by Lewis Sorley
Marine Brigadier General John Chaisson reported these matters in a letter to his wife. "Sunday we went up to Phu Bai for a meeting on Khe Sanh," he wrote. "I never saw Westy so mad. They were making plans... to pull out. Westy lowered the boom. He was so mad he wouldn't stay around and talk with them. Instead he told me what he wanted and left me to push it with Rosson and Cushman." That account was dated 17 April 1968.22
Later, though, Westmoreland would claim (at planeside as he arrived at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland) that in April he had had a study done, then "made a decision in principle that we would change our tactics in the area of the Khe Sanh plateau." In a 257-word disquisition in response to a reporter's question, Westmoreland sought to imply that the withdrawal from Khe Sanh (which had been effected while Westmoreland was en route home for reassignment) had been his idea and that all Abrams had done was decide on the date of its execution.
When Abrams did take command, the first thing he did was get on the intercom with Major General Walter Kerwin, still the MACV Chief of Staff. "Dutch," he asked, "what about Khe Sanh?"23 Soon the withdrawal plans were back on track. "I agreed with Abe," said Kerwin. "Khe Sanh just sat there and was a blister, a boil."24 So did Admiral Sharp, the CINCPAC. "I concur completely" with Abrams's outline of the situation involving Khe Sanh, he cabled General Wheeler. "The advantages of the move... override any possible psychological or political disadvantage."25
Abrams, seeking to spare Westmoreland the appearance of having had his judgment reversed when Khe Sanh was evacuated, had suggested some language for use in a MACV press release. Lieutenant General Charles Corcoran remembered a meeting Abrams convened in his office. "The topic was Khe Sanh. The consensus of his staff was that Khe Sanh didn't do anything for us, and we could use the troops elsewhere. There was a big discussion. Then Abe said: 'We've got to handle this very carefully so it won't be interpreted as a repudiation of Westy.' I don't think," observed Corcoran, "Westy ever appreciated Abe's consideration."26
Westmoreland countered with his own proposed version of a press release: "We are taking military action to reinforce the successes won by General Westmoreland at Khe Sanh earlier this year." General Wheeler sent that suggestion out to Abrams, where it elicited a lukewarm response. "Paragraph 1," said Abrams, referring to the "reinforce the successes" element, "has a trace of the 'hard sell' and, furthermore, it is not quite true, since basically we are not reinforcing success." Abrams suggested instead a modified statement that he described as "low key" and containing "a minimum of future booby traps."27
In the event, Khe Sanh proved to be merely a distraction for American and South Vietnamese forces. The real battle—and the terminating factor for Westmoreland's tenure in Vietnam—lay just ahead.
18. Tet 1968
ON 23 JANUARY 1968, getting ready for the annual celebration, Westmoreland cabled Sharp and Wheeler to report that "we are developing a plan to broadcast from ground and air PA systems sentimental Vietnamese music to the NVA during Tet."1 The new year observance about to commence was, as things turned out, going to be marked in a very different way.
Shortly before the Tet Offensive began Westmoreland decided to send Abrams north to the I Corps region to establish and run a tactical headquarters that he designated MACV Forward. From there Abrams was to control the operations of all U.S. forces in the area, Army and Marine alike.
General Phil Davidson had returned from a visit to Khe Sanh on 20 January 1968 and briefed Westmoreland and Abrams on the situation there. "The description of the unprotected installations at Khe Sanh and the general lack of preparation to withstand heavy concentrations of artillery and mortar fire agitated General Westmoreland," said Davidson. "Finally, he turned to Abrams and said something to the effect that he (Westmoreland) had lost confidence in Cushman's ability to handle the increasingly threatening situation in his (Cushman's) area. Westmoreland concluded his remarks by saying, 'Abe, you're going to have to go up there and take over.'"2
Marine reaction was predictable. Major General Rathvon Tompkins, commanding the 3rd Marine Division, was one of the most vocal. Marines viewed this development with "shock and astonishment," he said. "The most unpardonable thing that Saigon did!"3 Davidson later wrote that "General Westmoreland's establishment of MACV Forward with authority over General Cushman and the marines in the two northern provinces raised a storm of protest within the Marine Corps and a flurry of hostile and speculative comment by the news media. Westmoreland promptly held a press conference in which he denied that he had lost confidence in Cushman and for that reason had placed Abrams over him."4
Westmoreland also cabled Cushman to say "there has been extensive backgrounding here [in Saigon] with the various news bureau chiefs to point out that the establishment of MACV Forward carried no stigma whatsoever with respect to the Marines, that it was merely a normal military practice of establishing a forward headquarters near the scene of impending critical combat, and that it was only temporary."5 Only the "temporary" was true.
