George Jacobson
[Col. George D. Jacobson, a retired United States Army officer who headed the pacification program in Vietnam in the early 1970's, died of a lung disease on May 18, 1989, at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. He was 76 years old and lived in Vienna, Va.
Colonel Jacobson served in Vietnam for 18 years. His first tour was with the Military Assistance Advisory Group from 1954 to 1957. He returned in 1961 as deputy chief of staff of the group.
He later became associate director of field operations in Saigon for the Agency for International Development and assistant chief of staff for the pacification program, which was intended to win support of the Vietnamese people through education, public works projects and improvements in public health and agriculture.
Colonel Jacobson, who retired in 1976, was among the last Americans to leave Saigon in 1975 after the North Vietnamese defeated South Vietnamese military forces.
He joined the Army in 1941 and served with an armored cavalry reconnaissance unit in France and Germany in World War II.]
"So That's the Way It Is"
I never could understand why it took the students here so long to realize their power, because the students in other countries had been demonstrating and rioting for years. We were kind of backward. I was concerned the peace movement in America all the time I was in Vietnam -- I went there first in 1954, just before Dienbienphu -- but not to the point that it was a central thing in my life, because I'm a product of this country too, and in my day the students never had any great power over what was going to happen internationally. So I didn't pay a hell of a lot of attention to it. But that sure changed. When I came back here in '67,'68, I was here for that tremendous thing that went on on the ellipse and I've never seen anything like that in my life. I spent a whole day and a whole night with those people. I wanted to see what the hell went on. And you know what I determined? I determined that if I was that age and the situation was as it was, I wouldn't have missed it for the world, because it was so much fun. Most of those kids had absolutely no ideological notion about what was going on, but my God look at the opportunities.
Here's a chance to do something that's exciting, because you turn over a car, and maybe the pigs would come and try to arrest you and that gets the adrenalin going good. And then you've got interesting people talking to you, like Jane Fonda, Alan Ginsberg and just any number of very interesting people, fascinating stuff. And then of course if you're a fellow and you're looking for a girl who wants to do what the hell ever you want to do, smoke pot, go to bed, read Kafka, discuss existentialism, she's there because she's looking for the same thing. So you absolutely couldn't miss it.
It was a terrifying thing too. Because crowds are always terrifying. Anybody that's ever been in a riot or a crowd that gets out of hand has just got to be terrified at the mindlessness of what they do. This required just a spark and would have set off carnage. That night I went up to Dupont Circle. That was an experience. A nice looking little girl, I'd say fifteen, with stringy dirty hair, filthy sweater and unkempt as she could be, when you looked into her eyes you knew that was a quality girl, that somewhere she had a family that was worried about her. This wasn't her normal milieu. She was an outsider. She came up to me and she said "How can you do this? How can you possibly speak the word war without cringing when you avoid a beautiful word like fuck."
Well, I looked at her and said this is one discussion that I am going to opt out of, because I don't think fifteen year old girls and I should discuss that question. That's the first time I saw a marvelous sign that the guys were carrying "fighting for peace is like fucking for chastity".
Whoever was behind this whole peace thing made Joseph Goebbels look like a pure amateur. This was very well orchestrated. No question about it.
I'll tell you what did disappoint me. I had some serious discussions, particularly at the Dupont Circle, with some very intelligent people. They had some strong convictions and they had reasons and while I battled them every inch of the way, I could see their point and I had regard for it. But then the instant, the fleeting fraction of a split second when, due to a change in the law, they became bullet proof from the draft, it all stopped. No more dissent. No more college problems. And this made me feel kind of bad because it made me realize that their concern was truly not ideological. It was personal. And it kind of disappointed me a little bit.
I don't know where the support came from for those demonstrations. But I've got to say that if our enemies, anywhere in the world, missed an opportunity to do everything possible with money and ideas, whatever it took to further what was going on, then they're fools, and I don't think they're fools. I can't prove that any country actively participated in this, I can certainly say that they were awfully God damn fools if they didn't, and I don't think they are fools.
There were some students that were extremely well informed, and others who were just obviously there because the rest of the kids were there. It's a lot like going to these rock festivals, you can run into any number of people who understand this music and can describe it and explore it and take it apart and put it back together. Then you've got a lot of other people, the great majority who are just there to be there.
The whole thing made me conscious of what a hell of a thing it is to have somebody like Jane Fonda in charge of foreign policy. Fortunately she's not interested in that anymore. She's now in charge of our nuclear program. And the hell of it is she's one of the best actresses that ever lived. I despise her, but I don't miss her movies because she's such a hell of a good actor.
And don't forget the press. They had their own axes to grind, and axes of their publishers, editors and investigative journalism was on the uptake in those years. And this started in the late 50s and reached full flower in the early 60s. And from then on, of course, I think for whatever reason, the press had tremendous amount to do with making the war as unpopular as it was.
I'm convinced that if we had no restrictions on the news, unrestricted television would have lost World War II. You can't serve up that kind of publicity every night on the news with dinner and see this blood and guts night after night after night, and continue to support this kind of effort.
