by Lewis Sorley
13 E-mail, McKenna to Sorley, 1 May 2005.
14 Westmoreland Oral History (Cameron/Funderburk), MHI.
15 Subsequently Westmoreland sought to get a report on Operation Overdrive published in the Harvard Business Review. "Consensus of the editors and the Editorial Board is that it is too limited in its interpretation for our broad audience of more than 65,000 subscribers," responded that publication.
16 Linn, Echo of Battle, p. 178.
17 Col. John H. VonDerBruegge telephone interview, 22 April 1995. VonDerBruegge was the briefer. "The critique of the exercise was in the Bragg theater," he said. "I came in and found Westmoreland rehearsing his speech to a blank wall." General Howze told an interviewer, in considerable contrast to the rather uncritical view of airborne soldiers held and frequently stated by Westmoreland, that when he took command of the 82nd Airborne Division he was "rather shocked... at what then was the attitude of the airborne. And that is that their interest in military operations stopped—not completely, but to a considerable extent—as of the time they hit the ground and got out of their parachutes." Howze Oral History, MHI.
18 Text of the talk as printed in Westmoreland, "The How of STRAC," Army (December 1958), pp. 61–62.
19 Westmoreland Oral History (Ganderson), MHI. Westmoreland's change of heart may not have had much influence on termination of the Pentomic division organization, which occurred two years after he submitted his critical letter. When Garrison Davidson was serving in the Weapons System Evaluation Group on the Army Staff, he sent for the background studies underpinning the decision to create the Pentomic division. "We were quite disappointed," said Davidson. "The foundation was nothing more than a series of unsupported opinions." Having gone through the material, he concluded that "the 'widely heralded but short lived Pentomic division' was a directed verdict with no substantive study by the powers that were in the Army hierarchy." See Davidson, Grandpa Gar, p. 128. Once Maxwell Taylor was no longer Chief of Staff, the rapid demise of the Pentomic division was virtually assured. Promulgated in 1958, the concept was supplanted just four years later.
20 As quoted in John G. Hubbell and David Reed, "The Man for the Job in Vietnam," Reader's Digest (January 1966), pp. 55–60.
21 Westmoreland Oral History (Ganderson), MHI.
22 Lt. Gen. Dave Palmer interview, 1 August 2006. Former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger recalled a conversation he once had with Lieutenant General Vernon Walters. "I asked him whether he thought Westmoreland had peaked at major general," said Schlesinger. "No," replied Walters, "colonel." Schlesinger telephone interview, 8 February 2004.
8. SUPERINTENDENT
1 Lt. Gen. Robert M. Cannon, Commanding General of Sixth Army, wrote to Westmoreland: "For many reasons the Kaydets might not think too highly of Westy—but they will certainly give him a 3.0 for having Kitsy as Mrs. Supt." The 3.0 referred to a maximum grade in the Military Academy marking system of that day.
2 Gen. John R. Galvin interview, 2 May 2001. Galvin also recalled what a fine memory for names and people Westmoreland had. "It was not until later," he said, "in Vietnam and then in the Pentagon, that I began to see him in a different light."
3 Remarks, 24 August 1961, Box 44, WPSCL. The portion relating to rain is lined through on the text, so may not have been delivered.
4 Creighton, A Different Path, p. 112. "Sam" Wetzel was Robert Lewis Wetzel, USMA 1952, who earned a Silver Star as a battalion commander in Vietnam and reached the rank of lieutenant general, commanding a corps in Germany, before his retirement.
5 Anecdote posted by Sheridan as a personal eulogy to Westmoreland on a West Point website, 31 July 2005.
6 Hon. Stephen Ailes interview, 25 October 1989.
7 Lt. Gen. John Norton interview, 13 June 2001.
8 Westmoreland Oral History (Ganderson), MHI.
9 Crackel, West Point, p. 380.
10 Lt. Gen. Charles Simmons telephone interview, 21 September 2007.
11 Col. Roger Nye, a long-serving Professor of History at West Point, compiled an important study, The Inadvertent Demise of the Traditional Academy. Addressing the expansion of the Corps, he wrote that it "created great pressure to change the traditional process of admitting cadets, which amounted to 'let those who want to follow a military career find us and qualify for entry.' The burden was shifted to the Academy to find enough qualified candidates, motivate them towards a military career, and retain them through graduation into long-term career service. When the Academy appeared to be failing in this process, Washington authorities intervened, usually accompanied by media criticism."
