Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam

by Lewis Sorley

  For some reason that last report was not published until five years after Westmoreland's retirement. Despite the lengthy delay, when the document finally appeared Westmoreland dispensed copies to one and all, just as he had done with the economy plan at Fort Campbell, with MacArthur's speech to the Corps, with his final report as Superintendent after leaving West Point, with his Report on the War in Vietnam, and with his book A Soldier Reports. Sending a copy of this final document to Lieutenant General Andrew Goodpaster, then Superintendent at West Point, Westmoreland wrote: "Enclosed is a report, recently off the press, covering my stewardship in the Army. I thought this may be of interest to you particularly those portions concerned with the Officers Corp."

  22. Shaping the Record

  WESTMORELAND USED HIS position as Chief of Staff in multifaceted efforts to shape the history of the war in Vietnam. His vehicles for telling the story his way included a Report on the War in Vietnam, a series of monographs he commissioned, a very heavy schedule of speeches, his Report of the Chief of Staff, and—after his retirement—his memoirs and two extensive sets of oral history interviews. He had very able help in these endeavors, most notably from Charles MacDonald, the ghostwriter for the memoirs; Colonel Reamer "Hap" Argo, who had been the MACV Historian and was now brought in to continue helping with writing the history in its multiple forms; and Major Paul Miles, a new aide-de-camp who eventually functioned primarily as a research assistant. Miles recalled that when he was summoned to Washington to be vetted by Westmoreland for the job "the entire interview—conversation—was about how historians would look back on the Vietnam War. He was concerned about how the Army had abdicated to civilians the framing of the historical outlook."

  During Westmoreland's tenure as Chief of Staff Dr. Robert E. Morris was at the Army's Center of Military History, overseeing the people who were writing the history of the Army in the Vietnam War. "General Westmoreland came by," he recalled, "and told us 'I had a very limited role in Vietnam.'"1 Westmoreland made this claim at various other times as well, citing as evidence his not being allowed to take the fight to the enemy in the sanctuaries and his lack of influence over aspects of the war outside South Vietnam such as bombing North Vietnam.

  Westmoreland also intervened in plans for a multivolume Vietnam War history being prepared by the Army Center of Military History. Charles MacDonald, then the staff historian in charge of that project, described it as a ten-subject history in which some subjects might take several volumes. "One of them will be a broad overall history," he said in 1970, "which we intended to do last. But General Westmoreland is anxious to get something in print fairly soon, so we have had to transfer that last volume up to the first." At that point, of course, the war itself was far from over, so any overview written then would necessarily increase Westmoreland's prominence.

  Westmoreland even sought to persuade the Director of Marine Corps History to revise a draft of the volume on the Marine Corps in Vietnam in 1966 by substituting the term "offensive operations" for "search and destroy operations" wherever it appeared in the text. The Marine historians welcomed this as grist for their mill, adding in a footnote Westmoreland's contention that "search and destroy had been distorted" by his critics and featuring beside it Marine Commandant General Wallace Greene's conviction that search and destroy had been a bad idea, while in the text the term "search and destroy" was let stand.2

  AS WESTMORELAND BEGAN these energetic efforts to shape the record of his performance in Vietnam, an early vehicle was the Report on the War in Vietnam, which he claimed Lyndon Johnson had asked him to prepare. The title itself was revealing, Westmoreland styling it a report on the war even though it covered only the four years of his tenure in command, was written while that war raged on without him, and was in fact only a report on his war in Vietnam—and as he would have it remembered.

  Westmoreland drew on such sources as Colonel Argo for input, but went outside the Army Staff to General William DePuy to shape the finished product. "He asked me to pull together his first historical account of the Vietnam years," said DePuy. "I did that, with a lot of help, and did it more or less as an additional duty to those which I had down in the Joint Staff."3 As the document took shape, various officers working for the Secretary of the General Staff, pressed into service as proofreaders, began referring to it as the "Me-My Manual."