The other denials were false, as evidenced not only by Davidson's eyewitness account but by a lengthy and anguished cable Westmoreland sent contemporaneously to General Wheeler. "As you perhaps appreciate," he began, "the military professionalism of the Marines falls far short of the standards that should be demanded by our armed forces. Indeed, they are brave and proud, but their standards, tactics, and lack of command supervision throughout their ranks requires improvement in the national interest."
There was more: "I would be less than frank if I did not say that I feel somewhat insecure with the situation in Quang Tri province, in view of my knowledge of their shortcomings. Without question, many lives would be saved if their tactical professionalism were enhanced." Westmoreland added that he was sending this message only because he was "concerned as a military man, and feel it is my duty to give you the benefit of my views."6 He also sent an emissary, Army Lieutenant Colonel Richard Cavazos (later a full general), to Washington to describe these problems in more detail, although it is not clear that he actually got in to see Wheeler.
General Kerwin, as MACV's Chief of Staff, also had some insight into Westmoreland's evaluation of the Marines, described in an 8 February 1968 letter to his wife: "Westy just came back from the I Corps, up with the Marines. Surprisingly, he was very despondent, more than I have ever seen him. He says the Marines are inflexible—good for over-the-beach operations, storming hills, and holding onto positions. In this type of warfare they don't have the ability to change pace quickly. Also their organization and equipment is not configured for this type of war."7
Westmoreland was also very candid in discussing the Marines in his memoir, even after a trusted former aide who had seen the manuscript in draft counseled him to tone it down, which he apparently did, at least to some extent. During early 1968, said Westmoreland, he had significantly reinforced the Marines in I Corps, "yet General Cushman and his staff appeared complacent, seemingly reluctant to use the Army forces I had put at their disposal." In a conference with Marine leaders in Danang, he said, he listened to various reports for more than two hours, "becoming more and more shocked at things that virtually begged to be done yet remained undone. Local decisions were urgently needed. I ended up giving direct orders myself to General Cushman's subordinate units, an unusual and normally undesirable procedure."8
After the war, when the Marines were writing their history of the conflict, they sent a draft of the 1968 volume to Westmoreland for comment. He marked it up so extensively, and took issue with so many of the judgments rendered, that he was invited to discuss the whole matter in person. He accepted and, in a session with a number of Marine Corps historians, again insisted with regard to establishment of MACV Forward that "that particular action had not a damned thing to do with my confidence in General Cushman or the Marines, not a damned thing."9 This was not only false, but reckless, given the existing paper trail.
LATE ON THE NIGHT of 29–30 January 1968 the enemy attacked—prematurely—at a half-dozen
or more different locations, mostly in the II Corps Tactical Zone, the apparent result of a mix-up in instructions.10 The next night the full panoply of the Tet Offensive erupted throughout South Vietnam, with thirty-six of the country's forty-four provincial capitals and five of the six autonomous cities assaulted. In Saigon the American Embassy, the Vietnamese Joint General Staff compound, the radio station, Independence Palace, and Tan Son Nhut Air Base were among the facilities targeted.
In November 1967 Westmoreland had been quoted in Time magazine as saying, "I hope they try something because we are looking for a fight."11 Now he had his wish.
