Larry Vernal Claspill

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

(I wrote these remembrances of Larry and Roy Dean a few months ago, on the 50th anniversary of the Tet offensive in which they were both killed.  I've moved my pages about them to go with my long-pondered summary of Vietnam's meaning for our generation, and for America.

There was some detailed information on the deaths of Roy Dean and Larry, which I was glad to gather and post, to make it accessible to others who knew them.  Three other classmates who died in Vietnam; Johnie Ray Barber, Larry Thomas Moulder, and Harve Edward Brown [who quit school and enlisted before our graduation]; have memorial pages online, but I couldn't find any more detailed information about their deaths.)


Our classmate Larry Claspill was killed by "multiple fragmentation wounds" on 5 February 1968, in Kon Turn Province in the Central Highlands, about 150 miles south of Khe Sahn.

We were casual friends, and thrown together in many classes.  I used to have a (staged) photo the school-newspaper photographer took when Larry and I were lunchroom monitors together, of he and I and two others with broom and dustpan, sweeping up something from the floor in the hall outside the lunchroom.            

According to his obituary, Larry had been a Post Office letter-carrier after high school, and was drafted in early 1967.  He trained at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, as an infantryman, with advanced infantry training at Fort Polk, Louisiana.  He was in Company C 1/22 Infantry, of the 4th Infantry, and arrived in Vietnam on 16 August 1967.


There are two remembrances by men who were with Larry the day he died, one including a photo, at the website Together We Served

"Larry was with Co C. 3rd platoon on Feb 5, 1968 when a squad was attacked by the NVA using a B-40 rocket. the rest of the platoon moved up to provide assistance. Shortly thereafter we were surrounded and pinned down by a machine gun to our front. Larry move up to help establish a perimeter when he received wounds to the upper body. 1 1/2hours a tank took out the machine gun and relieved the platoon. we lost 3 or 4 good men that day.Larry was a great friend and a fine soldier. His sacrifice will always be remembered and appreciated. His memory will always be an example to me of one who was ready to be the 1st to serve his fellow men.See attached photo. Doc Shyab."

	"Larry and I stood side by side that dreadful day, the burst of the machine gun came without notice I stood wounded and Larry gave up his life. I don't know why God took some and left others. I can only hope that my life has been good enough to make up for the life his family had to live without from that day forward. He was a good person and a courageous soldier.
Posted by: Michael Stoke" That website also includes a note left at The Vietnam Wall in Washington: "On 05 Feb 1968 C Company, 1/22nd Infantry, lost eight men in a firefight in Kontum Province: 2LT Harold A. Kram, St Louis, MO SSG Rembert Crawford, High Point, NC SP4 Larry V. Claspill, Kansas City, MO SP4 Lawrence G. Grassi, Bradford, PA PFC Gary L. Campen, Washougal, WA PFC Timothy J. Dineen, Vallejo, CA PFC Thomas A. Marchut, Sayreville, NJ PFC James E. Stover, Detroit, MI"

Larry was awarded the Silver Star posthumously.  His citation says 

"Specialist Fourth Class Claspiill distinguished himself while serving as a Radio-Telephone Operator with Company C, 1st Battalion, 22d Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division. On 5 February 1968, Specialist Claspill's platoon was on a search and destroy mission a few miles north of Kontum, when the element was suddenly taken under heavy fire by a regimental-size force of North Vietnamese Regulars. Although enemy fire was coming from three sides, Specialist Claspill immediately took charge of his section and quickly set up a perimeter while simultaneously directing fire at the enemy. Through his quick actions the enemy was pushed back. Although completely unprotected from the enemy fire, he continued to direct fire at the enemy. Realizing that a few wounded personnel were lying outside of the perimeter, Specialist Claspill organized a five man team and deployed to recover the wounded. Although the enemy fire increased in intensity, he courageously moved out into the open, drawing the hostile fire while the wounded were withdrawn to safety. It was during this gallant act that Specialist Claspill was mortally wounded by enemy fire."
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Roy Dean McDaniel

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Roy Dean lived about 7 blocks north on the street where I grew up.  He joined the Marines the last day of June 1966, the month we graduated from East High School in Kansas City, Missouri.  He was trained as a "scout-sniper."  He went to Vietnam in October 1967 in Company A, 1st Battalion of the 9th Marines.


