Eli Lilly, Archaeology, Glenn Black, and the Indiana Historical Society

In the fall of 1930 a staff member of the Smithsonian Institution, Frank Setzler, assistant curator for archaeology, ran across a visitor from the Hoosier State. Setzler, who had worked as a surveyor for the Indiana Historical Society before migrating to Washington, DC, had been won over by the man’s passion for the subject, so much so that he wrote a letter to his old boss, Christopher B. Coleman. “I think the [archaeology] committee will be very fortunate to have such a man working with it,” Setzler told Coleman. “He seemed earnestly interested in the work and willing to learn all there is to know. . . . More men of his type will certainly boost archaeology in Indiana.”

Setzler was correct. The man he was writing about, Eli Lilly, businessman and future president of his family’s Indianapolis pharmaceutical company, certainly boosted archaeology in the state through his own efforts researching and writing about the subject, but also from his financial support of the archaeology program through the IHS. Subsequently, Lilly became more and more involved in the IHS’s other activities, serving as its president from 1933 to 1946 and as a trustee until his death in 1977; writing books on a variety of Indiana subjects (Prehistoric Antiquities of Indiana, published in 1937); supporting significant publications from other authors (as examples, R. C. Buley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Old Northwest: Pioneer Period, 1815–1840 and the multivolume The Diary of Calvin Fletcher); paying the salaries and/or underwriting the education of such prominent staff members as Glenn A. Black and Gayle Thornbrough; and offering significant sums (without publicity) for the organization’s endowment, as well as expanded facilities. As Setzler noted, Lilly’s association with the IHS had “been among the pleasantness that I have had in this lower mundane institute.”

Before Lilly’s involvement the IHS had experienced some difficult times since its creation on December 11, 1830, when more than half the members of the legislature and several Indiana Supreme Court judges had gathered at the Marion County Courthouse to consider forming a historical society to collect and preserve material about the nineteenth state’s past. John H. Farnham, one of the IHS’s founders and its corresponding secretary, said at the initial meeting that those in attendance fully impressed with the importance and necessity of collecting and preserving the materials for a comprehensive and accurate history of our country, natural, civil and political, many of which are of an ephemeral and transitory nature, and in the absence of well directed efforts to preserve them are rapidly passing into oblivion.”

Unfortunately, the IHS failed to achieve all Farnham, who died in a cholera epidemic in 1833, had hoped for despite several tries at reorganization and leadership attempts from such notable Hoosiers as John Brown Dillon and John Coburn. “Its existence has been very quiet,” Indiana historian Jacob P. Dunn Jr. said of the group. “So quiet at times as to suggest death.” Dunn, along with fellow amateur historians William H. English and Daniel Wait Howe, worked to revitalize the organization in the 1880s, and began its long tradition of publishing monographs. Further assistance to the IHS’s mission to collect “all materials calculated to shed light on the natural, civil, and political history of Indiana” came in 1922 with a generous $150,000 bequest from Delavan Smith to establish a memorial library in honor of his father, William Henry Smith (after whom the IHS’s library is named), as well as donating items on Indiana history collected by both Smiths.

Lilly’s enthusiasm for archaeology and increasing role with the IHS led to a lasting friendship with Black, a former salesman, “estimating engineer” for an Indianapolis company, and musician, which, in turn, led to the organization’s involvement in saving one of the state’s most important archaeological sites—Angel Mounds, located on the Ohio River in Vanderburgh and Warrick Counties and built between 1000 and 1450 AD by people of the Mississippian culture. The two men admired one another, with Lilly saying that as he saw it, Indiana archaeology depended on Black, while Black wrote in 1960 that Lilly was the “one person essentially responsible for what has been achieved in the field of prehistory through the Indiana Historical Society during the last three decades.”

Self-educated in archaeology, Black first became familiar with Lilly in May 1931 when he served as a driver and guide for a tour of the state’s most important archaeological sites in southern Indiana with William King Moorehead, the well-known director of the Robert S. Peabody Foundation for Archaeology in Andover, Massachusetts. “The memory of the three delightful days in your expedition,” Lilly later wrote Moorehead, “will always be a happy one.”

