collector.

________________________________________________________________

References

Arnold-Foster, Mark; 1974, The World at War. New York: Signet Books.

Bradley, James; 2000, Flags of Our Fathers. New York: Bantam Books.

Dillman, George (Editor); 1993, H&R Reising Submachine Gun Manual. Arkansas: Desert Publications.

Fawcett Publication; 1942, "Sky Dynamite." Mechanix Illustrated, (October): 64-66.

Griffith, Gen. Samuel; 1974, "Battle for the Solomon." History of the Second World War. Marshall Cavendish: 1553-1566.

Harrington & Richardson Arms Company; 1951, Manual H&R Reising Submachine Gun Model 50. Worcester, Massachusetts.

Hobart, Major F.W.A.; 1973, Pictorial History of the Sub-Machine Gun. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Hogg, Ian; 1977, The Encyclopedia of Infantry Weapons. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company.

Hogg, Ian and John Weeks; 1977, Military Small Arms of the Twentieth Century. New York: Hippocrene Books.

Iannamico, Frank; 2000, The Reising Submachine Gun Story. Maine: Moose Lake Publishing.

Myatt, Major Frederick; 1978, Modern Small Arms. New York: Crescent Books.

National Rifle Association; 1943, "The Reising Submachine Gun." The American Rifleman, (February): 24-26.

Nelson, Thomas; 1977, The World's Submachine Guns. Virginia: T.B.N. Enterprises.

Nelson, Thomas and Daniel Musgrave; 1980, The World's Machine Pistols and Submachine Guns. Virginia: T.B.N. Enterprises.

Roetter, Charles; 1974, "Guadalcanal: The Land Battles." History of the Second World War. Marshall Cavendish: 1093-1102.

Smith, W.H.B.; 1962, Small Arms of the World. Pennsylvania: Stackpole Company.

United States Marine Corps; 1942, Manual for the Reising Submachine Gun, Caliber .45, Models 50, 55, and 60. Washington D.C: United States Government Printing Office.

Weeks, John; 1979, World War II Small Arms. New York: Galahad Books.

Robert C. Ankony, PhD, is a sociologist who writes criminological, firearms, and military articles for scientific and professional journals and special-interest magazines. He served as an Army Ranger in Vietnam and is the author of Lurps: A Ranger’s Diary of Tet, Khe Sanh, A Shau, and Quang Tri, revised ed., (Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books, 2009). Nominated for the Army Historical Foundation’s 2006 and 2009 Distinguished Writing Award. For further reading, he recommends:The Reising Submachine Gun Story, by Frank Iannamico.

Originally published in Small Arms Review, July 2008, 64--67.

The Impact of Perceived Alienation on Police Officers' Sense of Mastery and Subsequent Motivation for Proactive Enforcement

Robert Ankony — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 17:51:00 +0000

Abstract This study examines the impact of perceived community alienation on levels of self-reported mastery and motivation for proactive law enforcement for 272 police officers from eleven law enforcement agencies in a large Southeast Michigan County. Also, it investigates the impact of three highly publicized "anti-police" judicial verdicts (i.e., Rodney King, Malice Green, and O.J. Simpson) on the predicted alienation-mastery-proactive enforcement relationship.

Results support the study's major hypothesis that as officers' perceived level of alienation increases, they will report less mastery, and express less willingness for proactive enforcement efforts . One regression model confirms the study's second hypothesis that the inverse relationship between alienation and motivation for proactive enforcement increases significantly following the "anti-police" judicial verdicts.

The contemporary community policing movement emphasizes changing the role of law enforcement from a static, reactive, incident-driven bureaucracy to a more dynamic, open, quality-oriented partnership with the community (Brown and Wycoff, 1987; Eck et al., 1987; Goldstein, 1990). Community policing philosophy emphasizes that police officers work closely with local citizens and community agencies in designing and implementing a variety of crime prevention strategies and problem-solving measures. To accomplish these initiatives, it is crucial that officers feel closely integrated with the majority of citizens and agencies in the community they serve. Typically, this means that officers perceive themselves as sharing important community values, beliefs, and goals. It also implies that officers are confident of community support and involvement in their decisions and actions (Bobinsky, 1994; Burden, 1992; Mastrofski et al., 1995). It is the premise of the present study that as the perception of community alienation increases among police officers, their sense of confidence or mastery in decision-making will decrease, and so, too, their motivation for proactive enforcement.

Alienation is essentially a sociological concept developed by several classical and contemporary theorists (esp., Durkheim, 1951, 1984; Fromm, 1941, 1955; Marx, 1846, 1867; Seeman 1959; Simmel, 1950, 1971). According to these theorists, alienation is defined as a condition in social relationships reflected by a low degree of integration or common values and a high degree of distance or isolation between individuals, or between an individual and a group of people in a community or work environment.

The experience of community alienation among police officers would appear to be anathema to effective community policing efforts for at least two essential reasons. First, alienation appears to be closely tied to the experience of mastery. Mastery is typically defined as a state of mind in which an individual feels autonomous and experiences confidence in his or her ability, skill, and knowledge to control or influence external events (Wilson, 1989). Community policing requires departments to flatten their organizational pyramid and place even more decision-making and discretion in the hands of line officers. Thus, it would seem logical that as the level of community alienation or isolation that officers experience increases, there will be a corresponding decrease in officers' sense of mastery in carrying out their expanded discretionary role.

Second, a strong sense of community integration for police officers would seem to be vital to the core community policing focus of proactive law enforcement. Proactive enforcement is usually defined as the predisposition of police officers to be actively committed to crime prevention, community problem-solving, and a more open, dynamic quality-oriented law enforcement-community partnership (Bobinsky, 1994; Taylor et al., 1998). Again, it would seem logical that the stronger the level of perceived community alienation, the weaker officers' motivation to engage in proactive law enforcement behavior.

Several effects of alienation on police officers' behavior have been demonstrated in the literature. For example, Berg et al. (1984), found that a lack of community support resulted in an increased sense of alienation and a greater degree of apathy among police officers. King (1995) and Mottaz (1983), found that a lack of community support and working in a larger populated community was associated with an increased sense of alienation and a greater degree of inactivity among police officers. Pogrebin (1987), discovered that an increased sense of alienation resulted in a greater degree of negative feelings and lethargy among police officers. Finally, Shernock (1988), found that the more police officers felt socially isolated from the community they served, the more they withdrew and the more negative they felt towards its citizens.

No empirical studies were found in the literature, however, that specifically focused on the relationship of alienation with mastery and motivation for proactive enforcement for police officers. Also, no empirical research was uncovered that investigated the impact of highly publicized "anti-police" judicial verdicts (i.e., Rodney King, 1991; Malice Green, 1992; and O.J. Simpson, 1994) on the proposed alienation-mastery-proactive enforcement relationship. Therefore, the present study was designed to test the following hypotheses:

H1. As the level of officers' perceived community alienation increases, their level of mastery will decrease, and so too their motivation or willingness to engage in proactive enforcement behavior.

H2. The predicted inverse relationship between alienation and mastery/proactive enforcement will increase significantly following the "anti-police" judicial verdicts.

This study will also examine the relationship of gender, age, seniority, race, rank, education, degree of urbanism, and residency, to the predicted alienation-mastery-proactive enforcement relationships. A review of the research suggests that these variables be included as controls for the following reasons: gender, because it may influence an officer's level of perceived alienation (Schmidt et al., 1982)[1]; age and seniority, because they may be associated with officer complacency, and thus, may influence motivation for proactive enforcement (Berg et al., 1984; King, 1995; Pogrebin, 1987); race, because it may influence an officer's level of perceived alienation and motivation for proactive enforcement when it is different from the majority race in the working community (Berg et al., 1984; Crank et al., 1995); rank and education, because both have been shown to influence an officer's level of perceived alienation (Crank et al., 1995; Mottaz, 1983); degree of urbanism, because the complexity, population density, and anonymity associated with urban communities, can influence an officer's level of perceived alienation (Durkheim, 1984; Erikson, 1986; King, 1995; Mottaz, 1983; Schmitt, 1983; Simmel, 1950); and residency, because living in or choosing to live in the working community can impact an officer's level of perceived alienation and motivation for proactive enforcement (King, 1995).

Methods

Sample

The present study surveyed 272 police officers from eleven law enforcement agencies. These agencies ranged in size from 15 to 850 officers, and included nine city police departments, one county sheriff's department, and one university public safety department. Each department was located in a large metropolitan county in Southeast Michigan with a population density of 3,392 persons per square mile. The communities served by these departments ranged in size from approximately 10,000 to more than two million people. The racial make-up of this county was approximately 60% white and 40% black. There was a mean ratio of 18 sworn police officers to every 10,000 citizens. Racially, these nine communities ranged from predominantly white (99%) to mostly minority (69%).

Officers in the sample were predominantly male (95.2%). They ranged in age from 22 to 59 years, with a mean age of 37.4 years. The majority of police officers were caucasian (84.2%). Three quarters (75%) of the officers surveyed were line patrol officers, while the other 25% held the rank of sergeant or higher. Officers ranged in seniority from one to over twenty-one years, with a mean seniority of 12.9 years of service. Every officer surveyed had completed their high school education. Over half of the officers (50.4%) had at least some college, more than one fourth (28.7%) had a Bachelors Degree, and 14% had an advanced graduate degree. Close to two-thirds of the officers in this study (61.8%) lived in the community in which they worked.

Degree of urbanism

Officers from the eleven police departments in this study were grouped into three categories (high, moderate, and low-urban) based on the degree of urbanism of the community they served. Degree of urbanism was based on two factors proposed by Bartol (1982) and Theodorson (1979):

1) the distance in miles from the community to the center of any urban sprawl, and

2) the population density per square mile of each community. Using these criteria, one hundred officers (36.8%) worked in high-urban communities, one hundred thirty-one worked in moderate-urban settings (48.2%), and the remaining forty-one (15.1%) served in low-urban areas.

Survey instrument

A survey instrument was developed by the authors to measure police officers' level of perceived alienation, sense of mastery, and willingness to respond proactively both before and after "anti-police" judicial verdicts. The instrument contained eighteen items which were conceived and operationalized based on the conceptualization of alienation, mastery, and proactive enforcement, by the various social theorists and researchers cited earlier.

Alienation was measured in two ways: first, by three "Residence and Choice" items which asked officers if it was totally up to them, would they choose to live in the community where they worked, and second, by four Likert Scale items which asked officers to rate the degree to which they shared the family, religious, economic, and political values of the community they served. Mastery was measured using six Likert Scale items on which officers rated the degree to which their work community supported their enforcement efforts, encouraged them to actively enforce the law, was likely to turn against them when something went wrong, and the extent to which they could use their own judgement in responding to crime and felt that they were making a difference in the community.

Motivation for proactive enforcement was measured using five Likert Scale items on which officers rated the degree to which (assuming total volition) they were willing to respond proactively to various criminal activities in the community. They were then asked to rate the degree of change in this proactive willingness following the "anti-police" judicial verdicts.

Sampling procedure

The unit of analysis was individual police officers. Selection of the eleven departments surveyed in this study was done using a non-probability judgmental sampling method (Babbie, 1989). All uniformed patrol officers in these departments (402) ranked as lieutenant or below were asked to complete the survey on a voluntary and anonymous basis. These officers were selected because they work the street and typically confront law enforcement situations where they use their own discretion and initiative. Of the 402 officers surveyed, 272 (68%) completed and returned the questionnaire.

Specifications of regression models

This study concerns the relationship of officers' perceived alienation on their sense of mastery and their subsequent motivation for proactive enforcement. The authors predict that perceived alienation is inversely related to sense of mastery and proactive enforcement; as alienation increases mastery will decrease and so too officers' willingness to patrol proactively. The authors also predict that the inverse relationship between alienation and mastery/proactive enforcement will increase significantly following the "anti-police" court decisions.

These hypotheses were tested by hierarchical regression which is a procedure for regression analysis to test the hypothetical relationships among the variables and present the explanatory power of the incremental models. The statistic employed to indicate the explanatory power of a regression model is the "coefficient of determination" -- R2. Thus, for the equation using the Mastery Scale as the dependent variable, two models were constructed to test the importance of alienation. These models differed in their inclusion of the explanatory variables: Model 1 contained demographic variables only. This model serves as a baseline for comparisons. In other words, if alienation is indeed an important factor effecting the dependent variable as hypothesized by this study, one should expect Model 1 (a model without alienation) to have very little explanatory power. By contrast, Model 2 which adds the measures of alienation to Model 1, should have much stronger explanatory power.

For the equation using the Proactive Enforcement Scale or Proactive Enforcement Since Verdicts Scale as the dependent variable, three models were constructed to test the importance of alienation. These models differed in their inclusion of the explanatory variables: Model 1 contained demographic variables only; Model 2 adds the measures of alienation to Model 1; and Model 3 adds the Mastery Scale to Model 2.

Results

Validity and reliability of scales

An exploratory factor analysis (DeVellis, 1991) was used to test for construct validity to determine if the individual items in the survey instrument were empirically related to the broader concepts of alienation, mastery, proactive enforcement, and proactive enforcement since verdicts. Findings of this test revealed item loadings ranging from: .63 to .86 for the Alienation Scale, with most items loading above .80; .48 to .71 for the Mastery Scale, with all but one item loading above .50; .52 to .69 for the Proactive Enforcement Scale, with most items loading above .60; and again .52 to .69 for the Proactive Enforcement Since Verdicts Scale. Thus, in terms of validity, this test revealed that all the items that purport to measure their concept grouped together in one dimension, with all but one item loading above the .50 minimum acceptable level.

In addition, Cronbach's alpha (DeVellis, 1991) was used to test for scale reliability. Findings of this test revealed the values of: .85 for the Alienation Scale; .75 for the Mastery Scale; .66 for the Proactive Enforcement Scale; and .71 for the Proactive Enforcement Since Verdicts Scale. Thus, in terms of reliability, all scales were above the .60 minimum acceptable level.

The effect of alienation on mastery

Table 1 presents results of the hierarchical regression analysis to test the hypothesis of alienation on mastery. When the regression equation included solely the five demographic variables (Model 1), almost none of the variation in mastery could be explained (R2 = .0036). However, when the Residence and Choice Variable and Alienation Scale were added to the regression equation (Model 2), the coefficient of determination, R2, increased to .2692. Overall, the independent variables in Model 2 explained more than 26% of the variation in mastery (see Table 1 below).

Regression Model 2 also revealed a significant positive relationship between the Alienation Scale and the Mastery Scale, where one unit of increase in the Alienation score raised the Mastery score by 0.54, net of impacts of all other variables (p<.01).[1] These results appear to support the predicted relationship between alienation and mastery.

Table 1 (Model 2) also displays a significant positive relationship between age and mastery. Other things being equal, a one year increase in age increased the Mastery score by .08. Younger police officers self-reported a higher level of mastery than older officers. Model 2 also revealed a significant inverse relationship between race and mastery with white officers reporting a higher level of mastery than nonwhite officers.