“On 23 Jan, the 45 men of First Platoon, A/l/9, under the command of 2/Lt ROACH, together with 20 men of the l/9 Weapons Platoon under the command of 2/Lt LOVELY established an OP position at XD 823 4l6, called 'Hill 64.' At 0445H, NVA forces suddenly unleashed the fury of a mortar attack on the outpost and launched a 3-prong assault on it. By 05l3H, NVA were inside the wire...

"CPL McDANIEL asked for my grenade pouch. As I was handing the pouch to him another grenade landed between us again. This one must of been a frag because it knocked the hell out of me and the CPL. Everything seemed to be in slow motion. CPL McDANIEL’s face seemed to lift off, leaving a bloody mess, and then he fell backwards into the trench.”

--This and other remembrances of the 45 men killed February 1968 at Khe Sahn are online at the website Khe Sahn Veterans, from information compiled by Chaplain Ray W. Stubbe in his book Battalion of Kings.


"...three companies of the NVA 101D Regiment moved into jump-off positions to attack Alpha-1, an outpost just outside the Combat Base held by 66 men of Company A, 1st Platoon, 1/9 Marines. At 04:15 on 8 February under cover of fog and a mortar barrage, the North Vietnamese penetrated the perimeter, overrunning most of the position and pushing the remaining 30 defenders into the southwestern portion of the defenses. For some unknown reason, the NVA troops did not press their advantage and eliminate the pocket instead throwing a steady stream of grenades at the Marines. At 07:40 a relief force from Company A, 2nd Platoon set out from the main base and attacked through the North Vietnamese, pushing them into supporting tank and artillery fire^. By 11:00 the battle was over, Company A had lost 24 dead and 27 wounded, while 150 North Vietnamese bodies were found around the position which was then abandoned.^"    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khe_Sanh

One source says Roy Dean was killed at "Khe Sanh Near the Rock Quarry." His unit had first been stationed near Hill 689, and the map shows a quarry between there and the main Khe Sahn base.

The NVA wanted accress to Route 9, which ran east from the north-south Ho Chi Minh trail just across the Laotian border.  Their Tet offensive was in preparation, and they planned to use Route 9 to transport troops to the coast, and south on connecting highways.  The Marine base at Khe Sahn, overlooking the Demilitarized Zone and Route 9, blocked the way.

The NVA easily captured Khe Sahn village on 22 January 1968, cutting off the US Special Forces and ARVN base at Lang Vei.  On 23 January they captured Ban Houei Sane, a 700-man Royal Laotian Army post about a mile west across the border from Lang Vei.  The NVA threw 2000 men and (their first use of) armor against Ban Houei Sane, overwhelming its garrison in hours.

Lang Vei was effectively surrounded, and the major U.S. base at Khe Sahn under siege, when the NVA launched their Tet offensive on 30 January.  Lang Vei was overrun on the night of 6-7 February 1968. Roy Dean was killed February 8th.

President Johnson was worried that Khe Sahn would be "another Dien Bien Phu," (the besieged post whose capture marked the defeat of the French in Vietnam), and ordered Khe Sahn held at all costs.  The base was the western anchor of the American defence-line that paralleled the Demilitarized Zone, and directly faced North Vietnam's border.  General Westmoreland even briefly considered using tactical nuclear weapons against the NVA besieging Khe Sahn.  He believed the rest of his life that the Tet offensive was a diversionary maneuver, and Khe Sahn the real NVA target.

An Army operation broke the siege of Khe Sahn in April, but the decision was made to evacuate the post in June.  The NVA claimed victory.  There was continued fighting in the area afterwards, but the base was not occupied again until January 1971, when it was used as an American support-base for ARVN troops who unsuccessfully attacked west down Route 9 into Laos.  Khe Sahn base was again abandoned in April 1971.


