Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam

by Lewis Sorley

  Westmoreland's efforts to control what was printed about the war also extended to trying to limit what news was available to the troops in Vietnam. In particular he had an aversion to a tabloid known as Overseas Weekly, a publication often called Oversexed Weekly by the troops, who delighted in its spectacular cheesecake photographs and exposés of the misdeeds (actual or alleged) of those in authority, especially senior officers. That publication was widely available wherever American GIs were stationed, most notably in Germany, but Westmoreland sought to limit its availability in Vietnam. He denied it space in the post exchange distribution system on the premise that "since it did not fall into the category of a magazine, and we do not allow tabloid-type papers (with the exception of the service newspapers) to be sold because of their bulk, we could not find a place for it on our stands."28 That was, of course, a totally bogus rationale, as was demonstrated conclusively when Westmoreland's successor, soon after taking command, authorized Overseas Weekly to be sold at Stars and Stripes newsstands throughout Vietnam.

  EARLY IN HIS VIETNAM assignment Westmoreland had conceived a very unfavorable impression of many in the press corps, writing to his father in April 1964 that "this war has been very badly reported to the American people through the press, and I might say the New York Times is perhaps the best example of what I mean." That paper, he said, had not sent its best reporters to the war zone, "and the results speak for themselves. Many of the reporters have been young, immature, impetuous men who have been unprepared to report the situation objectively." After Tet 1968, said Westmoreland in a later oral history interview, "I was very disgusted with the media, particularly CBS and Walter Cronkite.... I think they deceived the American people...." Of course, he took it personally: "This was an effort to lift the onus of the adverse public reaction toward the Vietnam War, following the Tet Offensive, lift it from their backs and put it on my back. That was the objective."

  The targets of such criticism had a different view. One who said so very strongly, and one of the more controversial Vietnam War reporters, was Peter Arnett. "When Westy took command in 1964," he said, "I was thirty years of age. I had been in Southeast Asia for eight years, and had been all over Vietnam. I was married to a Vietnamese woman. My brother-in-law was a colonel in the Vietnamese army. I knew John Paul Vann and most of the American advisors. What did he [Westmoreland] mean that we were too young and didn't know anything? Westy was wrong."29

  Another experienced Vietnam-era journalist rebutted a Westmoreland criticism of reporters. Westmoreland had told Charles MacDonald, in preparation for his work on the memoirs, that "ARVN had an unfair and unfortunate image in the US, thanks to a vicious press." In the book Westmoreland then wrote that "the American news media contributed to a false image of the ARVN's performance." Attempting to shore that up, he continued, "I convinced the South Vietnamese to conduct a daily press briefing similar to that held at MACV, but only two or three American reporters showed up the first day and seldom any thereafter."30

  Not so, wrote Phil Jordan to Westmoreland after reading that allegation in the memoirs. "I was in 'Nam as a reporter—freelance and on the staff of Overseas Weekly for more than two years, 1966–68." And "for most of the time I was in Vietnam, I had a standing assignment from USIS to cover, when I was in Saigon in the afternoon, the ARVN daily press briefing and to prepare from it one or more stories for USIS distribution. I can assure you, Sir, the ARVN briefings were, for the time I was attending them, usually quite well attended by American and other non-Vietnamese reporters; anywhere from 25 to 40 or more reporters were common, as I recall, and on occasion a lot more." Jordan closed by giving Westmoreland the names and addresses of both American and South Vietnamese officials who could confirm his account.31

  IN A FINAL definitive contribution to the credibility gap, at a postwar symposium where reporting from the combat zone was being discussed, Westmoreland asserted: "I could care less. My job is on the battlefield."32

  14. M-16 Rifles

  NO SINGLE FACTOR more definitively illustrates Westmoreland's neglect of the South Vietnamese armed forces than the M-16 rifle, then a new, lightweight, automatic weapon considered ideally suited for the Vietnam environment.

