by Lewis Sorley
Naturally this staggered the young captain, but he did his best to respond. "You should not make General Westmoreland Chief of Staff of the Army, as he will have to go to great lengths to justify his record. Make him the new NATO commander, where he will have no responsibility for Vietnam policy. The Chief of Staff should be General Andrew Goodpaster, who is brilliant and wise in the ways of Washington. Replace Westmoreland with General Creighton Abrams, who is a gifted combat commander." Bundy thanked him and left, whereupon Deagle "walked out with rubbery knees and got a martini."3
WESTMORELAND'S TENURE IN Vietnam had gravely damaged the war effort. Ambassador Bunker summarized the evidence, observing that "because this kind of war was new to the American experience, it is clear that we have made mistakes. We did not in the beginning, I think, fully understand the complexities of this kind of warfare. Prior to Tet 1968 we underestimated the capabilities of the enemy. And we were slow in equipping our Vietnamese allies while the enemy was being equipped by the Soviets and Chinese with a wide range of the most sophisticated weapons."4
General Bruce Palmer offered a similar assessment. "South Vietnam needed more time," he concluded, "and the real tragedy was that if we had concentrated more of the time we had on building the South Vietnamese forces rather than trying to win it ourselves, we might have done better in the long run. I think it could have been done. We misjudged how tough it was."5
Bunker and Westmoreland also had divergent views on a subsidiary but important matter, as became clear at Westmoreland's departure press conference. The issue was enemy shelling and rocketing of cities, especially Saigon. Said Westmoreland, "The Viet Cong shelling is being blown out of proportion.... The shelling has not done major damage. There have been a few people killed, there's been some destruction, but it's been minor. There have been a number of innocent people wounded, but it has not disrupted life in Saigon. Life goes on as usual."
Westmoreland did, however, deplore the public relations aspects of the shelling. "I was recently in the United States," he told the assembled reporters, "and I was shocked to see how a few rockets were ballooned in the public eye."6 And, he claimed, "It's of really no military significance. It does make headlines, I must say."7
That outlook was very much at variance with Ambassador Bunker's views.8 Only a month before Westmoreland's departure Ambassador Bunker had told the President, in his periodic reporting cable, that "the indiscriminate attacks on civilians in Saigon had had an impact in psychological terms as well as added to the list of dead, wounded, and homeless." He reinforced that view in his next cable, only six days later, saying that "the terror attacks on the cities in the South, which are essentially attacks against the civilian population, are obviously designed to destroy popular morale, to create loss of confidence in the government, and eventually to bring about its downfall." Thus: "It is not so much the amount of damage inflicted, but the fact that this is a continuing pattern which is important."9
Those diametrically opposed views on the significance of enemy rocket attacks on Saigon illustrated, as dramatically as any other single aspect of the conflict, how Westmoreland simply never understood the war he was assigned to fight.
S.L.A. MARSHALL HAD spent considerable time in Vietnam during Westmoreland's tenure there, traveling extensively and producing books describing major battles. Now, as Westmoreland prepared to leave Vietnam for Washington, Marshall wrote a devastating critique of the way he had fought the war. "There is little payoff in any of the large sweeps where we crank up a division and more to beat out the countryside," he stated. "Least of all are these ventures advisable when thrown against enemy buildups along the Cambodian border, where the enemy has every advantage. The record of what happens to us there is not less than ghastly."10
Said General Fred Weyand: "When Clark Clifford took over as Secretary of Defense after Tet 1968, he found that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had no concept of victory and no plan to end the war. And that was the case in Saigon as well."11
For his part, Westmoreland viewed himself as having been much put upon. "As American commander in Vietnam," he maintained, "I underwent many frustrations, endured much interference, lived with countless irritations, swallowed many disappointments, bore considerable criticism."12
WESTMORELAND TOLD PEOPLE that he kept under the glass on his desk this quotation from Napoleon: "Any commander-in-chief who undertakes to carry out a plan which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forward his reasons, insist on the plan being changed, and finally tender his resignation rather than be the instrument of his army's downfall."13
During his four years in command in Vietnam Westmoreland had found much he disagreed with in the war policies of his government, and in later years—in speeches and articles and memoirs—he would be even more openly critical of such policies as confining ground forces to South Vietnam, keeping the enemy sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia off limits to allied forces, and limitations on bombing North Vietnam and refusals to mine or otherwise block North Vietnam's ports. But never, apparently, did he view those limitations, individually or in the aggregate, as sufficiently disabling to suggest resignation in accordance with the Napoleon dictum.
Once, during the period when the memoirs were being drafted, Charles MacDonald was in the car with Westmoreland and Kitsy, and the matter of the Napoleonic quotation came up. "I'm sorry, sir," said MacDonald, "but all these things you've been telling me about interference from Washington, how you were not allowed to go into Laos and Cambodia, and how the air war was run the wrong way, it's hard to reconcile this quotation with all those things you thought were wrong. If you believed in that quotation, then maybe you should have resigned." At that point Kitsy chimed in, "That's what I say, too, Charlie."