                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
 

Thinking Vietnam

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

To slightly paraphrase William Faulkner, "The past isn't dead. It's not even past yet.”

The Vietnam war is not past.  It's part of the life-story of every American of my generation.  But it's also part of America's story, and is not past for anyone who is part of America's story.  Somebody once said that "things are the way they are now because they got that way."  Vietnam is part of how America got the way it is now, and part of how America will be in all the future.

Ken Burns' Vietnam documentary on P.B.S. last Fall did a masterful job of presenting the many kinds of people and stories that were part of the war.  But he left it for us to think about what the war meant, and continues to mean: the past isn't dead, or even past yet.  It continues having meaning for us, and historical perspective gives it new meaning.

But like everything in life, we get the past wrong when we're not honest about it: especially, honest about our part in it.  There was recently a striking example of getting it right and getting it wrong, when a couple well-known newspaper columnists both happened to write about Americans' lack of faith in government.  Both looked at our history to explain how things got that way.

Leonard Pitts highlighted Vietnam as the event that caused many Americans to begin doubting what our government told us, and what our government did.  The events of Watergate, taking place as the war was winding down, convinced many more that our government could not be trusted.  (And Pitts didn't say...but I will...that Ronald Reagan's Inaugural proclamation that "Government is the PROBLEM" both captured and gave Presidential imprimatur to Americans' lack of faith in government following Vietnam and Watergate.)

But Vietnam (and Watergate) was prominent by its absence from the musings of hard-line conservative George Will.  Will argued instead that Americans lost faith in their government because New Deal "Liberalism" failed.

Since he was of military-service age himself during the Vietnam war, it's impossible to believe Will was unaware of how Vietnam effected people at the time, especially those who served in the war, and those who protested it.  (Will himself did neither).  But Will serves as an exemplar of how we get the past, and the present, wrong.  Reading our preconceived meaning into the past, as Will does his conservative ideology, falsifies history...and current reality.

Will is not alone in getting Vietnam wrong.  Anyone who believes America "won" in Vietnam gets it wrong.  If America's purpose was to keep South Vietnam from falling under communist rule, we failed.  If North Vietnam's purpose was to re-unite their country under communist rule, they succeeded.  Arguing otherwise is delusional.

But there probably aren't many who'd argue America "won" in Vietnam.  The question for most Americans is why we lost the war.  And like the war itself, that retrospective question of meaning requires honesty.

I had to admire Robert McNamara.  Secretary of Defense during the first part of the war, he was later able to look at the reasoning by which he and the others who directed the war got into it, and stayed in it.  Even in retrospect it's rare that anyone, especially those who've been leaders during disastrous events, admit they were wrong: but McNamara had that courage.

McNamara said (in his 1995 memoirs, in the movie "The Fog of War," and in numerous interviews) that America's planners and leaders chose to enter the war, and made bad decisions in its conduct, because they believed "the domino theory."  America's leaders were convinced that if South Vietnam fell to the communists, Communism would infect the bordering countries, and then the countries bordering them. Their theory was that the nations of the world would thus fall to Communism sequentially, like dominos, until America was surrounded and engulfed by world-wide Communism.  McNamara had the integrity and courage to look back and say, "we were wrong."

America's first leaders in the war gave the war false meaning, with disastrous consequences.  And there are still false "meanings" being read into the war, retrospectively; such as Will's ideological view that it had nothing to do with Americans' losing faith in their government.

But the false retrospective "meaning" of Vietnam I hear most often is that "the media," and anti-war protestors, turned Americans against the war, and made America and its soldiers lose the will to win...causing America to lose the war.

It was originally Richard Nixon's "meaning," after he took over the war's conduct.  Like Lyndon Johnson, Nixon feared being "the first President to lose a war."  Johnson's solution had been to escalate the war, in the belief that defeat could be staved off that way.  Nixon tried escalation too: but as it became increasingly clear victory was not possible, Nixon found it politically expedient to deflect failure onto someone else.  Not surprisingly, he blamed those he considered his "enemies," the media and anti-war protestors.