Then we had some sons of bitches over there who paid GIs to cut the ears off of dead bodies. We had some sons of bitches over there who came out with marijuana cigarettes and handed them around to these young kids who didn't know any better and then photographed it and -- look, those bastards would have set their grandmothers on fire if they couldn't have lit their cigarette any other way. I just loathe despise and detest that kind of reporters.
I don't think that any person with any sensitivity with respect to the situation could have read the Paris Agreements without saying "when you are leaving the North Vietnamese in the backyard of the South Vietnamese, you are asking for trouble and you are going to get it." But it was a political imperative that we get out troops out of Vietnam and our prisoners back, that was absolutely not negotiable. However we recognized that it was a very bad thing that we had to leave the North Vietnamese forces deep inside South Vietnam. So our President has assured Thieu that he was leaving the 8th Air Force in the area and leaving the 7th Fleet in the China Sea, and if the other side failed to agree and conform with the terms of the agreement, he promised he was going to use those forces to defend South Vietnam. And I believed that.
Then came Watergate. Then came the resignation of Nixon. Then came a complete change in the political imperatives in this country. I know that Ford did what he could to get the kind of aid that had to happen in order to save the situation, because you see, it was not only the loss of ammunition, and spare parts, and gasoline and replacement vehicles and so forth, it was psychological -- first among the generals over there and then it seeped down to the last man -- that their big friend had given them up, and gone his own way, and they were going to have to go their's. And it just became obvious that the mood of the country at that point was such that the Vietnam War was over. The American attitude seemed to be let's cut our losses and to hell with it, we're not going to pour any more funds down the rat hole.
When the political imperatives in American changed, there was no doubt in my mind but that we had had it. No question. I didn't expect the end to come anything like as soon as it did, but I'll tell you what made me put into concrete the feeling that I had that the other side was certain to win. It was when the other side had the temerity, the unmitigated guts to take a province capital of Phuoc Long province. And when there wasn't even a dirty word spoken about it in Washington, when it went absolutely unnoticed, except for the papers that were on the other side, they cheered about it, but there was absolutely no government opposition from our point of view. I knew then that this was the signal to the other side -- you can do anything you want to do. Those bombers are never going to come back. The Seventh Fleet is never going to fire a round into that shore again. You are home free. I absolutely positive that that's what they couldn't help but think. That's when I knew without any question that the other side was going to win.
Now, in all candor I certainly didn't expect it to come as soon as it did. I have a reason for that too. There's no question in my mind but that the other side could have come into Saigon with all guns blazing at least two to three weeks before the end came, but they didn't. And they didn't come, and they didn't come. Which led me to believe that they weren't as sure as I was and that they wanted to enter into a period of negotiations. That's what I expected to happen. And it didn't happen.
During that period of time, if Graham Martin had done what he was not only encouraged, but ordered to do, we would have panicked Saigon, just like we panicked Danang and we would have left thousands of Americans in Vietnam because we couldn't have gotten them out. Graham was ordered to bring the American presence down much faster than was possible, because apparently a hell of a lot of people don't realize that an ambassador can order all of the bureaucrats to do anything he wants them to do and they'll do it. Including the military. But we had thousands of civilians there, mostly ex-contractor types, who had girlfriends, or wives, and families and all of that, and they just weren't going to leave until they could bring their families with them.
Back here they kept hounding us to get people out. Well, you can't order those people to do anything, because you don't have that kind of authority. The ambassador has absolute authority over all of the people who work for the government, but no authority over anybody else, American or not. And we just didn't dare to panic Saigon. There were ships up in the Saigon port where we could have put two thousand people on one ship. We were absolutely sure, however, that once that thing started down the Saigon river, all hell was going to break loose. Not the least of our worries were the Vietnamese military. Because how would they feel if they saw us leaving, taking with us the Vietnamese who had worked for us, as many as we could scoop up, and leaving them there to the fate they knew was in the future. Well, what we were more concerned about than anything was the attitude of what they would do when the final evacuation took place.
In the midst of all of the confusion and planning, Ed Daly of World Airways comes in. Now Daly is a total ass. He is absolutely a total ass. He is one of the most despicable human beings I have ever had the misfortune to meet. A fourflusher, a loud mouth, unhousebroken, miserable man. He's just one of those fourflushing types. Obviously he had ability, but World Airways, I'm sure is doing better now that he is dead. I read his obituary with the greatest of pleasure, I'll tell you that.
He was raising hell around Vietnam, and Graham Martin, God damn it I'll never forgive him for this, put me in charge of Ed Daly, in addition to the thousand things I had to do I had to put up with this idiot. He was a mad man.
Remember when he flew up to Danang? What stupidity. He's a true horse's ass, is what he was. One of those loud mouthed characters who carries a big pistol and runs around in a Honolulu shirt and he's got these stewardesses with him, on his god damn airplanes, just a miserable impossible man. Nobody could like him better than I do.