  Charles W. Hinkle was then Director of Security Review in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and eventually the Report came to his office for processing. Hinkle noted two major substantive issues and flagged them for Phil Goulding, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. There was "no mention of the large number of U.S. forces requested of the President by COMUSMACV in early 1968," he noted, "nor are the American killed figures given." The omission of friendly KIA had previously been raised with Westmoreland, who declined to have them included. Thus that point, cautioned Hinkle, "has been avoided as a matter of personal preference by COMUSMACV, although it will be certain to be noted by the press and others." The other point (omission of any mention of the 206,000 troop request), he noted, "was a major issue requiring a Presidential decision. The lack of discussion on this issue is unlikely to go unnoticed." Westmoreland's preferences prevailed and the document was published as he had crafted it.

  There were other omissions, deliberately chosen, also determined by Westmoreland. "You will note," he said in a letter to Professor Douglas Kinnard, "no use of the term 'body count' and scant reference to 'search and destroy.'"

  Speaking on one occasion with Colonel Argo by phone, Westmoreland said, "The US press has created an image that I over a period of years neglected the ARVN. Want to go through text to point out constant and abiding interest I took in ARVN and programs pursued. Want report to make it loud and clear that have not neglected ARVN." After some further musings, Westmoreland told Argo: "Based on my feel for the situation here, believe the American people think I neglected both ARVN and pacification and went slow in mobilization [of the South Vietnamese armed forces]. Don't worry about controversy in correcting this impression. Step on toes if you have to. Lay it on the line. Must correct this impression, which was caused because I couldn't give the press all the information."

  Argo, who had previously been the MACV Historian, knew how vulnerable Westmoreland was on this point. In another conversation he recalled that when Westmoreland asked for M-16s for the South Vietnamese "this was turned down because of failure of US to go to wartime production. Do you want to use this language?" he asked. "No," Westmoreland responded. "Don't explain why request denied, just say due to reasons beyond my purview they were not immediately available."

  In a subsequent telephone conversation with Argo, Westmoreland instructed him that in the Report he wanted to "make the point that from '67 on we seized every opportunity to have ARVN take over more and more of the load. This was general policy which should be made known." That claim was grossly inaccurate, of course.4 Nevertheless Westmoreland urged Argo to note in the Report the "tremendous strides that ARVN had made. This will," he stressed, "make a good crescendo to the whole report—demonstrable evidence of success of our efforts. This is the best way to conclude the report. Get the best brains we have working on this to get just the right tone to it."

  Despite his personally directed omissions and evasions in the document, Westmoreland was bold enough to assert, in a letter to the Editor-in-Chief of Reader's Digest, that "the fact remains that this is the only authentic publication on the war."5

  During his first year as Chief of Staff Westmoreland devoted much of his time to the Report, first in giving such detailed instructions to those who were writing it for him, then in developing an extensive distribution list and personally inscribing large numbers of presentation copies. The manuscript was evidently completed at Admiral Sharp's headquarters in Hawaii, for in late September 1968 Westmoreland cabled Lieutenant General Claire Hutchin, the chief of staff there, to say that, "at my direction, Lieutenant Colonel Edwin C. Keiser is hand-carry
ing to you the changes I have made to the Report on the War in Vietnam."6 He thanked Hutchin for his help in having these changes made, adding, "as you know, the report is of great importance to me."

  As the document neared publication Westmoreland called Major General Wendell Coats, his Chief of Information, almost daily, quizzing him on the production schedule and then on press reaction and commentary. "Are we still struggling to get the history published?" Westmoreland asked in late December 1968. "I would like to get advance copies to Joe Alsop, Beech, Bob Considine, Ed Sutland (New Yorker), Johnny Apple, and Martin of Newsweek."

  "No news magazines yet?" he asked in another such conversation. "No." Then: "What about Huntley-Brinkley?" Coats reported that in that program's coverage the "twist was that this was an apology by Adm. Sharp and you for not winning the war." And, suggested that prominent news broadcast, the report also served another purpose: "If we pull out, the military are on record as saying they did the best they could under the restrictions imposed."

