by Lewis Sorley
BELOW LEFT: "Westmoreland's life since Vietnam has been miserable," observed a former aide, but Westmoreland remained combative: "I have no reluctance to talk about Vietnam. There is nobody that has given it more thought than I have. Nobody has suffered more anguish as to the plight of the Vietnam veterans than I have. Nobody has taken more guff than I have, and I am not apologizing for a damn thing — nothing, and I welcome being the point man!" Roger Pettengill, Academy Photo, West Point, New York
RIGHT: Westmoreland died in July 2005 and was buried at West Point, at a gravesite he had selected when he was Superintendent there. Members of his former Scout Troop 1 in Spartanburg raised funds to help pay for the special monument, a contribution recognized on its base. Author photograph
27. Memoirs
WESTMORELAND ARRANGED FOR Charles MacDonald, the professional military historian working for the Army with whom he had already had many dealings, to take a year's leave of absence to help him write his memoirs. The task became for MacDonald something of an ordeal, with Westmoreland's requests for assistance of various kinds spilling over well beyond the dedicated year and burdening MacDonald when he was back at work for the Army. Westmoreland's gratitude, at least as expressed in the book's acknowledgments, was minimal, confined to a single sentence mentioning that MacDonald "took leave of absence from his usual duties to assist."
During the process Westmoreland sent MacDonald a remarkable document, a typed summary by Kitsy of her views on the Vietnam War, along with Westmoreland's note saying he agreed with some of them. Kitsy stated her approval of amnesty for those who refused to serve and her compassion for what her own offspring went through: "Our poor children. There seemed to be no middle crowd or ground. They were either violently for or violently opposed." She added that Vietnam brought out the very best and the very worst, dividing the country in two camps, "and neither was right, neither was completely wrong." Finally, she concluded, "somehow, no matter if one served in VN with honor, became a student and accepted deferment, [or] ran away... we will all carry the scar of Viet Nam, with or without honor."1
MAJOR PAUL MILES played an important part in the development of Westmoreland's memoirs. While aide-de-camp to Westmoreland during the Chief of Staff years, Miles interviewed various senior officers, primarily on Vietnam-related matters, and even visited a prospective publisher on Westmoreland's behalf. "In March 1971, Mr. Thomas Congdon of Harper & Row wrote that he was joining Doubleday as a Senior Editor and hoped that I would discuss with him your plans for writing," Miles said in a later memorandum to Westmoreland. "I visited Doubleday in the Spring of 1971 and met Congdon and Sam Vaughn." In a separate note in which Miles identified himself as, rather than aide-de-camp or research assistant, now historian, he reminded Westmoreland that "Congdon is the young editor recommended by Halberstam."2 As things turned out, Doubleday did publish the memoirs, with Stewart Richardson as the editor.
Westmoreland dictated comments, some brief, others running to several pages, on a number of people he had associated with, fellow soldiers like Maxwell Taylor, Hank Emerson, George Forsythe ("He had the appearance and many of the mannerisms of Danny Kaye"), and Bruce Palmer. These were passed to MacDonald as grist for the mill. Periodically MacDonald went down to Charleston. "We would work all day long," he said. "I'd have his records, and he would read every word in that record. He wouldn't skip a word. He was loving every minute of it, particularly when he came to his words. He absolutely adored it. And I would have to sit there sometimes, my god, trying to stay awake." They'd take a break for dinner at six o'clock, then go back to work. MacDonald remembered the abrupt transition, "as though a mask, a shade, went down over his face, and he'd become a different person. I mean, there was never any banter while we were working. The minute he decided we went back to work, we went back to work."3
During the book's development MacDonald also of course got to know Kitsy, whom he termed "a delightful person" with "an earthy quality that Westy can't possible have, and you wonder how if he can't have it he can even admire it in somebody else." MacDonald also met Kitsy's father, "an old horse artilleryman" and "a great old boy." He remembered being offered a drink by Colonel Van Deusen, then ninety-three years old, who told him, "[Y]ou can have sherry or a martini. Those are the only two things I remember how to make."