Both Lilly and Moorehead were impressed by Black. “Mr. Black is an intelligent and willing worker and I am certain will make good. I predict a future for him,” Moorehead wrote Lilly, who hired Black to do archaeological work and initially funded his field expenses and $225 per month salary. To improve Black’s credentials with others involved in the field, the IHS, with Lilly’s approval, sent the young man to study from October 1931 to May 1932 at the Ohio State Museum under Henry C. Shetrone, an expert in the mound builders. 

Lilly subsequently paid Black’s salary as the IHS’s archaeologist through contributions to the organization, the only way, he noted, he could “get credit on my income tax.” As usual for such contributions, Lilly made it a condition that he receive no publicity for his generosity. The investment certainly paid off. As Coleman wrote Lilly in November 1938, Black was so “thoroughly devoted to archaeology and such a fine person in every respect that it is difficult to put a money value on his services.”

One of Black and Lilly’s major achievements was securing the approximately 400-acre Angel Mounds site from destruction—a process that Black described as including “a long period of interest, watchful waiting, diligent effort, and sacrifice on the part of the a few people in Indiana in whose hearts was a wish that this site be preserved at all costs.” The site had fascinated Lilly for many years and he had included a description of it in his book Prehistoric Antiquities of Indiana and wondered why no significant archaeological investigations had been made there. “What would we not give to reverse the film of prehistory to a view of the teeming life within this village, its boisterous play, sweat-producing work, revered ceremonies, bloody wars, and the general way of living?” he asked, urging the state to rescue Angel Mounds from possible oblivion and thus saving for posterity “another of our pre-Columbian heritages.”

The Angel Mounds site had attracted national interest in the early 1930s, with Black accompanying a National Park Service official, Vern Chaterlaine, on a tour of the area with an eye toward acquiring it for the government. In August 1932 Lilly met with Coleman and other IHS officers to discuss the idea of purchasing the private properties “at a reasonable price” and having the organization’s archaeological committee manage the site. Black noted that Lilly had agreed to assume the expense, upkeep, and explorations at Angel Mounds for a few years, and then the IHS might possibly “give the mounds to the State or Nation as a park.” That attempt failed.

Six years later, with Evansville growing and the danger increasing that Angel Mounds might be swallowed up by development or possible encroachment from flood-prevention projects, there was an increased urgency to buy the site. Black set out to obtain support for doing so from Evansville civic organizations, politicians, and media. “Enthusiasm varied, naturally,” Black recalled, “but no one voiced opposition to the proposal that the site be saved, explored and, ultimately, restored.” Black and others also lobbied the Evansville Plan Commission to prevent, if it could, for a reasonable time, “further realty development in the neighborhood of the mounds.” He noted that this step had to be taken as a precautionary measure “to prevent spiraling land prices in the event that the attempt to acquire the property failed at that time.”

Although both the Evansville Courier and Evansville Press cooperated with Black’s effort in every way, including publishing editorials backing the project and cartoons with Courier staff artist Karl Kae Knecht, sufficient public donations never materialized (only $127 had been collected locally). “It made it very difficult, and embarrassing,” Black reflected, “to approach ‘outsiders’ when financial support in Evansville was completely lacking.” With “great reluctance,” and knowledge that options on the land purchases were soon set to expire, Black wrote to Lilly in early October 1938, including a statement covering the amount of funds needed to complete the land purchase, as it was “barely possible that we may receive unsuspected support at the last moment and we shall not give up trying until that time arrives.”

Lilly, who previously had donated $11,000 to the IHS to be “borrowed” for some land options set to expire in July, went even further with his generosity, giving the organization another $57,000 to, as he noted, “prevent the destruction of the mounds at Evansville.” In 1939, under Black’s direction and with the assistance of workers funded by the Works Progress Administration, archaeological excavations began at Angel Mounds. (Today the site is owned and operated by the state of Indiana, and Indiana University’s Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology does research and excavations.)

Preservation of Angel Mounds came at just the right time. Black had noted that while he and others were trying to raise the money necessary to purchase the land holdings, they continually stressed that in Indiana and around the country, “we were . . . destroying our heritage at an alarming rate.” An expanding American economy and population, he was sure, meant that large archaeological sites such as Angel Mounds were sure to be lost. “Even spots of green in the form of fields and woods, adjacent to centers of population density,” he noted, “would be rarities.” Black said he and others did not know, in 1938, how “prophetic we were being,” as in the future the site would be encroached upon by expanding residential areas.

