Vietnam War: The Individual Rotation Policy

By Mark DePu | Vietnam  | one comment  |  Print This Post  |  Email This Post

Following Johnson’s decision, newly appointed Secretary of the Army Stanley Resor asked the chief of staff to consider extending the average soldier’s tour length in Vietnam to 15 months. That adjustment would ‘reduce replacements needed by 20 percent for Vietnam and 12 percent for Korea, while increasing unit effectiveness,’ Resor reasoned. The Army staff was divided on the issue, with the deputy chief of staff for logistics and the assistant chief of staff for force development favoring the proposal, while the powerful deputy chief of staff for operations was opposed. So was General Johnson, and he had the support of the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps as well. They all feared the adverse effects on morale if a longer tour length were adopted, and warned that the decision might result in a decline in enlistments plus an increase in health problems from a more prolonged exposure to the harsh climate and living conditions in Vietnam. General Westmoreland, commander of forces in Vietnam, also weighed in, strongly favoring a 12-month tour. ‘The harsh conditions provided one of the strongest arguments for a one-year tour of duty,’ he later explained in his autobiography, A Soldier Reports. ‘The one-year tour gave a man a goal. That was good for morale.’ The 12-month policy was retained. Meanwhile, the tour for 130 senior officers was extended to 19 months, this exception applying only to general officers and other selected officers in senior staff positions.

In October 1966, Secretary of Defense McNamara declared in a lengthy, strongly stated public announcement: ‘We have no intent of changing the 12-month tour of duty….We are equipped to supply the replacements necessary to support it.’ Indeed, the military was able to support the ever growing demand for troops in Vietnam, but only by repeatedly raising the quotas it issued to local draft boards. The war’s unquenchable appetite for soldiers eventually triggered a national debate over the draft, and increasingly led to violent protests on the nation’s college campuses.

By 1968, with troop strength in Vietnam approaching 500,000, the nation was feeling the strain. Prominent military psychiatrists warned that the individual replacement system was having catastrophic consequences on unit cohesion. When called to testify in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee, however, General Johnson reassured the senators, ‘We have no intention of altering the length of tour in Vietnam.’

That same year, following the Tet Offensive and rising tensions in Korea, President Johnson finally approved a limited call-up of Reservists and Guardsmen. The numbers were minuscule, however, including 13,633 Guardsmen, only 2,729 of whom ever served in Vietnam.

There were many arguments advanced in defense of the 12-month rotation policy. Rarely stated but always looming in the background was the fact that the nation’s conscription laws gave policymakers few options when determining the length of combat tours in Vietnam. Ever since the Korean War, the 24-month tour for draftees had been embedded in American society, with Congress repeatedly renewing that policy. Only after the need for draftees swelled did the policy come under heavy scrutiny. The possibility of extending the overall time in service past 24 months was never seriously debated. The reason lay in the fact that the supply of eligible draftees far exceeded the demand, even at the height of the war. Thus, to extend the draftee’s tour length would have meant that greater sacrifice would be asked of a few unlucky draftees while the vast majority of young men avoided service entirely.

When defending the policy, the Army’s senior leaders invariably cited their desire to create an equitable system of treatment for all soldiers. That was the sentiment expressed by both Generals Westmoreland and Johnson. ‘The one-year tour was adopted primarily so that the hazards of combat might be shared by more that just a limited number of people,’ explained Johnson during an interview in 1973.

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Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts, Vietnam War

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