Westmoreland wrote to many of his former aides and other close associates, asking that they send him "antidotes, reminiscences, and events" that could be used in the book. The results of such appeals were mixed at best, some respondents attempting to pattern their input on those short snippets often featured in Reader's Digest. Most were pretty lame, especially those submitted by former aides-de-camp.
In mid-November 1973 MacDonald sent Westmoreland a draft of Chapter 2. Westmoreland responded that he found it "somewhat heavy going" and suggested that a good approach to revising it might be to "give a very brief summary of the history and then move into the character of the country and its people in a lighter vein throwing into the account as much color as we can find. As an example, the Cao Dies are a peculiar religious sect and have a beautiful and ornate temple in Tay Ninh where they have a pope and are organized dissimilarly to the Catholic church."4
Paul Miles noted that Westmoreland "thought he was an excellent editor, and he liked to add dependent clauses that made things longer and more ponderous." That tendency, and his fondness for rather lame stories he thought were amusing, posed continuing challenges for MacDonald. Of course Westmoreland had the controlling role.
THOSE WHO WRITE memoirs can be expected to put the best face on their actions and motives, and Westmoreland's version of the genre is no exception. Those seriously interested in the history of his era, however, need to be aware of the distortions by omission in his volume. Dr. John Carland, longtime staff historian at the Army Center of Military History, then later at the Department of State, cited an important example in Westmoreland's discussion of the Vietnam War battles of the Ia Drang Valley in the autumn of 1965. Two separate but related encounters constituted the larger battle. In the first, at Landing Zone X-Ray, the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, fought a desperate and prolonged battle with NVA elements, sustaining heavy casualties but inflicting even heavier ones on the enemy, who eventually withdrew. In the second, immediately following, the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, failing to follow good security practices, was ambushed by NVA elements while moving on foot to Landing Zone Albany, suffering in the process very heavy one-sided casualties.
Immediately after these events Westmoreland visited the units involved and was briefed on the fighting at X-Ray, but told nothing of what had happened at Albany. Talking with some of the wounded in the hospital, he began to realize he had not been given the full story. Westmoreland contacted Lieutenant General Stanley Larsen, commanding general of I Field Force, Vietnam, and asked for an explanation. Larsen personally investigated the matter and was told by the division commander, assistant division commander, and brigade commander of the forces involved that they had said nothing to Westmoreland about what happened at LZ Albany because they had not known about it at the time. Larsen later spoke of this matter to Joe Galloway, coauthor with General Moore of two books about the battle and its aftermath, and even gave Galloway a signed affidavit detailing those events. Of what he had been told by the division's senior officers, Larsen stated: "They were lying and I left and flew back to my headquarters and called Westy and told him so, and told him I was prepared to bring court-martial charges against each of them. There was a long silence on the phone and then Westy told me: 'No, Swede, let it slide.'"5
Yet in writing of these events, Dr. Carland noted, "Westmoreland in his text conflated the two battles but implied that he was discussing only one." Thus, "if a reader knew nothing about Albany before reading... he would still know nothing afterward."6 The aspect omitted, of course, was the one in which Westmoreland's troops had performed poorly and suffered accordingly. In this he mimicked the commanders on the scene of the original battle. There is no
doubt that Westmoreland was aware of all this, for he dictated extensive coverage of it in his history notes, none of which made it into the memoirs. In fact, coaching MacDonald on what to say in the memoirs, Westmoreland told him: "Never a defeat of a US unit of battalion size or larger. Some hard knocks, yes; no defeat."7
BEFORE CHARLES MACDONALD became a historian he was a soldier, commanding an infantry company during World War II and writing of those experiences in Company Commander, which became a classic of small unit leadership. He later rendered a judgment on Westmoreland derived from their long discussions while working on the book. "I think Westy was a little hard when it came to being inured to casualties," said MacDonald. "I don't think he was emotionally affected by heavy losses, as I think some commanders might be. And perhaps this is a virtue. Maybe a senior commander has to be this way." But: "From a human angle, you sort of question it."8
MacDonald was also realistic when it came to reviews of the book. One particularly critical treatment was by Kevin Buckley, formerly the Newsweek bureau chief in Saigon. Writing in the New York Review of Books, Buckley said Westmoreland believed "a general is a very special person, and people should be made aware of this" and that "some officers who worked with him in Vietnam say that he reached the limit of his talents [during World War II]." Also, he observed, "from the beginning Westmoreland probably expected to write a memoir of victory similar to Crusade in Europe and the books of other successful American generals of the past" and "the defeat in Vietnam has not deterred him from this." Said MacDonald, in a talk at the Army War College, "Kevin Buckley has got[ten] to Westmoreland in many ways. In many ways, very correct."9
Those comments were rendered by MacDonald in the course of a lecture on a topic of great interest to the War College students, a comparison of Westmoreland and Abrams. When he told Westmoreland about that talk, said MacDonald, "he almost blew his stack. He said, 'What the hell? Has the War College got no better thought than to think up some subject like that?!' He simply didn't want it." Admitted MacDonald, "I regret to say that I simply didn't have the guts to tell him it was my idea."
