The Gun (75 page)

56.
“Vietnam Arms Race,”
Washington Daily News,
unsigned editorial, March 26, 1967.

57.
Appointment letter, on file at Western Historical Manuscript Collection–Columbia, at Ellis Library, University of Missouri. The collection is hereinafter referred to as WHMC-C, U. Mo.

58.
Letter from Representative Ichord to Representative Charles Raper Jones, February 8, 1968. On file at WHMC-C, U. Mo.

59.
Personal communication to author from Ray Madonna, who commanded Hotel Company, Second Battalion, Third Marines during spring 1967 in Vietnam.

60.
Personal communication to author from Thomas R. Givvin, who commanded Third
Platoon, Hotel Company, Second Battalion, Third Marines in 1967 and participated in the actions related here.

61.
Letter of Lance Corporal Larry R. Sarvis to Representative Ichord, June 17, 1967. On file at WHMC-C, U. Mo.

62.
Personal communication from Raymond C. Madonna.

63.
From unpublished manuscript of Raymond C. Madonna, who has written his own memoir of the Hill Fights, incorporating his recollections and his interviews of many of the Marines formerly under his command. Ord Elliott, who commanded First Platoon during the attack in which the Marines fixed bayonets, also discussed the events of that day with the author.

64.
Personal communication from Charles P. Chritton, a lieutenant in Foxtrot Company, who witnessed the scene at the landing zone. The description of pins near the trigger assembly working loose is from Ord Elliott, David Hiley and Cornelio Ybarra Jr.

65.
The shortages pointed to supply failures and to pilferage. Logistics units had not pushed an adequate amount of cleaning equipment to the troops in the field. But the light hands of war were a factor, too. Colt’s included brass cleaning rods inside the cases of rifles shipped to Vietnam. One rod was shipped for every rifle. Colt’s field teams later found the rods were disappearing even before the rifles were handed out, apparently as local Vietnamese employees on American bases stole them to sell on the scrap-metal market. It was frustrating for Colt’s. This was a problem it could not fix. “They used them to make rice bowls or something,” said Paul Benke, Colt’s president at the time (personal communication to author).

66.
“‘Causing Deaths’—Marine Hits Faulty Rifles,”
Asbury Park Evening Press,
May 20, 1967. After the letter was published, it was sent to Secretary McNamara by James J. Howard, a congressman from New Jersey, on May 22. Howard’s letter is on file at WHMC-C, U. Mo.

67.
Memorandum to Honorable Richard H. Ichord, from Ralph Marshall, May 31, 1967. On file at WHMC-C, U. Mo.

68.
Letter from a Marine to his family, May 17, 1967. On file at WHMC-C, U. Mo.

69.
“Memo to Mr. Findley re M-16 Events on Friday While You Were Gone,” October 7, 1967. Mr. Findley is Paul Findley, then a Republic congressman from Illinois. The memo noted a call from Senator Dominick’s office describing the incident in Vietnam and noting the senator’s irritation. On file at WHMC-C, U. Mo.

70.
The account of the night ambush was cited in a letter from Representative Dante B. Fascell to Representative Richard Ichord, August 2, 1967. The concerns of the navy lieutenant and army sergeant preparing to ship to Vietnam were sent directly to Representative Ichord. All three letters are on file at WHMC-C, U. Mo.

71.
“M-16 or AK-47? The Right Rifle For the Right Job,” a six-page fact sheet, dated November 25, 1968, intended to show the M-16’s superiority to the AK-47. Circulated by Colt’s, and on file at the Ezell Collection in Shrivenham.

72.
Interviews with veterans still provoke disgust. Many believe they were guinea pigs. Charles Woodard, a young officer in the battalion at the time, called Colt and the military leadership’s decisions “unconscionable.” Givvin (see note 60, above) said the military leadership of the time “had blood on their hands.” David Hiley, a platoon radio operator at the hill fights, said “They ought to give a million dollars to every Marine who had to carry one of those things.”

