by Lewis Sorley
In early February 1965 it was decided that U.S. families should be evacuated from Vietnam on very short notice. Said Westmoreland proudly, "The President told us to get them out in a week to ten days. We did it in six."11 He then had to cable General John Waters in Hawaii with a plea: "Because of short notice many do not know where they want to go. Can you help?"
Earlier Westmoreland had suggested a subterfuge of a sort. Wives with children could be evacuated first, no new dependents would be authorized to come to Vietnam, and wives without children would depart as their spouses' tours ended. "With this plan," he told a senior Pentagon official, "the disappearance of U.S. dependents from the scene would be so gradual as to pass almost undetected by the Vietnamese."12 That scheme, unlikely in any event to escape the notice of the fiercely attentive South Vietnamese, was turned down in Washington.
Kitsy and the three children went to Honolulu to live in a hastily acquired house. Not long after, while driving, Kitsy heard a radio report that her husband had been assassinated. Only after a frantic cable was sent by CINCPAC headquarters to Saigon was it was determined that the report was incorrect, the result of a misinterpreted AP bulletin saying merely that Westmoreland was on an enemy assassination list.13
Honolulu eventually became untenable for the family. Kitsy was the victim of verbal attacks by strangers, and someone vandalized their home. In August of the following year, the family, less Stevie, moved to Clark Air Base in the Philippines, while Stevie returned to Washington to finish her senior year at the National Cathedral School for Girls. It could then be argued that Westmoreland had the better living conditions. He was reportedly furious when columnist Jack Anderson portrayed him as "leading some type of country-club existence" in Saigon, but in fact that was not so far off the mark. Ensconced in a comfortable villa with an attentive house staff, riding in an air-conditioned limousine with a police escort, eating fine meals prepared by his personal chef, playing tennis at the Cercle Sportif, working in an office outfitted with executive furnishings, Westmoreland was effectively insulated from the war in the jungle, even when he was helicoptered into various base camps and command posts for whirlwind visits.
ON 6 APRIL 1965 the White House issued National Security Action Memorandum 328, documenting the decision to introduce U.S. ground forces into the fighting in South Vietnam. Ominously, noted the Pentagon Papers, "missing from NSAM 328 was the elucidation of a unified, coherent strategy." The large buildup of American ground forces in Vietnam began slowly in March (two Marine battalion landing teams) and May 1965 (the Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade), rising to a flood in July, when division-sized forces began to arrive. In June 1965 Westmoreland had cabled Wheeler to say "we need more troops, and we need them quickly."14 Now they were coming in large numbers and at a rapid pace.
Early in this process Westmoreland joined the deceptions and dissimulations that LBJ and McNamara were resorting to in misleading the public about the extent and even intent of American involvement in the war. Westmoreland sent to Washington a concept paper on proposed offensive use of U.S. forces in combat, a departure from the essentially defensive employments authorized to that point. In this document he described the use of the additional forces as being not only in support of the South Vietnamese, but also for independent "deep patrolling and offensive operations." In that cable, as William Conrad Gibbons noted in his superb collection of documents and commentary on the war, "Westmoreland proposed... that the 'public stance' on the use of U.S. forces in combat should be, in part, that U.S. forces were providing combat support to the South Vietnamese rather than conducting their own offensive operations."15 Washington agreed, and the deception had begun, almost before the first ground forces arrived in the combat theater.
Robert McNamara later recalled what he described as "a constant turmoil over Vietnam between mid-June and mid-July" of 1965. "Every few days," he said, "we received a message from Max [Taylor] or Westy reporting further arguments for more troops. We attended one meeting after another. I spent countless hours with the Joint Chiefs in 'The Tank' [the JCS conference room] debating Westy's shifting plans and requirements."16
Westmoreland said that "McNamara frequently made the point to me that the economy of the country [the United States] could afford to support as many troops as I wanted, and for me not to be concerned about it." In mid-June 1965 Westmoreland dictated for his history notes the view that "so far we are not cost accounting the war and I don't believe we will."