TABLE 1: REGRESSION RESULTS - ALIENATION AND DEMOGRAPHIC VARIABLES ON MASTERY

Independent Variables Hierarchical Regression Models

Model 1 Model 2

Demographic Variables:

Age .06 .08*

(1.4) (2.39)

Race: White vs. Nonwhite (D) -.49 -1.55*

(-.61) (-2.18)

Rank: Police Officer vs. Sgt or higher (D) 1.63* .82

(2.10) (1.19)

Education: Bachelor or higher vs. Other (D) -.49 -.82

(-.89) (-1.69)

Degree of Urbanism: High vs. Other (D) -.12 -.79

(-.20) (-1.53)

Measures of Alienation:

Residence and Choice Variable .28

(1.33)

Alienation Scale .54**

(7.82)

Constant 13.96 8.47

Adjusted R2 .0036 .2692

R2 Increment .2656

Note:

A t statistics are shown in parentheses

* Significant at the 0.05 level, two-tailed test

** Significant at the 0.01 level, two-tailed test

D Denotes a dichotomous variable

The effect of alienation and mastery on proactive enforcement

Table 2 presents results of the hierarchical regression analysis to test the hypothesis of alienation on proactive enforcement. When the regression equation consisted solely of five demographic variables (Model 1), very little variation in proactive enforcement was explained (R2 = 0.0368). However, when the Residence and Choice Variable and Alienation Scale were added to the regression equation (Model 2), the coefficient of determination increased to .1660. Finally, by adding the Mastery Scale to the equation (Model 3), an additional gain of .0687 occurred in R2. Overall, Model 3 accounted for more than 23% of the variation in proactive enforcement (see Table 2 below).

Regression Model 3 also showed a significant positive relationship between the Alienation Scale and the Proactive Enforcement Scale, where one unit of increase in the Alienation score raised the Proactive Enforcement score by .21 (p<.01), net of impacts of all other variables.[2] A significant positive relationship is also shown in Model 3 between the Mastery Scale and the Proactive Enforcement Scale, where one unit of increase in the Mastery score raised the Proactive Enforcement score by .28 (p<.01), net of impacts of all other variables. Again, these results supported the predicted relationship between alienation and proactive enforcement.

Table 2 (Model 3) also displays a significant positive relationship between both age and race and proactive enforcement. A one year increase in age corresponded with an increase in the Proactive Enforcement score of .12, and white police officers scored 1.32 units higher on the Proactive Enforcement Scale than nonwhite officers. This means younger or nonwhite officers generally have more desire for proactive enforcement than older or white officers.

TABLE 2: REGRESSION RESULTS - MASTERY AND OTHER VARIABLES ON PROACTIVE ENFORCEMENT

Independent Variables Hierarchical Regression Models

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Demographic Variables:

Age .12** .14** .12**

(3.30) (4.14) (3.72)

Race: White vs. Nonwhite (D) 1.45* .87 1.32*

(1.95) (1.22) (1.92)

Rank: Police Officer vs. Sgt or higher (D) 1.37* .78 .60

(1.98) (1.17) (.94)

Education: Bachelor or higher vs. Other (D) -.18 -.30 -.03

(-.37) (-.62) (-.07)

Degree of Urbanism: High vs. Other (D) .37 -.05 .14

(.69) (-.10) (.28)

Measures of Alienation:

Residence and Choice Variable -.08 -.13

(-.36) (-.68)

Alienation Scale .37** .21**

(5.45) (2.87)

Measure of Mastery:

Mastery Scale .28**

(4.59)

Constant 5.74 2.01 -.46

Adjusted R2 .0368 .1660 .2347

R2 Increment .1292 .0687

Note:

A t statistics are shown in parentheses

* Significant at the 0.05 level, two-tailed test

** Significant at the 0.01 level, two-tailed test

D Denotes a dichotomous variable

The effect of alienation and mastery on proactive enforcement since verdicts

Table 3 presents results of the hierarchical regression analysis to test the hypothesis of alienation on proactive enforcement since verdicts. Again, when the regression equation includes only the five demographic variables (Model 1), very little of the variation in proactive enforcement since verdicts was explained (R2 = .0430). However, by adding the Residence and Choice Variable and the Alienation Scale to the regression equation (Model 2), the coefficient of determination increased to .0760. Finally, by adding the Mastery Scale to the regression equation (Model 3), an added gain of .0771 in R2 occurred. Overall, the independent variables in Model 3 accounted for about 15.3% of the variation in proactive enforcement since verdicts (see Table 3 below).

Regression Model 2 also showed a significant positive relationship between the Alienation Scale and the Proactive Enforcement Since Verdicts Scale, where one unit of increase in the Alienation score raised the Proactive Enforcement Since Verdicts score by .11, net of impacts of all other variables (p<.05).[3] However, when the Mastery Scale was added into the regression equation Model 3, the coefficient of the Alienation Scale becomes insignificant. A positive relationship is also shown in Model 3 between the Mastery Scale and the Proactive Enforcement Since Verdicts Scale, where one unit of increase in the Mastery score raised the Proactive Enforcement Since Verdicts score by .19 (p<.01), net of impacts of all other variables.

Table 3 (Model 3) also displays a significant and positive relationship between age and proactive enforcement since verdicts. Other things being equal, a one year increase in age increased the Proactive Enforcement Since Verdicts score by .07. This means younger police officers generally have more desire for proactive enforcement since verdicts than older officers.

In general, the impact of alienation on proactive enforcement since verdicts is complicated: Model 2 supports the research hypothesis, but Model 3 does not. This is probably because the causal relationship between alienation, mastery, and proactive enforcement since verdicts is more sophisticated than the hierarchical regression analysis used in this study, where each model treats the dependent variable separately (one at a time).

TABLE 3: REGRESSION RESULTS - MASTERY AND OTHER VARIABLES ON PROACTIVE ENFORCEMENT SINCE VERDICTS

Independent Variables Hierarchical Regression Models

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Demographic Variables:

Age .08** .09** .07**

(3.73) (4.02) (3.47)

Race: White vs. Nonwhite (D) .73 .55 .86

(1.62) (1.21) (1.94)

Rank: Police Officer vs. Sgt or higher (D) .80 .60 .43

(1.91) (1.40) (1.04)

Education: Bachelor or higher vs. Other (D) -.01 -.10 .09

(-.04) (-.34) (.30)

Degree of Urbanism: High vs. Other (D) .46 .26 .37

(1.41) (.80) (1.17)

Measures of Alienation:

Residence and Choice Variable .11 .06

(.82) (.47)

Alienation Scale .11* .00

(2.47) (.04)

Measure of Mastery:

Mastery Scale .19**

(4.74)

Constant .69 -.60 -2.17

Adjusted R2 .0430 .0760 .1531

R2 Increment .0330 .0771

Note:

A t statistics are shown in parentheses

* Significant at the 0.05 level, two-tailed test

** Significant at the 0.01 level, two-tailed test

D Denotes a dichotomous variable

[1] Note, a low level of mastery is actually indicated by a high score on the Mastery Scale.

[2] Note, a low degree of willingness for proactive enforcement is actually indicated by a high score on the Proactive Enforcement Scale.

[3] Note, a low degree of willingness for proactive enforcement since verdicts is actually indicated by a high score on the Proactive Enforcement Since Verdicts Scale.

[4] Limitations regarding the external validity of this study should be recognized because police departments used in this study were selected by a non-probability judgmental sampling method from departments located in one county. Thus, the findings may be biased. It should, however, be pointed out that national data of local officers demonstrated the demographics of the sample found in this study are fairly representative (see U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1996).

Conclusion and implications[4]

Overall, the major hypothesis of the present study was confirmed. As the level of community alienation perceived by police officers increased, their sense of mastery deceased, and so too their willingness to engage in proactive law enforcement activities. Also, one of the regression models supported the study's secondary prediction that the expected inverse relationship between alienation and proactive enforcement would increase significantly since the "anti-police" judicial verdicts.

Regarding demographic variables, results revealed that older officers self-reported lower levels of mastery, less willingness for proactive enforcement, and less willingness for proactive enforcement since verdicts. This finding is consistent with other research results that senior officers generally express more negative job attitudes and futility about their work (King, 1995; Mottaz, 1983; Pogrebin, 1987). Also, compared to nonwhite officers, white officers reported a higher level of mastery and less willingness for proactive enforcement. This finding may have been influenced by the fact that all of the highly publicized "anti-police" judicial verdicts cited in this study involved white officers.

Consistent with the theory posited by this study, it was expected that officers working in communities with a higher degree of urbanism would experience the most alienation (see Durkheim, 1951, 1984; Simmel, 1950, 1971). However, significance was not found for this variable and the results were inconclusive. This could be due to the lack of participation by any true "big city" police department. Departments of this type declined to participate in this study because they viewed the survey items regarding the Rodney King, Malice Green, and O.J. Simpson cases as too politically sensitive.

The results of this study underscore the importance of minimizing police officer alienation, especially in community policing programs. Alienated officers are likely to experience less mastery on the job and to become less willing to work proactively with citizens and community agencies to solve community problems related to crime. Negative attitudes and "burnout" symptoms displayed by alienated officers can affect the morale and productivity of an entire department (Pogrebin, 1987).

These results further suggest the need for police departments and communities to work together to implement community policing programs from the start in a way that minimizes the potential for police officer alienation. Departments, for example, must do some major soul-searching about whether or not they have undertaken the organizational changes necessary to implement effective, alienation-resistant, community-orientated policing. In the words of Taylor et al. (1998: 3):

"...How many departments have actually changed the entrance requirements for new officers to reflect changes in the police role? How many have changed recruit training from a military oriented academy to curriculum more in tune with the new role demanded by community policing? How many departments have flattened their organizational pyramid and placed more decision-making in the hands of officers? How many chiefs have turned the organization 'upside-down' and have committed to participatory dialogue with officers as a major part of their management style? How many departments have actually changed their organizational culture? How many departments have structurally changed on a city-wide basis? Unfortunately, we submit to you only a very select few!"

Furthermore, police officers cannot be an isolated group within a city trying to be all things to all people. City governments must also become more decentralized and committed to community problem-solving. City agencies must team with police in an integrated proactive problem-solving manner. Police cannot possibly be expected to deal with major social problems without the partnership and resources of the entire community.

This study also suggests the need for education to help officers recognize the impact of alienation on police performance. For example, officers can learn the prominent features of alienation such as powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, isolation, and self-estrangement (Seeman, 1959). They can learn about cultural diversity, community values, and the often conflicting nature of citizen expectations. They can be taught to understand the psychological experience of alienation, how it is produced, and how to avoid it like the plague. Also, they can learn to take the negative attitudes and unrealistic expectations of citizens less personally, perhaps even to experience compassion for separate cultural realities.

Finally, departments can increase their efforts to provide consistent support and recognition of good community police work (Berg et al., 1984; Pogrebin, 1987; Schmidt et al., 1982). For example, recognition must be expanded from the traditional criteria of making arrests and clearing cases. Officer evaluations must begin to recognize the changes in police role inherent in the community policing philosophy.

Since the Crime Bill was passed in 1994, over $3.3 billion has been funneled into about 9,000 police agencies for community policing initiatives. Over 61,000 new community police officers have been hired, and an additional $1.5 billion has been spent on new community policing programs (Taylor et al., 1998). Also, thousands of existing officers have been reassigned to various community policing projects. Efforts to prevent officer isolation and alienation and to enhance strong officer-community bonds must be undertaken quickly, lest community-oriented policing become the LEAA of the 1990s.

References

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Robert C. Ankony is the Director of CFM Research on Grosse Ile Michigan. He is a former detective sergeant from a metropolitan sheriff's department. He received a Master of Correctional Sciences degree from the University of Detroit and his PhD in sociology from Wayne State University in Detroit. His research interests include police behavior, policing, use of deadly force, and firearm-related crime.

Thomas M. Kelley is Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Wayne State University in Detroit. His research interests include police stress, the nature and prevention of juvenile delinquency, and child abuse and neglect. His latest book concerning reducing stress and alienation for criminal justice personnel is called, "Falling in Love with Life: A Guide to Effortless Happiness and Inner Peace" (Breakthrough Press; Rochester, MI).

Originally published in Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, vol. 22, no 2 (1999): 120-32.

No Peace In the Valley

Robert Ankony — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 06:00:00 +0000

April 9, 1968, in the evening, Sergeant Doug Parkinson’s six-man long-range reconnaissance patrol (LRRP, or “Lurps”) team scrambled aboard a UH-1 Huey. They had just climbed Dong Tri Mountain outside the Marine combat base at Khe Sanh in search of the enemy. Although they never saw the enemy, a stray artillery shell nearly killed them all, and a Bengal tiger stalked them for several nights. Then, with B-52s set to bomb their position in preparation for a Marine sweep of the mountain, they almost fell 1,000 feet to their deaths as helicopters extracted them on long emergency ropes known as McGuire rigs. As Parkinson’s helicopter started up and its rotors began to spin, he glanced through the dust at dozens of other helicopters lifting off and said, “So much for Khe Sanh, lads. . . . I’d say we got off easy!”

Sgt. Parkinson and team en route to Khe Sanh patrol

But Parkinson’s long-range reconnaissance patrol team from Company E, 52nd Infantry, commanded by Captain Michael Gooding, would soon find itself in the thick of one of the most daring airmobile operations of the Vietnam War: an air assault into the A Shau Valley, the most formidable enemy sanctuary in South Vietnam. Company E would play a key role in establishing a stronghold in the valley—and it would pay a high price.

By early April 1968 the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) had just suffered two of the most catastrophic defeats of the war: the Tet Offensive and Khe Sanh, which cost them more than 50,000 men killed. But the NVA still had an ace in the hole to regain the initiative in the northernmost part of South Vietnam, designated I Corps Tactical Zone (ICTZ). That ace was the sparsely populated A Shau Valley, running north-south along the Laotian border 30 miles south of Khe Sanh, where troops and supplies were pouring into South Vietnam as the NVA geared up for another battle at a time and place of its choosing. The A Shau, a lovely mile-wide bottomland flanked by densely forested 5,000-foot mountains, was bisected lengthwise by Route 548, a hard-crusted dirt road. A part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the valley was a key NVA sanctuary.

The NVA seized A Shau in March 1966 after overrunning the isolated Special Forces camp there. They considered A Shau their turf and had fortified it with powerful crew-served 37mm antiaircraft cannons, some of them radar controlled. They also had rapid-firing twin-barreled 23mm cannons, scores of 12.7mm heavy machine guns, a warren of underground bunkers and tunnels, and even tanks. Because of this formidable strength on the ground, the NVA were left pretty well alone except for jet attacks, but given the steep, mountainous terrain—often cloaked under clouds and prone to sudden, violent changes in weather—air strikes were few. And because of the very limited airmobility of the Marines in ICTZ, no ground operations of any significance had been launched in the A Shau.

In January 1968 the situation changed. General William Westmoreland, the commander of U.S. military forces in South Vietnam, ordered the 1st Cavalry Division to move north from the Central Highlands to support the Marines. The 1st Cav, an airmobile division with 20,000 men and nearly 450 helicopters, had the most firepower and mobility of any division-size unit in Vietnam. When it arrived in ICTZ the 1st Cav fought toe-to-toe with the enemy during Tet. It was fully engaged with the NVA at Khe Sanh when its commander, Maj. Gen. John Tolson, unveiled plans for the air assault into the A Shau Valley: Operation Delaware.

Operation Delaware

Two brigades—about 11,000 men and 300 helicopters—would assault the north end of the 25-mile-long valley and leapfrog their way south, while another brigade would stay at Khe Sanh, continuing the fight from there to the Laotian border. Since satellite communications were still a thing of the future, a mountaintop in A Shau had to be secured to serve as a radio relay site for the troops, who would be slugging it out hidden deep behind the towering wall of mountains, to communicate with Camp Evans near the coast or with approaching aircraft. On the eastern side midway up the valley was a perfect spot: the top of a 4,878-foot peak known as Dong Re Lao Mountain. Headquarters dubbed it “Signal Hill.”

Since the mission required specially trained and equipped men who could rappel from helicopters, clear a landing zone with explosives, and hold the ground far from artillery support, the Lurps were the logical choice. As a result, the task of securing Signal Hill fell to Parkinson’s unit, Lieutenant Joe Dilger’s 2nd Platoon, Company E, 52nd Infantry.