But Westmoreland disagreed. While he was unhappy "with many of Washington's decisions and restrictions," he said, he "believed that success would finally be achieved in spite of it, that they would not be, as Napoleon put it, 'instruments of his army's downfall.'"14
FOR WESTMORELAND IT was truly a long good-bye, with several preliminary visits to the United States preceding the final departure. On 30 May 1968, visiting President Johnson at the LBJ Ranch, he took the occasion to state his conviction that in the war in Vietnam "time is on our side." And, he said during that same press conference, "The enemy seems to be approaching a point of desperation. His forces are deteriorating in strength and quality. I forecast that these trends will continue." After lunch at the ranch, Westmoreland said in his history notes, the President and his party "departed for a sheep auction, and I departed for Washington."
Aware of Westmoreland's fondness for press conferences and speaking opportunities, Wheeler cabled him some pointed instructions in advance of the U.S. visit, during which Westmoreland would undergo confirmation hearings on his nomination to be Chief of Staff. Wheeler said that he had spoken with the President and Secretary of Defense Clifford about the timing of those hearings. "I believe that everyone is in accord that you should not remain in country [meaning in the United States on that visit] any longer than is necessary.... You should not accept any public speaking engagements," he cautioned.
IN A FAREWELL CONFERENCE with senior South Vietnamese officers, Westmoreland issued them each a paper entitled "Final Advice by General Westmoreland, COMUSMACV." The document included nine printed points, with a final tenth point added by Westmoreland in longhand (and which he asked them to similarly add in longhand on their copies): "Maintain the offensive spirit."
Near the time for his departure, Westmoreland briefed members of the South Vietnamese National Assembly. In those remarks, according to a memorandum describing the session, "General Westmoreland stressed that it is important that mobilization be applied impartially, affecting rich and influential citizens as well as those who are not. The sons of ten US generals have been killed in Vietnam, said General Westmoreland, while the sons of many high-ranking Vietnamese civilian and military officers are whiling away their time in Paris. This is difficult for
the American public to understand and is an abuse which should be ended." Senator Nguyen Gia Hien thanked General Westmoreland for his remarks and predicted that he would rank with General MacArthur in the annals of American military history.15
At a news conference in Saigon held the afternoon before he left Vietnam, Westmoreland told the assembled newsmen that in late morning he had sat at his desk and jotted down "a number of the bench marks" that had occurred during his command. The recitation that followed amounted to nearly seven single-spaced typed pages of detail, including such information as where the trucks used by the North Vietnamese were manufactured, with no apparent sense of perspective or proportion.
When the enemy upgraded his capabilities from porters to trucks, for example, claimed Westmoreland, the change was a result of his having denied them access to porters by pushing enemy units inland toward the Laotian and Cambodian borders. Then he argued that the trucks the enemy began to use to transport heavier tonnages of ammunition for his upgraded weaponry represented "vulnerabilities." Next he described in some detail how the enemy had been provided with the newest and best Soviet and Chinese weaponry, never mentioning that the South Vietnamese had during those same years continued to be armed with castoff U.S. World War II equipment.
Having droned through all of this, he concluded: "Now, I have a summary statement that the TV media may want to record and I will give you a moment to get set up." Then he asked: "Anybody not ready?" Next he read this statement: "At this time our military posture is at its height since our commitment. We are now capable of bringing major military pressure on the enemy. This we are doing and the enemy is beginning to show the effects. The Vietnamese Armed Forces are growing stronger in size and effectiveness. Resolve is still the key to success. Trends are favorable, but it is unrealistic to expect a quick and early defeat of the Hanoi-led enemy."
He then asked (about his summary statement): "Want me to read it again for TV? I will read it again." And he did. Finally Westmoreland told the media, reported the New York Times, "that if he had to serve his 52 months in Vietnam over again, he would make few, if any, major changes in the way he has conducted the war."
Afterward Westmoreland's aide distributed statistics on the general's travels: 469,638 miles in Vietnam, for an average of more than 9,000 miles a month and 300 miles a day. In addition he had made eleven trips out of country, racking up another 242,000 miles, for a grand total of 711,638 miles in 52 months.16 The next day, as a South Vietnamese band played "Auld Lang Syne," Westmoreland climbed into a T-39 jet and flew away.
WESTMORELAND'S DEPARTURE ENDED four years during which, as Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird later observed, "the war had been Americanized." Said Laird, "We had not been giving the South Vietnamese the tools to do the job. We had been doing the job for them." Or, he might have added, trying to.
The attrition strategy had not worked. The enemy had not lost heart, nor given up his intention of unifying Vietnam by force. Under Westmoreland, allied forces had indeed imposed large numbers of casualties on the enemy, a horrifying number really, but that had not diminished the will or magnitude of the opposing force. Instead the communists just kept sending replacements down from the north, year after year, keeping Westmoreland on a kind of treadmill. Meanwhile U.S. losses were also accumulating and, while they were not as large as those the enemy was experiencing, that really did not matter. What did matter was that they became more than the American people were willing to accept as the price for what seemed to be at best a stalemate in a faraway war.
