The Generals
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ground combat had begun to seem: Roger Spiller, “Six Propositions,” in Matthew Moten, ed., Between War and Peace: How America Ends Its Wars (Free Press, 2011), 33.
the U.S. Army’s size was reduced: McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 10.
“a man,” as historian Adrian Lewis put it: Adrian Lewis, The American Culture of War: The History of U.S. Military Force from World War II to Operation Iraqi Freedom (Routledge, 2007), 152.
“has left them somewhat unsatisfied”: Andrew Goodpaster, “Memorandum of Conference with the President,” April 18, 1956, box 15, 4/56, Eisenhower Library, 3.
Reporting to Fort Dix: John Collins, Military Professional, unpublished memoir, 6.
“The ones who were still” . . . “before seven o’clock”: H. Norman Schwarzkopf, It Doesn’t Take a Hero (Bantam, 1993), 91–92.
“in many ways”: Schwarzkopf, It Doesn’t Take a Hero, x.
“When I came back to Washington”: “Address by General Maxwell D. Taylor, Chief of Staff, United States Army, at the First Annual Meeting of the Association of the United States Army, Fort Benning, Georgia, Saturday, October 22, 1955,” Maxwell Taylor Papers, online archives, special collections, National Defense University, 20.
“period of Babylonian captivity”: Maxwell Taylor, The Uncertain Trumpet (Harper, 1959), 198.
“The Army [was]”: “Coordination Group,” interviews with Lt. Gen. John Cushman, U.S. Army (Retired), unpublished, USAMHI, shared with author by General Cushman; chap. 10, page 1.
the “Pentomic Army”: A. J. Bacevich, The Pentomic Era: The U.S. Army Between Korea and Vietnam (National Defense University Press, 1986), 96. See also “The Nuclear Revolution, 1945–1960,” chap. 1 in Thomas Mahnken, Technology and the American Way of War (Columbia University Press, 2008).
Nevertheless, by 1957: Brian Linn, The Echo of Battle: The Army’s Way of War (Harvard, 2007), 170.
In 1959, Taylor lamented: Taylor, Uncertain Trumpet, 66.
“We must be able to deter”: Maxwell Taylor, letter to retired generals, November 28, 1955, copy in Andrew Goodpaster Papers, box 18, folder 12, “White House 1954–1961,” Marshall Library.
an article for Military Review: Raymond Shoemaker et al., “Readiness for the Little War—Optimum Integrated Strategy,” Military Review, April 1957, 24.
Also in 1957, Taylor established: Weigley, History of the United States Army, 534, 543.
“From corporals to colonels”: George Fielding Eliot, “Has the Army Lost Its Soul?,” Military Review, November 1953, 8 (repr. from Ordnance Magazine, July–August 1953).
“The noncoms who receive”: Eliot, “Has the Army Lost Its Soul?,” 9.
“The leader is often rewarded”: Col. Steven M. Jones, “Improving Accountability for Effective Command Climate: A Strategic Imperative,” U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA, April 2003, 8.
“like the mass society”: Roger Little, “Solidarity Is the Key to the Mass Army,” The Army Combat Forces Journal, February 1955, 27–28.
A full 81 percent: Donnelly, “Bilko’s Army,” 34.
“to reward caution and conformity”: Donnelly, “Bilko’s Army,” 35.
“Over-supervision stifles initiative”: Donnelly, “Bilko’s Army,” 36–38.
“Why do so many generals”: Aubrey Newman, What Are Generals Made Of? (Presidio, 1987), 121.
“command and management”: David Ramsey Jr., “Management or Command,” Military Review, September 1961, 39.
“It can be said” . . . “World War II or Korea”: Charles J. V. Murphy, “A New Multi-Purpose U.S. Army,” Fortune, May 1966, 124.
“Officers were doing the tasks”: Henry Gole, “The U.S. Army in the Aftermath of Conflict,” unpublished notes, 2010, 7.
“The ideal almost seems to be”: Peter Dawkins, “Freedom to Fail,” Infantry, September–October 1965, 9.