With every unit requesting lift ships, many of which were undergoing repair or still at Khe Sanh, not enough birds were available to bring in the entire platoon, so Sergeant Parkinson’s team was told to stand aside until later. The helicopters landed, and everyone else clambered aboard, heavily laden with gear. The slicks rose into a clear blue sky and vanished in the west, reaching the mile-high peak of Signal Hill some 20 minutes later.

As planned, the small force of helicopters came to a hover 100 feet above the dense jungle, and the men, led by Lieutenant Dilger, started rappelling down to clear a landing zone. But in the thinner atmosphere at that altitude, the helicopter engines had less oxygen for power, and the rotors less air to bite into for lift. As a result, seconds after Sgt. Larry Curtis and his assistant team leader, Cpl. Bill Hand, had jumped off the skids, their helicopter lost control while they were still 50 feet in the air.

Sgt. Curtis's crashed helicopter, Signal Hill, Vietnam

Once unloaded, the four helicopters still in the air quickly flew away to avoid further engine strain, and Corporal Hand and the others could now finally mount a belated rescue. After digging Sergeant Curtis out from beneath the skid and removing the injured on board to safety, they began at once the grueling task of clearing an LZ, using chain saws, machetes, and long tubular explosives called bangalore torpedoes. There in the middle of enemy territory, the insertion and clearing work had not gone unnoticed, and soon enough the troops were battling against more than just nature.

By the next morning there still wasn’t an adequate clearing for a helicopter to land, so the injured Sergeant Curtis had to be lifted out on a McGuire rig. As the assault force toiled away clearing an LZ, NVA soldiers made the long, arduous climb up from the valley floor, reaching the mountaintop at noon. Hidden by dense foliage and blown debris, and with the sounds of their approach masked by the din of explosives and chain saws, they roamed the perimeter at will, shooting at members of Dilger’s platoon who were still struggling to make a clearing.

Unable to see the snipers, yet compelled to finish an LZ, the assault force threw grenades down the slope and fired their weapons at suspected targets, keeping the enemy at bay. As this battle with the unseen enemy dragged on, men charged forward through mud, debris, and deadly sniper fire to rescue the wounded and dying and carry them to the top of the peak and the protective shelter of a bomb crater. Those in need were given plasma expanders to replace lost blood, cloth-wrapped plastic bandages to cover sucking chest wounds, or morphine injections to ease the pain. Radiomen made desperate calls to Camp Evans for helicopters to evacuate the wounded, but with several waves of choppers still making assaults far north into the valley, and nearly a dozen shot down on the first day of the operation, none were available for Signal Hill.

By late afternoon a functional LZ was finally cleared, but at a steep cost. Snipers had killed Cpl. Dick Turbitt and Pfc. Bob Noto, mortally wounded Sgt. William Lambert and combat engineer Pfc. James MacManus, and gravely wounded Cpl. Roy Beer. Lieutenant Dilger was shot through the chest and close to death.

As fierce battles raged far to the north in the valley, Sergeant Lambert—just one day short of completing his two-year tour—clung to life for six hours before dying in the arms of his comrades. Soon after Lambert died, a lone Huey approached from the north to remove the wounded and the stranded aircrew left on Signal Hill. The dead would have to wait.

Early the next morning, Sunday, April 21, a medevac, already crammed with wounded infantrymen and the badly burned pilot of a downed helicopter, landed on Signal Hill to pick up Corporal Hand, whose condition had worsened. He was put inside on a stretcher, beneath the screaming burned pilot, and as the medevac lifted off, the men on the ground could hear the burned man pleading again and again in his agony, “Shoot me! Somebody, for God’s sake, please shoot me!”

At about that time, Captain Gooding and Sergeant Parkinson’s six-man team arrived. Since no patrols had yet been made to clear the peak of snipers, Captain Gooding ordered Parkinson to make an immediate patrol around the peak. Once Parkinson had notified everyone on the LZ of their planned route of departure his team mounted their gear and slogged through the mud to the western side of the mountain, where they came to the crashed helicopter, lying on its side on a steep embankment. Then, stepping over an enemy fighting position where cartridges and two grenades had been left abandoned in pouches, they pushed through a dense wall of mud-covered branches and trees, twisted and broken from the blasting to clear the LZ.

Once through the thick mat of debris, they entered dense virgin forest swathed in a thick blanket of fog—the clouds surrounding the peak. Bracing their feet on tree roots and the stems of huge ferns, they groped from stalk to frond to keep their balance, slowly maneuvering through the fog and undergrowth that limited their visibility to the men immediately in front of and behind them. Suddenly, after an hour of this slow, painstaking, and uneventful climb, a lone NVA soldier stood and called to Parkinson’s front scout—an indigenous Montagnard named Dish—thinking he was a fellow soldier. Instantly realizing his mistake, the soldier stood shocked, arms at his sides, mouth and eyes open, as Dish and Parkinson raised their rifles and shot him.

Cpl. Dish on Signal Hill with captured SKS

Parkinson’s team made another patrol around the peak while, with the LZ now operational, hundreds of scout helicopters, slicks, gunships, and powerful CH-47 Chinooks laden with troops flocked in from the east. Reaching the Lurps’ mountaintop stronghold, they plunged deep inside the valley to search out and destroy the enemy with airpower and overwhelming infantry assaults. As large and small battles raged farther and farther south, streams of tracers could be seen flying skyward. The effectiveness of the enemy antiaircraft was obvious as massive CH-54 Skycranes could be seen from Signal Hill, returning to Camp Evans with one or two destroyed helicopters slung beneath them.

During the operation, jet air strikes came frequently. In clear weather they struck the valley and mountainside positions, at times screaming in just above the Lurps’ heads. Their bombs, along with the shells from the vast rings of artillery, shortly transformed the lush, green valley and mountainsides into a continuous wasteland of craters. Watching it all from their mountaintop position, the Lurps could see for miles in the cool, thin air, from the distant warships 30 miles east in the South China Sea to pristine towering green mountains in neutral Laos seven miles away, where silvery cataracts tumbled down cloud-wreathed cliffs.

Lurps on Signal Hill directing artillery on enemy trucks in A Shau Valley (author in tiger fatigues)

The bombers could easily be identified by their running lights, V formation, and the faint drone of their engines, but by the time that identification could register, it was too late for the enemy to run. When the bombers reached the valley, the clouds below the Lurps’ mountaintop position suddenly started flashing bright orange as three lines of bombs merged to lay down a continuous swath of death and destruction that raced down the valley at five hundred miles an hour. In seconds the earth trembled beneath the Lurps’ feet, followed after a long lag by a deep rumbling that sounded as if the valley itself were moaning in agony.

In the following days, Signal Hill was secured, a battery of artillery was airlifted on top to support the infantry in the valley, and another helicopter crashed on the peak, its rotors narrowly missing two Lurps, but three other young men were not so fortunate. One was crushed beneath the skid; another slammed in the chest by a sailing fuel can; and another, an Air Force meteorologist, had his leg and feet severed off.

The Lurps held that small green islet high above a vast ocean of clouds for close to three weeks, providing a vital fire support base and radio relay site for the troops in the valley to communicate with Camp Evans and with approaching aircraft. Their action saved American lives and helped ensure the success of Operation Delaware by allowing coordinated air and ground attacks, timely artillery strikes, and air rescues of wounded infantrymen and downed aircrews.

Despite hundreds of B-52 and jet air strikes to destroy the most sophisticated enemy antiaircraft network yet seen in South Vietnam, the NVA managed to shoot down a C-130, a CH-54 Skycrane, two CH-47 Chinooks, and nearly two dozen UH-1 Hueys. Many more, though not shot out of the sky, were lost in accidents or damaged by ground fire. The 1st Cavalry Division suffered more than 100 dead in Operation Delaware. Bad weather aggravated the loss by causing delays in troop movements, allowing a substantial number of NVA to escape to safety in Laos. Still, the NVA lost more than 800 dead, a tank, 70 trucks, two bulldozers, 30 flamethrowers, thousands of rifles and machine guns, and dozens of antiaircraft cannons. They also lost tons of ammunition, explosives, medical supplies, foodstuffs, and documents.

A week after leaving A Shau, Sergeant Parkinson’s assistant team leader, Bob Whitten, was killed in action. Three other Lurps from the Signal Hill assault force were also killed, and Sergeant Curtis lost an eye in a grenade blast. In the following days, Sergeant Parkinson returned home to work as a fish and wildlife specialist, Lieutenant Dilger recovered from his wounds and became a member of the Special Forces, Captain Gooding was promoted to major and assigned to Special Warfare Command, and Company E, 52nd Infantry (LRP), was redesignated Company H, 75th Infantry (Ranger).

Maj. Gen. John Tolson, in summing up why so many of the NVA were able to flee to safety in Laos despite his division’s huge airmobile force, said, “According to old French records, April was supposed to be the best month for weather in the A Shau Valley. As it turned out, May would have been a far better month––but you don’t win them all.” That lesson, however, would not be lost on the 101st Airborne Division, who, in May 1969, stormed Dong Ap Bia Mountain, commonly known as Hamburger Hill, on the opposite side of the valley, just southwest of Signal Hill. The NVA lost that battle, too, yet they returned to A Shau, prompting criticism of American tactics. But with South Vietnam’s wild and remote borders over twice as long as the trenches in France during World War I—which were manned by millions of troops—there simply were not enough allied soldiers to secure them. With that limitation in mind, airmobile divisions such as the 1st Cav and 101st Airborne demonstrated that a unit need not be based in the hinterlands to operate and destroy the enemy there.

__________________________________________________________

Robert C. Ankony, PhD, is a sociologist who writes criminological, firearms, and military articles for scientific and professional journals and special-interest magazines. He served as an Army Ranger in Vietnam and is the author of Lurps: A Ranger’s Diary of Tet, Khe Sanh, A Shau, and Quang Tri, revised ed., (Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books, 2009). Nominated for the Army Historical Foundation’s 2006 and 2009 Distinguished Writing Award.

Originally published in Vietnam magazine, cover story, October 2008, 26--31.

The Financial Assessment of Military Small Arms

Cathy — Fri, 31 Jul 2015 04:31:00 +0000

No other developed country trusts their citizens with firearms as does the United States, safeguarded by our Second Amendment right. As a result, vast quantities of surplus military small arms are imported annually. Of these most will make excellent shooters, however, in terms of financial investment how can a collector separate the wheat from the chaff?

Imported Military Weapons.

To establish a comprehensive and objective method for assessing a firearm's potential to increase in value sixteen variables are illustrated. This potential is hereafter referred to as "explanatory power." Thus, unlike a casual evaluation of a firearm, the multiple variables presented scrutinize a firearm with an assortment of measurements. Consequently, much greater explanatory power is achieved.

METHODOLOGY

Read each variable carefully as each specifies unique details. Every variable is accompanied by an example depicting the highest and lowest score for that variable. Since it is impossible to list allexamples, simple judgment can infer the score in between. If a variable does not relate to a particular firearm, the average score for that variable must be substituted to render the effect of that variable neutral, otherwise the final "investment score" will be artificially lowered.

Because each variable has different explanatory power, the maximum and minimum scores of some variables will differ. The sum of the variables is the investment score. This score can range on a five-point scale from "excellent" to "bad." To ensure accuracy score only as the firearm relates to that variable.

On a final note, few firearms achieve maximum scores. Consequently, an investment score of "very good" is significant. Firearms having a score of "poor" or "bad" should not be purchased for investment.

OPERATIONALIZATION OF VARIABLES

Price: measures the degree a firearm costs below or above the current market as this has an immediate effect on its ability to appreciate. Using this criteria, the highest value is "well below" with a maximum score of fifty (i.e., 50% or more below, e.g., $500 for a $1,000 firearm). The lowest value is "well above" with the minimum negative score of fifty (i.e., 50% or more above, e.g., $1,500 for a $1,000 firearm). Note, under this classification if a firearm was recently purchased at the current market price, or if the purchase price is dated or unknown, score with the average, i.e., zero.
Country's Significance: measures the twentieth century historical relevance of the country where the firearm was manufactured. Using this criteria, the highest value is "very high" with a maximum score of thirty (e.g., United States, Soviet Union, Germany). The lowest value is "very low" with the minimum score of zero (e.g., Chile, Sweden, Portugal). To elaborate on the possibility of scores for this variable, Great Britain would have a value of twenty five, France a value of twenty, Japan a value of fifteen, Italy a value of ten, and Czechoslovakia a value of five. Also note, under this classification if a firearm was manufactured in one country specifically for another (e.g., in Germany for Chile), score with the lowest valued country.
Manufacturer's Desirability: measures the appeal for a specific company or armory of manufacturer. Using this criteria, the highest value is "very high" with a maximum score of ten (e.g., a German Luger by DWM). The lowest value is "very low" with the minimum score of zero (e.g., a German Luger by Erfurt). Again note, if a firearm does not relate to a variable, score with the average. For instance, a U.S. M50 Reising submachine gun would receive a score of five on this variable as all were manufactured by Harrington and Richardson.
Quality of Machining: measures the quality of construction of a firearm. Using this criteria, the highest value is "excellent" with a maximum score of ten (e.g., a U.S. M1928A1 Thompson submachine gun). The lowest value is "poor" with the minimum score of zero (e.g., a British Mark II Stein submachine gun). Note, under this classification if a firearm is made from contemporary stampings or with a plastic stock (e.g., a U.S. M16A1 rifle), score with the average.
Action Desirability: measures the appeal for a firearm having a more rapid method of function. Using this criteria, the highest value is "very high" with a maximum score of twenty (e.g., a machine gun). The lowest value is "very low" with the minimum score of zero (e.g., a bolt action rifle). To further detail the possibility of scores for this variable, a semiautomatic rifle or pistol would have a score of ten and a revolver a score of five. Also note, under this classification the specific method of function is irrelevant (e.g., gas, recoil, blowback).
Matching Parts: measures the degree a firearm retains matching numbered or coded parts (i.e., not numbered but denoted with a manufacturer's code, e.g., "SA" for Springfield Armory). Using this criteria, the highest value is "all" with a maximum score of thirty. The lowest value is "none" with the minimum score of zero. Note, under this classification if: A) the firearm parts are not numbered or coded but appear to be matching (i.e., having similar finish and wear), score with the maximum; B) the firearm parts are matching but the weapon has an importation mark as required by federal law on January 30, 2002, score with the average; or C) the firearm parts are matching but the receiver was remanufactured, the crest removed, or the barrel rechambered once in surplus, score with the minimum.
Technologically Innovative: measures the technological contribution of a firearm. Using this criteria, the highest value is "very much" with a maximum score of twenty (e.g., a French M1917 Saint Etienne---first common military semi-auto rifle, or German MP44---first true selective-fire assault rifle). The lowest value is "very little" with the minimum score of zero (e.g., a German Kar. 98k or Japanese Type 38 Arisaka bolt action rifle). To elaborate on the possibility of scores for this variable, a Canadian Mark III Ross or Swiss M1911 Schmidt Rubin straight pull bolt action rifle would have a score of ten.
Symmetry of Design: measures the firearm's visual appeal and harmony of design. Using this criteria, the highest value is "excellent" with a maximum score of ten (e.g., a German MP40 Schmeisser submachine gun). The lowest value is "poor" with the minimum score of zero (e.g., an Australian Mark 1/42 Owen submachine gun).
Compact Model: measures the appeal for the smaller version of a firearm model. This criteria is a simple dichotomy. The highest value is "yes" with a maximum score of ten (e.g., a U.S. M1898 Krag carbine or paratrooper stocked U.S. M1 carbine). The lowest value is "no" with the minimum score of zero (e.g., a U.S. M1898 Krag rifle or full stocked U.S. M1 carbine). Note, under this classification if a firearm was not produced in a compact model, score with the average.
Reliability: measures the degree a firearm model is perceived as dependable. Using this criteria, the highest value is "excellent" with a maximum score of ten (e.g., a Russian AK-47 Assault rifle). The lowest value is "poor" with the minimum score of zero (e.g., a French M1915 Chauchat light machine gun).
History: measures the degree a firearm model participated in significant military history. Using this criteria, the highest value is "very much" with a maximum score of thirty (e.g., a U.S. M1 Garand rifle). The lowest value is "very little" with the minimum score of zero (e.g., a Chilean M1895 rifle). Note, this classification does not measure a firearm's specific history. For instance, if an individual firearm was used in a distinct battle or by a particular person, as these factors are unique and could significantly affect the firearm's value.
Condition: measures the degree a firearm maintains its original condition. Using National Rifle Association criteria, the highest value is "mint" with a maximum score of twenty. The lowest value is "poor" with the minimum score of zero. Note, under this classification "mint," "perfect," and "new" are considered synonymous. Also note, if a firearm was refinished, score with the minimum as restoration generally decreases value. However, if the restoration was professionally rendered with the intent to preserve history (e.g., removal of rust and dings without rounding edges or obliterating markings) it can increase value, if so, score with the average.
Availability: measures the degree a firearm model is rare due to brief production or attrition. Using this criteria, the highest value is "very rare" with a maximum score of fifty (e.g., a U.S. M1942 Liberator pistol). The lowest value is "very common" with the minimum score of zero (e.g., a British No.1 Mark III Enfield rifle).
Importation Prohibited: measures the degree a particular type of firearm (not model) is lawfully restricted from importation. This criteria is a simple dichotomy. The highest value is "yes" with a maximum score of fifty (i.e., a legally registered machine gun). The lowest value is "no" with the minimum score of zero (i.e., any other firearm). This variable requires further explanation. Although other firearms can periodically be imported and sold in this country, and this includes other highly collectible items, such as art and automobiles, machine guns can never be (except to government agencies or as parts without receivers). Thus, the only machine guns available to collectors are those that were federally registered in this country prior to May 1986. This reduces supply to what is legally here (approximately 200.000, i.e., one for every 1,750 people). In addition, since a 200 dollar federal tax is charged on every machine gun upon transfer to a citizen, the buyer adds this and related expenses upon sale. This process is repetitive. As a result of these factors and that population steadily increases so does demand, thus machine guns appreciate in value extraordinarily fast (e.g., a U.S. M50 Reising submachine gun that a decade ago could be purchased for $500 now costs more than $5,000). Note, although U.S. M1 rifles and carbines are prohibited from importation they're not viewed under this classification for the following reasons: A) their supply is not limited to those that are federally registered, B) they are released through the Civilian Marksmanship Program, C) original receivers are available, and D) receivers can be manufactured.
Market Restricted: measures the degree a firearm is regulated in the domestic market thus limiting the ability of it to be sold. Using this criteria, the highest value is "very little" with a maximum score of twenty (e.g., a Curio and Relic rifle). The lowest value is "very much" with the minimum score of zero (e.g., post May 1986 dealer sample machine gun).
Ammunition Price: measures the degree ammunition is available for a firearm at a reasonable cost, as the greater this factor is present the more it would increase a firearm's potential to increase in value. Using this criteria, the highest value is "very reasonable" with a maximum score of ten (e.g., 9 mm Luger ammunition). The lowest value is "very expensive" with the minimum score of zero (e.g., 7.62 mm Russian Nagant ammunition). Note, under this classification if ammunition is not available for a firearm, score with the minimum.