12 Westmoreland Oral History (Ganderson), MHI.
13 The exclamation point is included in that document.
14 In a radio interview some years later Westmoreland said that being Superintendent at West Point was "my favorite assignment, but my favorite place was Hawaii."
9. VIETNAM
1 Ailes interview, 25 October 1989.
2 Westmoreland interview with Dorothy McSweeney, 8 February 1969, Box 52, WPSCL.
3 These appointments were evidence of an aggressive youth movement in the McNamara Pentagon. Passing over twelve four-star generals, Harold K. Johnson, chosen as the new Army Chief of Staff, was 32 on the current list of lieutenant generals, Westmoreland was 33, and Creighton Abrams, 34.
4 When Charles MacDonald was ghostwriting Westmoreland's memoirs, he put in a mention of how important Taylor's mentoring and patronage had been to Westmoreland's career. Westmoreland took it out. "He didn't want to admit that he owed his success to anybody else," said MacDonald. Dr. Walter'S. Poole, long a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff History Office, looked at the other side of the relationship and wrote that "despite his disclaimers, Taylor was responsible for choosing Harkins and Westmoreland, both of whom proved quite unequal to their tasks." Letter, Poole to Maj. H. R. McMaster, 30 July 1996, copy provided to Sorley by Brig. Gen. David Armstrong. Later, said Gen. Bruce Palmer Jr., after Westmoreland and Taylor differed over the introduction of U.S. ground forces into Vietnam, "Maxwell Taylor disowned him. 'He's not my protégé!'" Palmer interview, 26 September 1994.
5 Jordan telephone interview, 6 November 2009.
6 Letter, Maj. Gen. William Yarborough to Westmoreland, 26 February 1964, Westmoreland History Backup File #3, CMH.
7 Ibid.
8 Westmoreland, Taylor Profile, Box 41, WPSCL.
9 Gen. Harold K. Johnson notes, JCS meeting, 171400 January 1964, Johnson Papers, MHI.
10 McMaster, "Dereliction of Duty," Air Force Magazine (January 1998), p. 71.
11 Gibbons, U.S. Government and the Vietnam War, Part III, pp. 2–3, recounting a conversation presidential aide Bill Moyers had with LBJ following a meeting of high-level advisors on 24 November 1963.
12 Notes of 021400 March 1964 JCS meeting, Harold K. Johnson Papers, MHI.
13 As quoted in Charlton and Moncrieff, Many Reasons Why, p. 135.
14 Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, p. 49.
15 McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, p. 86. Clifton and Westmoreland were West Point classmates.
16 Westmoreland interview by Maj. Paul Miles, 10 October 1970, WPSCL.
17 Recalled Westmoreland's aide Capt. Dave Palmer of this trip: "While we were there we played tennis on some grass courts at an old British club in Kuala Lumpur. The 'ballboys' were girls, bare-breasted. It was a memorable game." Palmer interview, 1 February 2006.
18 Montgomery interview, 5 February 2009. The press of business did, however, sometimes keep Westmoreland from getting to the dictation until quite some time after the events described, offering him considerable advantage of hindsight. A notable example occurred after the onset of the 1968 Tet Offensive when, describing a matter that took place on 23 January 1968, he added that "this arrangement continued until early March."
19 MacDonald, Outline History, p. 44.
20 Palmer interview, 26 September 1994.
21 Letter, Wheeler to Westmoreland, 17 September 1964, Westmoreland History Back
up File #8, Westmoreland Papers, CMH.
22 Ibid.
23 Message, Westmoreland to Brig. Gen. E. C. Dunn, MAC 6468, 151200Z December 1964, quoting his own message "sent to all senior advisors on 8 December." Box 23, WPCMH.
24 Westmoreland received a letter of condolence from Senator Strom Thurmond. "Your father was one of South Carolina's finest citizens," he wrote. "When I was Governor, he was Chairman of the Board of Visitors at the Citadel, and we always had a warm friendship and a good working relationship."
25 Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, p. 89.