  Ernest Furgurson, then a journalist and Westmoreland's first biographer, wrote of the Westmoreland and Sharp accounts that "the most experienced military observers here are puzzled by them. Never in our history have erstwhile theater commanders published such narratives, essentially justifications of their own stewardship, while a war rumbled on."7

  It was significant that the Report was configured in two separate sections, one by Admiral Sharp and the other by Westmoreland. "Admiral Sharp would not collaborate with General Westmoreland on the 'Report,'" recalled Colonel Fred Schoomaker. "That's why we had to do it in two sections. Westmoreland asked him to collaborate with him on it, but he would not do so." Westmoreland suffered a similar disappointment when he later published his memoirs and asked Admiral Sharp to contribute a blurb. Sharp turned him down.

  WESTMORELAND NEXT COMMISSIONED an extensive slate of monographs on various aspects of the Vietnam War, even though, again, the war was still very much in progress, ensuring that any such accounts would be incomplete and possibly out of balance. But they would be about Westmoreland's war, and that seemed to be the point. These documents were produced by authors chosen by Westmoreland and written, or at least begun, while he was still on active duty and in a supervisory position over those who wrote them. Peter Braestrup described these monographs as "highly uneven in quality" and characterized by "a reluctance to explore error, command failure, or confusion."8 That assessment was accurate, but their even more important shortcoming was that they were truncated treatments of a war still being fought.

  Westmoreland omitted any monograph on armored or mechanized forces in the war, even though General Ralph Haines had suggested such a work. Later, after Westmoreland retired, General Donn Starry took on that task and wrote Mounted Combat in Vietnam, which turned out to be a best seller through the Government Printing Office. And, since it was not written until after the others in the series, it was the only monograph to treat the war as a whole.

  DURING THESE CHIEF of Staff years, apparently looking ahead to writing his memoirs, Westmoreland had his aide-turned-research-assistant, Major Paul Miles, interview various senior officials, both military and civilian. Transcripts of those sessions provided raw material for the book and other purposes. Westmoreland also used his position to task various staff elements to produce studies and analyses that might prove useful to him. In March 1970, for example, he asked the staff to research the origins of the term "war of attrition" as applied to Vietnam. He told them he recalled using the term in 1967.

  "Actually," said the response, "you had used the term at least as early as January 1966, during MACV preparations for the February Honolulu Conference."

  Besides tasking the staff, Westmoreland wrote to a number of senior officers who had served with him in Vietnam to ask for, as one officer phrased it in his response, "any post-mortem comments I might have on the strategy for winning the war in Vietnam." This canvassing seemed aimed at collecting ammunition for defending Westmoreland's conduct of the war. If so, however, Westmoreland could not have liked the tenor of some of the answers his requests produced. Major General Willard Pearson, for example, was blunt in his response.

  "Our inability to precisely locate the enemy in the Vietnamese jungles," he wrote, "together with his operating out of border sanctuaries, gave him two unique capabilities." He could control the level and intensity of combat, and he could control his losses and thereby "insure continuation of war for the period desired." As long as the enemy enjoyed those advantages, said Pearson, we were "basically fighting a defensive war and reacting to enemy initiatives." He also said he "must confess" that, while he was serving in Vietnam as Westmoreland's J-3, he "had an uneasy feeling that in the application of the approved strategy... there were a few missing ingredients essential to a more successful prosecution of the war." Among those he cited were "our inability to more effectively employ available combat power" and inability "to win wholehearted support of the Vietnamese peasantry." And finally: "An undue portion of the time is spent in unproductive flailing around, reconnoitering for the enemy, with relatively less time attacking and destroying him."9