I saw the video tape of the flight out of Danang and I wasn't surprised at all. It was just too bad that Daly wasn't the guy that was caught in the wheel well. That was my feeling. Let's say I despised this man. Let's just leave it at that.
I was the guy that Martin charged with doing the planning on the evacuation. And we had set up I think it was either twelve or thirteen helicopter sites on buildings where we could take people out. Part of that gave us trouble because of the rocketing to Tan Son Nhut, which hit some Air America aircraft and some of the helicopters were knocked around.
You see one of our problems was that we had to beg the Vietnamese, literally to give us their sovereignty, and permit us to decide who was going to leave and who was going to stay. We had to get permission to take out those that we wanted to take out, which we did. It was one of the consuls and myself that arranged that with the Minister of the Interior. They had a constricted solution to emigration, whereby there was one guy in the Department of the Interior who had the only stamp that would permit people to leave, so this took some doing. By god that guy that had that one stamp was central to us in getting the thing squared away where we decided -- back here they permitted us to parole people into this country, but the exit problem over there was strictly ours for the Vietnamese, and there were some people that were intimately involved with helping us get that arrangement, and we did not get them out. For me this is a terrible thing.
Let me put it this way, there were things that happened that I've lived with to this day that bother the hell out of me. People that I wanted to get out and who truly deserved to be taken out, didn't get out. Just to give you one example, the judges who sentenced a hell of a lot of communists to Con Son Island were people that I had at the very top of the list of those who just had to get out, and I didn't get them out. That's just a typical example. There was a hell of a lot of bar girls and girl friends and all the rest that did get out, not that they're bad people, but there were a lot of people that I sure as hell wanted out before them. That's not the reason I couldn't get these people out. I just couldn't get to them. It happened too fast. I couldn't get all the tentacles out.
We didn't start the big evacuation of civilians until just a few days before Frequent Wind, and then Tan Son Nhut was closed, and I didn't expect that. And the only thing that I'm truly proud of is that I do not know of a single American, not one, who let us know that they wanted to go out, that did not get out. I don't know of one.
Finally, Martin was ordered out by the President. No question about who ordered him out. And he insisted on continuing the helicopter lifts long after it was supposedly over. I suppose no group of men have ever done more above and beyond the call of duty than those helicopter pilots, because you talk about pilot fatigue, those guys had been working around the clock, for god's sake. A helicopter is one hell of a strain on anybody and when you've got one of those big devils and that many people aboard, it's a nerve-wracking thing. Martin kept jamming Washington to permit him to take out more people, keep that helicopter lift going. And he did for a long long time.
I came out with the Ambassador. We landed on the Blue Ridge at 5:30 on the morning of April 30th and it was about a thirty minute trip.
You know it was a very sad thing after you spent that much time and that much effort at trying to do anything, suddenly it's over and you lost. That's a damned unnerving experience and certainly was for me. Because I had literally lied to so many Vietnamese about what we were going to do if the other side didn't obey the rules, the Paris Accords. And you just have a bad feeling.
On the way out I didn't look down at all. The hell with it. I wasn't looking at anything. I was looking straight ahead and feeling very sorry for a lot of people including me.
I think it didn't have to happen the way it did. It was all unnecessary. But the Jane Fondas of this world took charge of our foreign policy and took over the sense of the appropriateness of the support for this war. There finally was just total lack of support for what we were trying to do. That's what defeated us.
I've never visited the Vietnam Memorial, never seen it. I'm going to tell you something that sounds strange after this diatribe that I've gone through. I realize that the mood of the American people has changed considerably since 1975. There's a lot of people in this country now including, God bless her, Joan Baez, who admits that she probably took some wrong tacks in those days. There's a lot of people who realize that maybe the whole country misread the proper thing to do. And that's due to people that have been writing and working and talking. I must say that I am not concerned in the slightest about what the great American people think about our efforts in Vietnam. I couldn't possibly care less. They misread the situation when it counted so far as I was concerned, and what the hell do I care what they think now when it's immaterial. I realize that is not a nice way to feel about it or a popular way, and I'm glad that there are people who feel otherwise, but I can't bring myself to get all unstrung about statues and people who now decide maybe we weren't really the bastards and sons of bitches they said we were.
So that's the way that is.
Obituary:
George Jacobson, 76, A Colonel in Vietnam
Published: May 26, 1989
Col. George D. Jacobson, a retired United States Army officer who headed the pacification program in Vietnam in the early 1970's, died of a lung disease on May 18 at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. He was 76 years old and lived in Vienna, Va.
Colonel Jacobson served in Vietnam for 18 years. His first tour was with the Military Assistance Advisory Group from 1954 to 1957. He returned in 1961 as deputy chief of staff of the group.
He later became associate director of field operations in Saigon for the Agency for International Development and assistant chief of staff for the pacification program, which was intended to win support of the Vietnamese people through education, public works projects and improvements in public health and agriculture.
Colonel Jacobson, who retired in 1976, was among the last Americans to leave Saigon in 1975 after the North Vietnamese defeated South Vietnamese military forces.
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