Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam

by Lewis Sorley

  AS HIS FIRST Christmas in retirement approached, with the concomitant need to do some shopping, Westmoreland wrote to Brigadier General James L. Collins Jr., the Army's Chief of Military History, thanking him for having sent twelve copies of a photograph of Westmoreland's Chief of Staff portrait. Please send me thirty more, said Westmoreland. "I would like to give copies to some of my close friends during the holiday season."9

  Once established in Charleston, Westmoreland told a correspondent that hanging on the wall of his study was his most prized possession, his commission as a 2nd Lieutenant in the United States Army. To another he confided that what he really missed was "flying that helicopter."

  Another thing he probably missed was all the people who had taken care of him when he was a senior officer on active duty. An Army major was in an airport when he was approached by someone in civilian clothes. "Do you know who I am?" the man asked. "Yes, sir," responded the officer, "you're General Westmoreland." Westmoreland then explained that he had recently retired from the Army and was on a trip. "But I don't know how to get my luggage. They took it when I checked in for my flight, but now I'm here and I don't know where my bags are." The major explained about baggage claim.

  On a visit to West Point, Westmoreland was escorted by Brigadier General Walter Ulmer, the Commandant of Cadets. Ulmer introduced him to the King of the Beasts, the senior cadet in charge of "Beast Barracks," where new plebes got their initial training. That young man had just been selected to be First Captain. He stood about 5'9" or 5'10", causing Westmoreland to exclaim to Ulmer, "He's not very tall, is he?" Ulmer explained that he had other redeeming features.

  DURING HIS RETIREMENT Westmoreland struggled with an unfortunate situation involving veterans of the 9th Infantry Division. That division was his old World War II outfit and had later served under him in Vietnam, with Major General Julian Ewell as its commander. Under Ewell's leadership the Vietnam veterans formed what they called the Octofoil Association. Ewell wrote to invite Westmoreland to serve as honorary president of the new organization. Westmoreland "accepted with pleasure," but also suggested to Ewell that they merge with the existing Ninth Division Association. That group had not opened its membership to those who served in it at later times, only World War II veterans. This situation gave Westmoreland an opportunity to take a stand on principle.

  A respected sergeant major, still in uniform, had attended a 1970 division reunion in New York City and been booed for suggesting that Vietnam veterans be admitted to membership. Wrote a retired lieutenant colonel to Westmoreland: "I have been told that the opposition is essentially racist on the assumption that Vietnam veterans would include a high proportion of black people." He said he understood Westmoreland had withdrawn his support from the organization because of the position it took on the issue. "Would you please reconsider your position and actively support this project?" he asked. Westmoreland declined to do so.

  In 1977 it was reported to Westmoreland that at a meeting in Chicago the Ninth Division Association "defeated a motion to allow the division's Vietnam veterans to join their ranks. That was not unexpected," he was told. Soon thereafter Westmoreland was invited to be the main speaker at the Association's 1978 meeting. "I can not in good conscience continue to affiliate myself with an organization that rejects the younger comrades-in-arms of our division who saw service in Vietnam," he responded. "For the Vietnam veterans to be 'shafted' by his fellow division veterans is beyond my comprehension, and I will not be a part of an organization that conducts itself in such a bigoted and irresponsible manner." Over a decade later, with the issue still unresolved, Westmoreland wrote that "my position is clear and will never change."

  As late as 1992, responding to a correspondent who had written about an upcoming division reunion, Westmoreland again laid it on the line: "My position on the attitude of the Association is I hope well known and I will not compromise." Apparently, though, he did just that. There is in his papers the text of an address prepared for delivery at the reunion that very year. It is identified as "50 Years Ago," 9th Infantry Division, 1992.

  WESTMORELAND CONTINUED MAKING other speeches at every opportunity, many of them exculpatory. Lieutenant General William McCaffrey was sympathetic to his plight. "One of the saddest things I've seen of my contemporaries," he said, "is what happened to Westy. It's been a monkey on his back ever since. I don't think he's ever had the fun I've had, a lot of others have had, of retiring and saying, 'Well, screw them all but six, and save them for pallbearers.' He's trying to rationalize what happened. He did the best he could."10 Westmoreland was proud of what he was doing, saying in an oral history, "I haven't dug a foxhole, like McNamara has, and hid out. I made myself accessible." Eventually, he said, he had spoken in every state in the Union, plus Guam and Puerto Rico. "When I retired," he said, "I made a commitment to myself that I would accept any invitation to talk about Vietnam, and I did." That determination never wavered, Westmoreland telling an interviewer more than thirty years after his retirement, "The Vietnam War is my number one priority."11

  It is clear that Westmoreland also considered his speechmaking a money-making enterprise. Queried by a former fellow soldier about a possible 60th Infantry Regiment staff reunion in Lincoln, Nebraska, he responded: "I am now an author/lecturer and one thought would be for the University to ask me to lecture during the time of the reunion. That would assure my presence since they would pay my expenses. If the University is interested they will have to go through my agent and I will provide the details on that on a timely basis."

