In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

1 To Fi a Broken Army As the office gained stature and confidence, the Secretary was willing to put back into the “green suit” part of the house, through the AVICE and the Vice Chief, the authority and responsibility which had been taken away from the Army staff during the McNamara regime and for a long time thereafter. —William DePuy, 1979 The period 1969–1973 was a terrible time in the history of the U.S. Army. The “raggedy-assed little bastards” in Vietnam were demonstrating a readiness to outlast the United States and win. They did both.And while the U.S.Army was engaged in light infantry combat in Asia for a decade, the Red Army had modernized its mechanized and armored forces and massive mobile fire support in Europe. That required the U.S. Army to refocus on the threat posed by the Soviet Union in Europe, improve training, modernize weapons systems, and rethink doctrine. Among the by-products of the unpopular war in Asia were an end to conscription and the reliance upon volunteers to fill the Army’s ranks. That was a sea change in personnel policy and a plunge into the unknown. Along with these changes was a reduction in the size of the Army, from 1.6 million to 800,000 people in the period from 1969 to 1973. Summing up the condition of the Army in 1972, Major General Donn Starry unceremoniously informed General Creighton Abrams, who was awaiting Senate confirmation as Chief of Staff, “Your Army is on its ass.”1 Concurrent with other blows, the managerial revolution in the Department of Defense had come as a culture shock to the Army, as the Army was dragged into modern management. When General Westmoreland was sworn in as Army Chief of Staff on 3 July 1968, he set himself two tasks. One was to support the soldiers who were fighting in Vietnam. The other was to revitalize the Army for future challenges. Consistent with his previous practice, he assembled a gifted team for his Army staff. According to 1 General William e. DePuy one of them, “Westmoreland picked the best lieutenant generals in the Army, whether they agreed with him or not.”2 Two officers who worked with Westy on a daily basis as his assistants, one in Vietnam and the other in the Pentagon, emphasized his search for brains, not yes-men, to assist him. Lloyd Matthews said General Westmoreland hired the very best talent he could find, the implication being that he was a big enough man to surround himself with officers he knew to be smarter than he was. Paul Miles described instances in which the general sought his opinion as a young major, because he knew that his younger officers saw things from a different perspective. Both Miles and Matthews said the same of DePuy. When DePuy asked a junior officer a question, it was not pro forma or small talk. He listened intently to the answer to get a fresh perspective.3 The generals Westmoreland relied upon as his principal staff officers in the Pentagon came from the generation that had cut its teeth in battalion command in World War II, men like Bill DePuy, George Forsythe, and Dutch Kerwin. By the late 1960s, they had risen to the top of the Army hierarchy, where they found themselves the custodians of a broken institution that they were determined to fix. Revitalization would not be achieved during Westmoreland’s tenure as Chief. Creighton Abrams, Fred Weyand, and others to whom the Army was a calling put their shoulders to the wheel, but the much maligned General Westmoreland had set that wheel in motion. The sheer volume of work and the amount of time demanded from civilian and military senior leadership was staggering. One thinks of McNamara near nervous breakdown as he left the Department of Defense after seven pressure-filled years, and one recalls the “before and after” photos of Presidents as they age perceptibly in office. Westmoreland’s executive officer, who was later a military assistant in the White House, recalled what was expected of his boss. Volney Warner (GEN, USA, Ret.) mentioned Westmoreland’s 6 AM to 10 PM days in the Pentagon, the mass of details on his desk, the meetings, the decisions, the travel, and the JCS responsibilities, adding in 1983, “As I reflect on it now, being his age now myself, it was almost cruel and inhumane to send him home with bags...

Share