On 7 June 1965 Westmoreland dispatched a cable noting "the conflict in Southeast Asia is in the process of moving to a higher level." He asked for a total of 175,000 U.S. troops, with the prospect of "even greater forces if and when required." McNamara, calling this a "bombshell," was cornered. "Of the thousands of cables I received during my seven years in the Defense Department," he recalled, "this one disturbed me the most. We could no longer postpone a choice about which path to take."17
While there is much to criticize LBJ for in his conduct of the war, one cannot help having some sympathy for the dilemma posed by the often wildly conflicting advice he was getting from his senior aides and advisors, including those in uniform. General Wheeler, his senior military advisor, was often just flat wrong in what he told the President. When these major U.S. ground force deployments were under consideration in July 1965, for example, LBJ worried that North Vietnam would respond by pouring in more men of its own. He need not be concerned, soothed Wheeler, because the "weight of judgment" was that the enemy "can't match us on a buildup."18 That turned out to be one of the classic misjudgments of the war, comparable in magnitude and consequences to General MacArthur's assurances to President Truman that Chinese forces would not enter the Korean War.19
IN MID-JULY 1965 McNamara spent several days in Saigon, discussing the troop buildup and other requirements. General William Rosson, then serving as MACV Chief of Staff, dated the "transformation of the conflict into a US war" from that fateful visit. "During the months that followed," he observed, "little more was heard of the thesis that this was a war that must be won or lost by the Vietnamese themselves. Accent instead was on what the US required to fight and win. Programs dealing with GVN [Government of Vietnam] military expansion and improvement slid into the background."20
Westmoreland's troop requests were the product of intense negotiation between the field commander and the civilian leadership in Washington, represented primarily by McNamara. This resulted in a more or less continuing deception on the part of the administration, one in which Westmoreland took part and later (after Tet 1968) sought to use as cover. A further troop increase would be in the offing. McNamara would travel to Saigon to discuss it. Westmoreland would suggest a number. Jawboning would follow, and a new (sometimes smaller) number would emerge. Westmoreland would then formally ask for, and get, that number, enabling him, the Pentagon, and the White House to all maintain that the field commander was being provided with everything he requested. A related aspect of McNamara's managerial technique was later revealed by his assistant Adam Yarmolinsky, who said that McNamara "regarded his trips as theater, and, in fact, the [trip] report was usually drafted before he left and then revised in light of what assessments they made of what people told them."21
Almost right away there developed a major controversy over how to deploy and employ the one truly innovative unit entering the war, the new 1st Air Cavalry Division. "General Westmoreland's first reaction," said a battle history of the war, "was to split the division, sending each of its three brigades to a different part of the country." The division commander, Major General Harry W. O. Kinnard, was dead set against that, pointing out to Westmoreland that "the whole point of airmobility was to keep the closely integrated force together to maximize its impact."22 Kinnard recalled vividly his initial encounter with Westmoreland after arriving with an advance party. "It was quickly apparent that he had not had the time to track what had been going on in airmobile developments," he said. "He didn't know zilch about it." He remembered that Westmor
eland had begun by saying, "Harry, I know exactly how to station your division." He wanted to split it up and parcel out the brigades in scattered locations. Kinnard explained why that wouldn't work, how the division had been organized and equipped to operate as a whole. Finally he talked Westmoreland out of the penny packet scheme, but there were more troubles ahead.23
"Westy had a micromanagement approach which was totally contrary to the style I liked," said Kinnard. "He'd say, 'Take your division into Happy Valley and operate for 48 hours.'" And that would be based on something Westmoreland had heard, but not current intelligence. Kinnard said to Lieutenant General "Swede" Larsen, his next higher level commander, "I really don't know how to do what Westy said—'Operate for 48 hours.'"24 Westmoreland said in his memoirs only that he "tried to be flexible with plans and afford leeway to the local commander."