  Invited to speak at the 1988 annual meeting of the Association of the United States Army, Westmoreland gave what had become a stock lecture, one in which he said that "Rogers Hammerstein characterized the Vietnam veteran, and the American soldier, when he said, 'Give me some men who are stout hearted men,'" then went on to quote those lyrics at considerable length.

  General John Galvin suggested that, "if Topeka had a garage sale going on, Westmoreland would speak." Given some of the engagements he actually undertook, that did not seem too far off the mark. Among them were the Hampton County Watermelon Festival, the Junior National Team Handball Champions Recognition Ceremony, the South Carolina Subsection of the Society of American Foresters, the Lees-McRae Junior College Gymnasium Dedication, the Annual Installation of Officers of the Oak Cliff Chamber of Commerce in Dallas, and a meeting of the National Soccer Coaches Association in New York. Besides such esoterica, of course, were rafts of military, veteran, and civic organization events all across the country.

  While traveling for such speaking engagements Westmoreland also made an effort to maintain physical fitness, or so he apparently convinced reporter Elisabeth Bugg. Writing in the Richmond News Leader, she reported that Westmoreland, then nearly sixty-five years old, "was out of bed by 7 o'clock to jog in place for 40 minutes in his hotel room here." No mention was made of how this may have been received by the people on the floor below.

  Among Westmoreland's other pursuits was an effort to have "tackle football" adopted as an Olympic sport, advocacy of a five-year moratorium on new federal spending (for which he was paid a monthly stipend by backers of that idea), and a suggestion that nuclear weapons be used to affect hurricanes (a proposal that horrified a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory to whom he suggested it).

  Westmoreland's preoccupation with the war and its outcome continued as the long struggle played out. "The important thing," he wrote to General Alexander Haig in early 1973, during the brief period when Haig was Army Vice Chief of Staff, "is to get our POW's back and, if we can accomplish this, we should pull out and let them fight it out among themselves until they are exhausted and conclude that there is a better way to settle their differences."12 When we did just that Westmoreland, apparently appalled by the consequences, would dramatically shift his position on abandoning the South Vietnamese.

  General William DePuy maintained a correspondence with Westmoreland when both were in retirement, by turns consoling and couns
eling him. "I believe the public in general now accepts the fact that the whole country was involved," DePuy wrote in response to a letter from Westmoreland complaining about how Reader's Digest had characterized the war. "They don't much blame anybody, and certainly don't blame the military for getting in or getting out. Oddly enough I think the military man came out amazingly well—a soldierly kind of image—doing what they were told to do—doing it reasonably well—and operating under complex limitations."

  Then DePuy offered a suggestion. "You have borne the brunt," he told Westmoreland. "You have borne it well—you have been a gentleman about it. There is a great reservoir of respect for that. History will get it straight some day. In the meanwhile I hope you will be somewhat philosophic and maintain the marvelously effective and impressive stance of a distinguished gentleman soldier."

  ***

  IN DECEMBER 1974 Westmoreland and Kitsy accepted an invitation to visit the Rose Festival in Pasadena. Westmoreland sent a letter to Doubleday asking them to pay for the plane tickets as a promotional trip for his book. While they were still in California, early in January, Westmoreland suffered a serious heart attack. He was in Palm Springs at the time and was hospitalized at the Eisenhower Medical Center in nearby Palm Desert, where he remained for twenty days. Then it was on to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington for another ten days. After some six weeks of recuperation at home Westmoreland wrote to the Veterans Administration asking that his medical records be reviewed to determine whether his retirement disability could be modified "in view of the possibility that there were indications of a possible heart malfunction at the time of my departure from active service." Ironically, that letter was written on 30 April 1975, the day Saigon fell to the communists and the Vietnam War at last came to an end.

  AFTER THE U.S. CONGRESS decided to abandon the South Vietnamese, thereby assuring their conquest by the North, Westmoreland was bitter—as were, of course, many of those who had made such great sacrifices for the cause. "Our erstwhile honorable country betrayed and deserted the Republic of Vietnam after it had enticed it to our bosom," Westmoreland wrote in Military Review. "It was a shabby performance by America, a blemish on our history and a possible blight on our future." In sum, "The handling of the Vietnam affair was a shameful national blunder."13

  In later years Westmoreland also criticized Lyndon Johnson's conduct of the war, something he had not done while the former president was alive. "Johnson... hoped the war would go away...," wrote Westmoreland in an essay, "Vietnam Blunders," "but his key decisions were destined to drag the war out indefinitely." Then Westmoreland offered some political advice: "We should choose our leaders carefully, broad-gauged statesmen, not slaves to the public-opinion polls."14

  Nearly two decades after the end of the war that had consumed him then and later, Westmoreland offered a considered but surprising judgment: "In the scope of history, Vietnam is not going to be a big deal. It won't float to the top as a major endeavor."15

  LEFT: Named "Man of the Year" by Time, Westmoreland was riding high. But the laudatory article also suggested ominous prospects: "As the price of the war begins to crimp Great Society programs and boost taxes, Americans may fi nd it harder than ever to accept the long war predicted by the Administration." © 1966 Time Inc.