The Tet Offensive caused Westmoreland many problems, perhaps the least of which was helping the South Vietnamese turn back the attacks. In the succeeding weeks he was deeply engaged in attempting to refute charges that he had been surprised by the enemy offensive, in claiming that he had caused that offensive—a "desperation" move by the enemy, he styled it—by the successes he had achieved during the previous year, in defending his decision to hold at Khe Sanh and in seeing that as the enemy's primary objective, in denying that he had made a request for a large number of additional troops while simultaneously claiming a great victory, and then in rejecting any idea that his subsequent reassignment to Washington was in any sense a criticism of his performance as the U.S. commander in Vietnam.
Westmoreland was in his quarters in downtown Saigon when the attacks began, then found himself pinned down there, unable to get to his headquarters until morning. But, he claimed, "by my Marine aide talking to the Marine guard inside the embassy and by my numerous telephone conversations with the US Army MP command, I was able to follow the course of the battle and direct action."12
At mid-morning on 31 January Westmoreland was driven to the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, where during the night some nineteen enemy sappers had blasted through the wall and entered the grounds, where all were eventually killed. There Westmoreland gave an impromptu press conference. Television reporter Don North was there. "I couldn't believe it," he later wrote. "Westy was still saying everything was just fine. He said the Tet attacks throughout the country were 'very deceitfully' calculated to create maximum consternation in Vietnam and that they were 'diversionary' to the main enemy effort still to come at Khe Sanh." North was also present later that day when Westmoreland appeared at the daily MACV press briefing to "emphasize the huge body counts" that allied forces were racking up. Then, "to add to Westy's growing credibility gap," recalled North, "it was also reported at his press briefing that the city of Hue... had been cleared of enemy troops. That false report had to be retracted, as the enemy held parts of Hue for the next 24 days."13
Once he reached MACV Headquarters, Westmoreland found himself isolated, cut off from his residence, which was in any case insecure. "It was humiliating for Westmoreland. He couldn't get out of his own headquarters," said Brigadier General Zeb Bradford, then a field grade officer and aide-de-camp. That first day, he said, the senior generals assembled in a makeshift dining room for the evening meal. "The mood was grim, even despondent," he recalled. "It appeared that all that had been so painfully achieved over the years had been for nothing." Then "the gloom was made complete when a stray bullet smashed through a window in the room where the generals were eating. With as much dignity as possible these senior officers had to evacuate themselves to a safer part of the building."14
"Our HQ has been under continuous attack all day," Brigadier General Chaisson wrote to his wife on 1 February. "We are all holed up here—including Westy." The next day Chaisson wrote home that "Gen Westmoreland had to shift his office. He was getting sniper fire." The following week he reported on another aspect of the situation: "Chow is intermittent. Gen West—— is living in the building, also. He has a rotating mess. I get an invite to dinner or breakfast every other day. In the interim, I have 'C' rations." Brigadier General Larry Caruthers was another sometime beneficiary of that makeshift hospitality. "We slept in the headquarters at MACV during Tet," he recalled, and "every third night we would be detailed to have drinks and dinner with Westy."
Captain Ted Kanamine was then an aide-de-camp to General Abrams, and he too remembered the situation at MACV Headquarters. "You know, my god, they were in that building and Tet was raging all about them, and bullets were going through the windows and there was a superhuman effort made for those two gentlemen [Westmoreland and Abrams] to be in a certain configuration in that building so that they wouldn't be exposed to direct bullet fire and all that kind of stuff."15
MACV Headquarters was not a war headquarters, recalled Bradford. "There were no bunkers. No defenses. It was like being in a department store." Some 4,000 people who worked in the headquarters were in a billeting area at Newport or somewhere about four miles away and could not get to their place of duty. "It didn't seem to make any difference," he observed. "The war went on without them."16
And, said Bradford, "I remember Westmoreland saying: 'Everything I have worked for is lost. It's all been a failure.'"17
In his history notes for 7 February 1968 Westmoreland recorded that "in the course of the next several weeks, I put in extraordinarily long hours." He cited receiving numerous briefings and approving B-52 strikes as examples of what he was doing. "In other words, I was living with the situation minute-by-minute, and making the appropriate decisions."18