After saving Angel Mounds, Lilly kept a keen interest in progress at the site and continued his close friendship with Black. Lilly’s interest included such mundane matters as controlling weeds at the property by allowing Black to purchase the proper equipment needed to handle the problem, as well as making sure that the house Black and his wife occupied on the site had the necessary sanitary facilities. “It seems to me that we cannot ask Mr. and Mrs. Black to reside in those parts without such equipment,” Lilly wrote Coleman in March 1939, “and I move you, sir, that we instruct him to have proper arrangements made and charged to the archaeological funds.”

Angel Mounds proved to be a busy place in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as Black, who called the effort one of “the most rewarding experiences” of his life, oversaw excavations at the site by workers hired through the federal government’s Works Progress Administration, with the Indiana Historical Bureau serving as the project’s sponsor.

Largely untrained in archaeological practices, the 277 men, most in their thirties and forties, who toiled at the site from April 27, 1939, to May 22, 1942, for the public works project processed approximately 2.3 million archaeological items. “There were men from farm, factories, and offices. . . . There was a retired minister, a trained tree surgeon, and one paroled homicide [convict],” Black recalled. “But so far as we were concerned, we made it a point to ignore backgrounds and concentrate on the tasks at hand. We considered one of these tasks to relate to the men themselves—to explore their personal potential and get as much out of them as possible.” In his time with the WPA workers, his admiration and respect for their “inherent ability, ‘native’ honesty, and ingenuity increased tremendously.”

In 1944 Black joined Indiana University as a lecturer, eventually teaching three courses: North American archaeology, Ohio Valle archaeology, and archaeological methods and techniques. With the end of World War II, Black wanted to restart field work at Angel Mounds. “A conviction grew that the site was actually an outdoor classroom of almost inexhaustible proportions; why not use it as such,” Black exclaimed. With the approval of the IHS and IU, field schools were held at Angel Mounds each year from 1945 through 1962, giving students practical training that paid “dividends in the years which they devote later to field archaeology,” said Black, who was recognized for his outstanding work in archaeology with an honorary degree from Wabash College in 1958.

The hard work Black engaged in took a toll on his health. After experiencing some trouble with his heart in the early 1940s, he received a letter from Lilly telling him to take time off from Angel Mounds if his doctors advised him to do so. “One Glenn Black is worth all the mounds, villages, and camp sites in the Mississippi Valley so do listen to reason,” Lilly wrote. “Do be sensible, young fellow, and reassure your old friend that you are doing the very best for yourself—and all of us.”

Black, who succumbed to a fatal heart attack on September 2, 1964, came to hold Lilly with the esteem a son has for a father, and the two men, and their wives, often visited each other’s homes and took vacations together. “You have been my ‘father,’ friend and councilor,” Black wrote Lilly in 1958. “More than anything else I have wanted to please you and give you no cause to regret that we ever took that first archaeological trip together in May 1931.” A touched Lilly replied that if he had a son, he would want him “to have character and abilities equal to yours.”

Lilly made certain that Black’s achievements at Angel Mounds were recognized, including his research on the work at the site. The archaeologist had almost finished the project before his death, and his friend did all he could do, including financially, to see the work published, helped in no small part by contributions from Doctor James H. Kellar, Black’s student and the first director of the Glenn Black Laboratory of Archaeology at IU, and HIS editor Gayle Thornbrough. In 1967 the IHS published Black’s two-volume work, Angel Site: An Archaeological, Historical, and Ethnological Study. The book received wide praise, with Ethnohistory describing it as “a landmark in New World archaeology.” The Lilly Endowment had helped fund the construction of the Black Lab at IU and provided aid to build an interpretive center at Angel Mounds.

Until his death on January 24, 1977, Lilly continued his long association with the IHS, including a million-dollar donation to help build an addition to the Indiana State Library, dedicated in October 1976, which provided space for the IHS staff and library. Upon Lilly’s death, the IHS learned that its longtime benefactor had left the organization in his will 10 percent of his holdings (309,904 shares of stock) in Eli Lilly and Company. He ensured that the institution could continue to play a major role in championing Indiana history in the future, as it did with Angel Mounds. Lilly’s foresight provided the IHS with the means to consistently operate as one of the leading private state historical societies in the country. Lilly’s decades of involvement and support had elevated IHS to be worthy of John Farnham’s founding vision in 1830.

