Nor did Kerwin find the command relationships at MACV as strong as they should have been. Abrams had left for Vietnam believing that he would shortly relieve Westmoreland as MACV commander, with Kerwin as his own hand-picked chief of staff at his side. The change in command, however, was delayed for more than a year. 'Although General Abrams was completely loyal to Westmoreland,' Kerwin recalled, 'there was not the closeness that there probably should have been between the two of them. There were many times — which I knew of, being the chief of staff — that General Westmoreland did not take General Abrams into his confidence. General Abrams knew that he wasn't being utilized in the true sense of being a deputy commander.'

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In addition to supporting both generals, Kerwin was called on to perform chief-of-staff duties for the ambassador to South Vietnam, Ellsworth Bunker, and Ambassador Robert William Komer, MACV's civilian deputy commander in charge of Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support programs. Although Kerwin remained fiercely loyal to all four of his bosses, his duties were complex and difficult, considering that these men seemed to have different agendas, personalities, philosophies and priorities.

Moreover, as Kerwin lamented, his bosses 'didn't necessarily speak the same language.' From the quiet and introspective Westmoreland, to the blunt and down-to-earth Abrams, to the abrasive and volatile Komer, it was usually Kerwin who was caught in the cross-fire. 'It took an inordinate amount of time,' the MACV chief of staff recalled, 'before I, as the chief of the whole headquarters, was able to exercise some sort of coordination and staff functioning, and all those things that should be done in that headquarters got done.' Moving MACV from its cramped facilities in Saigon to larger and better organized quarters near Tan Son Nhut helped, but staff coordination remained a chronic challenge in his new position.

Tet Begins
MACV's problems seemingly culminated on January 31, 1968, during the Tet cease-fire that marked the traditional Vietnamese celebration of the Lunar New Year. The day before, MACV had received reports of sporadic attacks, including some near Da Nang. Before dawn on January 31, VC insurgent forces and NVA Regulars launched a series of coordinated surprise attacks across South Vietnam. They hit more than 100 cities, towns and hamlets, as well as military bases and the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.

'Well, we knew something was coming,' recalled Kerwin. 'They [the NVA forces] were moving out all over the place. [On the night of January 30, 1968] I went down to my house, down almost in the center of Saigon. Of course, it was Tet night and they'd blow firecrackers all over the place as they do in Hawaii. I woke up about 2 in the morning, wondering what all of this bang, bang, bang was, and I just ordinarily thought it was the firecrackers, because I had heard them before. Then the phone rang, and they said that we were under attack and I'd better get down here right away.

'My Vietnamese driver slept in the other part of the building, and I got dressed in a hurry and out the door we went — got the jeep and started down the long drive. I quickly saw that was not the thing to do, particularly since up ahead of us on the right-hand side of the main drag there was a military police outfit. They were under attack. So I tried to figure out what the hell to do. I thought, 'If I get off on the side streets, I'm liable to get killed myself. And I'm not sure in the middle of the night (it was a dark night in January) whether I can even get back to headquarters or not."

'So we quickly turned around and went back close to the house and waited for a while. Things didn't improve. It must have been 45 minutes or something like that. They were firing all over the damn place. We finally got out of there, and of course I went right down to the TOC to find out what the hell was going on. It was very difficult to do that, because everybody was being attacked everywhere.'

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