For his part Westmoreland clearly disdained Kinnard, belittling his ideas in a condescending and almost nasty way in dictated history notes. "General Kinnard of the 1st Cavalry Division arrived in town with his advance party and I had an extensive discussion with him," he began. "General Kinnard's ideas on how his division would be employed are not realistic to the environment in Vietnam. I am sure he will reorient his thinking after he has an opportunity to see at first hand the nature of the conflict." Then, after Kinnard had suggested another possible concept of employment: "I explained to General Kinnard that such a plan was not in the cards in the foreseeable future because of complex political and other considerations." And when Kinnard broached a plan the Army Chief of Staff, General Johnson, had suggested to him: "I pointed out that this is a much-discussed plan but, in my opinion, completely impractical in the foreseeable future."25
That about covered matters, leading Westmoreland to dictate this coda: "This discussion served to point out the difficulty that senior officers who have not served in Vietnam experience in attempting to understand the situation and the practical problems faced by our military units in fighting the Viet Cong and countering the well-developed covert infiltration from the north."26 After the 1st Cavalry Division had been in-country for a time, said Westmoreland in his history notes, he "congratulated General Kinnard on the successes being achieved by elements of his division in Pleiku and made the passing observation that they were apparently getting over their prima donna complex."27
The new air cavalry division had experienced a severe shock even before deploying. On 28 July 1965 President Johnson addressed the nation, stating that he was authorizing 50,000 more U.S. troops for Vietnam. The 1st Air Cavalry, at Fort Benning, was among the units to be sent. The division commander and a select few staff members, having been alerted to this impending announcement, listened expectantly for the President to state that he was also calling up reserve forces and extending the terms of those already in service. No such word was uttered. As a consequence this unique unit, with its highly skilled cadre of specialists, experienced the immediate loss, recalled General Kinnard, of "over 500 highly skilled pilots, crew chiefs, mechanics" and so on, those men who had insufficient time remaining in their terms of obligated service to be eligible for assignment overseas.28 Said Lieutenant General Hal Moore, then a lieutenant colonel battalion commander, "the Commander-in-Chief sent the First Cav Division to war under-strength. I lost over 150 men." That situation was not corrected, said Moore, and as a result he was never up to strength the whole time he was a battalion and brigade commander in Vietnam.29
IN HIS APOLOGIA regarding the Vietnam War, Robert McNamara described the series of troop requests submitted by Westmoreland and their effects on people in Washington. In the autumn of 1965, he recalled, the communists had matched our initial increase in forces, also strengthening their air defenses and upping the quantity of men and materiel sent down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Authorized U.S. forces then numbered 175,000, but in early September Westmoreland asked for 35,000 more, resulting in a 210,000 authorization for the end of that year. Another authorization allowed a total strength of 275,000 by July 1966. Then, in mid-October 1965, Westmoreland sent in a revised estimate of the additional forces needed, boosting the 275,000 figure to 325,000 and raising the possibility of even more later. And all this came, said McNamara, "with no guarantee" that even at that level "the United States would achieve its objectives."30
Even after the war Westmoreland apparently remained insensitive to the difficulties his troop requests had caused (even as scaled down by McNamara) for the military establishment in the United States. To the politicians the problems were even more agonizing. "Westy's troop requests troubled us all," said McNamara. "We worried that this was the beginning of an open-ended commitment. The momentum of war and the unpredictability of events were overwhelming the Joint Chiefs' calculations of late July [1965] and Westy's predictions of early September. I sensed things were slipping out of our control."31 Said Westmoreland: "I wasn't worried about where they got the troops anyway."