  RIGHT: Especially after the family moved to the Philippines Westmoreland was, he wrote to his mother, able to "get over about every two weeks for a short visit." South Caroliniana Library

  During LBJ's 1967 "Progress Offensive" Westmoreland, here briefing in the White House Cabinet Room in late April, made several visits to the United States, speaking optimistically in public forums while in private asking for more U.S. troops. LBJ Library

  Invited during the April 1967 U.S. visit to address the South Carolina General Assembly, Westmoreland escorted his mother to the event. The legislators subsequently adopted a resolution to "prevail upon" their native son to become a candidate for the Presidency of the United States. The State

  RIGHT: Yet another appearance during Westmoreland's very busy April 1967visit to the United States was an address to a Joint Session of Congress, which he later described as "the most memorable moment in my military career" and "my finest hour which gave me the greatest personal satisfaction." South Caroliniana Library

  BELOW: In December 1967 President Lyndon Johnson made a brief visit to South Vietnam, addressing the troops at Cam Ranh Bay and awarding Westmoreland the Distinguished Service Medal. Back in Washington, LBJ told his senior associates: "I like Westmoreland.... Westmoreland has played on the team to help me." LBJ Library

  In the wake of the enemy's 1968 Tet Offensive, Westmoreland and JCS Chairman General Earle Wheeler presented LBJ with a request for 206,000 more American troops in Vietnam. That ploy backfired and soon led to Westmoreland's reassignment and a changed approach to conduct of the war. LBJ Library

  In July 1968 Westmoreland was sworn in as Army Chief of Staff, then spent much of the next four years on the road. "I spoke in every state in the union," he said. "I considered myself the military spokesman of the Army, and that I should be exposed to the American public...." That, he concluded, "was the primary mission that fell on my shoulders while I was Chief of Staff." South Caroliniana Library

  Anticipating the end of conscription, the Army's efforts to make service more attractive to volunteers earned Westmoreland considerable comment editorially and from such cartoonists as the famous Pat Oliphant. © Universal Uclick

  Chief of Staff Westmoreland agonizing at an Army football game. Earlier, when he was Superintendent, he had been told by President Eisenhower to "buck up the football team" but, despite changing coaches, he had gone 0–3 against Navy. South Caroliniana Library

  In early 1969 the "My Lai massacre" became publicly known. The March 1968 slaughter of innocent Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops had taken place when Westmoreland was in command, and now — unfortunately — it was up to him as Chief of Staff to sort the matter out. Secretary of the Army Stanley Resor, Lieutenant General William Peers (running the investigation), and Westmoreland address reporters. U.S. Army Center of Military History

  On his retirement in June 1972 Westmoreland, accompanied by Kitsy, was awarded another Distinguished Service Medal by President Richard Nixon. Westmoreland had sought a fifth year as Army Chief of Staff, but that was not to be. South Caroliniana Library

  LEFT: Westmoreland's portrait stands out in the Pentagon gallery of those who have held the Chief of Staff post, the only person portrayed not in the dress uniform of the day but in jungle fatigues, perhaps appropriate in view of his continued obsession with the Vietnam experience. U.S. Army Center of Military History

  RIGHT: At a West Point reunion Westmoreland talked with his classmate General Bruce Palmer Jr., who served with him in Vietnam and then was his Vice Chief of Staff for the entire four years, playing an indispensable role during difficult times for the Army. South Caroliniana Library

  LEFT: Westmoreland ran for governor of South Carolina, telling voters he was "the only candidate with the proven leadership and administrative ability to carry South Carolina to greatness," but he proved an ineffective campaigner while overspending the budget. South Caroliniana Library

  LEFT: Westmoreland and Kitsy watch the election returns on television. He was defeated by State Senator James Edwards, who went on to become the first Republican governor of the state since Reconstruction. The State

  BELOW: Bob Hope and Westmoreland became friends during Hope's Christmas trips to entertain the troops in Vietnam. Later, Hope held benefits that helped retire Westmoreland's campaign debt. Westmoreland's golfing skills may be gauged by a letter he wrote to a friend: "The dozen golf balls arrived. In fact, only today I tried them out and lost 6 of them." South Caroliniana Library

  LEFT: In 1982 CBS Television aired a documentary charging Westmoreland with having manipulated reports of enemy strength during the Vietnam War. Westmoreland denounced the broadcast as "a star chamber procedure, with distorted, fal
se, and specious information, plain lies, derived by sinister deception — an attempt to execute me on the guillotine of public opinion." South Caroliniana Library

  RIGHT: Against the advice of high-powered attorneys Westmoreland sued CBS for libel. Some veterans, styling themselves "Westy's Warriors," raised money for his legal expenses, but after a lengthy trial Westmoreland withdrew his suit just before the case would have gone to the jury, claiming vindication. Tony Bliss Jr. Collection

  LEFT: Westmoreland was very proud of his support for Vietnam veterans and their regard for him, and in 1988 he was honored by the Association of the United States Army with a special award for that devotion. The citation read: "He made their cause his own. He has helped bind up a nation's wounds. There is no more noble work." South Caroliniana Library