 

Celebrating Statehood: The Indiana Centennial

The fall of 1914 was a bloody one in Europe. The British and German were winding down the First Battle of Ypres and would soon dig in to begin the long and futile period of trench warfare. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, however, it was an election year. On November 3 Hoosiers trooped to the polls and “for a time the war dropped into the background as all Indiana played the election game,” wrote Cedric C. Cummins in his book on public opinion during World War I.

In addition to the usual candidates on the ballot, voters had the chance to register their opinions on two special issues: a convention to alter the state’s constitution and whether to celebrate the state’s centennial in 1916 by appropriating two million dollars for the construction of a memorial building to house the state library and other historical agencies. Both measures suffered defeat at the polls.

Democratic governor Samuel M. Ralston, who became a leading force behind the state’s eventual centennial observance, believed the memorial plan was rejected not because Hoosiers were against celebrating the event, but because they objected to the amount of money sought for the building.

Ralston was proven right; in just two years, backed by the efforts of the Indiana Historical Commission and thousands of volunteers, Indiana residents would see the creation of state parks, the beginnings of an improved statewide road system, the creation of permanent memorials in numerous communities, and an overall awakening of interest in the nineteenth state’s history.

At Governor Ralston’s request, the 1915 Indiana General Assembly agreed to appropriate $25,000 and create a nine-member Indiana Historical Commission to promote the centennial celebration. The legislature’s financial support of the commission marked the first notable state commitment of funds to history in Indiana. Of the $25,000, $20,000 was earmarked for the promotion of centennial activities, while the remaining amount went to collecting, editing, and publishing Indiana’s past.

The IHC first met on April 23 and 24, 1915, in Governor Ralston’s Statehouse office. An illustrious group joined Ralston on the commission, including James Woodburn of Indiana University, Reverend John Cavanaugh of the University of Notre Dame, and Charity Dye, an Indianapolis schoolteacher. The commission employed Professor Walter C. Woodward of Earlham College to direct the centennial celebration.

The commission set out to educate the state’s citizens about the centennial. Special bulletins were sent to county school superintendents asking for their cooperation; direct appeals were made to teachers in the summer and fall of 1915; a weekly IHC newsletter began publication; and commission members addressed various clubs, civic organizations, churches, and historical societies (Dye alone gave 152 talks).

The IHC also turned to film to get its message across to the public. Realizing it had neither the necessary funds nor skills needed to undertake such an enterprise, the commission called upon the public for help. Citizens soon responded by forming the Inter-State Historical Pictures Corporation, which contracted with the Selig Polyscope Company of Chicago to produce a movie titled Indiana. The seven-reel picture featured famed poet James Whitcomb Riley telling the story of the state’s development to a group of children.

To encourage former Indiana residents to return to the state for the centennial, the commission used the services of noted humorist and author George Ade. Honored, or “burdened,” Ade joked in speeches touting the centennial, with the chairmanship of the committee to “sound the call and bring all the wandering Hoosiers back into the fold,” he set about recruiting contributions from a veritable who’s who of Hoosiers for a book.

Titled An Invitation to You and Your Folks from Jim and Some More of the Home Folks, the book, published by Bobbs-Merrill Company of Indianapolis, contained messages from Governor Ralston, Vice President Thomas Marshall, Meredith Nicholson, and Booth Tarkington. Gene Stratton-Porter contributed the poem “A Limberlost Invitation,” and Riley the poem “The Hoosier in Exile.”

With its publicity campaign on its way to being a success, the commission had to turn its sights to how best to state the actual celebration; keeping in mind the lack of funds, it was clear that such events would have to be financed locally. The IHC turned to staging historical pageants. These dramas appealed strongly to the commission because they could both focus attention on Indiana’s history and bring communities together.

The commission hired William Chauncy Langdon, former first president of the American Pageant Association, as the state pageant master. Langdon’s main duties were to write and direct three pageants, one at Indiana University, another at the old state capital of Corydon, and a final one at Indianapolis. Historical studies were made, music was especially composed, and costumes were designed “for the sole purpose of producing in the sequence of its various scenes a clear, beautiful and inspiring drama and a truthful impression of the development of the State of Indiana,” noted Langdon.