In late November 1965 Westmoreland requested 200,000 more troops for 1966, "twice his July 1965 estimate." That would, said McNamara, bring the total of U.S. forces in Vietnam by the end of 1966 to 410,000. "The message came as a shattering blow," McNamara remembered. "It meant a drastic—and arguably open-ended—increase in U.S. forces and carried with it the likelihood of many more U.S. casualties."32
McNamara again flew to Saigon, taking Wheeler with him, to confer with Westmoreland and Admiral Sharp, in from Honolulu. The meetings, said McNamara, "confirmed my worst fears." In South Vietnam political instability had increased, pacification was stalled, and South Vietnamese army desertions were up sharply. "The U.S. presence," concluded McNamara, "rested on a bowl of jelly." All this, he remembered, "shook me and altered my attitude perceptibly." Back in Washington, he met with the President, who asked: "Then, no matter what we do in the military field, there is no sure victory?" "That's right," McNamara told him. "We have been too optimistic."33
WESTMORELAND'S REPEATED REQUESTS for troops were essentially approved—until the spring of 1967, when he asked for 200,000 more troops and got only a pittance. The mood in Washington had changed, as illustrated by a 4 May 1967 memorandum from McGeorge Bundy to the President: "I think there is no one on earth who could win an argument that an active deployment of some 500,000 men, firmly supported by tactical bombing in both South and North Vietnam, represented an undercommitment at this time. I would not want to be the politician, or the general, who whined about such a limitation."34
Yet the massive escalation brought no real change in the war's dynamics. Someone recalled the story of the Texan selling watermelons alongside the road who bought a hundred melons for a hundred dollars, sold them for a dollar apiece, and wondered why he hadn't made any money. His conclusion: "We've got to get a bigger truck." Westmoreland reached that very conclusion, figuratively speaking, over and over again.
WITH LARGE NUMBERS of troops flooding into the combat zone, a basic question involved the policy on tour length. Westmoreland decided it should be one year. He defended this policy on the grounds that it was inevitable that the war would drag on, "which was the basic reason for the one-year tour." When he came back from the war zone and appeared on the television program Face the Nation, he argued that he didn't believe "we had any alternative because of considerations of morale, and the necessity of sharing the burden of the war in consideration of the fact that those of us in policy positions during the early days saw this as a long war." Thus, he concluded, "I don't believe it was a mistake, I think it was necessary."35
Later Westmoreland reminded his command historian, "In 1965, when we committed US troops, I insisted on a 12-month tour." At a commanders' conference in April 1966 Westmoreland told his subordinates that "I continue to be a proponent of the one-year tour, but the price we pay is in the teamwork, proficiency, and competence of tactical units."
The costs in human terms were great, as established by studies conducted by Thomas Thayer. He found that both the one-year tour and the six-month command tour "apparently had the ef
fect of raising the toll of U.S. combat deaths. Twice as many troops died during the first six months of their tour as in the second half. After the first month, the number of deaths decline as the tour progresses, without exception. Thus, the longer one stayed alive after arriving in Vietnam, the better one's chances for survival, presumably as the result of a learning curve, which then had to be repeated for each new arrival." Russell Glenn reported confirmatory findings, including longer-term effects. "The 12-month rotation policy," he stated, "touted for its benefits provided to the individual soldier, seems in fact to have been a significant element in causing greater numbers of men to lose their lives and may have increased neuropsychiatric casualties."36
Westmoreland had apparently received negative views on these tour policies from some of his senior subordinates, as evidenced by a letter he sent to Lieutenant General Jonathan Seaman, then commanding II Field Force, Vietnam, in September 1966. "We have discussed many times the manifold problems that accrue from our one-year tour policy," said Westmoreland. "I have taken the position that the plus factors involving morale more than offset the problems generated by the turnover. I am confident that this is sound reasoning." A decade later, in his memoirs, Westmoreland wrote—in a rare admission of fallibility—"it may be that I erred in Vietnam in insisting on a one-year tour of duty for other than general officers."37 And Lieutenant General Julian Ewell noted, upon completion of his tour as a division commander in Vietnam, the negative effects of the policy. "One hears that we have in Vietnam the most professional army ever fielded by the U.S.," he wrote (and indeed, that claim was often made by Westmoreland). "The fact is that due to turbulence all units fluctuate between order and chaos and tend to be about average."38