  IN NOVEMBER 1970 Westmoreland tasked General William Rosson, then Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Army, Pacific, to prepare what evolved into a paper entitled Assessment of Influence Exerted on Military Operations by Other Than Military Considerations. The thrust was made clear in Westmoreland's instructions to Rosson, directing assessment of those influences having a negative effect on conduct of the war, "to include rules of engagement, problems in security clearance to fire, border restrictions (including the DMZ), the limited incursion into Cambodia and prior proposals, ceasefires, policies on use of air power (including restrictions on the use of B-52's in South Vietnam until June 1965, the 37-day halt in air attacks north of the demilitarized zone beginning in December 1965, the partial limitation of air strikes in March of 196[8], and the complete bombing halt in North Vietnam in October of 1968), the Buddhist uprising in 1966, the prisoner of war issue, limitations in command and control of third country forces, the effect of anti-war sentiment in the United States, and the effect of coverage of the war by the news media." That amounted to a pretty comprehensive catalogue of frustrations. The study was not formally published until the Army Center of Military History issued it in 1993, introduced by a Chief of Military History comment that the manuscript was "a reflection of the era in which it was prepared."10

  Having done not one but two extended oral history interviews for the U.S. Army Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks, Westmoreland then took the precaution of having the draft transcripts reflecting his editing, and also the tape recordings of the interview sessions themselves, destroyed. Only the final paper versions of the transcripts survive—no recordings of his voice, of what he said and how he said it. "As requested, all previous drafts of this transcript have been destroyed, as were the tapes," reported the Army's Military History Institute in a letter to Westmoreland.11 That constituted a significant loss to history.

  Some years later, in a November 1986 radio interview, Westmoreland was asked, "How do you want to be remembered in history?" He responded, "I've never really given it any serious thought.... You serve in the military, you develop a philosophy that you're going to do the best job you can in every job that you're given, try to do what the government expects of you, and do it honorably. And then you let the chips fall."

  23. Volunteer Army

  MILITARY CONSCRIPTION—the draft—actually continued throughout Westmoreland's tenure as Chief of Staff, but increasingly preparation for transition to an all-volunteer Army became a major issue. "People in DoD [the Department of Defense] thought we weren't doing enough," recalled General Walter Kerwin, the Army's Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel during most of Westmoreland's years as Chief of Staff. "Westy's answer was to set up a special group, which was called SAMVA [Special Assistant for the Modern Volunteer Army], with General Forsythe in charge."

  In both the grand design and many o
f its specifics Westmoreland was ambivalent about, if not solidly opposed to, an all-volunteer force. Colonel Jack Butler documented this attitude in an insightful analysis of volunteer force issues published near the end of Westmoreland's tenure. Butler called the Modern Volunteer Army initiative "probably the most misinterpreted and misunderstood program ever initiated by Department of the Army," a result, as he viewed it, of rushing the program to the field without any real preparation of those who were expected to implement it, and also of Westmoreland's questionable commitment to a volunteer force. During 1969–1970, when the Army's official position was in favor of an all-volunteer force, wrote Butler, "statements of some high officials suggested less than full support for the concept."1

  Westmoreland said in interviews that he was for a volunteer force, but expressed reservations in testimony before Congressional panels and in internal discussions. He was also apparently encouraging, and being encouraged by, members of the Congress who shared his view. In May 1969, for example, Westmoreland told a friend that he had breakfasted with Congressmen Rivers and Hebert. "The volunteer Army was discussed," he said, "and both pledged that as long as they are in Congress we'll never have a volunteer Army."

  When President Nixon appointed a commission to advise him on the future of the draft, Westmoreland was called to testify before it. Right away he got into trouble by saying he was not interested in leading an Army of "mercenaries." Milton Friedman, a member of the commission, asked, "Would you rather command an army of slaves?" Westmoreland "bristled. 'I don't like to hear our patriotic draftees referred to as slaves,' he said." To that "Friedman snapped back—and pointed out that if they were, then he was a mercenary professor and Westmoreland a mercenary general."2 Soon the fifteen-member commission unanimously recommended ending the draft.