It was typical. The Americans, particularly the military, were so straight and Westy was the classic example; he was so American, like all Americans in Vietnam he wanted the Vietnamese to be Americans, he saw them in American terms, he could never seem to see them as themselves. He was not really at ease with them, though he wanted to be, and a friend would remember one of Westy’s first field trips when he was still deputy commander, a trip to Chau Doc province, which seemed to sum up Westmoreland’s frustration and inability to penetrate the society: Westy having lunch with the very sophisticated province chief, who spoke classic Sorbonne French and no English and who had laid on a great feast. Midway through the meal, about the third serving of rice, it became clear that Westmoreland had nothing to say to this man, that he wanted almost desperately to talk with him, but there was no common bond, no real curiosity about the society. Finally the conversation going like this—Westy: “I notice in your country your people eat a good deal of rice.” Translated. Province chief: “Oui, oui.” Westy: “In my country, our people eat a good deal of bread.” Translated. Province chief a little puzzled and a little worried. “Oui, oui.” Westy: “In my country, we call bread 'the staff of life.’ ” Translated. Province chief nods, very puzzled and very worried—is this American general about to spring a trap, is he subtly edging the conversation toward the subject of corruption? Is he suggesting that the province chief is allowing the landlords to tax the peasants working the paddies too heavily? Westy: “I guess in your country your people could say that rice is the staff of life.” Translated. Province chief heaves a sigh of relief. Agrees readily. Westy: a supremely conventional man in a supremely unconventional war.
He was a general who obeyed his orders; Johnson had chosen him in part because he had sensed in Westmoreland a man who would not play games or try to circumvent him, and in that sense he had chosen well. (Johnson subsequently did not worry too much about Westmoreland turning on him; he knew that Westy was straight, and more, that he was extremely ambitious. When an aide once mentioned the possibility that Westy might go public with the war, Johnson quickly deflected it. “No, he won’t,” the President said, “because I’m the one person who has what he wants.” By that he meant future promotion. Then the President suddenly added, “It’s the same with Hubert.” Johnson, the aide thought, was always more at ease with ambitious men, he could understand them, know their price; it was men with a sharp limit on their ambitions who were a problem for him.) The general was very honest, he shunned a political role. He never protected himself in his cables, and he tried to do the job the civilians set for him; his greatest failing was in believing it could be done. He was never aware of just how much doubt there was about the war in Washington among the civilians; everyone seemed to have signed on, and thus to Westmoreland there was a sense of a clear mandate, he was not aware of the extent of misgivings, signature by signature. When he finally came back and spoke to the Congress, he did it at the request of his Commander in Chief. It was something he was not that eager for, and he had turned down a similar but somewhat vaguer request from McNamara a year earlier (he had written his speech for the Congress himself, and when a civilian friend looked at the opening paragraph he suggested that he change it, since it began “I stand here today where General MacArthur stood . . .” Typically, of course, there was no element of chance even to that speech: Pentagon janitors checking the building very early in the morning of his address were stunned to find the main auditorium absolutely empty except for one man, General William Childs Westmoreland, booming away, loudspeakers all go, his forthcoming speech blaring out. Time after time). He had played by the rules even when they had all turned away from the war, and he did not go public with complaints, though he had them. Johnson had chosen well in that sense; whatever hurts there were, were private ones. He would not feed the right wing, the jingoists, although occasionally some of the hurt showed through in talking about the civilians. Bob McNamara was someone who told him not to worry about resources, we were the richest country in the world. So it had not ended for him as auspiciously as it had begun. After Tet even Rostow, the last believer, was heard around the White House to have a change in tone. Rostow, who had been so proud of talking about Westy, Westy wanted this and Westy said this, and Westy feels, was heard in those weeks after Tet to say that General Westmoreland felt, and General Westmoreland believed.
He had had an enviable boyhood and career. The son of upper-middle-class people in South Carolina; goals set, goals achieved, values confirmed. A classic American story. Career admired. A low quotient of materialism, the goals, the goals were loftier, to serve, to protect. The son of people who belonged, who had been on that soil for 150 years. Ten of his ancestors had fought in the Civil War. His father had attended the Citadel, probably the South’s best-known military school, but had been expelled for what was boyish enthusiasm, and thus had never served himself. He had become a businessman, a banker, married a Childs, a well-known Columbia family.