  When improved weaponry and other materiel became available, U.S. forces got first call on the M-16 rifle, the M-60 machine gun, the M-79 grenade launcher, and better radios. For much of the war the South Vietnamese were armed with castoff U.S. equipment of World War II vintage, such as the M-1 rifle (not well suited in weight or configuration for the relatively slight Vietnamese, let alone in terms of its limited firepower) and the carbine. Meanwhile the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were getting the most modern weaponry their communist patrons could provide, including the famous AK-47 assault rifle. As a consequence, during the Westmoreland years the South Vietnamese were consistently outgunned, with predictable results in battlefield outcomes and morale, not to mention reputation. "Great emphasis was placed on improving the ARVN constantly," claimed Westmoreland,1 but that was simply not the case.

  Air Vice Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky, South Vietnam's sometime Vice President, later recalled bitterly how "the big, strapping American GI carried a light, fully automatic Colt M-16 rifle into combat with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, a match for the enemy's AK-47 assault rifle. Until after the Tet Offensive of 1968, our small soldiers carried heavy, eight-shot American M-1 rifles so obsolete that the U.S. National Guard did not want them."2 Lieutenant General Ngo Quang Truong, widely viewed as South Vietnam's best field commander, agreed. "In general," he noted of ARVN units during these years, "they were inadequately equipped to respond effectively to operational requirements."3

  The disparity in weapons would become particularly apparent during the 1968 Tet Offensive. Remembered Colonel Hoang Ngoc Lung, South Vietnam's chief intelligence officer, "The RVNAF was equipped with modern weapons only after comparable ones had been employed by the enemy. M-16 rifles were supplied to all RVNAF units only after the 1968 Tet Offensive when the enemy employed Communist AK-47s in large numbers."4 The recollections of Lieutenant General Dong Van Khuyen, South Vietnam's chief logistician, were particularly poignant: "During the enemy Tet offensive of 1968, the crisp, rattling sounds of AK-47's echoing in Saigon and some other cities seemed to make a mockery of the weaker, single shots of Garands and carbines fired by stupefied friendly troops."5 The M-1 rifle weighed over 11 pounds loaded and was 43 inches long. According to one calculation, the average South Vietnamese soldier stood five feet tall and weighed 90 pounds.

  Westmoreland later stated that in 1964 he had asked his deputy, Lieutenant General John Throckmorton, specifically to look into "the feasibility of my asking for M-16's for the Vietnamese forces," and that when Throckmorton recommended against it because of the cost, he had approved that recommendation, although "with some reluctance." A year later, after the initial large-scale battles in the Ia Drang, said Westmoreland, "I decided that the M-16 was essential, not only for the American troops but for the Vietnamese. I made such a request in December 1965." But, he had to admit, "upon my departure in the summer of 1968, only a fraction of the Vietnamese forces had been equipped."6 Of course they had been relegated to last priority for the new weapons, and there had been influential officials who opposed giving them modern weapons at all, so that result was predictable.7

  In April 1968 Time magazine reported that the new Secretary of Defense, Clark Clifford, had announced "a dramatic increase in the U.S. production of the M-16 so as to equip all ARVN units by midsummer."8 That was something McNamara had never agreed to and that Westmoreland made only sporadic and at best halfhearted efforts to advocate, further evidence of just how pervasive was his belief that U.S. forces could come in and do the job for the Vietnamese without the necessity of ever equipping them to do it for themselves.

  Charles MacDonald interviewed many other people to obtain background for Westmoreland's memoirs. One of them was General Harold K. Johnson, Army Chief of Staff during 1964–1968. MacDonald laid out h
is problem: "In talking with General Westmoreland from time to time, I've gotten his story of having recommended the M-16 for the ARVN as early as the [word(s) inaudible: Ia Drang?] fight back in the fall of 1965. And I have also asked him on occasion, 'Well, why has this only recently been fulfilled?' And the only answer he could give me was—said probably production difficulties in the United States. Can you shed any light on that at all?"9

  General Johnson could and did. He did not remember exactly when Westmoreland's initial request for the rifles came in, he said. "But you will find—this is a personal view, and one in which I am perhaps being too candid—General Westmoreland has a request to cover every contingency. He has a magnificent file as far as Vietnam is concerned."10

