A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (76 page)

Col. Daniel Boone Porter in civvies.
John Paul Vann Papers
.

Dick Ziegler’s war diary opened to facing pages on the battle.

Top:
Planning an earlier operation: Ziegler, standing; Maj. Essex, left; Lt. Col. Bui Dinh Dam, center; Capt. Linh, 7th Division operations officer, right.
Center:
The paratroops are dropped too late and in the wrong place.
Bottom:
An A-26 Invader hitting Bac hamlet with napalm.

THE BATTLE OF AP BAC

Ziegler’s sketch map of the battle. Bac is at the place where he has penned the
number
3 in
a circle
.
Courtesy Lt. Col. Richard Ziegler, U. S. A. (Ret)
.

Jim Scanlon and Ly Tong Ba on top of Ba’s M-113 APC during an operation prior
to the battle
.
Courtesy Lt. Col. James Scanlon, U. S. A. (Ret)
.

Downed helicopters: the two H-21s stand forlornly in the paddy field in front of Bac. The crashed Huey is behind to the left.
Courtesy Lt. Col. James Scanlon, U.S.A. (Ret.)
.

David Halberstam of
The New
York Times
fording a stream, or, “Knee-deep in the Big Muddy,” as he later put it.
Horst Faas /Associated Press
.

Lt. Gen. Victor “Brute” Krulak of the Marine Corps became a rarity among the American military leaders. He learned to think like the men in Hanoi.
U. P. I./Bettmann Newsphotos
.

Paul Harkins, right, takes Gen. Earle Wheeler in hand when Wheeler is sent out after Ap Bac to investigate Harkins’s direction of the war.
U. S. Army
.

BACK IN VIETNAM

Hau Nghia Province, 1965: Doug Ramsey, the cheerful, lanky Westerner who was the perfect assistant and partner for Vann in this most insecure of provinces west of Saigon after Vann’s return to Vietnam.
Mert Perry
.

Dan Ellsberg, right, who replaced Ramsey as Vann’s companion in the field after Ramsey was captured by the Viet Cong. Vann, showing Ellsberg Hau Nghia, has stopped to talk to the local Vietnamese official at left.
John Paul Vann Papers
.

John Vann with Gen. Fred Weyand, the friend who was to help Vann get his stars and who saved Saigon during the Communist Tet Offensive, at Weyand’s headquarters at Long Binh.
Dick Swanson, Life Magazine
, ©
Time, Inc
.

The author, then a correspondent for
The New York Times
, talking to Brig. Gen. Du Quoc Dong, commander of the ARVN Airborne Division, during the fighting in Da Nang between two factions on the Saigon side.
Paul Avery
.

JOHN VANN TAKES COMMAND
May 15,1971