It was a self-serving political ploy, then and now.  Nixon lied self-servingly in his ascription of defeat, which can surprise no one.  And with everything else we know of Nixon's character, it's hard to understand why any honest person would continue to believe the "meaning" he gave the war. 

The media simply did their job.  They told us and showed us what was happening: on battlefields, and, as the Pentagon Papers came out, in American government councils.  People saw that what was happening was horrible...knowingly purposeless destruction and death, and criminal political manipulation of our people and government.   People rightly demanded an end to the horror, for the good of our people and country.

Complaints that "the media" lost the war by not falsifying it as glorious and good was Nixon's ploy to disguise political self-interest as "patriotism."  No one, those directing the war most of all, believed we were winning, or could win, the war.  No one believed that it was in the best interests of America and its soldiers to spend more of their blood in Vietnam.  Politicians who pretended to believe they could lead America to victory in Vietnam, but were being undermined by the media and anti-war protestors, "played" the war in the most evil way possible, for their own cynical political advantage.

But Nixon's lying "meaning" of Vietnam is still fixed in some people's minds.  I still hear it from them.  As a political ploy, it has worked well.  The people who still believe that lie are largely the same self-deluded people who were once Nixon's, and are now Trump's, "base:" as if lying to ourselves about Vietnam's meaning will "make America great again."

More disturbing is that Americans' giving a false "meaning" to defeat in Vietnam has a historical parallel in Weimar Germany.  Like America, Germany lost a war.  As in post-Vietnam America, many in post-war Germany questioned how it could have happened, for the spirit of nationalist pride (American or German) is always that our soldiers, our courage, our will, and our purpose are so superior to any other nation's that we can never be defeated.

Many Germans would not give up their nationalistic pride; but could not reconcile it with Germany's undeniable defeat.  They chose to believe the comfortable lie their politicians told them, that Germany lost the war because the nation and its soldiers were"stabbed in the back" by the machinations of enemies at home.  (And Hitler wasn't alone in telling them the Jews were that enemy.)  Many Germans chose to believe that lie, and believed that Nazism would restore Germany to greatness.

It has yet to be seen what will be the outcome of Americans believing the "stabbed-in-the-back" lie about Vietnam, that "the media" and ("liberal") anti-war protestors lost the war.  But we already see that hatred of Nixon's scapegoats is an article-of-faith for supporters of the current president; and that his deceived "base" believes his immoral and corrupt rule is the only thing that will "make America great again."

Congresswoman Jeanette Rankin spoke wisdom about war: "you don't win a war any more than you win an earthquake."  Satan is the spiritual author of all man's wars; and only satan ever wins them, gaining his purpose of destroying people physically, psychologically, and spiritually.  And on the rubble of war he builds toward further destruction: confirming the "winners" in their self-pride (satan's own sin, which is under God's heaviest judgement), and fomenting murderous self-delusion on the thwarted national pride of the defeated.

But satan never gets the final say.  God holds out repentance, for people and for the nations they are.  If we can be honest enough to admit to ourselves that we lost in Vietnam, we can be as honest with ourselves as Robert McNamara was, and admit that "we were wrong."  The only way people or nations begin to free themselves from the consequences of their wrong-doing is admitting it to God and to themselves.

We were wrong in our pride.  Wrong that scripture's judgement on pride somehow didn't (and doesn't) apply to America the same as to any other person or people that ever existed; and wrong to disbelieve God that pride goes before a fall.  Wrong to believe the politicians who told us that we can restore America's pride by blaming other people for our fall.

Continuingly wrong to want America to be proud, and wrong to believe those who tell us that restoring pride will bring God's blessing on America...and not God's judgement on America.

Nations are people, and people make mistakes.  We were mistaken in what we thought we were doing in Vietnam.  God is merciful to those who admit doing wrong, and stop doing wrong.  If we instead tell ourselves lies about Vietnam, in order to maintain our pride, we delude ourselves about the war's meaning, and about current reality.  Most significantly, we continue doing wrong.

God promises no blessing to the self-deluded, and willful wrong-doers.