Many years later, when he belatedly decided to speak out on the war, Robert McNamara recalled "the seemingly endless reports and requests made by Gen. William Westmoreland to Washington between 1964 and 1968." His assertions of progress and success of the attrition strategy were, now saw McNamara, "an illusion. At no time during Westmoreland's tenure in Saigon, it now appears, was there the slightest chance of reaching the famed crossover point beyond which the fortunes of the Vietnamese communists would decline, leading them eventually to sue for peace."17
General DePuy—the architect of search and destroy—had once said, in what he called a "coldly realistic" assessment of the situation, "We are going to stomp them to death. I don't know any other way."18 In a much later interview, by then considerably chastened, he explained the outcome: "We were arrogant because we were Americans and we were soldiers or marines and we could do it, but it turned out that it was a faulty concept, given the sanctuaries, given the fact that the Ho Chi Minh Trail was never closed. It was a losing concept of operation."19
At least in the views of some observers, responsibility for such failure resided more with LBJ than with his field general. "No capable war President," wrote historian Russell Weigley, "would have allowed an officer of such limited capacities as General William C. Westmoreland to head Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, for so long."20
Some senior officers saw it the same way. "If Westmoreland couldn't have done it," said Lieutenant General Samuel T. Williams, "they could have jerked him and put someone in there that could have done it. They had plenty of people who could have done it. Abrams could have done it."21 Williams had served in Vietnam for five years as first chief of the MAAG and knew a lot about its challenges.
Perhaps, too, fortune played a role in how things played out during these years of greatest American involvement in the war. Westmoreland may have thought so. "The Vietnamese have it that if a gecko outside your house croaks nine times straight, you will have good luck," he said. "Quite a colony of geckos lived around our villa, but no matter how many times I counted, no gecko of mine ever got beyond eight."22
21. Chief of Staff
ON THE MORNING of what should have been a day of triumph and celebration, his ascent to the highest post in the Army, Westmoreland received a devastating message. In Vietnam a helicopter carrying Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Van Deusen, commanding officer of an infantry battalion, had been shot down and plunged into the Vam Co Dong River. Colonel Van Deusen and others were missing, cabled General Creighton Abrams, adding, "I thought you should know but not anyone else."1 Fred Van Deusen was Kitsy's younger brother.
Westmoreland, understandably, initially said nothing of this to Kitsy, for it would have been impossible for her to get through the day. Further details soon came in another cable. Colonel Van Deusen's helicopter had been recovered from the river. Bullet holes were found in the chopper's floor. One body had been recovered from the skids and positively identified as that of Van Deusen. The battalion executive officer would escort the body back to the United States.2
Fred Van Deusen had been in command of his battalion for just two and a half weeks. In that brief time he earned the Distinguished Service Cross, two Silver Stars, and the Purple Heart. Brigadier General Elvy Roberts, assistant division commander of the 9th Infantry Division, wrote to Kitsy that her brother had been "lost in the thick of battle leading his troops magnificently at the location where there was the heaviest combat action."
WESTMORELAND WAS SWORN IN as Army Chief of Staff that morning of 3 July 1968 in the office of Secretary of the Army Stanley Resor, followed by an honors ceremony on the Pentagon Mall.3 "On this occasion," said Westmoreland, "I cannot help but reflect on the officers and men who have served me so loyally and effectively during the past four years in Vietnam." Five minutes after arriving at his new office, Westmoreland was on the phone with Philip Mallory, Commanding General of Walter Reed General Hospital, setting up an appointment to deal with a persistent intestinal disorder. His assigned doctor, Lieutenant Colonel Boyce, examined him there the next afternoon, the Fourth of July. They conferred twice more by telephone before, on Monday, 8 July, Westmoreland and Kitsy departed for Fayetteville, North Carolina. The following day Fred Van Deusen was laid to rest there after a funeral at St. John's Episcopal Church, the same parish in which Westmoreland and Kitsy had been married twenty-one years earlier, when Fred, still a boy, had been an acolyte. It must have been a surpassingly painful day.<
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After the funeral Westmoreland went back into the hospital, this time at nearby Fort Bragg. Soon after returning to Washington he was honored at a White House ceremony, where President Johnson awarded him his third Distinguished Service Medal, the citation noting that "by his conduct, by his competence and his compassion, General Westmoreland epitomizes the finest qualities of American fighting men that he commanded so long and commanded so well."
THERE WAS MUCH to be done during Westmoreland's years as the Army's Chief of Staff. The war continued on, although at progressively reduced levels of American involvement. Readiness and morale throughout the Army were at low ebb, largely because the war had deprived other commands of manpower, experienced leadership, materiel, and funds. Before long there would loom the prospect of transitioning to an all-volunteer force, a prospect that filled many with great foreboding. Then too research, development, and acquisition had been badly stunted by the operational costs of the war, with little expectation of improvement any time soon.