ABOUT THREE WEEKS before the Tet Offensive began, Lieutenant General Fred Weyand, then commanding II Field Force, Vietnam, had called MACV and asked to meet with Westmoreland. He was given an appointment for the following day. He made his way to Saigon, where he first met with General Abrams. Weyand described recent traffic analysis of enemy radio transmissions which seemed to indicate major formations were moving toward the Saigon area. "General Westmoreland had ordered us to move many of our major units northward toward the border," said Weyand, "apparently to relieve the pressure on Khe Sanh. I went to Saigon and talked with Abe, then with his backing explained to Westmoreland what was happening and got the orders to move to the border rescinded. We then set up to protect Saigon."19
That was highly fortuitous, for when the enemy attacks began Weyand had forces in position to interdict their routes into the Saigon area and then to assist South Vietnamese forces in dealing with those that made it into the city. Those same assaults demonstrated the utter futility of the large-scale search and destroy sweeps of the previous year, including Operation Cedar Falls in the enemy stronghold known as the Iron Triangle. During Tet, observed the authors of The Tunnels of Cu Chi, "the most damaging thrust—that against Saigon itself—would come straight from the Iron Triangle."20
It was noteworthy that Weyand had had to dissuade Westmoreland from his fixation on deployments in the border regions, far from most of the indigenous population. The 1967 MACV Command History, contrariwise, had favored the tactic of disposing forces to protect the population. "The enemy's strategy continues to reflect an effort to draw Allied forces into remote areas of his choosing," read that account, "especially those areas adjacent to border sanctuaries, enabling his local and guerrilla forces to harass, attack, and generally impede the GVN nation building effort."21 Apparently Westmoreland was not aware of, or chose to discount, these implied lessons of recent history.
In his memoirs Westmoreland sought to take some credit for these pre-Tet precautionary troop dispositions, claiming that "Weyand's information reinforced doubts that had already begun in my own mind."22 Since Weyand had needed the backing of Abrams to persuade Westmoreland to cancel sending Weyand's forces out to the border areas, there is some reason to doubt Westmoreland's claim.
Weyand also had a more realistic outlook on the larger sweep of the war than Westmoreland's optimistic accounts, noting in his debriefing report after lengthy service in Vietnam that "the infiltration of large North Vietnam forces and the concomitant dominant control of the conflict taken by Hanoi in 1966, the massive infusion of the most modern Soviet weaponry down to include the guerrilla squads in 1967 and the all-out country-wide assaults
coupled with introduction into South Vietnam of multi-division forces in 1968, each brought the conflict to a point of great crisis for the allies."23
OF COURSE THE issue of surprise at Tet became the centerpiece of a raging controversy. Westmoreland tried hard to make the case that he hadn't been surprised, or at least not all that surprised. It was a difficult case to make. On 26 December 1967 Westmoreland had said in a Mutual Broadcasting System interview that 1967 had been a year of "great progress" in the war and that he saw "no evidence that communist strategy will change in the coming year."24 Thirty-five days later the Tet Offensive began, sending Westmoreland scrambling to make a case that the enemy had been forced to change his strategy because of allied successes in the year just past.
Inevitably Westmoreland's year-end report for 1967 came to light and was excerpted in the New York Times on 21 March 1968, just as the Tet fighting was winding down. That report predicted, wrote another journalist, "'more military victories in 1968' and contained not a hint of any possible enemy drive such as the Tet offensive."25 In fact, stated Westmoreland's report, "In many areas the enemy has been driven away from the population centers; in others he has been compelled to disperse and evade contact, thus nullifying much of his potential. The year ended with the enemy resorting to desperation tactics in attempting to achieve military/psychological victory; and he has experienced only failure in these attempts."26 Summarizing, the report stated that "1967 was characterized by accelerating efforts and growing success in all phases of MACV endeavors."27 No wonder the Tet Offensive, erupting only days after this report reached Washington, created such widespread consternation. General Wheeler reacted by cabling Westmoreland to report the "pernicious leak" of the optimistic assessment.
In rationalizing Tet, Westmoreland was all over the map. "We knew preci—almost exactly when he was gonna attack," he stated in a CBS television documentary interview. "We—we thought he would attack before Tet or after Tet." On another occasion he maintained that "we had full warning that the offensive was coming."28