INSTRUMENT OF MEASUREMENT

All variables measure the impact on firearm demand, except for the variables of "Availability" and "Importation Prohibited" which impact supply. Nonetheless, each variable is an independent variable as each influences the dependent variable, the degree a firearm can appreciate in value.

Variables are scored according to explanatory power. Thus, "critical" variables have a maximum score of 50, "very important" variables a maximum of 30, "important" variables a maximum of 20, and "meaningful" variables a maximum of 10. The sum of the variable scores is the investment score. This score can range from 380 to negative 50. A negative score can only be obtained with the variable "Price." If acquired it must be subtracted from the total.

The categories of the investment score and their respective range are: "excellent" 380 to 295, "very good" 294 to 209, "good" 208 to 123, "poor" 122 to 37, and "bad" 36 to negative 50. The mean score is 165 and serves as a baseline for comparison. The higher an investment score the more rapid a firearm should appreciate in value. Again, firearms having a score of "poor" or "bad" should not be purchased for investment.

The following Military Small Arms Financial Assessment Scale provides a collector or dealer a method to make evaluations. After writing the manufacturer and model of a firearm in the upper right-hand margin of the scale, a firearm is scored on each of the sixteen variables in the adjacent blank space and totaled below. The categories and range of the investment score are also presented. Again note, if the variable "Price" is scored in the negative, subtract it from the total. If a variable is non-applicable, score with the average.

MILITARY SMALL ARMS FINANCIAL ASSESSMENT SCALE

Firearm Manufacturer and Model:

Maximum Variable Score Investment Score

Critical 50 Excellent 295 to 380

Very Important 30 Very Good 209 to 294

Important 20 Good 123 to 208

Meaningful 10 Poor 37 to 122

Bad -50 to36

Total: (mean score 165)

LIMITATIONS

There are several limitations that should be noted. First, precise adherence to instructions is required as some variables can appear confusing (e.g., "Price" is mathematically a continuous variable that can range from positive to negative). Second, when designing any instrument of measure, every effort must be made to assure the variables are exhaustive and mutually exclusive. In other words, there should be a category for everything logical and every possibility should fit into one and only one category. This is a rigorous requirement and weakness must be acknowledged here. For instance, the variable "Country's Significance" has ambiguity (overlap) with the variable "History." This can affect the reliability of obtaining consistent measurements. Yet, if one is aware of the definition submitted for each variable this weakness can be eliminated. Lastly, there are many insignificant variables. For instance, parts availability, original packaging, or additional accessories. These were eliminated for weakness in explanatory power and for their peripheral character.

___________________________________________________________

Robert C. Ankony, PhD, is the Director of CFM Research and is an NRA Life Member. He is a former detective sergeant with Detroit's Wayne County Sheriff's Department and a U.S. Army Ranger who served in Vietnam. Dr. Ankony received his PhD in sociology with a specialty in criminology from Wayne State University, Detroit. He is the author of Lurps: A Ranger's Diary of Tet, Khe Sanh, A Shau, and Quang Tri, revised ed., Hamilton Books, Landham, MD. (Nominated for the Army Historical Foundations' 2006 and 2009 Distinguished Writing Award).

Originally published in Small Arms Review, April 2000, 53--59.

Perspectives

Cathy — Sun, 14 Jun 2015 02:47:00 +0000

Nearly 30 years after the end of the Vietnam War, the myth that it was a 'bad war' still passes for history.

For the past three decades conventional wisdom in America has held that the Vietnam War was a "bad war," unlike the "good war" of World War II. But an argument can be made that the Vietnam War not only was a good war but was more vital to America's interests than World War II. To pursue this argument, we need to consider several factors: America's stance at the beginning of World War II; the Cold War; the Communist threat; and the foundation on which the "bad war" myth rests.

Because of the clear dangers posed in the 1930s by the totalitarian ideologies of Germany and Japan, combined with their expansionist policies, World War II is commonly referred to in the United States as a "good war." But what did the United States do in March 1939, when Germany invaded the democratic country of Czechoslovakia? It did nothing. What did America do at the beginning of the war, in September 1939, when Great Britain and France stood alone against the Germans for their invasion of the democratic country of Poland? It issued a proclamation of neutrality. What did we do in the spring of 1940 when Germany conquered the largely democratic countries of Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Holland, Belgium and France, and began bombing Great Britain? We transferred surplus war materiel to Great Britain.

And what did we do in the spring and summer of 1941 when Germany conquered Yugoslavia and Greece, invaded the Soviet Union and Egypt, and began bombing Malta--and when Japan's mass wave of butchery in China had become known worldwide? We maintained our neutral status; we referred to Germany and Japan as aggressor nations; we instituted a trade and oil embargo against Japan; and we passed Lend-Lease legislation to aid Great Britain and the Soviet Union.

In fact, it took a direct act of war against us at Pearl Harbor in December 1941 to get America involved in World War II. Even then, we declared war only against Japan. Our war with Germany came about because Hitler declared war against us. Remember, too, that our entry into WWII came after millions of Chinese, Poles, Russians, and others had died at the hands of their captors, and after millions more had been sent into slave labor. The point is: If WWII was such a compelling fight against tyranny, why didn't we enter it much sooner?

The Vietnam War, far from being an irrelevant or isolated conflict, was meaningful to the United States because of its connection to the Cold War. Our fight in Vietnam was part of America's battle against communism. Had it not been for the existence of the former Soviet Union, a Communist Vietnam would have been less relevant to the United States than Communist Cuba is to us today. However, the Soviet Union's policy of global communism, plus its massive nuclear arsenal, limited our options with the Soviets during the Cold War to the following: a head-to-head war of mutual assured destruction, a concession to communism's expansion, or showing our resolve by fighting their surrogates conventionally or covertly. In short, the Cold War could only be won or lost on the periphery--for example, in Korea or Vietnam.

Vietnam was our generation's test of resolve against tyranny. Unfortunately, America's lack of political and domestic resolve allowed South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia to fall to communism in 1975, Afghanistan and Nicaragua to succumb to the same ideology in 1979, and Iran to submit in 1979 to religious fundamentalists.

Why was the threat of Soviet communism worse to America than that posed by our World War II adversaries? Specifically, Soviet ideology was dedicated to the destruction of our economic and individual freedoms. Further, because Communist ideology was based upon the broad philosophy of economic egalitarianism rather than on the narrow nationalistic and ethnocentric philosophies of our WWII adversaries, its appeal was exportable.

Other philosophical and religious differences also played a part. But there was a drastic difference between our WWII and Cold War adversaries' capabilities to inflict mortal harm on America. The Soviets had nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could reach our central cities within 35 minutes, or within 10 minutes if they were launched from submarines off our coast. They also had, along with their Communist allies (especially China, North Korea and East Germany), formidable conventional forces.

By contrast, the Germans in 1940 could not even cross the 22-mile-wide Strait of Dover when they were at the peak of their power and their adversary, Great Britain, stood alone. The Japanese, although they had a powerful navy that included many aircraft carriers, lacked mechanized ground forces and (like Germany) strategic air power.

Still, many Americans during the Cold War did not perceive the Communists to be as threatening as the Axis powers of WWII. Abstract threats, real though they may be, can never be as compelling as a real battle, such as the attack on Pearl Harbor. Yet ideologically and militarily the Communist threat was real, and it was worse.

To understand why our fight against communism during the Vietnam War has been portrayed for the past three decades as mistaken and immoral, we need to understand the counterculture of the 1960s. That movement, with its anti-war, anti-authority and anti-establishment views, was spawned by the unremitting conflicts of the 20th century and by the development of technology capable of inflicting human destruction on an ever-increasing scale.

Consider, for example, World War I, "the war to end all wars" in 1914; World War II, "the great war for democracy" in 1939; the first atomic bomb explosion in 1945; the Berlin blockade in 1948; the first Hydrogen bomb explosion in 1949; the Korean War in 1950; and the launch of Sputnik in 1957, which seemingly demonstrated Soviet ability to deliver ICBMs worldwide against undefended populations. Add to these the Berlin Wall Crisis in 1961; the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962; the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963; the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in 1964, which brought America directly into the Vietnam War; the widespread race riots in 1967; the Tet Offensive in 1968; and the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King and Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.

At their worse, some of these events threatened mankind. At best, they led idealistic young Americans to feel powerless and to lose faith in their parents, their government, their society and the institute of science. Frustrated and discouraged with everything, many of them viewed the demand placed on their generation to wage war in Vietnam as evidence of society's continuing madness.

As these individuals became increasingly alienated, contemptuous, hostile and paranoid regarding every American social structure, they withdrew from American society to form the counterculture, in which they repudiated traditional values such as respect for marriage, elders, authority, the rule of law, the work ethic, delayed gratification, patriotism, technology, Western society and Western religions. Adherents of the counterculture expressed their contempt for these values and institutions by embracing values, habits, demeanor, attire and music that made a mockery of traditional society. By the time of the Woodstock festival in August 1969, the counterculture's character and spirit had reached full maturity.

The counterculture came mostly from the middle and upper class strata of American society, particularly the youth in Ivy League or large urban universities. That segment of society had the financial resources and influence to attend college and receive draft deferments to avoid serving in Vietnam. More than 30,000 of them sought temporary refuge in Canada and Sweden. Thousands of others burned their draft cards in defiance.

Members of the counterculture rationalized that they were against the war on moral grounds. They also believed they had a level of consciousness and humanity that was not shared by those who served. In their certainty and self-righteous zealotry they became moral exhibitionists. They also became blinded to different perspectives or civil discussion.

As antagonists against American values, they embraced our enemy's argument that we were the "imperialists" and the VC and the NVA were the "liberators." Their loathing of our military was a logical extension of their rationalizations. Members of the counterculture did not agonize over the loss of American soldiers. Rather, they showed their contempt in many different ways for those who served in their place. These ranged from waving the enemy flag and burning ours, to harassing veterans and their families.

Politically, the counterculture embraced the left. Of particular relevance is the counterculture's subsequent domination of certain occupations: Hollywood, the media and academia. These enormously powerful and influential social institutions have a vested interest in portraying Vietnam protestors (themselves) as motivated only by moral and ethical considerations. They assert that their actions took courage, and that they shortened the war and saved American and Asian lives.

Members of the counterculture are vociferous when speaking about the massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese by American troops at My Lai in 1968. Yet their silence is deafening in response to the murder of millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians by the Communists, or the plight of our prisoners of war, or the Communist massacre at Hue.

Others try to absolve their past by claiming that everyone in our generation was part of the counterculture. Worse, many of them justify their actions by bombarding the American public with propaganda that our military in Vietnam performed nothing noble or decent, but was only dedicated to depravity and insanity. Witness movies such as Coming Home, The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, and Platoon.

Sadly, still other perpetrators of the Vietnam War myth exist in the ranks of veterans––that small but conspicuous minority who, even today, can still be found wearing fatigues and ready to cry on anyone's shoulder about the horrors of Vietnam and how it destroyed their lives. Although this group has not been researched in any scientific manner, reports suggest that many of them were never in combat (see Stolen Valor, by B.G. Burkett). This group unwittingly aids the left's desire to portray the war as immoral and Vietnam veterans as dysfunctional. Not surprisingly, Hollywood and the media has generally focused on this minority.

More than 30 years have passed since the peak of the Vietnam War. At this late date we don't need sympathy, a parade or another monument, but we do need the truth. Fortunately, it is within our power to accomplish that goal.

First, we must have faith in our own Vietnam experience, during which we witnessed many decent men honorably performing their duty. Second, we must be proud of our fight against the tyranny of communism during the Cold War. Third, we must recognize that all our battles in Vietnam are trivialized if the war is erroneously viewed. Fourth, we must be aware of why the Vietnam "bad war" myth came into existence and why former members of the counterculture have a vested interest in keeping that fiction alive. Last, we must challenge this myth whenever we have the opportunity.

