The Road to My Lai

The U.S. military of the Vietnam era was a total institution of the Goffman school, set apart from larger American society, whose often forcibly inducted personnel underwent a transformative process from citizen to soldier. Comprised of a large group of individuals, with a common purpose, with a clear distinction between officers and enlisted, and regulated by a single authority, Goffman's formulation as presented in the 1950's has become a basic tenet of military sociology. The overwhelming evidence is clear: perhaps the best equipped army in history faced a debacle on the battlefield and cracked under minimal stress due to the internal rotation structure which was not resolved until the withdrawal of U.S. forces: the "fixed length tour". Throughout the Vietnam War the duration of the tour in the combat theater was set at 12 months for Army enlisted, 13 months for Marine enlisted - officer ranks in both branches served six months in combat, six months on staff duty. The personnel turbulence generated by the "fixed length" combat tour and the finite Date of Estimated Return from Overseas (DEROS) created huge demands for replacement manpower among both enlisted and junior grade officers at the company and platoon level. It has been argued that just as a man was learning the ropes of combat in the jungles of Vietnam he was rotated out of the theater of operations. The logistical and training cycle implications aside, the loss of combat experience through the individual replacement system had an effect on morale, cohesion, and discipline of units at every echelon. The stress of losing so many key personnel to rotation was most devastating to the primary combat groups at rifle platoon and infantry company level, which shouldered the majority of combat. The basic hypotheses I wish to state are as follows: 1. The U.S. Army in Vietnam underwent a rapid disintegration separate from social forces at work on the home front, and not due to traditional stresses of combat such as heavy casualties. 2. The U.S. Army in Vietnam disintegrated because of internal personnel "turbulence" created by far reaching complications caused by loss of experienced soldiers due to rotation on completion of the "fixed length tour" of duty. The manpower requirements created by the DEROS and "fixed length tour" system were the key structural element undermining the cohesion of US forces in the field. 3. Crimes against civilians, and mass killings such as My Lai, are a symptom of this systemic disintegration just as drugs, race riots, fragging, and mutiny: produced by the loss of military normative order due the "fixed length tour" and DEROS. This policy had far reaching consequences across the entire institution: 1. First and foremost, units deploying to Vietnam had a lifespan of exactly one calendar year. After the initial deployment and rotation cycle units lost their experienced cadre, and virtually all institutional memory - most critically at the primary group level within Infantry companies in combat. Units deploying to Vietnam also lost many key senior enlisted men who had served prior tours with other units due to the fact that they were no longer eligible for compulsory Vietnam service. 2. Second, and perhaps most critically officer ranks rotating at twice the rate of enlisted men created an upside down power dynamic in which inexperienced commanders were often placed in command of units already in combat. This often led to a crisis of legitimacy as those with the power of rank at every level led and issued orders to units comprised of alienated subordinates, who, though compelled to serve often had more field experience. 3. Third, the cascading eligible manpower shortage forced shortened training cycles, which were diluted in quality and increasingly brutalizing in nature. The realities of the war bore very little resemblance to what soldiers had been trained for or led to expect prior to Vietnam where it was difficult to distinguish friend from foe. The most vicious of institutional memories were retained, culminating in the universality of the racist "gook syndrome" and the liberalization of unofficial field Rules of Engagement (ROE) as the "Mere Gook Rule." 4. Fourth the individual replacement system guaranteed that the most inexperienced soldiers were often placed in combat units - as they were the largest body of troops eligible for deployment to replace personnel losses due to rotation or combat. Soldiers trained and worked with a known primary group stateside - building cohesion - yet were assigned individually to deployed combat units, on which they were then dependent for orientation, integration, and hopefully, survival. The far reaching anomie created by this unresolved structural cycle brought about an eventual system-wide failure, as the loss of normative order and cognitive dissonance it engendered among era servicemen increasingly resulted in the disintegration of the U.S. military units in Vietnam. The historical identity image of the hallowed military institutions involved were no longer consonant with those of the average soldier serving in the jungles and rice paddies of South East Asia. As a result, the U.S. military as an organization became anomic and mutable, resulting in adaptive instability at every level. Many professionally trained, would-be career soldiers became disillusioned and left the service - becoming a mechanism for institutional change that is still traceable today. Never has such a massive institution changed so much in such a short period of time - largely from symptoms arising from self imposed internal structures - a fatal flaw which compounded all other dependent factors. In this respect the U.S. military in Vietnam offers a unique opportunity to study sweeping and sudden social change in a total institution.