26 Later it was speculated that the Brink attack had been triggered prematurely, that it had really been intended to take place the following day when the Bob Hope troupe would arrive at the hotel. Hope, always on the alert for grist for his mill, told GIs that "a funny thing happened on the way in from the airport—I passed my hotel going the other way." And, he claimed, "When I landed at Tan Son Nhut [the airport serving Saigon] I got a nineteen-gun salute. One of them was ours." Hope and his troupe returned at Christmas 1965 for another round of shows, in the process demonstrating that there were limits to Westmoreland's power and authority. When they flew over from Bangkok to do a show at Tan Son Nhut, Hope was very impatient with the delay in getting started. His advance man explained that the technicians had arrived on the same plane with the cast, not before, and that it took an hour and a half to set up. Hope and Westmoreland were standing there, and Hope protested that Westmoreland had promised they could have any support they needed, so they could have had two planes instead of only one. Hope's staffer explained the realities: "Your friend the General says we can have them, but my friend the Sergeant says we can't." Hope, Five Women I Love, p. 95.
27 Westmoreland, News Conference, Saigon, 10 June 1968.
28 Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, p. 9.
10. FORCES BUILDUP
1 Bui Diem, "Reflections on the Vietnam War," in Head and Grinter, Looking Back on the Vietnam War, p. 246. Emphasis in the original.
2 Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker Oral History (unpublished transcript), interviewed by Stephen Young. Bunker felt so strongly about this that he even commented on it when accepting the Thayer Award at West Point on 8 May 1970: "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." Thayer Award Acceptance Speech, West Point, N.Y., 8 May 1970.
3 Pentagon Papers, III:396.
4 Remarks, 10th Mountain Division Symposium, National Defense University, Fort McNair, Washington, D.C., 1 February 2006.
5 Gen. Richard Stilwell Oral History, MHI.
6 Lt. Gen. Julian Ewell interview, 24 April 1997.
7 Message, Taylor to President, Embtel #2057, 6 January 1965, Westmoreland History Backup File #12, WPCMH.
8 Collins, Development and Training of the South Vietnamese Army, p. 128.
9 Tolson, Airmobility, p. 83.
10 As quoted in Maurer, Strange Ground, p. 449.
11 Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, p. 118.
12 Westmoreland, Memorandum for John McNaughton, 6 February 1965, History File Backup #13, WPCMH.
13 Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, p. 45.
14 Message, Westmoreland to Wheeler, MAC 3275, 261000Z June 1965, Box 24, WPCMH.
15 Gibbons, The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War, III:235.
16 McNamara, In Retrospect, p. 192.
17 Ibid., p. 188.
18 As quoted in Gibbons, The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War, IV:16.
19 It would almost be possible to charge General Douglas MacArthur with losing the Vietnam War. A major inhibiting concern throughout the conflict was the possibility of Chinese intervention, and this was in some (probably large) measure a legacy of MacArthur's disastrously wrong prediction that the Chinese would not enter the Korean War when United Nations forces drove north to the Yalu. Not only a sense of the unpredictability of Chinese actions, but loss of confidence in the advice of American military leadership, were products of the MacArthur fiasco.
20 Rosson, "Four Periods," p. 208.
21 Gibbons, 3:369.
22 Pimlott, Vietnam, p. 48.
23 Lt. Gen. Harry W. O. Kinnard interview, 25 July 2001. See also Coleman, Pleiku, p. 45, and Kinnard's Army Aviation Senior Officer Oral History Program interview, MHI.
24 Kinnard interview, 25 July 2001.
25 Westmoreland History File #2, 29 August 1965, WPCMH.
26 Ibid.
27 Westmoreland History File, Box 8, 6 November 1965, WPCMH.
28 Lt. Gen. Harry W. O. Kinnard Oral History, MHI.
29 Lt. Gen. Harold Moore, Remarks, "Rendezvous with War Symposium," College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va., April 2000, as reported in The VVA Veteran (October/November 2001).
30 McNamara, In Retrospect, p. 213.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid., p. 221.
33 Ibid., pp. 222, 224–225.
34 As quoted in Berman, Lyndon Johnson's War, p. 40.
35 Westmoreland, Face the Nation, CBS Television Network, 19 December 1971.
36 Glenn, Reading Athena's Dance Card (draft), pp. 291–292.
37 Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, p. 417.
38 Debriefing report, CG 9th Infantry Division, "Impressions of a Division Commander in Vietnam," 17 September 1969, MHI. Soon after the war ended an academician visited the Air Force Academy, where during dinner he listened to three Air Force officers and an Army major discuss the recent conflict. The rotation policy that kept people in their jobs for only six months came up, prompting one of the Air Force officers to observe that "if you tried to run a business like that, it would go under." After a pause the Army officer responded: "Ours did." Edward M. Coffman in "Commentary," Second Indochina War Symposium, ed. John Schlight, p. 187.