None of these tasks should prove too difficult to accomplish, for we who served in the Vietnam War are privy to the truth. The vast majority of those who are distorting the facts about the Vietnam War were not. Author George Orwell once wrote, "He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past." Have not our past, and the meaning behind the deaths of 58,000 of our comrades, been controlled long enough?

__________________________________________________________

Robert C. Ankony, PhD, is a sociologist who writes criminological, firearms, and military articles for scientific and professional journals and special- interest magazines. He served as an Army Ranger in Vietnam and is the author of Lurps: A Ranger’s Diary of Tet, Khe Sanh, A Shau, and Quang Tri, revised ed. (Landham, MD: Hamilton Books, 2009); Nominated for the Army Historical Foundation’s 2006 and 2009 Distinguished Writing Award.

Originally published in Vietnam magazine, August 2002, 58--61.

A New Strategy for America's War on Terrorism

Robert Ankony — Thu, 21 May 2015 16:50:00 +0000

World Trade Center, September 11, 2001

America's current thinking on how to defeat radical Islamists is split along two very different schools of thought. Republicans, following what is known as the Bush Doctrine, advocate the military model of taking the fight to the enemy and seeking to democratize the Middle East. Democrats, by contrast, propose the law enforcement model of better cooperation with nations and more security at home.

Although we have implemented aspects of both policies, the way forward is anything but clear. For one thing, our fight against terrorism is complicated by the fact that we are not fighting standing armies. Estimates are, about 15 percent of the world’s Muslims either support or have mixed feelings of terrorism against us.1 This amounts to some 250 million people, scattered across dozens of ethnic groups and nations, including many countries friendly to the United States. This small but dangerous minority is united by a fanatical hatred of the West.

America needs to move beyond criticizing former President George W. Bush. Yes, the purported threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was based on poor intelligence and did not materialize. But it’s also true that Coalition forces toppled a brutal dictator and introduced Iraq and Afghanistan to democracy, which, if successful, may spill into nearby nations, making the world safer.

Unfortunately, democracy can’t be thrust on people who think of security only in tribal terms. Democracy involves a lot more than casting ballots or people wildly demanding change in the streets. It requires rule of law, enfranchisement of minorities, intolerance of corruption, a free press, private property rights, religious liberty, and a transparent economy.

Geographical Perspective

Why has the Arab world been eclipsed by the West and so many East Asian nations? Mort Zuckerman, editor in chief of U.S. News and World Report, perhaps said it most aptly: "Their governments are inept and undemocratic...their societies riddled by class privilege and corruption, their economies inefficient and backward.... Their problem is systemic: Until they shed their neurotic and outmoded resentment of the rest of the world, they will fail."2

Bernard Lewis, a leading Middle East scholar, states that the total non-fossil fuel exports of the Arab countries (about 300 million people) amount to less than those of Finland, a country of only five million inhabitants.3 Brigitte Gabriel, raised amid Lebanon’s civil war, points out that in 1998, a grand total of three technology patents were granted to the entire Arab world, whereas the Republic of Korea, with about one-eighth the population, received 779. Moreover, one-third of Arab men and half of Arab women are illiterate.4

Too often, Arab leaders stand silent or, worse join the hatred when their people lash out. Radical Shiites imposed harsh Sharia law in Iran and have de facto control of Lebanon through funding the terrorist organization Party of God, more commonly known as Hezbollah. Iran also funds Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Palestinian Hamas, the Zionist Resistance Movement. In Iraq, the Shiite majority, currently led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, will stay in power whether democracy succeeds or not.

The Sunnis, who are the vast majority of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims, have plenty of radicals of their own. Salafism (also known as "Wahhabism"), a conservative branch of Sunni Islam, is the state religion of Saudi Arabia. Radical Sunnis control Syria via the Baath Party, and the Gaza Strip via Hamas. Indeed, the United States’ two archenemies, al-Qaeda and the Taliban, are Sunni. Al-Qaeda was spawned primarily by Arabs, the Taliban by Pakistanis. And the Taliban continues to threaten Pakistan, a dubious U.S. ally whose popular support for our policies has dipped to the lowest among our Muslim allies.5

Where Do We Go from Here?

We lost the Vietnam War, but we won the larger Cold War because the Soviets’ economy imploded. We can win this war by focusing on our real fight: the global economic challenge. For America to remain a beacon of hope, justice, and economic opportunity, we must reduce our national debt of nearly $17 trillion and promote superior education and the free market. For without an educated people and a robust economy—one supported by productivity, not by indebting ourselves to countries that do not have our best interests at heart—we will forever be obstructed by fossilized organizations such as the United Nations. Or, worse, we will lose our technological edge and fall subject to the whims of China or unscrupulous coalitions led by Russia or Iran.

U.S. Army Rangers

Our war against terrorism has diverted too much of our human and economic capital ($5 trillion for Iraq and Afghanistan so far, according to one Harvard study).6 We must acknowledge that we can’t win this war with infantry and tanks. We can lose it, though—by being afraid to call the terrorists what they are, by not acknowledging that we’re fighting radical Islamists, or by thinking we can appease those same radicals by closing Gitmo. Terrorists captured abroad have a special status. They’re not POWs, nor are they domestic criminals, who have the U.S constitutional right to be imprisoned here. Gitmo provides an optimum remote and secure environment safely operated by the military. And meanwhile, we can still take the fight to our enemies as we did with Osama Bin Laden, not with regular military forces but covertly through the CIA, State Department, FBI and special-ops soldiers, or by tactical air strikes and drones.

Yes, many Muslims hate us. But we would do well to remember that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 came not from enemy combatants living abroad but from civilians living here. And those who tried to destroy our transatlantic aircraft with liquid explosives in 2006, as well as those who planned mass murder at Kennedy Airport and Fort Dix in 2007, were well-educated Muslim citizens from friendly nations. And the 2007 suicidal firebombing at Glasgow Airport and the thwarted attack at London’s Luton Airport, as well as the 2009 Fort Hood massacre, were by Muslim medical doctors residing in country. In 2010, we had the failed car bombing at Times Square, also by someone of privilege, wealth, and a good education, who lived right here.

In the introduction of the U.S. Army / Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, Sarah Sewall states the need for "U.S. forces to make securing the civilian, rather than destroying the enemy, their top priority. The civilian population is the center of gravity—the deciding factor in the struggle.... Civilian deaths create an extended family of enemies—new insurgent recruits or informants––and erode support of the host nation." Sewall sums up the book’s key points on how to win this battle: "Sometimes, the more you protect your force, the less secure you may be.... Sometimes, the more force is used, the less effective it is.... The more successful the counterinsurgency is, the less force can be used and the more risk must be accepted.... Sometimes, doing nothing is the best reaction."7 This strategy, often termed "courageous restraint," has certainly led to some success on the Middle East battlefield, yet it fails to address the central truth: the terrorists we face are mostly homegrown.

First Vietnam and now our "war on terror" should be teaching us to choose both the battle and the way we fight it very carefully. Nation building is enormously expensive. And in a country hopelessly mired in corruption, tribalism, religious strife, and just plain old reactionary intransigence, it’s flat-out impossible. Sometimes, doing little or nothing abroad is the best course. Keeping 63,000 U.S. troops in in Afghanistan only diverts us from focusing our brains, brawn, and technology on the real threat: domestic security and the global economic challenge. And this misallocation of our resources enables our real enemies to laugh while we continue to bleed. America is a big country. We can admit our mistakes, step away from peripheral fights, and still stand tall.

_______________________________________________________

1http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/feb09/STARTII_Feb09_rpt.pdf
Mort Zuckerman, "The Triumph of Desert Storm," U.S. News and World Report, March 11, 1991, 76.
Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
Brigitte Gabriel, Because They Hate (New York: St. Martins Press, 2006).
Pew Research Center Global Attitude Project, "Obama More Popular Abroad than at Home, Global Image of U.S. Continues to Benefit," June 17, 2010, http://pewglobal.org/files/pdf/Pew-Global-Attitudes-Spring-2010-Report.pdf (accessed Aug. 27, 2010).
http://www.infowars.com/harvard-study-iraq-afghan-wars-will-cost-to-4-trillion-to-6-trillion/
Sarah Sewall, introduction to The U.S. Army / Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

Robert C. Ankony, PhD, is a sociologist who writes criminological, firearms, and military articles for scientific and professional journals and special-interest magazines. He served as an Army Ranger in Vietnam and is the author of Lurps: A Ranger’s Diary of Tet, Khe Sanh, A Shau, and Quang Tri, revised ed., (Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books, 2009). Nominated for the Army Historical Foundation’s 2006 and 2009 Distinguished Writing Award.

Originally published in Patrolling magazine, 75th Ranger Regiment Association, Winter 2011, 56--57.

Community Alienation and Its Impact on Police

Robert Ankony — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 02:13:00 +0000

It is well known in law enforcement circles that the individual line officer wields an enormous amount of discretion in enforcing the law (esp, non-dispatched runs like traffic enforcement or street crime). What is surprising is the public belief that police are usually eager and motivated to do their job. Thus, when a particular crime problem becomes apparent, it is often approached by monetary related arguments, such as the need for more police, equipment, training etc; rather than by non-monetary related approaches, such as recognizing how a high perception of alienation among police officers from the citizens of the community where they patrol reduces morale and spawns police indifference and inactivity.

The impact of alienation is especially relevant as the contemporary community policing movement emphasizes proactive law enforcement strategies. Effective community policing requires that police officers work closely with local citizens in designing and implementing a variety of proactive crime prevention and control measures. To accomplish these initiatives, it is crucial that officers feel closely integrated with the majority of citizens in the community they serve. Typically, this means that officers perceive themselves as sharing important community values and beliefs and being confident of community support in the decisions they make.

It is the premise of this study that as the perception of community alienation increases among police officers, their sense of confidence or mastery in decision making will decrease, and so too their motivation for proactive enforcement. The study also investigated if the impact of three highly publicized "anti-police" judicial verdicts (i.e., Rodney King, Los Angeles 1991; Malice Green, Detroit 1992; and O.J. Simpson, Los Angeles 1994) are related to the level of perceived alienation experienced by police and thus their willingness to respond proactively to serious crime. Finally, the study examined the relationship of gender, age, race, rank, seniority, education, marital status, degree of urbanism, and residency, to the predicted alienation-mastery-proactive policing sequence.

Essentially a sociological concept developed by several classical and contemporary theorists, alienation is a condition in social relationships reflected by a low degree of integration or common values and a high degree of distance or isolation between individuals, or between an individual and a group of people in a community or work environment.

Alienation is closely aligned with the concept of mastery. Mastery is typically defined as a state of mind in which an individual feels autonomous and experiences confidence in his or her ability, skill, and knowledge to control or influence external events.[iii] The greater the level of alienation an individual experiences in a community or work setting, the weaker will be their sense of mastery.

For police officers, a strong sense of mastery is particularly vital in relation to proactive law enforcement. Proactive enforcement is usually defined as the predisposition of a police officer to be actively involved in preventing and investigating crime.[iv] Because police patrol work is highly unsupervised, most officers have considerable discretion or personal initiative regarding their level of proactive behavior on the streets. Again, it would seem logical that the stronger the level of perceived community alienation among police officers, the weaker will be their sense of mastery and motivation to engage in proactive law enforcement behavior.

SAMPLE

The study surveyed police officers from eleven law enforcement agencies in the Midwest United States. The communities served by these departments ranged in size from approximately 10,000 to more than two million people. The departments ranged in size from 15 to 850 officers, and included nine city police departments, one county sheriff's department, and one university public safety department. All uniformed patrol officers in these departments ranked as lieutenant or below were asked to complete the survey on a voluntary and anonymous basis. These officers were selected because they work the street and typically confront law enforcement situations where they use their own discretion and initiative. Of the 402 officers surveyed, 272 (68%) completed and returned the questionnaire.

Over half of the officers (50.4%) had at least some college, more than one fourth (28.7%) had a Bachelors Degree, and 14% had an advanced graduate degree. The majority of officers were married (73.2%), 17.3% were single, and the remaining 8.5% were separated or divorced. Three quarters (75%) of the officers surveyed were line patrol officers, while the other 25% held the rank of sergeant or higher. Officers ranged in seniority from one to over twenty-one years, with a mean seniority of 12.9 years of service. Close to two-thirds of the officers in this study (61.8%) lived in the community in which they worked.

The officers from the eleven police departments in this study were grouped into three categories (high, moderate, and low-urban) based on the degree of urbanism[v] of the community they served. Using these criteria, one hundred officers (36.8%) worked in high-urban communities, one hundred thirty one worked in moderate-urban settings (48.2%), and the remaining forty one (15.1%) served in low-urban areas.

SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE

A survey questionnaire was developed by the author to measure police officers' level of perceived alienation, sense of mastery, and willingness to respond proactively both before and after the "anti-police" judicial verdicts. The survey contained eighteen questions which were based on the conceptualization of alienation, mastery, and proactive enforcement by the various social theorists cited earlier.

Alienation was measured in two ways: first, by three "Residence and Choice" questions which asked officers if it was totally up to them, would they choose to live in the community where they worked; and second, by four questions which asked officers to rate the degree to which they shared the family, religious, economic, and political values of the community they served. This scale became a 20 point scale.

Mastery was measured using six questions on which officers rated the degree to which their work community supported their enforcement efforts, encouraged them to actively enforce the law, was likely to turn against them when something went wrong, and the extent to which they could use their own judgement in responding to crime and felt that they were making a difference in the community. This scale became a 30 point scale.

Motivation for proactive enforcement was measured using five questions on which officers rated the degree to which they were willing to respond proactively to various criminal activities in the community. They were then asked to rate the degree of change in this proactive willingness following the "anti-police" judicial verdicts. The Proactive Enforcement Scale became a 25 point scale and the Proactive Enforcement Since Verdicts Scale became a 10 point scale.

RESULTS

Statistical analysis revealed a significant negative relationship between officers' Alienation score and their Mastery score, where one unit of increase in the Alienation score lowered the Mastery score by 0.54, net of impacts of all other variables (i.e., age, race, rank, education, marital status, and degree of urbanism). These results supported the predicted relationship between alienation and mastery.

A significant negative relationship was also found between both age and race and mastery. Other things being equal, a one year increase in age lowered the Mastery score by .08, and nonwhite police officers scored 1.55 units lower on the Mastery Scale than white officers. This means younger or white officers generally had a higher level of mastery than older or nonwhite officers.

THE EFFECT OF ALIENATION ON PROACTIVE ENFORCEMENT

Statistical analysis revealed a significant negative relationship between officers' Alienation score and their Proactive Enforcement score, where one unit of increase in the Alienation score lowered the Proactive Enforcement score by .21, net of impacts of all other variables. These results supported the predicted relationship between alienation and proactive enforcement.

A significant negative relationship was also found between both age and race and proactive enforcement. Other things being equal, a one year increase in age lowered the Proactive Enforcement score by .12, and white police officers scored 1.32 units lower on the Proactive Enforcement Scale than nonwhite officers. This means younger or nonwhite officers generally have more desire for proactive enforcement than older or white officers.

Statistical analysis revealed a significant negative relationship between officers' Alienation score and their Proactive Enforcement Since Verdicts score, where one unit of increase in the Alienation score lowered the Proactive Enforcement Since Verdicts score by .11, net of impacts of all other variables. These results supported the predicted relationship between alienation and proactive enforcement since verdicts.

A significant negative relationship was also found between age and proactive enforcement since verdicts. Other things being equal, a one year increase in age lowered the Proactive Enforcement Since Verdicts score by .07. This means younger police officers generally have more desire for proactive enforcement since verdicts than older officers.

CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS

Overall, the major hypothesis of the present study was confirmed. As the level of community alienation perceived by police officers increased, their sense of mastery deceased, and so too their willingness to engage in proactive law enforcement activities. In addition, statistical analysis supported the study's secondary prediction that officers expressing a higher level of alienation would also express less willingness for proactive enforcement since the "anti-police" judicial verdicts.

With respect to individual characteristics, results revealed that older officers self-reported lower levels of mastery, less willingness for proactive enforcement, and less willingness for proactive enforcement since verdicts. This finding is consistent with other research results that senior officers generally express more negative job attitudes and futility about their work. Also, compared to nonwhite officers, white officers reported a higher level of mastery and less willingness for proactive enforcement. This finding may have been influenced by the fact that all of the highly publicized "anti-police" judicial verdicts cited in this study involved white officers.

Although it was expected that officers working in communities with a higher degree of urbanism would experience the most alienation, there was no statistically significant difference found for this variable and the results were inconclusive. This could be due to the lack of participation by any true "big city" police department. Departments of this type declined to participate in this study because they viewed the survey questions regarding the Rodney King, Malice Green, and O.J. Simpson cases as too politically sensitive.

The results of this study underscore the importance of minimizing police officer alienation, especially in community policing programs. Alienated officers are likely to experience less mastery on the job and to become less willing to respond proactively to prevent and control crime. Negative attitudes displayed by alienated officers can affect the morale and productivity of an entire department.

This study suggests the need for creative approaches to reducing the impact of alienation on police performance. For example, officers can be trained to recognize the prominent features of alienation such as powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, isolation, and self-estrangement. They can learn about cultural diversity, community values, and the nature of citizen expectations. They can be taught to understand the psychological experience of alienation, how it is produced, and how to avoid it. Also, they can learn to take the negative attitudes and unrealistic expectations of citizens less personally---perhaps even experience compassion for separate cultural realities.

If signs of alienation begin to surface, actions to improve police-community integration can be taken through town meetings, roll call discussions, officer residency initiatives, and implementing patrol techniques involving greater citizen contact. Police administrators can provide greater clarity in policy specifications, especially regarding highly controversial and potentially inflammatory enforcement situations, such as the use of force, high speed vehicle chases, and interracial enforcement actions. Finally, administrators can increase their efforts to provide consistent support and recognition of good police work.

___________________________________________________

During statistical analysis the variable of "gender" was eliminated because females only comprised 4.8% of the sample and "seniority" was eliminated because it is more a function of age.

b The term significance here refers to "statistical significance" which means this type of relationship is very likely to exist in the general population of police officers. For reasons of brevity only variables attaining significance are discussed in this article.

References,

[i]. R. Bobinsky, 1994; O. Burden, 1992; S. Mastrofski et al., 1995

[ii]. E. Durkheim, 1951, 1984; E. Fromm, 1941, 1955; K. Marx, 1844, 1846, 1867; G. Simmel, 1950, 1971

[iii]. L. Wilson, 1989

[iv]. R. Bobinsky, 1994

[v]. C. Bartol, 1982; G. Theodorson, 1979

[vi]. B. King, 1995; C. Mottaz, 1983; M. Pogrebin, 1987

[vii]. M. Pogrebin, 1987

[viii]. M. Seeman, 1959

[ix]. R. Bobinsky, 1994; O. Burden, 1992; S. Mastrofski et al., 1995

[x]. B. King, 1995

[xi]. B. Berg et al., 1984; M. Pogrebin, 1987; D. Schmidt et al., 1982

Robert C. Ankony, PhD, is a sociologist who writes criminological, firearms, and military articles for scientific and professional journals and special-interest magazines. He served in a large metropolitan sheriff's department and as an Army Ranger in Vietnam. He is the author of Lurps: A Ranger’s Diary of Tet, Khe Sanh, A Shau, and Quang Tri, revised ed., (Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books, 2009). Nominated for the Army Historical Foundation’s 2006 and 2009 Distinguished Writing Award.

Originally published in the Police Chief, October 1999, 150--53.

Twenty-second and Last Patrol: A Struggle against Bad Luck

Cathy — Fri, 06 Mar 2015 01:24:00 +0000

At dawn, Friday, August 30, 1968, I woke inside my cockroach-infested hooch at LZ Betty, sixteen miles south of the Demilitarized Zone, to go on my twenty-second and last patrol. I was the sergeant and team leader of a five-man long-range reconnaissance patrol assigned to the First Cavalry Division’s First Brigade, whose area of operation was from Quang Tri City, near the coast of South Vietnam, to the heavily forested mountains out west, halfway to Laos.

I was a Special Forces Recondo School grad, and though just nineteen, I had been in the battles of Tet, Khe Sanh, and A Shau Valley, where I learned that surviving in combat rested not just on skill but also on sheer dumb luck. Since luck was purely arbitrary, I figured that improving my skills was the only real way to increase my odds for survival. Fortunately, I was mentored by the legendary Sergeant Douglas B. Parkinson, a marine biologist turned LRRP team leader, whose quiet strength of character, sound thinking, and kind, fatherly manner brought out the best in every man he led.

As I got into my fatigues and boots, I looked out at the rice paddies and jungle-clad mountains growing slowly visible under a faint blue sky, unaware that I would soon have to call on all my skills and an extra measure of luck. I daubed on the facial camouflage wax, slung my rucksack over my shoulders and grabbed the CAR-15, and crawled out of my hooch to meet my team, gathering outside.

Friday, August 30, 1968, LZ Betty. Charles Williams, Bill Ward, author, Tony Griffith, and John Bedford

My front scout was Cpl. Charles Williams, a mild-mannered new replacement from Ohio. I followed as team leader, with Cpl. Bill Ward from California behind me as radio operator. Then came my friend and assistant team leader, Cpl. Tony Griffith from Tennessee, who always seemed to have a smile on his face. Cpl. John Bedford, a stocky black man from Pennsylvania, was rear scout. But since the front scout was so vital to team security, and everyone else was best suited in his assigned slot, I took Williams’s position so he could gain experience following me.

Our area of patrol was four miles southwest of LZ Betty, two miles south of the Quang Tri River, on the east side of a half-mile-long reservoir that had once irrigated a wide expanse of rice paddies. The terrain consisted of small rolling hills perhaps a hundred feet high. Although few trees grew there, all the hills were covered in five to eight feet of dense brush, with plenty of vines and thorns. Our mission: set up a fixed observation post (OP) on a hill across from the reservoir and keep constant surveillance on the north-south trails along its shore.

Like most areas of patrol, ours would be four thousand meters by four thousand meters, with the outer thousand meters serving as a no-fire zone to protect us from friendly fire by our own ground, artillery, or aviation forces. Our team wouldn’t venture into that zone, and our ground forces wouldn’t enter without notifying us first.

The air was hot and humid, without a breath of wind, when we were inserted at 0715 hours near the reservoir, a few hundred meters north of the hill where I wanted to establish our OP. After our insertion ships flew away, the bushes around us gradually came alive with birds and whirring insects. I whispered to Williams, standing behind me, “You always wanna stop, look, and listen right after you land, so you can hear and see what’s going on.” He nodded. “And you wanna keep doing it every so often—oh, and one more thing,” I said, pulling on the heavy leather gloves worn by the front scout, “always take a zigzag path to make it hard for anybody to pull an ambush.”

At that point I started the slow, laborious task of making a path through the six-foot wall of vines, thorns, burrs, and branches we’d jumped into, prying them apart with my hands and body or trampling them underfoot to clear a way for the next man. Drenched in sweat and constantly harassed by the bugs and leeches, we had inched our way south, halfway up a hill, when we heard a helicopter approaching from the north.

As we hurriedly took cover behind the walls of our path, I looked back and saw a lone Cobra gunship from our division, with a shark’s mouth painted on its nose, flying low three-quarters of a mile away. Since the Cobra had plenty of speed and hence a wide area of patrol, I figured the aircrew had little idea of its exact location, let alone ours, so we stayed hidden inside the vegetation, waiting for it to leave.

Within seconds the Cobra flew out of sight, so we came out into our path. Glancing back one last time at the hills and sky, I saw no sign of aircraft, so we moved on.

But minutes later, just as we neared the top of the hill, we heard another helicopter approaching from our rear. Looking back as I scrambled for concealment, I saw the same gunship, at a much higher altitude now, diving straight at us to attack. Knowing that it was armed with seventy-six 2.75-inch rockets, a 7.62mm minigun that could fire a hundred rounds a second, and an automatic 40mm grenade launcher, I had little doubt what we were facing.

Worse, not knowing what unit the gunship was from and thus with no way to determine its frequency—and with no time to radio them even if we had known—I yelled to my team, “Pop smoke!” hoping that this customary self-identification procedure would cause the Cobra to break off its attack. As it continued to dive at nearly 170 miles an hour, I stared at the four rocket pods on its sides and yanked the phosphorus grenade off my pistol belt, hoping it could substitute for one of the smoke grenades on the back of my rucksack, which weren’t close enough to grab quickly.

But as I grabbed the cotter pin and struggled to yank it out, I found that I couldn’t because I had bent it too much to keep it from snagging on vines and brush. Terrified, I dropped my rifle and grenade on the ground and reached for the luminous red cloth signal panel in my pants pocket.

But just as I grabbed the signal panel, with the Cobra three hundred meters away and closing fast, I saw puffs of black smoke on both sides of the fuselage. The worst of my nightmares was coming true, and I thought, Aw, shit, we’re gonna die!

The four rockets struck just meters north of us in a series of thunderous explosions and blinding flashes. Dropping my signal panel, I wrapped my arms around my face and dived to the ground, feeling a blast of leaves and hot, swirling air. After the cloud of smoke and dust shot past us, hearing a high-pitched ringing in my ears, I picked myself up off the ground and glanced at my team. Everyone was okay, and I realized that the dense vegetation that had once tormented our every step had saved us by absorbing the blast.

Unfortunately, there was no time to rejoice, since the gunship, still thinking we were the enemy, was quickly banking to one side to make another pass. Just then Griffith popped a smoke grenade in front of our position. Not certain if one was enough, I dropped my rucksack and grabbed a smoke off the back.

But just as a thick cloud of yellow smoke drifted up from Griffith’s grenade, a LOH and an OH-13 suddenly appeared and started flying in wide circles around us. Shocked by all the noise and aware that we were now facing two scout helicopters as well as a Cobra—which would be emboldened by the smoke grenade Griffith had popped, reasoning that it had been dropped by one of the scouts to mark our position—I dropped my smoke grenade and reached to the ground for the dropped signal panel, now our only hope.

By now the Cobra had completed its turn and was diving at us for the kill. As other team members shouted, “Get ’em on the radio, Ward!” and “Hit the dirt!” I opened and closed my cloth signal panel high over my head, desperately hoping the Cobra could see its bright red in spite of the smoke.

The next instant, the LOH suddenly flew low into the Cobra’s path and faced us. As vegetation whipped from the rotor blast and the air echoed with the whine of its engine, I looked at the minigun on its side and continued to collapse my panel, knowing there was nothing else I could do.

Just then the Cobra broke from its dive, and the LOH started to land in the small clearing the rockets had made. Falling to my knees in relief, I picked up my rifle.

After I could find my feet, I stood up and worked my way through the vegetation to the LOH on the ground, waiting with its engine running and rotors spinning. When I approached, the warrant officer piloting the craft leaned out and shouted, “Is everyone all right?”

“We’re okay,” I replied, still numb.

“Do you need anything?”

I shook my head in a silent reply.

“I knew that smoke wasn’t ours,” the pilot said, grinning, “but with things happening so fast, I didn’t have time to radio the Cobra, so I just blocked for you guys!”

Still dazed, ears still ringing, I nodded and waved.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, we’re all right.”

“Well, you Lurps take care,” he said, giving me a salute.

As I returned his salute, he increased engine power and pulled back the stick, lifting off and heading west to meet the other helicopters.

Silence returned, and I worked my way back to my team.

“What’d they say, Sarge?” Bedford asked when I returned.

“The pilot said he knew that smoke wasn’t theirs, so he blocked the Cobra so it wouldn’t shoot.”

“He didn’t see your panel?” Williams asked.

“No, just the smoke.”

“Shit!” Ward cried. “If it wasn’t for that guy, graves registration would be out here now sponging us up!”

“You mean that guy and Griffith,” I added.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Ward said.

“The sad thing is, I forgot to thank him.”

“Hey, nothing you can do about that,” said Bedford.

“Yeah, there is,” Griffith said, smiling. “You can thank me!”

“You’re right, Tony,” I said, looking at his warm, smiling face. “We owe you.”

With nothing else to do but continue the patrol, we mounted our gear and resumed our slow trek south through the continuous wall of vegetation. By 1300 hours we had moved another three hundred meters and reached a seventy-foot hill, where we set up an OP on the west side because it provided a clear view of the reservoir and two trails. But after several hours passed and we saw no sign of the enemy, we set up claymores around our perimeter, and Bedford and I worked our way west a hundred meters to check out one of the north-south trails.

That night at 2200 hours, Griffith caught sight of several small lights heading east toward us a couple of miles away. “Take a look, Sarge,” he whispered, nudging me with his hand.

“Damn, that’s gotta be gooks with flashlights!” I said, watching the lights bob and then suddenly disappear.

With such a brief sighting, we had no accurate range for a fire mission, but just in case, I notified our tactical operations center (TOC), who confirmed that we had no friendly forces in the area. But after spending a couple more hours without another sighting, I allowed all but one man to sleep, since I was confident the enemy wouldn’t continue toward us with all the hills and the water reservoir in their path.

However, at 0210 hours that night, Bedford woke me and the rest of the team, whispering, “We’ve got movement!”

“Okay,” I said, clutching my rifle as my heart began to pound.

By then each of us was sitting, straining to hear under the black, moonless sky, when we caught the sound of vegetation and branches moving fifty meters west. The crickets must have heard it, too, because they stopped singing.

“What do you think, Sarge?” Williams whispered as the sounds grew closer.

“I don’t know. . . . Hold your fire!” I said as my mind raced with questions: How’d they see us? How’d they get here so quick? Is it just by chance they maneuvered around the reservoir and back to us? Are they coming because of the rocket attack? Did they see Bedford and me when we went to the trail? How many men are coming? Are they coming from other directions as well? Should I fire our claymores? Should I tell my team to just throw grenades so we don’t give away our position? If I do, will one of the grenades hit the vegetation and bounce back? If I tell ’em, will the enemy hear me? What should I do? Where in the hell did I go wrong?

Recovering my senses, I whispered to Ward, “Give me your handset.” After he gave it to me, I put it to my ear and signaled TOC that we had movement nearby, by breaking squelch a certain number of times, hoping that if things did go to hell, TOC would know our situation and could mount a rescue.

But with our position so far from friendlies, and TOC unable to do anything in so short a time, we sat huddled in the dark vegetation with our rifles and claymore generators, knowing we were on our own. Just then the noise came to within twenty meters and then suddenly diminished from a loud, steady ruckus to a quiet, stealthy advance that I knew only a large predatory animal could make.

Relieved that we were facing an animal rather than the enemy, Ward notified TOC of our status just as the noise separated into two encircling paths, ten meters out.

“Tigers!” Bedford whispered, hearing snorting and heavy footfalls.

“Sounds like big-ass Bengals,” I added. “Don’t shoot unless you gotta.”

“For sure,” Bedford replied as the tigers circled at a constant distance.

But when they continued circling for a couple of minutes, Bedford said, “Let’s try scaring ’em off with rocks.”