These same ideas were used by local communities in developing their own pageants. The commission gave what help it could, securing centennial chairmen in all but three of Indiana’s counties, with each responsible for selecting a county committee to plan the work. The plan worked. Director Woodward reported that forty-five county or local pageants presented in 1916 were seen by an estimated 250,000 people, and anywhere from 30,000 to 40,000 Hoosiers participated in the performances.

Along with the week-long pageant in Indianapolis, capital residents had the chance to hear from President Woodrow Wilson as part of activities for Centennial Highway Day on October 12, 1916. Invited to speak by Governor Ralston, a vigorous supporter of roadway improvements, Wilson arrived in the city by presidential train (which was late). While in Indianapolis, the president reviewed an automobile parade before delivering a speech on the need for good roads to 10,000 people at the Fairgrounds Coliseum.

Perhaps the commission’s crowning achievement came with the development of Indiana’s first state parks. The movement began in April 1915 when Governor Ralston received a letter from Juliet V. Strauss, a nationally known writer living in Rockville, Indiana, appealing for help in saving the Turkey Run area in Parke County from being sold to timber interests. The commission created a special parks committee with Richard Lieber, who would become the first director of the Indiana Department of Conservation, as chairman.

While talks for purchasing the Turkey Run property for the state were under way, the commission learned of the opportunity to purchase the rugged area of McCormick’s Creek in Owen County. A total of $5,250 was raised, one-fourth of which by Owen County residents, and McCormick’s Creek became Indiana’s first state park. The commission later acquired the Turkey Run property.

When the last notes of the various pageants faded away and celebrants packed their costumes, the commission attempted to take advantage of the new opportunities presented by the centennial observance. Although a 1917 bill calling for the establishment of a permanent state agency for history failed, the commission was resurrected following World War I to organize a county-by-county war history. Since that time, Indiana has funded a state historical agency (today known as the Indiana Historical Bureau).

           

Ed Breen: Hoosier Journalist

As a teenager growing up in Fort Dodge, Iowa, Edward E. Breen, and many other citizens of the town, were attracted to the downtown one day by news of a major fire. While watching firefighters struggle to put out the flames, Breen noticed a woman with a Minolta Autocord camera around her neck and a power pack slung over her shoulder, without hesitation or explanation, march past the police barricades and into the gaggle of police and firemen.

The woman was Helen Strode, police reporter for the Fort Dodge Messenger and Chronicle, who later served as Breen’s mentor when he became a journalist. “I really liked the idea of going past the barricades, going where others were denied and where I might find something interesting,” Breen recalled.

From the time he started work as a part-time and summer employee at his hometown newspaper through years of dedicated work for the Chronicle-Tribune in Marion and The Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne, Breen found plenty of interesting material to report on and photograph. In a career that included stints as reporter, photographer, city editor, graphics director, features and special projects editor, and managing editor, Breen recognized that the discussions regarding the balance between word and picture content in newspapers ignored the fundamental point: “The purpose and function of each is totally different,” he said. “But both are tools of equal importance in carrying a message to the reader of the printed page.”

Breen has been recognized by his peers as a “pioneer in the early days of full-color newspaper photography, one of those people who made the rest of us realize what was possible,” noted Jack Ronald, publisher of the Portland Commercial Review. Emmett K. Smelser, who first met Breen forty years ago, noted that a visit to the Chronicle-Tribune’s newsroom showed why that newspaper was “considered a national leader in the bold use of color and offset printing,” and why Smelser described his colleague as the “epitome of a news professional—dedicated to his craft, his community and his state.”

Breen’s commitment to the Hoosier State also includes being one of the co-founders of the Mississinewa Battlefield Society, longtime board member for the Indiana Historical Society, columnist for the weekly Marion News Herald, and featured commentator and co-host for WBAT radio’s daily “Good Morning Grant County” program. Not a bad list of accomplishments for someone who had to teach himself how to type to secure his first job in journalism.

In the autumn of 1960 Breen was working as a drugstore soda jerk after classes were finished at his Saint Edmond High School in Fort Dodge and on weekends. One of his customers for the out-of-town newspapers for sale in the store each Sunday was the sports editor of the local newspaper. He asked Breen if he might be interested in working Friday nights in the sports department, taking call-in high school games from the area and writing three-paragraph summaries and statistics. Breen jumped at the opportunity, but came up short when the editor asked him if he could type. He answered “yes,” and spent that weekend teaching himself three-finger typing, started at the newspaper the next Friday night, and “haven’t left the newsroom (in some form) for 56 years,” he said.