In the discussion following MacDonald's talk the student officers expressed a great deal of hostility toward Westmoreland. One recalled that he had been at the Army Command & General Staff College when Westmoreland, as Chief of Staff, came to lecture. "He gave us a speech in the morning, telling us why we were in Vietnam. And I think that some 99 percent of that class had been to Vietnam once, 70 percent twice, and 40 percent three times. And he was really trying to convince us why we were there. That turned me off. And that afternoon he gave the same speech to the University of Kansas student body—you know, just totally the wrong thing."
Another student officer asked MacDonald whether Westmoreland read a lot. "No," answered MacDonald. "He just simply doesn't have any interests. I would venture to guess that the man has not read a book from cover to cover in a hell of a long time." That was in decided contrast to Westmoreland's self-portrayal, especially in talks given after his retirement, when he would sometimes describe himself as "a student of the history of war." General John Galvin, a four-star officer who had served with Westmoreland repeatedly, confirmed MacDonald's assessment: "Westmoreland had an astonishing lack of interest in a wide range of things."
Several years after the end of American involvement in Vietnam Westmoreland received a letter from Lieutenant General James M. Gavin, long since retired but the proponent of the much-debated "enclave" strategy for Vietnam. Gavin had read Westmoreland's memoirs and had a question about the assigned mission when Westmoreland had been in Vietnam. Citing the relevant page number, Gavin wrote, "You state that the mission... in Vietnam was to assist the Government of Vietnam and its armed forces to defeat externally directed and supported communist subversion and aggression and attain an independent South Vietnam functioning in a secure environment." Question: "Did this remain your mission throughout your tour, or was it modified in any way?" Westmoreland apparently did not know, for he passed the letter to MacDonald, sidelining the question and writing in the margin: "Charlie Would you research this?"
WESTMORELAND HAD PLANNED to call his memoirs The War Nobody Won. That had to be scuttled when, during the book's preparation, somebody did win that very war. Dozens of other titles were then considered before settling on the final choice: A Soldier Reports. Said MacDonald, "It was a second-choice title resorted to when the original selection became untenable after the North Vietnamese occupied Saigon."10
They had missed the manuscript deadline by quite a margin, submitting the finished product in December 1974, some nine months after the contracted date. Then Doubleday decided to hold up publication until the following autumn, apparently to see how the situation evolved in Vietnam and whether the manuscript might need to be revised accordingly. Publication finally took place in early 1976, in the midst of a season of soul-searching and continued controversy in the wake of South Vietnam's abandonment by the United States and subsequent 30 April 1975 conquest by the North Vietnamese communists. Those delays turned out to be prudent, since they provided time to change what had become a wildly inapt title.11
When the book finally appeared Westmoreland was not happy with the presentation. The jacket bore only the title and his last name, separated by four stars (inappropriately gold rather than silver). "Look at this cover," Westmoreland exclaimed, suggesting it had been "done by a B/O [maybe meaning "back office"] drafts man during his lunch break." And, he said, "I goofed on the book by giving it a bland unsexy name."12 The publisher had also persuaded Westmoreland that his author photo, which comprised the entire back of the jacket, should be taken in civilian clothes.