“Yeah, why not, John?” I said, reaching to the ground and feeling blindly for rocks.

Once we all had some, we lobbed them over the vegetation at the tigers, which caused them to leap to one side, but they quickly returned. As this went on for the next hour or so, with the beasts not coming closer but not leaving, either, we knew we could keep them at bay as long as we could find enough rocks.

“I think we can forget about sleep,” I whispered, reaching for another rock.

Just before dawn a cold rain developed, and finally the tigers left. With all of us exhausted, hungry, and wet, I had two men keep watch on the reservoir and trails as the others ate and went to sleep.

An hour later Bedford and Ward were sitting watch as Griffith and I slept, when a piercing scream suddenly came at us out of the dark clouds. Glancing up, I saw one of two camouflage-painted F-4s diving directly over our position, and we all hit the cold, muddy dirt, thinking it was coming at us. Within seconds it broke from its dive with a loud explosive noise as the twin afterburners hurled the twenty-ton jet back up into the sky.

Still lying on the ground, we felt the earth shake and, a few seconds later, heard the air thunder as two 500-pound bombs exploded on the far side of the reservoir, three-quarters of a mile away. At that instant the second jet dived from the clouds and dropped two bombs as the first prepared to dive again. Curious why they were striking so close, I had Ward radio TOC, who told us the jets were targeting an area they had struck before.

Minutes later the Phantoms had dropped all their bombs, and low-flying helicopters started to roam our area, moving in and out of LZs Betty and Sharon. Frustrated by all the activity, we stayed buried in the vegetation, waiting for them to leave, figuring any enemy troops in the area would be doing the same.

It kept raining the rest of that day, and we stayed wet and shivering. But just after dusk we again heard movement, this time approaching from the south. Sitting in place with our weapons in hand, we realized that the tigers were back. But after nearing our position and circling us as before, they started to come closer, clearly less intimidated by our rocks.

For the rest of that night the tigers tormented us as before, departing at dawn just as the two Phantoms returned for another bombing run. After the jets completed their attack, the low-flying helicopters returned; the tigers came back again that night, and the cold, rainy weather continued. Then the cycle continued for yet another day, only without the Phantoms, with the tigers becoming more emboldened each night.

Just before dusk on our last evening of patrol, Griffith sat heating a cup of water for his usual chicken-and-rice LRRP ration. Ward sat under a poncho next to him, eating a spaghetti ration. But once Ward was halfway through, he suddenly stopped eating and said, “Hey, Sarge, I’ve been thinking about tonight.”

“What about tonight?” I asked, eating the skin of an orange.

“There’s no way those tigers can come closer without ’em getting one of us.”

“We’ll be all right.”

“Maybe you, but not me.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Because it’s me they’re after.”

“What makes you say that?”

“’Cause I’m the biggest.”

“Gimme a break, Ward; you’re big but you’re stupid.”

“Oh, yeah? I’ll show you who’s stupid!” he said, picking up his half-eaten LRRP ration and crawling in the mud toward me.

“What the hell you doing?” I asked as he crawled over my legs and past my feet.

“I’m gonna put this by you so they’ll eat your ugly ass!”

“Okay, Ward,” I said as he set the ration at arm’s length in front of my feet. “If that helps you relax. . . ”

After he crawled back, I grabbed another orange from my rucksack, careful not to move Ward’s ration and ruin his fun.

When night fell, the tigers returned like clockwork, and we started throwing rocks. But halfway through the night, during the early morning hours of Wednesday, September 4, one of them approached me. Unable to see anything in front of me but a black void, I pulled my feet in and sat up. Pointing my CAR-15 at the sounds, I flicked the selector to semi as the tiger paused and then cautiously stepped toward the ration Ward had placed by my feet.

I could hear it as it reached the plastic bag the ration was in and began to eat. As I listened carefully, with my finger next to the trigger in case it should make a sudden move, it finished the meal and started to lick inside the wrapper. I couldn’t help thinking how much it sounded like my cat, Fluffy, back home. At that instant the tiger stopped licking and stood silently. Apparently not satisfied with the skimpy meal Ward had left, it stepped toward me. Aware of every lump and contour of the ground after five days of stationary patrol in this spot, I knew there wasn’t another morsel of food between the big cat and my team—except me.

So with no time to lose, I fired two quick shots.

As each shot echoed through the night with a bright flash, I heard the tiger leap to one side. Satisfied that it wasn’t coming closer, I held my fire, not wanting to give enemy troops more of a fix on our position. But instead of falling or running away, I heard it pad calmly over to its companion, whereupon the two walked away.

“Man, that thing wasn’t even scared!” I whispered. “I know I didn’t miss it!”

“That cat just used two of its lives!” Ward muttered.

“Hey, Sarge,” Griffith said, “since we’re getting out at first light, why don’t we zap ’em with claymores when they come back?”

“You know, Tony,” I said, “they’ve dicked with us long enough. Let’s do that.”

But hours passed and daybreak came, and the tigers didn’t return. We then prepared for our extraction by retrieving our claymores and gathering our gear. At 0705 hours TOC radioed for our extraction, so we headed north a short distance to a bomb crater we had passed, which would serve as a pickup zone.

September 4, 1968. Sgt. Ankony and my RTO, Cpl. Ward

Once there, we sat exhausted inside the wet vegetation surrounding the crater, and I dozed off. Just then a flock of birds flew up from the brush, waking me just before I heard the heavy whump, whump, whump of a helicopter rotor approaching.

Suspicious of the timing, I stood up and peeked out to see a lone Huey gunship a quarter mile to the north, a pair of gold crossed sabers painted on the nose, flying low directly at us.

“Stay covered!” I shouted, falling to the ground. At that second the gunship’s nose-mounted minigun opened fire with a long burst at a tall clump of vegetation two hundred meters north of us. As tracers ricocheted and whined through the air, the gunship started to work its fire toward us.

“They’re from the First of the Ninth, Ward!” I hollered. “Get ’em on the horn and tell ’em we’re here!”

Ward, who had already pulled his rucksack in front of him, quickly switched frequencies and was soon in contact with the gunship, yelling, “Cease fire, Blue Max! Cease fire! Slashing Talon Five Nine a hundred meters south, over!”

At that instant the gunship quit firing and the pilot radioed, “Sorry about that. We were reconning by fire, over.”

“Roger, Blue Max,” Ward replied as the gunship turned and flew away.

Shaken by the event, I pulled out one of my last fruitcake bars. “I told ya, Sarge, your last patrol was gonna bring bad luck,” Griffith said, taking a seat.

“Bad luck, Tony?” I replied, staring at the exhausted, weathered faces of my team. “It’s been a fuckin’ nightmare!”

We saw several Hueys approaching below thick black clouds to our north, but we stayed hidden even though we knew that our extraction ships were in the air. Once radio contact was made, we crawled out of the vegetation into the crater’s edge.

Bedford guided a Huey to a hover by holding his rifle high over his head as the other birds circled above. When it reached our crater we ran through the mud and rotor wash and leaped inside as each door gunner trained his M60 beyond us, watching for the enemy. We lifted off into the cold, drizzly sky as I sat on the floor with my CAR-15 in hand and my wet, muddy feet hanging out the door. Speeding back to our LZ, I leaned against Griffith’s leg, knowing that my patrols were over and I would make it home.

____________________________________________________________________

Five months later, during the early morning hours of Wednesday, February 5, 1969, Sergeant Tony L. Griffith from Company H, 75th Infantry (Ranger) led his five-man long-range reconnaissance team through thick fog and dense, short brush between An Loc and the Cambodian border, wearing my old flop hat, which I had given him for luck. Hearing wood being chopped not far off a trail they were assigned to surveil, the experienced Recondo School grad had his team set up an ambush. But members of the North Vietnamese Army had also detected the team.

At dawn several enemy soldiers stole through the fog and flung a grenade into the middle of the team, who were spread in a line by the trail, in sight of each other. The grenade exploded next to the front scout, Cpl. Richard E. Wilkie, showering him with shrapnel. As the enemy opened fire, the two team members on Wilkie’s left panicked and fired in the direction of the grenade’s blast. Caught in an intense crossfire, Wilkie, a Special Forces veteran, was shot five times—once by the enemy, twice by his team, and twice by bullets that passed through him. Miraculously, he survived. So, too, did the assistant team leader, Lewis D. Davidson, who was hit twice in the leg. Tony Griffith’s luck, however, ended that morning, when he was hit by multiple gunshots to the chest, just days before his twenty-first birthday.

H Company Rangers

Robert C. Ankony, PhD, is a sociologist who writes criminological, firearms, and military articles for scientific and professional journals and special-interests magazines. He served as an Army Ranger in Vietnam and is the author of Lurps: A Ranger’s Diary of Tet, Khe Sanh, A Shau, and Quang Tri, revised ed., (Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books, 2009). Nominated for the Army Historical Foundation’s 2006 and 2009 Distinguished Writing Award.

Originally published in the Saber newspaper, 1st Cavalry Division Association, Nov./Dec. 2010, 9–23, continued in Jan./Feb. 2011, 9.

The ‘Good War’ and the ‘Bad War’––Says Who, Exactly?

Robert Ankony — Tue, 03 Feb 2015 03:33:00 +0000

Conventional wisdom in America has long held that the Vietnam War was a “bad war,” unlike the “good” Second World War. But an argument can be made that the Vietnam War not only was a good war but was more vital to America’s interests than World War II. To pursue this argument, consider several factors: America’s stance at the beginning of World War II, the Cold War and the Communist threat, and the foundation on which the “bad war” myth rests.

Because of the clear dangers that the totalitarian ideologies and expansionist policies of Germany and Japan posed in the 1930s, World War II is commonly referred to in the United States as a “good war.” But what did the United States do in March 1939, when Germany invaded the democratic nation of Czechoslovakia? It did nothing. What did this country do at the beginning of the war, in September 1939, when Great Britain and France stood alone against the Germans because of their invasion of democratic Poland? We issued a proclamation of neutrality. What did we do in the spring of 1940, when Germany conquered the largely democratic countries of Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France and began bombing Great Britain? We transferred surplus war materiel to Great Britain.

USS Arizona, Pearl Harbor, 1941

And what did we do in the spring and summer of 1941, when Germany conquered Yugoslavia and Greece, invaded the Soviet Union and Egypt, and began bombing Malta––and when Japan’s mass wave of atrocities in China had become known worldwide? We maintained our neutral status, referred to Germany and Japan as “aggressor nations,” instituted a trade and oil embargo against Japan, and passed Lend-Lease legislation to aid Great Britain and the Soviet Union.

In fact, it took a direct act of war against us at Pearl Harbor, in December 1941, to get the United States involved in World War II. Even then, we declared war only against Japan. Our war with Germany came about because Hitler declared war against us. Remember, too, that our entry into that war came after millions of Chinese, Poles, Russians, and others had died at the hands of their captors, and after millions more had been made slaves. The point being, if World War II was such a compelling fight against tyranny, why didn’t we get into it a lot sooner?

The Vietnam War, far from being an irrelevant or isolated conflict, was meaningful to the United States because of its greater connection to the Cold War. Our fight in Vietnam was part of the United States’ battle against Communism. Had it not been for the existence and ideology of the Soviet Union, a Communist Vietnam would have been of less concern to the United States than Communist Cuba is today. But the Soviet Union’s policy of global Communism, combined with its massive nuclear arsenal and conventional forces, limited our options against the Soviets during the Cold War to the following: A) a head-to-head war of mutually assured destruction, B) a concession to Communism’s expansion, or C) a demonstration of our resolve by fighting Communist surrogates, conventionally or covertly. In short, the Cold War could be won or lost only on the periphery––for example, in Korea or Vietnam.

Why was the threat of Soviet Communism worse to U.S. interests than that posed by our Axis enemies in World War II? Specifically, Soviet ideology was dedicated to the destruction of our economic structure and the individual freedoms inherent in that structure. Further, because Communist ideology was based on the broad philosophy of economic egalitarianism rather than on the narrow nationalistic and ethnocentric philosophies of our World War II enemies, its appeal was exportable.

Other philosophical and religious differences also played a part. But there was a drastic difference between our World War II enemies’ and our Cold War adversaries’ ability to inflict mortal harm on the United States. The Soviets had nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could reach our central cities within thirty-five minutes, and within ten minutes if they were launched from submarines off our coasts. Our Cold War rival also had formidable conventional forces, augmented by those of its Communist allies (especially China, North Korea, and East Germany).

By contrast, the Germans in 1940 could not even cross the 22-mile-wide Strait of Dover when at the peak of its power and when its enemy, Great Britain, stood alone. The Japanese, although they had a powerful navy that included many aircraft carriers, lacked mechanized ground forces and (like Germany) strategic air power.

To understand why our fight against Communism during the Vietnam War has been portrayed for more than three decades as wrongheaded and immoral, we need to understand the counterculture of the 1960s. That movement, with its antiwar, anti-authority, anti-establishment views, was spawned by the unremitting conflicts of the 20th century and by the development of technology capable of inflicting human destruction on an ever-increasing scale.

Consider, for example, World War I, the “War to End All Wars,” 1914–18; World War II, the “great war for democracy,” 1939–45; the first atomic bomb explosion, 1945; the Berlin blockade, 1948; the first hydrogen bomb explosion, 1949; the Korean War, 1950–53; and the launch of Sputnik, 1957, which seemingly demonstrated Soviet ability to deliver ICBMs worldwide against undefended populations. Add to these the Berlin Wall Crisis, 1961; the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962; the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, 1963; the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, 1964, which brought America directly into the Vietnam War; the widespread race riots of 1967; the Tet Offensive, 1968; and the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, 1968.

At worst, some of these events threatened all humankind; at best, they led idealistic young Americans to lose faith in their parents, their government, their society, and the institutions of science and commerce. Frustrated and discouraged with everything, many of them viewed the demand placed on their generation to wage war in distant Vietnam as evidence of society’s progressing madness.

As these individuals became increasingly alienated, contemptuous, hostile, and paranoid regarding American social structures, they withdrew from society to form a counterculture, in which they rejected traditional values such as respect for marriage, their elders, authority and rule of law, and capitalism; the work ethic; delayed gratification; patriotism; and conventional Western religions. Adherents of the counterculture expressed their contempt for, or at least disinterest in, these values and institutions by embracing values, dress, music, and moral codes that defied and mocked traditional society. By the time of the Woodstock music festival in August 1969, the counterculture’s character and spirit had reached full maturity.

Many members of the counterculture professed to oppose the war on moral grounds. Many also saw themselves as having a higher level of consciousness and humanity than those who served. As antagonists against traditional American values, they embraced our enemy’s argument that we were the “imperialists,” whereas the VC and NVA were the “liberators.” A loathing of our military was thus a logical extension of easy rationalizations.

Politically, the counterculture embraced the left. Of particular relevance is the counterculture’s subsequent ascendancy in certain occupations, for example, in film, music, academia, and journalism. These enormously powerful and influential social institutions have an ongoing bias of portraying Vietnam protesters (themselves) as motivated purely by moral and ethical considerations. They assert that their actions took courage and that they shortened the war and saved American and Asian lives.

1st Cav LRP/Rangers, Quang Tri, Vietnam, 1968

Counterculture voices grow shrill when citing the massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese villagers by U.S. troops at My Lai in 1968. Yet their silence is deafening in response to the murder of millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians by their own Communist countrymen, or the ill treatment of U.S. prisoners of war, or the Communist massacre at Hue.

Worse, many of these voices have revised history with their pronouncements that our military in Vietnam did nothing noble or decent but was dedicated only to depravity and insanity. Witness such films as Coming Home,The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Taxi Driver.