After being “tossed out” of Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, in 1964, Breen found a job as a photographer at the Dubuque Telegraph-Herald. It was there that editor Jim Geladas, a pioneer in the photojournalism world of the 1960s, gave the young Breen the direction and education he needed to become a professional photographer and, “to an extent, a writer.” A former Marine, Geladas ran his newsroom that way. “You learned, by God, or moved on,” said Breen. “He asked much and gave much.”

After marrying Ruth Joanne Schiltz on February 27, 1965, Breen moved to Wisconsin and edited the weekly Plymouth Review. He was there when Dick Martin, who had been his Sunday editor in Dubuque, started as editor of Marion, Indiana’s Leader-Tribune (the morning newspaper that preceded the merger with the Marion Chronicle into the all-day Chronicle Tribune). Martin asked Breen to come to Marion to be a reporter/photographer for $110 a week, a slightly better offer than one he had received from the Milwaukee Journal. “I told Martin I would stay two years,” Breen said. “That was 50 years ago.”

Martin cared deeply about the craft of storytelling and saw that Breen understood how to tell stories with pictures, was a “reasonably good writer,” and gave him the freedom to do both, often on the same assignment. Martin assembled “a sort of magic-moment staff” in Marion, Breen recalled, including Gene Policinski, Phil Witherow, Jerry Miller, and others, that resulted in winning the Hoosier State Press Association’s Blue Ribbon daily newspaper award for several years in a row. Personal honors also came Breen’s way, including Indiana News Photographer of the Year in 1967 and numerous photography and writing awards from the Indiana Associated Press Managing Editors and the Hoosier State Press Association.

Breen moved to the Journal Gazette in August 1995, working as that newspaper’s assistant managing editor for photography and graphics until retiring in July 2009. Craig Klugman, Breen’s editor for nearly fifteen years, noted that his friend liked to say his job at the Fort Wayne newspaper was to “walk around the newsroom, coffee cup in hand, assuring younger staff members that things would be OK. Ed did that, certainly, but he did much more.”

Klugman worked directly with Breen on the newspaper’s Sunday “Perspective” section. The editorial board met every Monday to discuss what was coming up on Sunday. This put Breen in a difficult position, said Klugman, because the editorial staff, by definition, had to talk about positions, while Breen, as a member of the news staff, had to remain objective.

“But Ed handled the problem perfectly,” said Klugman. “He stayed out of any discussions of what we would say. But he always had an answer for how the paper would illustrate a story or essay (not to mention how to focus some of our wide-ranging ideas).” Breen, Klugman added, always “carried himself like the pro he was,” and, even today, more than a decade after leaving daily newspaper journalism, Breen “feels an irresistible pressure to tell stories, to speak truth to power, and to inform.”

Reflecting on his career in newspapers, Breen mused that he had been there for enough of the good years to understand both the importance of journalism and “the joy of doing it well. As John Quinn put it so elegantly, ‘It’s the most fun you can have with your clothes on.’”  

 

The Battle of Ap Bac

The future looked bright for Captain Kenneth Good. His superiors had recommended the thirty-two-year-old West Point graduate to leave his role advising troops with the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to serve as an American representative on a guerrilla warfare team in Malaya. Once the popular Good had completed his duty in Asia, the road seemed clear for his future posting to the prestigious U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. 

“That man would have been a general one day,” Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann, Good’s commanding officer, predicted to Associated Press bureau chief Malcolm W. Browne. “He was one of the most competent, knowledgeable officers in the country.”

Good’s position as senior adviser to the Second Battalion, Eleventh Regiment of the ARVN’s Seventh Division, however, was the last he ever held. A bullet from a Viet Cong gunner struck Good in the shoulder during a fierce engagement near a small village named Bac—later cited as Ap (meaning “hamlet”) Bac in newspaper accounts—in the Dinh Tuong Province, located approximately forty miles southwest of Saigon. Although he received immediate aid and joked with his comrades despite his wound, Good later died from loss of blood and shock.

Good was one of three Americans killed in the January 2,1963, battle that saw VC forces, cleverly concealed in well-dug foxholes and bunkers, shoot down five U.S. helicopters and inflict casualties of approximately eighty killed and more than a hundred wounded on South Vietnamese forces under the command of Colonel Bui Dinh Dam. “Troops of nearly every description were involved on the government side; there were regular army troops, paratroopers, civil guards, self-defense corpsmen and others,” Browne recalled.