39 Memorandum, DCSPER-DRD to Vice Chief of Staff, Subject: Study of the 12-Month Vietnam Tour, 29 June 1970, Box 41, WPCMH.
40 "By July 1967," Army Chief of Staff General Harold K. Johnson told his generals in the 31 May 1966 issue of the Weekly Summary, "more than 40 percent of our officers and more than 70 percent of our enlisted men will have less than two years of service." Everyone should recognize, he counseled, "that this is not just a local problem but is true Army-wide."
41 Gen. Harold K. Johnson, Recording: "The Military Professional," U.S. Army War College, 4 November 1980, MHI. Emphasis in the original.
42 Tom Johnson's Notes of Meetings, Box 1, 13 August 1966, LBJ Library. Quoted with permission.
43 Transcript 66-117, News Conference, Johnson City, Tex., 14 August 1966, USIS Tokyo.
44 Westmoreland, "Commentary & Reply," Parameters (Winter 1991–1992), pp. 106–108.
45 Westmoreland, "The Long Haul, with an Escape Route," Washington Times (8 October 1990).
46 In Charlton and Moncrieff, Many Reasons Why, p. 143.
11. SEARCH AND DESTROY
1 Westmoreland interview, British Broadcasting Corporation, 23 October 1977, Box 52, WPSCL.
2 Westmoreland interview, 27 April 1981, WGBH Interview Collection, Healey Library, University of Massachusetts at Boston.
3 Westmoreland interview with Dorothy Pierce McSweeney, 8 February 1989, Box 52, WPSCL.
4 Remarks, Andrew Krepinevich, Fort Leavenworth Conference, 10 August 2006.
5 Haig, Inner Circles, p. 161.
6 Williamson, unpublished memoir, n.d.
7 Commander's Combat Notes, Number 73, Headquarters, 173rd Airborne Brigade (Separate), 5 August 1965. Army Chief of Staff Johnson found these commentaries so valuable that at one point he sent Williamson this cable: "If you've stopped writing the combat notes, start again. If you've taken me off distribution, put me back on."
8 As quoted in Gibbons, The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War, III:153.
9 Secretary of the Navy
Paul H. Nitze as quoted in Message, Krulak to Greene, 170615Z July 1966, Gen. Wallace M. Greene Jr. Papers, Marine Corps Historical Center.
10 McNamara, In Retrospect, p. 207.
11 Message, Sharp to Wheeler, CINCPAC 220725Z September 1965, as quoted in Gibbons, IV:75.
12 Later Westmoreland, coaching his ghostwriter in the preparation of his memoirs, described Admiral Sharp as "a man of runt stature." Interview, Charles B. MacDonald with Westmoreland, 17 June 1973, Box 31, Westmoreland Papers, LBJ Library.
13 As quoted in Kahin, Intervention, p. 378.
14 Lt. Gen. Fred C. Weyand, Senior Officer Debriefing Report, CG II Field Force, Vietnam, 4 October 1968, MHI.
15 Murphy, Semper Fi, pp. 41–42.
16 As quoted in Pettit, Experts, p. 210.
17 Message, Westmoreland to Wheeler and Sharp, MAC 3240, 241220Z June 1965, Box 24, WPCMH.
18 Moore and Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once, p. 185.
19 Ibid., p. 339. The figures depend on the time span included. For the more restricted intense encounter at Landing Zones X-Ray and Albany, the JCS History states that "the enemy lost 1,286 men in the Ia Drang Valley, the US had 217 killed and 232 wounded."
20 Moore and Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once, p. 345.
21 Related by Sen. Hollings to Dr. Roger Cirillo at Normandy in 1994.
22 Stanton, The 1st Cav in Vietnam, p. 65.
23 Message, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Harold K. Johnson to Westmoreland, WDC 10453, 010105Z December 1965, Box 25, WPCMH. These operational losses were compounded by another major problem, one that Gen. Wheeler remonstrated with Westmoreland about. A recent meeting of the Vietnam Coordinating Committee, a Washington entity, had learned from Agency for International Development officers of the "effects of graft, corruption, and VC economic penetration of US/GVN stockpiles of materials in transit or storage. While some loss to theft has always been known," said Wheeler, "the cumulative effect now coming to light is staggering and implies large scale, organized operations to falsify documents, divert shipments, and siphon off large amounts of materials for private profit and enemy use." Message, Wheeler to Westmoreland and Sharp, JCS 4161-65, 011142Z November 1965, WPCMH.