  General Frank Besson was at that time commanding the Army Materiel Command, and he remembered Westmoreland's request for 100,000 M-16 rifles. "I also recommended that we give it to the Vietnamese, the South Vietnamese," recalled Besson, "because I felt we ought to give our allies the best we could. But they said, 'No. We can't give it to the South Vietnamese because it will undoubtedly be captured by the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese and will be used against us.' The honest-to-god fact—that is what they said."11

  It was not until March 1967 that an allocation of M-16 rifles for the South Vietnamese was reinstated, the first shipments arriving the following month. "But," said Brigadier General James Lawton Collins Jr., "until 1968 there were only enough to equip the airborne and Marine battalions of the General Reserve."12

  In his debriefing report upon leaving Vietnam in August 1968 General Fred Weyand emphasized the effects: "The long delay in furnishing ARVN modern weapons and equipment, at least on a par with that furnished the enemy by Russia and China, has been a major contributing factor to ARVN ineffectiveness."13

  To the last, Westmoreland sought to evade responsibility for the longstanding failure to properly arm the South Vietnamese, and he appears never to have even considered giving them the M-16 rifle and other advanced weaponry before similarly equipping U.S. forces. He was reinforced in this view by the similarly uncomprehending Wheeler, who at one point cabled to tell him: "You will readily perceive the sensitive public relations issues which would be raised if we provide M-16 rifles to non-U.S. units while U.S. combat units are issued less preferred rifles." Thus: "I must request that you defer equipping non U.S. units with the M-16 rifle until we can sort out the rifle situation."14

  A TELEPHONIC EXCHANGE with Colonel "Hap" Argo about the preparation of Westmoreland's Report on the War in Vietnam is also revealing. Argo: "On equipping of ARVN, on 22 Jan[uary 19]66 you requested M-16s for them and this was turned down because of failure of US to go to wartime production. Do you want to use this language?" Westmoreland: "No. Don't explain why request denied, just say due to reasons beyond my purview they were not immediately available." As he knew very well at the time, "not immediately" was going to mean not for the next two years, but his report was not going to say that.

  Another phone conversation reveals Westmoreland's feeble efforts to get M-16s for the South Vietnamese. In July 1971 Westmoreland spoke with Walt Rostow, who asked him what the problem had been with acquiring M-16s. The memorandum of the phone conversation reads like this: "General Westmoreland replied that this was a long story, but that he had sent a message urgently requesting that all US and ARVN troops be equipped with the M-16 in December 1965." However, "it was two whole years before things really got moving and it wasn't until June 1968 that this December 1965 request was actually filled. CSA [Chief of Staff, Army, Westmoreland's position at the time of this conversation] noted that he had mentioned this problem to President Johnson on at least one occasion, and the President had been amazed to hear about it."15

  IN A THREE-PAGE paper headed "M-16 Rifle" dictated as material for his memoirs, Westmoreland related a tale about White House concern over the adequacy of the M-16 rifle. "President Johnson sent a trusted old friend from Temple, Texas, a Mr. Frank Mayborn, to discreetly investigate the adequacy of the M-16 and the satisfaction of the troops," said Westmoreland. "I received word that General Bruce Clark[e], U.S. Army, Retired, had requested permission to come to Vietnam accompanied by Mr. Mayborn. I later learned that the principal in the party was Mayborn and that General Clark[e] had been used as a cover for Mayborn, which was neither known at the time by me or General Clark[e]."16

  "When they left and asked what they could do for me," continued Westmoreland, "I pointed out that I had asked for the M-16 rifle for my troops and the ARVN in December 1965. Now over two years later, I had them for my troops and only certain selected ARVN units. It was extremely important that I get the full complement of weapons soonest because the Tet Offensive clearly demonstrated the wisdom of the decision. This message was taken back to the United States and presumably reported to Mr. McNamara."17

  "Later, when I came back to the United States in May [1968], I pointed out to the President that the M-16's were not arriving as rapidly as should be the case. I reminded him that I asked for them almost two and a half years before. The President acted surprised," said Westmoreland, "as if he had not heard about this before, turned red in the face, and said he would do something about it soonest. After that, things really began to happen—orders went to Mr. McNamara to increase the production base and in due time this was done."18

  There are serious problems with the entirety of Westmoreland's account.