73.
Combat After-Action Report of Battalion Landing Team 2/3, July 30, 1967. Declassified and on file at the Library of the Marine Corps, Marine Corps Base, Quantico.

74.
Interviews of Michael Chervenak by the author; the physical description of Chervenak came from Marines he served with in Vietnam.

75.
The Marine Corps had not shown interest in the AR-15 as Colt’s and its salesmen made the rounds with it in the 1950s and early 1960s. It wanted its rifle and machine
gun to be of the same caliber, thereby simplifying logistics. Though the Soviet Union had taken this step in the 1950s—fielding both the AK-47 and the RPK, which used the same cartridge—the United States was only beginning to go down the road toward a lightweight assault rifle and had no companion machine gun, even in the research-and-design phase, to fire the same cartridge. This would come later, as the M-249, the Squad Automatic Weapon, known as the SAW.

76.
“Marines Hail M-16 Rifle, Army Accepts it Fully,” UPI, published in the
Hartford Times,
May 11, 1967.

77.
“House Ad Hoc Hearing for Vietnam Veterans Against the War,” April 23, 1971. From the transcript,
Congressional Record
vol. 117, part 10, which was introduced into the public record on May 3, 1971.

78.
Accounts of these inspections and function tests held at sea were shared with the author by former Marines who participated in them, including officers and staff noncommissioned officers who supervised them. These include Mike Chervenak, Chuck Chritton, Ed Elrod, Tom Givvin, Ray Madonna, Chuck Woodard, and Dick Culver.

79.
Text of letter from First Lieutenant Michael P. Chervenak, USMC, to the
Barnesboro Star,
the
Washington Post,
Senator Robert Kennedy (D-N.Y.), and Congressman Richard Ichord (D-Mo.), as published in the
Barnesboro Star,
August 10, 1967.

80.
A copy of the letter to Representative Ichord is on file at WHMC-C, U. Mo.

81.
Personal communication to author from Thomas Tomakowski.

82.
Personal communication to author from Charles Woodard.

83.
From Hallock’s brief biography in “The Hallock Soldier’s Fund and Metro Works Columbus Home Ownership Center.” Hallock entered the real estate business and died wealthy. He is a member of the OCS Hall of Fame at Fort Benning.

84.
“Report of the Special Subcommittee on the M-16 Rifle Program of the Committee on Armed Services,” October 19, 1967 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office).

85.
William G. Bray, “The M-16: A Report,”
Data,
April 1968, p. 6.

86.
Lieutenant Chervenak’s letter took a winding course to public light. The
Barnesboro Star
published it in August. Senator Kennedy never replied. Representative Ichord’s staff lost the letter (for which the congressman later apologized). The
Washington Post
held it, inexplicably, for three months. Throughout summer and fall 1967, as the M-16’s problems were a national story, no one helped Hotel Company as its new rifles continued to jam.

87.
The letter was a black mark on Lieutenant Chervenak’s otherwise promising career. Although promotion from first lieutenant to captain is almost automatic, the more so in times of war, Lieutenant Chervenak was denied promotion when his time came. He served an extra year in the lieutenant rank. This effectively docked his pay.

88.
Lieutenant Givvin wrote a letter detailing his platoon’s experience in the same fight, and it was forwarded to the Marine Corps, which did not investigate. Lieutenant Charles Chritton, who was briefly the commander of Foxtrot Company, wrote to Congress describing his company’s experiences with the rifle. One of the senators from his home state read the letter at a press conference on Capitol Hill, but there was no official reaction. The letter to the
Washington Post
changed the conversation.

89.
Letter from Kanemitsu Ito to William H. Goldbach, vice president and general manager of Colt’s Military Division, December 3, 1967.

90.
Dick Culver, “The Saga of the M-16 in Vietnam (Part 1).” Culver served a career in the Marine Corps. Some of his experiences with the M-16 when he commanded Hotel Company, Second Battalion, Third Marines are posted on
www.bobroher.com
, p. 5.

91.
Letter from Ito to Goldbach, December 3, 1967.

92.
Patent No. 3482322, “Method of Preventing Malfunction of a Magazine Type Firearm
and Gauge for Conducting Same.” Filed with U.S. Patent Office on November 6, 1967.

93.
Letter from Kanemitsu Ito, Colt’s field representative, to Misters Benke, McMahon, Hall, Fremont, December 9, 1967, re: “Return from Bear Cat to Saigon.”

94.
Daniel C. Fales, “M16: The Gun They Swear by… and At!”
Popular Mechanics,
October 1967.

95.
“Memorandum for Record, Debrief of Colt’s Vietnam Field Representative—Mr. Kanemitsu Ito,” December 28, 1967. Prepared by Lieutenant Colonel Robert C. Engle, Project Manager Staff Officer, Rifles.

96.
Personal communication to author by Paul A. Benke.

97.
Lewis Sorley,
A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam
(Harcourt Books, 1999), p. 164.

98.
“Memorandum for Army Chief of Staff, G4, Fact Finding Visit to 199th Infantry Brigade,” March 28, 1968, by Lieutenant Colonel Robert L. Semmler, Chief, PM Rifles, Vietnam Field Office.

99.
Personal communication to author from Jack Beavers.

100.
Contents of tape recording received from K. Ito and J. Fitzgerald, September 27, 1968.

101.
Letter from John S. Foster, Director of Defense Research and Engineering, to Representative L. Mendel Rivers, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, February 2, 1968. On file at WHMC-C, U. Mo.

102.
The poem, “Rifle, 5.56MM,XM16E1,” is by Larry Rottmann, who served as an Army public-affairs officer in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968. Excerpted with permission of the poet from
Winning Hearts and Minds: War Poems by Vietnam Veterans
(1st Casualty Press, 1972).

1.
This is the official German version; Abu Daoud, who claimed to have organized the attack, later said it was false. As with many accounts of terrorism, many sources contradict one another. Given the speed with which the terrorists located the Israelis’ apartment, their prior infiltration would seem probable.

2.
“Munich 1972: When the Terror Began,”
Time,
posted August 25, 2002 on
www.time.com
.

3.
Ibid.

4.
Simon Reeve,
One Day in September
(New York: Arcade Publishing, 2000), p. 2.

5.
This section was assembled using information from several sources, including Serge Groussard’s
The Blood of Israel: The Massacre of the Israeli Athletes
(New York: William Morrow, 1975), the most thorough and painstaking account of the act, by a journalist who covered the siege live and then investigated it. Reeve’s
One Day in September,
and reconstructions by
Time
magazine were also helpful, as was a visit to the site as part of a lecture series on the attack for students of the Program on Terrorism and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, attended by the author in 2005.

6.
Personal communication to author from Lin Xu.

7.
Mike O’Connor, “Albanian Village Finds Boom in Gun-Running,”
New York Times,
April 24, 1997. The factory manager is quoted as saying production reached twenty-four thousand AK-47s a month.

8.
Descriptions, and a limited selection of photographs from within the Artemovsk cache, were provided by several people who have been inside the caves. The author was denied entry.

9.
Kalashnikov,
From a Stranger’s Doorstep,
pp. 302–3.

10
The account of Fechter’s killing at the Berlin Wall was assembled from German
newspaper and academic accounts, as well as from records in the archive of the Stasi, the West Berlin police, and the Ministry of State Security. Von Schnitzler’s quotation is from the transcript of the program he hosted,
Schwarze Kanal
(Black Channel), on GDR-TV, August 27, 1962. Research conducted by Stefan Pauly.

11.
From “Meeting Notes taken by Chief of the Hungarian People’s Army General Staff Károly Csémi On Talks with Soviet Generals to Discuss Preparations for ‘Operation Danube,’” July 24, 1968, in
The Prague Spring ’68: A National Security Archive Documents Reader
” (Central European University Press, 1998), p. 277.