When the paperback edition appeared, Westmoreland was much happier: "Dell has done better." The front cover depicted Westmoreland in what he himself called "a favorite stance," hands on hips, standing on the hood of a jeep while addressing a crowd of soldiers gathered beneath him. Westmoreland stands out clearly, but the soldiers are masked by a sort of sepia tint that puts them very much in the background.
REACTION TO THE book was, as might have been expected, decidedly mixed. Westmoreland devoted just two chapters to his life before Vietnam, with the remainder of the 425-page text dealing entirely with the war and its aftermath. Peter Braestrup, the highly respected journalist who had exposed shoddy Tet Offensive reporting in his book Big Story, said that Westmoreland's book was "notable for showing how LBJ manipulated the U.S. commander in Vietnam into becoming, in effect, a spokesman for the administration in the domestic political arena."
Norman Hannah wrote that "on finishing the book, one has the feeling that even today, General Westmoreland is perplexed as to what happened [in Vietnam] and why." A like view was expressed sympathetically by Frank Getlein, writing in the Washington Star. "The poor man," he concluded. "That's really about all you can say of Westmoreland either before or after you read his story of a sincerely dedicated career of service to his country and the utter destruction of that career in Vietnam." And, he added: "No American in a position of authority in either Saigon or Washington had any remote notion of what the war was all about, least of all poor Westmoreland."13
George Wilson, long the military affairs correspondent for the Washington Post, made a telling point. "My own biggest disappointment...," he wrote, "is that the general writes so unfeelingly; saying so little about the pain both his troops and the Vietnamese people endured day after day as we waged modern warfare in that small country."
Westmoreland was also brought up short by Larry Laurion, a West Point classmate, who wrote: "I'm concerned that an uninformed reader, who doesn't know you as well as I do, might conclude that you personally claim credit for everything that panned out well in Vietnam and that those knuckleheads in Washington were to blame for everything that didn't turn out right."
Hanson Baldwin provided what was probably the most positive assessment, recording his belief that "the verdict of history will be that Gen. Westmoreland did his duty as a proud leader of a pr
oud outfit—the U.S. Army—and that he was vastly more sinned against than sinning."
S.L.A. Marshall, another widely known writer on military affairs and an earlier critic of Westmoreland's performance in Vietnam, now commiserated with him on the circumstances of his service, agreeing that, as Westmoreland had argued, "he commanded with one hand tied behind him. When the Joint Chiefs and Defense Secretary were not preempting his command prerogatives," said Marshall, "he was getting flak, interference, directives or naysayers from the Man in the White House and his coterie of crisis managers." Thus, he concluded, Westmoreland "remains the goat symbol of the country's most mournful misadventure abroad ever."14
28. Campaigner
IN 1974 WESTMORELAND, scarcely two years into retirement and already working on a memoir and building a house, nevertheless decided to run for governor of his native state of South Carolina. The campaign was an interesting and in some ways historic one, for the ultimate outcome was election of a Republican governor for the first time since Reconstruction.
A number of influential people tried to tell Westmoreland in a friendly way that he was not cut out for politics. "Several of us suggested," recalled former Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, "that he enjoy his retirement for a while, but he was bound and determined to get into politics." A very old friend wrote with similar advice: "You have done your part. Relax and enjoy 107 Tradd with Kitsy and the children."
An apparent stranger also sought to dissuade Westmoreland from a campaign. "I am writing to you personally in hopes of stopping you from running for Governor of South Carolina," began a letter from Charleston. "I feel that the elite class that you associate with has and is giving you some bad advice. I read the text of one of your speeches given last year in the Georgetown area and from a business point of view it sounded like you had copied it out of a third grade reader. The middle and lower class people of this area just aren't too impressed with retired generals and admirals."