  Westmoreland repeated the claim of having spoken about this matter directly with the President in a subsequent letter to the President's executive assistant, saying that "the President and I discussed in some detail the importance of modernizing the Vietnamese forces, and I put in a strong plea for accelerating the delivery of M-16 rifles to the Vietnamese. The President was," said Westmoreland, "unhappy with the fact that this had been a slow process and gave immediate orders to speed it up."19

  Then, in his memoirs, Westmoreland returned to this matter. "President Johnson later sent an old friend from Texas, Frank W. Mayborn, to investigate the M-16 for him personally," he wrote. "Mayborn was ostensibly merely accompanying a retired World War II general, Bruce Clarke, on an inspection trip to Vietnam, and it was only after their departure that I learned the true purpose of Mayborn's visit."20

  Actually, as General Clarke later wrote to Brigadier General Hal Pattison, the Army's Chief of Military History, "At Christmas 1967, Gen. Westmoreland called me and asked if I would come to VN to visit his troops in the field. We set 1 Feb 1968 as the target date." Clarke then explained to Pattison how he had asked Mayborn to go along, how they had drafted Clarke's report on the aircraft returning home, how General Wheeler had passed a copy of the report to President Johnson, how LBJ had Clarke and Mayborn come to the White House to talk about the lack of equipment for ARVN, and how they had then discussed that matter for three hours with two presidential staff members. "Within a few days of our visit to the White House," said Clarke, "a presidential aide called me to say the President had released 100,000 M-16 rifles to ARVN."21

  Westmoreland's contrary account in the memoirs prompted a letter from Clarke to Westmoreland setting the record straight. "It was I who invited Frank Mayborn to come with me," he began. "I do not believe [President] Johnson knew about it until after we returned when Pres. Johnson sent for me over my report on the poor weapons of the V.N. soldier. I took Mayborn with me. They were and had been on a 1st name basis for many years in Texas near Ft. Hood. It was at this meeting when Johnson released 100,000 rifles for the VN army."22

  After the trip to Vietnam Clarke drafted a report that included this observation: "The Vietnamese units are still on a very austere priority for equipment, to include weapons. This affects their morale, effectiveness, and their ability to supply the first ingredient of success—security. This should be corrected as a matter of urgency. Troops know and feel it when they are poorly equipped."23

  Westmoreland had every reason to know the facts of Clarke's involvement and the key role he played in breaking loose M-16s
for the South Vietnamese, since Clarke had written to him on 15 March 1968: "Tuesday we were called to the White House, where the President thanked us for the report and then turned us over to two members of the staff—Col. Cross and Bob Fleming—to be debriefed."24

  Another source, Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, had also informed Westmoreland of Clarke's role in dealing with the M-16 matter. Cryptic notes of a telephone conversation between Bunker and Westmoreland on 16 February 1968, shortly after the end of Clarke's visit, include this from Bunker: "Amb. reported Gen. Clarke's remarks on too bad ARVN not armed with M-16 sooner." Then Westmoreland's efforts to explain the problem: "Gen. relayed that he urged this in 1965, ran into peacetime methods in Washington—bureaucratic snafu, compounded by Colt patent on weapon. Colt wouldn't let anyone else produce, they couldn't fast enough by selves; result: never did get to ARVN like should have."25

  Later Clarke received a fine letter from Admiral John'S. McCain Jr., who told him: "I am proud of your role in getting new weapons to the Vietnamese Army."26

  SOON AFTER BECOMING Chief of Staff Westmoreland tasked the Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics to provide him the file of messages exchanged about equipping ARVN forces with the M-16 rifle. The tabulation included these pivotal items: