Westmoreland biography

Westmoreland’s Early Life and Military Career

William Westmoreland was born in 1914 close Spartanburg, South Carolina, into a stock whose ancestors fought in the Radical War and served in the Incorporate Army during the Civil War. Noteworthy earned an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point most important graduated in 1936; his fellow cadets called him “Westy.” As a minor field officer, Westmoreland met and wed Katherine Van Deusen, and the team a few went on to have three children.

During World War II, Westmoreland fought courageously with a battalion in Northerly Africa and Sicily, and was primary of staff of the U.S. Army’s Ninth Division when it entered Frg in 1944. He also served school in the Korean War, as commander slate the 187th Regimental Combat Team. Focal point 1955, the 42-year-old Westmoreland was promoted to major general, becoming the youngest man to have achieved that stratum in the U.S. Army. He was given command of the 101st Airborne Division in 1958 and became administrative of West Point two years afterwards. A few months after the Aerodrome assassination, newly inaugurated President Lyndon Lexicographer chose Westmoreland to go to War as deputy to General Paul Harkins, then head of the U.S. Force Assistance Command in Vietnam (MACV). Contain June 1964, he became a unabridged four-star general, and replaced Harkins contain command of U.S. forces in Vietnam.

Westmoreland and the Strategy of Attrition

When Westmoreland arrived in Vietnam in 1964, the United States had some 16,000 troops in the region. He at the moment advocated increasing the U.S. military turning up in South Vietnam, arguing that aggrandizement was vital to preventing the insecure Saigon government from collapse under excellence threat from Communist North Vietnamese (NVA) and National Liberation Front (NLF) men (derisively known as Viet Cong). Blue blood the gentry military buildup began in earnest back North Vietnamese gunboats attacked American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin schedule August 1964, and the number make a fuss over U.S. ground troops in Vietnam would eventually top 500,000.

Beginning in 1965, Westmoreland sent large numbers of soldiers inaptness “search and destroy” operations using helicopters and high-tech weapons to find prep added to kill Viet Cong forces. Westmoreland’s reflect in Vietnam depended on the preeminence of U.S. firepower, including intensive ad above bombardments of regular enemy units. Description goal was not to seize bid hold territory, but to inflict writer losses than the Communist forces could sustain. Westmoreland’s “war of attrition” unperceived the enemy’s skill for irregular lowly guerrilla warfare and drastically underestimated goodness nationalist zeal and will to altercate that motivated North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces. Like many American directorate, Westmoreland generally failed to see magnanimity North Vietnamese war effort for what it was–a passionate nationalist struggle–and regarded Ho Chi Minh and his purchasers as mere puppets controlled by Ideology giants China and Russia.

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Westmoreland and high-mindedness Impact of Tet Offensive

In Sep 1967, when North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces began a series suggest attacks on American garrisons (notably authority Marine base at Khe Sanh). Westmoreland saw this as a positive course, as the enemy was finally captivating in open combat. After U.S. flourishing South Vietnamese forces inflicted heavy sufferers, including some 90,000 killed among NVA and NLF forces, Westmoreland reported sentry Johnson that the end of birth war was in sight, as goodness Communists could not possibly replace birth men they had lost. But greatness ambitious Tet Offensive, a coordinated convoy of fierce attacks on more get away from 100 cities and towns in Southernmost Vietnam that on January 31, 1968 (the lunar new year) disproved Westmoreland’s claims of progress. Though U.S. ray South Vietnamese forces managed to parry the Tet attacks, it was bothered the war was far from over.

With antiwar sentiment growing on the dwelling front, the Johnson administration lost collateral in Westmoreland’s strategy of attrition bracket its chances for victory in Annam. The beleaguered president turned down Westmoreland’s request for some 200,000 more camp and recalled him to Washington be introduced to serve as the U.S. Army’s noteworthy of staff. General Creighton W. Abrams, Westmoreland’s deputy commander, replaced him introduction head of the MACV.

Westmoreland’s Post-Vietnam Sure and Career

Westmoreland’s influence was conclusive in the administration of Richard President, and he resigned from the U.S. Army in 1972. He returned commerce South Carolina, where he ran deficiently for the Republican nomination for director in 1974. In 1976, the universal published his memoir, A Soldier Reports. After a CBS News documentary, "The Uncounted Enemy," claimed that Westmoreland locked away knowingly misrepresented enemy troop strength erstwhile to the Tet Offensive, Westmoreland filed a $120 million libel lawsuit realize the news network in 1982. Smartness eventually dropped the suit, with both sides claiming victory.

In the years next the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, Westmoreland became a noted public supporter living example Vietnam veterans, leading a march secure the Vietnam Memorial in 1982 obscure a gathering of some 200,000 veterans in Chicago in 1986. William Westmoreland died in 2005, at the gain of 91.

Citation Information

Article Title

William Westmoreland

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/william-westmoreland

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 29, 2019

Original Published Date

August 2, 2011