William Childs Westmoreland was born on March 26, 1914, in Saxon, three miles west of Spartanburg. Westmoreland’s father was soon made manager of a major textile mill, an important job in the local social hierarchy; it meant a big two-story house with a simple cabin in back for the Negro servants. The Westmorelands lived in sharp contrast to the stark poverty of the mill workers; Westy as a young boy was allowed to play with his schoolmates who were the children of mill workers, but his younger sister, in keeping with local class and caste, was not. The Westmorelands were well connected in the hierarchy of that time. Childs, as he was known, knew the right people, went to the right church, with the right Sunday school teacher, James Byrnes, then a congressman, later a senator and Secretary of State, a family friend who would keep an eye out for this well brought up, serious young man. The young Westmoreland, who liked soldier suits as a boy, went into the Boy Scouts and did particularly well. Even then he seemed to love uniforms. As he won merit badges he was always careful to make sure that his mother sewed them onto the uniform with just the right spacing. He moved ahead quickly as a scout, First Class and then Eagle, and in 1929, when there was a World Scout Jamboree in Europe, Westy went, though it cost $395, a good deal of money in those days; a special court of honor had to be set up in South Carolina to qualify him as an Eagle Scout so he could go. When he returned he was interviewed in the local paper with a photograph and the caption “Spartanburg’s Own.”
He went on to Spartanburg High, the diligent young man, always well dressed, always very correct, his parents always proud of how many of their friends would tell them what a fine boy he was. The model boy. Studious but not brilliant, but on the basis of application, grades in the 90s, physically sound and dedicated but not a particularly gifted athlete. Inevitably class president. Upon graduation he decided to go to the Citadel (which he almost became the head of in 1970; when it appeared that he might leave the job of Chief of Staff, there was considerable talk that he would head the Citadel for a year or two and then perhaps run for governor of South Carolina). He did well at the Citadel, finishing 33rd in a class of 169 members, but impressing others with more important qualities, his leadership ability, evident even then. Others deferred to him. Even then he liked to drill, he liked the military austerity and discipline; he liked the ordered world, he was to be more at ease in it than the freer, open, less ordered world of the civilian; in the military you knew what was expected of you, others knew what was expected of them.
After his first year there he decided that he did want a military career, so he went to see his old friend Jimmy Byrnes about an appointment to Annapolis; the standing offer from Byrnes had been: “Just let me know when you’re ready for that appointment, young man.” Byrnes suggested that West Point offered a better and fuller life than Annapolis, and so West Point it was.
There for the first time in his life he became Westy, and he seemed to stand out, the dedication, the energy, the bearing; within a few months his classmates were discussing whether or not he would b
e First Captain of his class. It was 1931, the height of the Depression, which had hit the country but not his family. He was younger than most of his classmates, many of whom were college graduates, now turning to the Academy because there were no civilian jobs. He did well as a plebe, finishing 71st among 328 in his class. Again, not brilliant, but intelligent and very hard-working. He liked West Point; the values inherent in the discipline and the sacrifice came easily to him and he sensed he would do well in his career (indeed, even on summer vacation he would put in extra hours practicing parade-ground commands in isolated South Carolina forests). Those years also meant that the Depression, which would sharply touch so many young men of that era, would have little effect on him; West Point was a particularly sheltered place. If not the most brilliant member of his class, he had other qualities, bearing, leadership—other men would look to him to lead. He had the capacity to impress both his superiors and his contemporaries. This was the model young man, with a certain maturity to him. That Southern manner was disarming: he had ambition without seeming ambitious. So Westy became First Captain of his class, the Point’s highest honor, which in itself seemed to guarantee a brighter career. He finished with an overall academic standing of 112 out of 276 for his four years, but he ranked eighth in his class in tactics. He wanted to join the new Army Air Corps upon graduation, but his eyes were too weak; he had studied too hard in keeping his grades up, and so, because he was good in math, he settled for the field artillery.
The years between the wars were slow ones, slow advancement, slow in challenge, though the pace would quicken as World War II approached. Even then Westmoreland was the kind of young officer that the older officers’ wives coveted for their daughters. But he was also serious, painstakingly creating his own charts for artillery guides (only to find that though they were accurate, researchers at Fort Sill had beaten him with similar charts produced by slide rules). He was a young officer that more senior men kept their eye on, and when the war finally came he moved ahead quickly; by September 1942, at twenty-eight, he was a lieutenant colonel, commander of an artillery battalion, ready and anxious to get into the middle of the war, superbly trained for what was ahead, wanting to play his part. One of those men who never feared, who can only go forward, who sensed his own destiny.
Two months later he got his first chance in the North African campaign with the 9th Division, pushing his big guns into action at the Kasserine Pass and catching the Germans by surprise, making the Germans feel that the Allied forces were larger in number than they in fact were. He gained a Presidential Unit citation for his 34th Field Artillery Battalion, and throughout the North African campaign there was a new subsurface reputation. Hot unit, hot commander; Westy, it was said, could really move his unit. But Westy was not satisfied. He wanted more action, and he wanted to be with the hot new mobile units, the Airborne, the exciting units which were going to go where the action was the heaviest. Westmoreland had tried to get into Airborne earlier in his career, and he had struck up a friendship with Colonel James Gavin, obviously a comer and a leading proponent of airborne tactics. With the 82nd Airborne leading the invasion into Sicily in July 1943, Westy made a move to go Airborne. He drove up to General Ridgway’s headquarters, introduced himself, said he had heard what the Airborne was going to do, and he wanted to offer the general the best artillery support he could get, adding that in addition to his artillery pieces, four dozen trucks, scarce as to be almost sacred, a great sweetener, came with the deal. Ridgway, needing more wheels for his division, immediately asked his division artillery commander, a particularly sharp young brigadier named Maxwell Taylor, to go and take a look at this new unit with its 155-mm. howitzers which he was about to acquire. Taylor, who felt himself an expert on the use of 155s, was visibly impressed with the sharpness of Westy’s unit and went back to tell Ridgway that they had made a very good deal. This was, among other things, the beginning of the Westmoreland-Taylor friendship.