At this late date, we Vietnam vets don’t need sympathy, a parade, or another monument. What we could use, though, is a bit more of the truth. And fortunately, it is within our power to accomplish that much.

First, we must have faith in our own Vietnam experience, during which we witnessed many decent men bravely and honorably performing their duty. Second, we must be proud of our fight against the tyranny of Communism. Third, we must recognize that when the war is viewed inaccurately, all our battles in Vietnam are trivialized. Fourth, we must be aware of how the Vietnam “bad war” myth came into existence, and why former members of the counterculture have a vested interest in keeping that fiction alive. Last, we must challenge this myth wherever the opportunity presents itself.

None of these tasks should prove too difficult to accomplish, for we who served in the Vietnam War are privy to the truth. The vast majority of those who are distorting the facts and revising the history of the Vietnam War weren’t even there. George Orwell wrote, He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.Have not our past, and the meaning of the deaths of fifty-eight thousand of our comrades, been controlled by others long enough?

______________________________________________________

Originally published in Patrolling magazine, 75th Ranger Regiment Association, Spring 2011, 28--60.

Operation Delaware

Cathy — Thu, 08 Jan 2015 01:43:00 +0000

As evening approached on April 9, 1968, Sergeant Doug Parkinson’s six-man long-range reconnaissance patrol (LRRP, pronounced “Lurp”) team scrambled aboard a UH-1 Huey. They had just climbed Dong Tri Mountain outside the Marine combat base at Khe Sanh in search of the enemy. Although they never saw the enemy, a stray artillery shell nearly killed them all, and a Bengal tiger stalked them for several nights. Then, with B-52s set to bomb their position in preparation for a Marine sweep of the mountain, they almost fell 1,000 feet to their deaths as helicopters hurriedly extracted them on long emergency ropes known as McGuire rigs. As Parkinson glanced through the dust at the dozens of helicopters lifting off, he said, “So much for Khe Sanh, lads....I’d say we got off easy!”

But Parkinson’s long-range reconnaissance patrol team from Company E, 52nd Infantry, commanded by Captain Michael Gooding, would soon find itself in the thick of one of the most daring airmobile operations of the war: an air assault into the A Shau Valley, the most formidable enemy sanctuary in South Vietnam. Company E would play a key role in establishing a stronghold in the valley-—and it would pay a high price.

By early April 1968, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) had just suffered two of the most catastrophic defeats of the war: the Tet Offensive and the siege of Khe Sanh, which cost them more than 50,000 men. But the NVA still had an ace in the hole to regain the initiative in the northernmost part of South Vietnam, designated I Corps Tactical Zone (ICTZ). That ace was the sparsely populated A Shau Valley, running north-south along the Laotian border 30 miles south of Khe Sanh, where troops and supplies were pouring into South Vietnam as the NVA geared up for another battle––at a time and place of its choosing. The A Shau, a lovely mile-wide bottomland flanked by densely forested 5,000-foot mountains, was bisected lengthwise by Route 548, a hard-crusted dirt road. A branch of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the valley was a key NVA sanctuary.

The NVA seized A Shau in March 1966 after overrunning the isolated Special Forces camp there. They considered A Shau their turf and had fortified it with powerful crew-served 37mm antiaircraft cannons, some of them radar controlled. They also had rapid-firing twin-barreled 23mm cannons, scores of 12.7mm heavy machine guns, a warren of underground bunkers and tunnels, and even tanks. Because of this formidable strength on the ground, the NVA were left pretty well alone except for jet attacks, but given the steep, mountainous terrain—often cloaked under clouds and prone to sudden, violent changes in weather-—air strikes were few. And because of the very limited airmobility of the Marines in ICTZ, no ground operations of any significance had been launched in the A Shau.

In January 1968 the situation changed. General William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in South Vietnam, ordered the 1st Cavalry Division to move north from the Central Highlands to support the Marines. The 1st Cav, an airmobile division with 20,000 men and nearly 450 helicopters, had the most firepower and mobility of any division-size unit in Vietnam. When it arrived in ICTZ, the 1st Cav fought toe-to-toe with the enemy during Tet. It was fully engaged with the NVA at Khe Sanh when its commander, Maj. Gen. John Tolson, unveiled plans for the air assault into the A Shau Valley: Operation Delaware.

Two brigades—about 11,000 men and 300 helicopters—would assault the north end of the 25-mile-long valley and leapfrog their way south, while another brigade would stay at Khe Sanh, continuing the fight from there to the Laotian border. Since satellite communications were a thing of the future, a mountaintop in A Shau had to be secured to serve as a radio relay site for the troops––who would be slugging it out hidden deep behind the towering wall of mountains––to communicate with Camp Evans near the coast or with approaching aircraft. On the eastern side, midway up the valley, was a perfect spot: the 4,878-foot Dong Re Lao Mountain. Headquarters dubbed it “Signal Hill.”

Since the mission required specially trained men who could rappel from helicopters, clear a landing zone with explosives, and hold the ground far from artillery support, the Lurps were the logical choice. As a result, the task of securing Signal Hill fell to Parkinson’s unit, Lieutenant Joe Dilger’s 2nd Platoon, Company E, 52nd Infantry.

Friday, April 19, dawned calm and sunny, and the assault operation began. The 30-man Lurp platoon gathered with several engineers and signalmen at Camp Evans, awaiting flights to Signal Hill, 19 miles away. The troops heard the rumble of five slicks from the 227th Assault Helicopter Battalion approaching. With every unit requesting lift ships, many of which were undergoing repair or still at Khe Sanh, not enough birds were available to bring in the entire platoon, so Parkinson’s team was told to stand aside until later. The helicopters landed, and everyone else clambered aboard, heavily laden with gear. The slicks rose into a clear blue sky and vanished in the west, reaching the mile-high peak of Signal Hill some 20 minutes later.

The small force of helicopters was met by two gunships. The slicks came to a hover 100 feet above the dense jungle, and the men, led by Lieutenant Dilger, began rappelling down to clear a landing zone. But in the thin atmosphere at that altitude, the helicopter engines had less oxygen for power, and the rotors less air to bite into. Seconds after Sergeant Larry Curtis and his assistant team leader, Corporal Bill Hand, jumped off the skids, their chopper lost control while they were still 50 feet in the air.

Curtis and Hand slammed into the ground but managed to get free of their rappel devices and roll out of the chopper’s path as it came careening through the canopy and crashed to the jungle floor. The impact knocked the crew and the remaining men on board unconscious. Curtis suffered a concussion and was pinned under a skid when the helicopter rolled onto its side. As he lay struggling to get free, the chopper’s engine revved at full throttle and started leaking fuel. Despite the initial chaos, Lieutenant Dilger ordered those still rappelling in to retrieve the crates of explosives and gear being slung down and then make a defensive perimeter around the peak.

Once unloaded, the four helicopters still in the air quickly flew away to avoid further engine strain, and Corporal Hand and the others could now finally mount a belated rescue. After digging Curtis out from beneath the skid and removing the injured on board to safety, they began the grueling task of clearing an LZ, using chain saws, machetes and long tubular explosives called bangalore torpedoes. There in the middle of enemy territory, the insertion and clearing work had not gone unnoticed, and soon enough the troops were battling against more than nature.

By the next morning there still wasn’t an adequate clearing for a helicopter to land, so the injured Sergeant Curtis had to be lifted out on a McGuire rig. As the assault force toiled away to clear an LZ, NVA soldiers made the long, arduous climb up from the valley floor, reaching the mountaintop at noon. Hidden by dense foliage and blown debris, and with the sounds of their approach masked by the din of explosives and chain saws, they roamed the perimeter at will, shooting at Dilger’s platoon, which was still struggling to make a clearing.

Unable to see the snipers, the assault force threw grenades down the slope and fired their weapons at suspected targets, keeping the enemy at bay. As this battle with the unseen enemy dragged on, men charged forward through mud, debris, and deadly sniper fire to rescue the wounded and dying and carry them to the top of the peak and the protective shelter of a bomb crater. Those in need were given plasma expanders to replace lost blood, cloth-wrapped plastic bandages to cover sucking chest wounds, or morphine injections to ease the pain. Radiomen made desperate calls to Camp Evans for helicopters to evacuate the wounded, but with several waves of choppers still making assaults far north into the valley, and nearly a dozen shot down on the first day of the operation, none were available for Signal Hill.

By late afternoon a functional LZ was finally cleared, but at a steep cost. Snipers had killed Corporal Dick Turbitt and Pfc. Bob Noto, mortally wounded Sgt. William Lambert and combat engineer Pfc. James MacManus, and critically wounded Corporal Roy Beer. Lieutenant Dilger was shot through the chest and close to death.

As the fighting raged far to the north in the valley, Sergeant Lambert—just one day short of completing his two-year tour—clung to life for six long hours before dying in the arms of his comrades. Soon after Lambert died, a lone Huey approached from the north to remove the wounded and the stranded aircrew left on Signal Hill. The dead would have to wait.

Early the next morning, Sunday, April 21, a medevac, already crammed with wounded infantrymen and the badly burned pilot of a downed helicopter, landed on Signal Hill to pick up Corporal Hand, whose condition had worsened. He was put inside on a stretcher, beneath the screaming burned pilot. As the medevac lifted off, the men on the ground could hear the burned man pleading in his agony, “Shoot me! Somebody, for God’s sake, please shoot me!

Signal Hill. Cpt. Michael Gooding at left on radio

At about that time, Captain Gooding and Sergeant Parkinson’s six-man team arrived. No patrols had yet been made to clear the peak of snipers, so Captain Gooding ordered Parkinson to make an immediate patrol around the peak. Once Parkinson had notified everyone on the LZ of their planned route of departure, his team mounted their gear and slogged through the mud to the western side of the mountain, where they came to the crashed helicopter lying on its side on a steep embankment. Then, stepping over an enemy fighting position where cartridges and two grenades had been left, they pushed through a dense wall of mud-covered branches and trees, twisted from the blasting to clear the LZ.

Once through the thick mat of debris, they entered dense virgin forest swathed in a thick blanket of fog-—the clouds surrounding the peak. Bracing their feet on tree roots and the stems of huge ferns, they groped from stalk to frond to keep their balance, limited in their visibility to the men immediately in front of and behind them. Suddenly, after an hour of this slow, painstaking, and uneventful climb, a lone NVA soldier stood and called to Parkinson’s front scout—an indigenous Montagnard named Dish—thinking he was a fellow soldier. Instantly realizing his mistake, the soldier stood shocked, arms at his sides, mouth and eyes open, as Dish and Parkinson raised their rifles and shot him.

Sgt. Douglas Parkinson, Signal Hill

Parkinson’s team made another patrol around the peak while, with the LZ now operational, hundreds of scout helicopters, slicks, gunships, and powerful CH-47 Chinooks flocked in from the east, laden with troops. Reaching the Lurps’ mountaintop stronghold, they plunged deep inside the valley to search out and destroy the enemy with airpower and overwhelming infantry assaults. As large and small battles raged farther and farther south, streams of tracers could be seen flying skyward. The effectiveness of the enemy antiaircraft fire was obvious as massive CH-54 Skycranes could be seen from Signal Hill, returning to Camp Evans with one or two destroyed helicopters slung beneath them.

During the operation, jet air strikes came frequently. In clear weather they struck the valley and mountainside positions, at times screaming in just above the Lurps’ heads. Their bombs, along with the shells from the vast rings of artillery, soon transformed the lush, green valley and mountainsides into a continuous wasteland of craters. Watching it all from their mountaintop, the Lurps could see for miles in the cool, thin air, from the warships 30 miles east in the South China Sea to towering green mountains in neutral Laos seven miles away.

B-52 Arc Light strikes were launched several times each night. Cells of three bombers would approach north along the valley at 30,000 feet, with each aircraft carrying 84 500-pound bombs inside the fuselage, and 24 750-pounders beneath the wings. The bombers could easily be identified by their running lights, V formation, and the faint drone of their engines, but by the time the enemy could identify them, it was too late to run. When the bombers reached the valley, the clouds below the Lurps’ mountaintop position suddenly started flashing bright orange as three lines of bombs merged to lay down a continuous swath of destruction that raced down the valley at 500 miles an hour. In seconds the earth trembled beneath the Lurps’ feet, followed after a long lag by a deep rumbling that sounded as if the valley itself were moaning in agony.

In the following days a battery of artillery was airlifted on top of Signal Hill to support the infantry in the valley, and another helicopter crashed on the peak, its rotors narrowly missing two Lurps but severing the legs of one soldier and crushing another.

Despite hundreds of B-52 and jet air strikes to destroy the most sophisticated enemy antiaircraft network yet seen in South Vietnam, the NVA managed to shoot down a C-130, a CH-54, two CH-47s, and nearly two dozen Hueys. Many more were lost in accidents or damaged by ground fire.

The 1st Cavalry Division suffered more than 100 dead and 530 wounded in Operation Delaware. Bad weather aggravated the loss by causing delays in troop movements, allowing a substantial number of NVA to escape to safety in Laos. Still, the NVA lost more than 800 dead, a tank, 70 trucks, two bulldozers, 30 flamethrowers, thousands of rifles and machine guns, and dozens of antiaircraft cannons. They also lost tons of ammunition, explosives, medical supplies, foodstuffs, and documents.

A week after leaving A Shau, Sergeant Parkinson’s assistant team leader, Bob Whitten, was killed in action. Three other Lurps from the Signal Hill assault force were also killed, and Sergeant Curtis lost an eye in a grenade blast. Sergeant Parkinson eventually returned home as a fish and wildlife specialist, Lieutenant Dilger recovered from his wounds and became a member of the Special Forces, Captain Gooding was promoted to major and assigned to Special Warfare Command, and Company E, 52nd Infantry (LRP), was redesignated Company H, 75th Infantry (Ranger).

Major General Tolson, summing up why so many of the NVA were able to flee to safety in Laos despite his division’s huge airmobile force, remarked: “According to old French records, April was supposed to be the best month for weather in the A Shau Valley. As it turned out, May would have been a far better month––but you don’t win them all.” That lesson would not be lost on the 101st Airborne Division. In May 1969, they stormed Dong Ap Bia Mountain, known as Hamburger Hill, across the valley from Signal Hill. The NVA lost that battle, too, yet they again returned to claim A Shau, prompting criticism of American tactics. There simply were not enough allied soldiers to secure South Vietnam’s remote borders––more than twice as long as the trenches in France during World War I, which were manned by millions of troops. Even with that limitation, the 1st Cav and 101st Airborne showed that a unit need not be based in the hinterlands to operate and destroy the enemy there.

_______________________________________________________

Robert C. Ankony, PhD, is a sociologist and the author of Lurps: A Ranger’s Diary of Tet, Khe Sanh, A Shau, and Quang Tri, revised ed. (Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books, 2009); Nominated for the Army Historical Foundation’s 2006 and 2009 Distinguished Writing Award.

H Company Rangers

Originally published in the Saber newspaper, 1st Cavalry Division Association, Mar./Apr.2009, 23--24.

Appraising Military Small Arms

Cathy — Wed, 03 Dec 2014 20:10:00 +0000

Appraisal will always be more an art than a science, but this author proposes a technique that provides a bit of predictability to the valuation of military arms.

Each year tens of thousands of surplus military small arms are imported into the United States for commercial sale. Of these, most will make excellent shooters, however, in terms of financial investment, how can a collector or dealer distinguish between the two? In contrast to blue books that just describe the current value of specific firearms, this article intends to identify and explain certain variables that can measure the potential of any modern military firearm (post 1898) to appreciate in value.

For this purpose a Firearm Appraisal Scale is presented later in this article to score a firearm.