Also available to aid in the fighting were American-made M113 armored personnel carriers equipped with powerful .50-caliber Browning machine guns. Unfortunately, as Browne later learned, a M113 on the move made for a “very unstable platform” for the unfortunate soldier manning its top-mounted Browning. A gunner could fire a long burst and wind up missing his target at a range of only a hundred yards. 

The well-prepared enemy held their fire as the first few flights of U.S. Army H-21 Shawnee helicopters ferried in troops to the designated landing zone. Then, a chopper crewman recalled, the treeline “seemed to explode with machine-gun fire. It was pure hell.” The lumbering, banana-shaped H-21s made fine targets for the VC and were riddled with bullets. The ARVN troops they dropped off to fight had nowhere to hide. “When those poor Vietnamese came out of the choppers, it was just like shooting ducks for the Viet Cong,” recalled a U.S. officer.

Unprotected by any armor shielding, eight gunners on the M113s were cut down by well-aimed fusillades. Looking over the battlefield, an American adviser pointed out to a reporter that the enemy had selected its fighting positions with great care, so much so that it looked like a “school solution” from the infantry training school at Fort Benning on how a unit should prepare a defensive position. The VC units involved—more than 300 men of the 514th Regional Battalion and the 261st Main Force Battalion—took their time, before leaving the battlefield, to collect their dead and wounded, as well as grabbing expended brass shells to reload for later use.

Peter Arnett of the Associated Press and David Halberstam of the New York Times had a bit of luck when it came to arranging transportation to the scene of the fighting. Steve Stibbens, a U.S. Marine combat correspondent for Stars and Stripes newspaper, had been visiting with Arnett in the cramped AP office in Saigon when Halberstam walked in. Tipped off to the fierce fighting, the two civilian reporters convinced Stibbens to change into his U.S. Marine Corps uniform and drive them out of the capital to the battlefield in his Ford Falcon automobile. “The uniform helped get us past roadblocks and checkpoints on the way to Tan Hiep airstrip, the staging point for the Ap-Bac action,” Stibbens remembered.

Arnett reported that the road became “jammed with long lines of cars and buses undergoing security checks at heavily guarded bridges and villages.” Arriving at Tan Hiep, the trio came upon a chaotic scene, with jeeps, trucks, and helicopters jockeying for space on the small runway. For the first time in the war, Colonel Daniel Boone Porter told the reporters, the enemy forces “had stood their ground and fought back rather than hitting and melting away into the countryside.”

Inspecting the battlefield, Arnett recalled that he saw twenty-one holes in one of the downed U.S. helicopters. “On its deck lay the open wallet of one of the dead Americans, a 21-year-old door gunner,” he wrote. “There was a picture of his wife and child.” Watching a procession of ARVN casualties limp off a medical-evacuation helicopter, veteran war correspondent Richard Tregaskis, who had flown to Tan Hiep on a Helio L-28 spotter aircraft, saw soldiers wrapped with “bandages across chests, wads of bandage on arms or legs, eyes covered with the bandage—the wretched cordwood of wounded men, their faces frozen with shock.”

Later, a chopper pilot Tregaskis knew described Ap Bac as “about the worst engagement I was ever in.” United Press International reporter Neil Sheehan asked Brigadier General Robert York, who had come to assess the situation, for his opinion. York gave a curt and honest answer: “What the hell’s it looks like? They got away—that’s what happened.”

As for Sheehan, who had to dodge friendly artillery rounds that fell short of their target, taking cover with York, he considered what had happened “the biggest story we had ever encountered in Vietnam.” Although unnamed in press accounts, Vann, the senior American adviser to the Seventh Division, had lambasted the ARVN’s lack of aggressiveness, describing what had occurred as “a miserable damn performance, just like it always is.” He added that the South Vietnamese “won’t listen—they make the same mistakes over and over again in the same way.”

What happened at Ap Bac degenerated into another war of words between the young Saigon reporters and top U.S. military officials in Vietnam, with the press considering the engagement a defeat for President Ngo Dinh Diem’s government, while the top brass viewed Ap Bac as an ARVN victory. General Paul Harkins, who visited the battlefield the day after the initial fighting, had confidently predicted to newsmen at the scene, “We’ve got them in a trap and we’re going to spring it in half an hour.”

No trap sprung; the guerillas had slipped away into the countryside and the remaining ARVN soldiers appeared to be too discombobulated to track them down. Hearing the general’s remark, Halberstam wondered, as he would on many other occasions in Vietnam, if “Harkins believed what he was saying, or whether he felt it should be said.”

In a later statement, the general defended the mettle of ARVN soldiers, indicating that anyone who criticized their fighting abilities was “doing a disservice to thousands of gallant and courageous men who are fighting so well in the defense of their country.” Although U.S. ambassador Frederick Nolting acknowledged there had been some “snafus” that were the fault of Vietnamese commanders, he downplayed the battle’s significance, believing “it was blown out of all proportions by the American press.”

Nolting also criticized Vann for “spilling his guts to the American press and having it spread all over the headlines that the South Vietnamese Army, despite all that the Americans had done to train and supply them, were basically cowards and they couldn’t win. I don’t believe that.” The ambassador added that Vann’s comments to reporters were “emotional and not fair.”

Hoping to put a positive spin on the battle, Admiral Harry Felt, Harkin’s superior due to his position as commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, commented upon a visit to Saigon from his headquarters in Hawaii that he did not believe what he had been reading in the newspapers about Ap Bac. Felt insisted to the press that South Vietnamese forces had won the battle. Spying Sheehan in the crowd, Felt told him: “So you’re Sheehan. I didn’t know who you were. You ought to talk to some of the people who’ve got the facts.” A stubborn Sheehan was ready with an answer: “You’re right Admiral, and that’s why I went down there every day.”

Felt later told Secretary of State Dean Rusk that Sheehan’s work typified the “bad news . . . filed immediately by young reporters without checking the facts.” A top-secret report authorized by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the senior military leaders within the U.S. Defense Department, said the journalist’s reports were merely “ill-considered statements made at a time of high excitement and frustration by a few American officers.”

Veteran combat reporter Tregaskis, the author of the best-selling World War II book Guadalcanal Diary and a dedicated supporter of the American involvement in Vietnam, admitted that there probably were many mistakes made at Ap Bac, as “there always are in a battle.” He protested that critical news stories produced by “younger and brasher correspondents” such as Sheehan could do a lot of harm with the American public.

Tregaskis acknowledged that Ap Bac had been a setback to the South Vietnamese cause, but he also pointed out that the VC had suffered a similar defeat earlier at Phuoc Chau, where the ARVN had crushed a guerrilla force, leaving behind 127 dead with very few casualties on its own side. “At Ap Bac, the VC, apparently a very well-disciplined and well-dug-in outfit did it to our side—but not quite as badly [as Phuoc Chau],” Tregaskis noted. “That’s the way war goes, a bloody business any way you look at it.”

Of course, as Browne noted, the VC certainly regarded Ap Bac as a triumph for its cause. The 514th emblazoned the hamlet’s name in gold letters on its battle flag and propaganda posters from the Communists, “professionally printed in four colors, bloomed throughout the [Mekong] delta, all glorifying the fighters at Ap Bac.”

A few weeks after the engagement, Browne wrote an analysis of the battle that offered U.S. officials, who spoke to him with the understanding they would not be named, the opportunity to talk about their frustrations. “It’s the same old story,” one official told the AP bureau chief. “Americans don’t know Asia exists until some Americans start getting killed.”

Most people Browne talked to believed that the negative political and public reaction to the “bloody clash” in the Mekong Delta came about through “a basic ignorance of the situation.” A high-ranking official conceded that the conflict in Vietnam may have been presented to the American public in an “over-simplified form,” with some believing that the war against the Communists had already been won. “On balance things are going well, but it’s not that simple,” the official told Browne.

A military adviser made sure to point out to the reporter that military leaders in Washington, DC, had been told several times that “this is not a simple war that you win in conventional ways. They see it in a thousand reports every day and they’ve learned the correct jargon about guerrilla warfare—how politics are important and all that. They think they understand, but they don’t. The questions they ask show it.”

Browne also acknowledged the anger felt by some Americans in Vietnam about the press coverage: “The setbacks are always on page one, but the victories—some of them less spectacular—see little print. This is going to be a long, hard struggle, and it’s time people got used to the idea.”