Westmoreland’s unit, attached to the 82nd, moved rapidly across Sicily with the Airborne troops until the 82nd was pulled out for more traditional infantry, but his reputation as an aggressive commander with a sharp unit grew. He was awarded the Legion of Merit for his part in Africa and Sicily. He and his unit then went to England to prepare for the coming Normandy invasion. Taylor, now a major general and commander of the elite 101st Airborne, asked for Westmoreland, offering him a job as division artillery executive officer and a colonel’s eagles. If there was any doubt about his future, it was ended with that request. But the 9th Division was unwilling to give him up. He was slated for the same job in the 9th, where he again excelled, became chief of staff although only a bird colonel, and gained a Bronze Star for co-ordination of other units in the bridgehead at Remagen.
He stayed chief of staff of the 9th throughout the rest of the war, and then at the end he was advised by the commander, General Louis Craig, that his career was very bright, but that it was time to switch to the infantry, where the real future for the very best still resided. He was wary at first, thinking that too much careerism might be implicit, but he soon accepted command of an infantry regiment, and shortly afterward was made commander of the 71st Division, being largely in charge of taking the division home. Still, he was only thirty years old, he had commanded a division, and as his West Point classmates might have predicted, he had not bothered to marry, it might have slowed him down.
He was barely back home and on his way to a Pentagon assignment when he got a phone call from his old friend Jim Gavin, now commander of the 82nd Airborne and one of the most celebrated officers in the Army, a dashing, romantic figure. “Slim Jim” Gavin, who had led the jump on D-Day into Normandy, now offered Westmoreland one of three parachute regiments in the 82nd. Westmoreland wanted it, but, he reminded Gavin, he had never jumped. So he went to jump school at Fort Bragg, and returned as a regimental commander. It was the Army system very much at work; he was a much sought after officer. There were always too few men of that caliber and too many slots, so everyone in the Army was on the lookout for excellence, and the word would go up and down who were the special ones. A fine commander made himself look even better by collecting and using other, younger marked men in his unit, culling out the best, using the back-channel grapevine to pick the winners. Gavin was a winner and now he was picking a winner. It helped Westmoreland and it helped Gavin too.
Now, never having jumped in combat, Westmoreland was commanding some of the most combat-toughened men in the Army, men who built their very special mystique because they jumped out of airplanes, and very few of their fellow troopers and almost none of their fellow countrymen did. (There is the classic Airborne story about a general inspecting Airborne troops. “And do you like to jump out of planes, soldier?” asks the general. “No, sir,” answers the trooper. “Then why are you here?” “Because I like to be around men who do,” answers the trooper.)
Westmoreland was soon made chief of staff of the division, at Gavin’s request, a particularly flattering recommendation; indeed it was soon said that when Gavin left the division, there would be no trouble finding his successor, since there was a young light colonel named Westmoreland who could run the division as well as Gavin. Westmoreland had made it, chief of staff of the 82nd at the age of thirty-two. There was even time now to get married to an Army brat named Kitsy Van Dusen (who friends found had a leavening influence on Westmoreland). At the 82nd he impressed his superiors with the dedication, the organization, the skill, the attention to detail, the enormous industry, the valued—in the Army, and business—capacity to anticipate demands. To his contemporaries he was a cold one, you did not get close to Westy, you kept your distance. He seemed to have no confidants; the system was his confidant.
He was marked for great things; when as chief of staff of the 82nd he received a letter suggesting that his next assignment be the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, a plum assignment for most officers his age, a reassurance that they were on their way, Westmoreland
was irritated. He thought he was beyond that, that he was something special, which he was, for his commanding general, Williston Palmer, said not to worry, that his career was being guided on a different level, above all the usual mechanics. When Westmoreland finally went to Leavenworth it was not as a student, but as an instructor; he would teach there and at the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks. They were good assignments but irritating to him because the Korean War had started and he wanted to get there for the action. He finally did, in July 1952, as commander of the 187th Regimental Combat Team; it was once again a plum and a sign that he was special. During the Korean War the Pentagon was flooded with requests for Westmoreland, every division seemed to want this letter-perfect soldier who had been sponsored by both Taylor and Gavin. The command he got was the choicest one; the 187th was the only Airborne unit in Korea, an elite team, which meant that its commander had ultrahigh visibility. Yet Korea was not a particularly harsh war to him, he did not see that much action, and he came out of Korea with his first star at the age of thirty-eight.
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