More detail on this person: General
Commanded Troops in Vietnam
By Patricia Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
William C. Westmoreland, 91, the controversial
four-star general who confidently predicted
victory, leading the American military buildup in
Vietnam until the 1968 Tet Offensive shattered
public confidence, died July 18 at a retirement
home in Charleston, S.C., his son said. The cause
of death was not immediately available.
Westmoreland commanded U.S. troops in South
Vietnam as the U.S. military presence grew from
about 20,000 advisers in early 1964 to 500,000
troops in 1968. Facing a confounding enemy, a
fearful public turning rapidly hostile and an
undependable ally in the South Vietnamese
government, Westmoreland came to personify the
military establishment against which a generation
rebelled.
He was called a war criminal, was burned in effigy
on campuses, and historian Arthur M. Schlesinger
Jr. called Westmoreland possibly "our most
disastrous general since Custer."
In an interview in 1982, Westmoreland said: "It
was my fate to serve for over four years as senior
American commander in the most unpopular war
this country ever fought." The American military
never lost the Vietnam War, he insisted.
"We won the war after we left, in effect," he told
the New York Times in 1991. "One of our great
strategic aims was to stop the Communist advance
in Southeast Asia, and when you look at Southeast
Asia today, the Communists have made no gains.
Today, Vietnam is a basket case run by a bunch of
old men and is a threat to no one but itself."
Westmoreland's military strategy was to conduct a
war of attrition, trying to kill enemy forces
faster than they could be replaced. American
soldiers, in units no smaller than 750 men, were
sent on "search and destroy" missions to inflict
the heaviest possible losses on the biggest units
of North Vietnamese troops. Because there were no
front lines, Westmoreland and his officers
measured success by counting the number of
enemy troops killed. But the Army's "body count"
reports became widely disbelieved.
Worse, his optimistic assessments of how the war
was going ran up against increasing numbers of
American dead.
He later said he was prevented from waging a
full-out war by rear-echelon second-guessers and
by war protesters on campuses who took to the
streets. President Lyndon B. Johnson, worried that
the Chinese would join the fray and turn the
conflict into a full-scale world war, refused
Westmoreland's appeals to enlarge the battlefield.
As head of the Military Assistance Command,
Vietnam, he did not control the bombing raids
against North Vietnam or the conduct of the Army
of the Republic of South Vietnam.
Coming home at Johnson's request to defend the
Vietnam policy in 1967, he made the mistake of
calling the critics "unpatriotic." Antiwar
congressmen loudly objected, and Westmoreland,
chastened, went before a joint session of
Congress, gave U.S. fighting men a stirring
tribute and ended by snapping no fewer than five
salutes at the lawmakers, bringing down the house.
He was widely quoted saying, "We have reached an
important point, when the end begins to come into
view," and in a televised news conference in late
1967, repeating the words of others about a "light
at the end of the tunnel" to describe improved
U.S. fortunes. Ten weeks later came the Tet
Offensive.
During the lunar new year celebration of Tet,
Vietcong and North Vietnamese troops surprised
U.S. and South Vietnamese troops with a massive
attack, initially occupying parts of virtually
every city in South Vietnam. They soon were
beaten back and suffered extremely heavy losses.
But it was a major turning point in Americans'
perception of the war. Westmoreland asked for
200,000 more soldiers, which would have required
calling up reservists. Johnson delayed and then
called him back to Washington in July, appointing
him chief of staff of the Army. His four years
in-country were over.
"He was a cultivated soldier who had read many
military texts," North Vietnamese General Gen. Vo
Nguyen Giap told historian Stanley Karnow in 1990.
"Yet he committed an error following the Tet
Offensive, when he requested another 206,000
troops. He could have put in 300,000, even 400,000
more men. It would have made no difference."
Most Americans know him from those four years,
but he was a celebrated soldier before he set foot
in Vietnam.
He was born in Spartanburg, S.C., attended the
Citadel military academy in Charleston and was
appointed to West Point. By graduation in 1936, he
became first captain -- the top position -- and
received the Pershing Sword, given each year to
the most militarily proficient cadet, along with a
handshake from the 75-year-old general of the
armies himself.
The young Westmoreland entered the field
artillery, and during World War II he commanded a
battalion in North Africa and Sicily before
landing at Utah Beach on June 10, 1944. He fought
through France, Belgium and Germany. In March
1945, he and members of his 9th Armored Division
captured and held the bridge at Remagen, the last
bridge standing on the Rhine River. Westmoreland
and his men defended it for two weeks, despite
continuous bombardment.
This daring feat allowed time for construction of
three Allied bridges across the Rhine. Military
historians have cited the taking of the bridge at
Remagen as one of the most decisive actions in
hastening the end of the war in Europe.
During the Korean War, he commanded
paratroopers. He later attended the management
program at Harvard Business School and then
headed the Pentagon's manpower office. He also
was secretary to the general staff under Chief of
Staff Maxwell Taylor, which put him in touch with
many leading national politicians. He was promoted
to major general at 42, the youngest major general
in the Army's history at the time. He became
superintendent of West Point in 1960.
Westmoreland was sent to Vietnam in late 1963
and began urging Johnson to expand the military
commitment there. In 1965, Time magazine named
him its Man of the Year.
He retired from the military in 1972 and became a
much-in-demand public speaker, attracting
protesters as well as supporters.
In 1982, enraged by a CBS news documentary "The
Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception," he filed
a $120 million libel lawsuit. The 90-minute
program charged that Westmoreland directed a
"conspiracy" to "suppress and alter critical
intelligence on the enemy" by understating enemy
strength in 1967 and 1968 in order to deceive
Americans into believing the war was being won.
The highly publicized lawsuit was funded by one of
the country's richest men and financier of
right-wing causes, Richard Mellon Scaife. But
after four months, it was settled out of court,
and CBS acknowledged that the documentary had
been seriously flawed. Much like in Vietnam,
Westmoreland withdrew and declared victory.
He ran unsuccessfully in 1974 for the Republican
nomination for governor of South Carolina.
Survivors include his wife of 58 years, Katherine
Stevens Van Deusen Westmoreland of Charleston;
three children; and six grandchildren.
This information was last updated 05/18/2016
Please send additions or corrections to: HQ@vhpa.org VHPA Headquarters
Return to the Helicopter Pilot DAT name list
Return to VHPA web site
Date posted on this site: 03/10/2024
Copyright © 1998 - 2024 Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association