PART III: THE VIETNAM WAR
15. MAXWELL TAYLOR: ARCHITECT OF DEFEAT
“All the way from Westmoreland”: “General William DePuy,” interview by Michael Perlman, part 2, May 16, 1987, DePuy Papers, box 2, USAMHI, 24–25.
“We never had very much”: “General Water T. Kerwin Jr., USA Retired,” interview by D. A. Doehle, 1980, Walter Kerwin Papers, USAMHI, 2.
Kerwin, for example: Truscott, Command Missions, 325–26.
“brigadier generals”: Kerwin, interview by Doehle, 74–75.
“It was the strangest thing”: “General Bruce Palmer Jr.,” interviews by James Shelton and Edward Smith, 1975–1976, Bruce Palmer Papers, USAMHI, 235.
The first draft of the book: John Cushman interviews, unpublished, USAMHI, chap. 10, page 3.
“We had been affected”: Ronald Carpenter, “General Maxwell D. Taylor and the Joint Chiefs of Staff During the Cuban Missile Crisis,” in Rhetoric in Martial Deliberations and Decision Making (University of South Carolina Press, 2004), 70.
“may have influenced the United States”: Dave Richard Palmer, Summons of the Trumpet: A History of the Vietnam War from a Military Man’s Perspective (Presidio, 1978), 271.
Taylor would become almost the opposite: This thought is from an e-mail message from Henry Gole to the author, November 25, 2011.
“Those sons of bitches”: Carpenter, Rhetoric in Martial Deliberations, 73. See also “Maxwell D. Taylor Oral History,” interview no. 1a, by Dorothy Pierce, January 9, 1969, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, TX (hereafter: LBJ Library), 8–9.
“I would often see him”: Taylor Oral History, LBJ Library, 11.
“General Taylor had an influence”: “Oral History Interview with Earle Wheeler,” interview by Chester Clifton, 1964, John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, MA (hereafter: JFK Library), 67.
the first issue Taylor took up: Wheeler Oral History, JFK Library, 28.
He was regarded warily: Douglas Kinnard, The Certain Trumpet: Maxwell Taylor and the American Experience in Vietnam (Brassey’s, 1991), 212–13.
“bears as much responsibility”: Bernard Brodie, War and Politics (Macmillan, 1973), 191.
“He is largely responsible”: “Interview with General Nathan F. Twining,” interview by John T. Mason Jr., June 5, 1967, Columbia Center for Oral History, Columbia University, 146, 225–26.
“My answer is a qualified ‘yes,’”: Nathan Twining, “Memorandum for Admiral Radford,” April 2, 1954, Matthew Ridgway Papers, box 78, USAMHI. The “three A-bombs” quotation is from Twining, interview by Mason, Columbia University, 148.
Two American aircraft carriers: Osgood, Limited War, 217–18.
“My answer is an emphatic and immediate ‘NO,’”: Matthew Ridgway, “Memorandum for the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” April 6, 1954, Matthew Ridgway Papers, box 78, USAMHI, 1–2.
Nor, he stated in another document: “Army Position on NSC Action No. 1074-A,” n.d., document 31, The Pentagon Papers, “Gravel Edition” (Beacon Press, 1971), vol. 1.
Over Radford’s objections: Maj. Jay Parker, “The Colonels’ Revolt: Eisenhower, the Army, and the Politics of National Security,” Naval War College, June 17, 1994, 38.
“I’m convinced that no military victory”: Ferrell, Eisenhower Diaries, “March 17, 1951,” 190.
“As long as I’m president”: “Douglas MacArthur II,” interview by Mack Teasley, April 6, 1990, Eisenhower Library, 29.
“we would not”: Andrew Goodpaster, “Memorandum of Conference with the President, May 24, 1956; 10:30 AM,” Andrew Goodpaster Papers, box 18, folder 12, “White House 1954–1961,” Marshall Library, 2.
“American advisers in the 1950s”: William Westmoreland, “A Military War of Attrition,” in W. Scott Thompson and Donaldson Frizzell, eds., The Lessons of Vietnam (Crane, Russak, 1977), 70.
Williams and his comrades tried: Andrew Krepinevich Jr., The Army and Vietnam (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986),
24–25.
“was convinced that that was the way”: Ronald Spector, The United States Army in Vietnam: Advice and Support, The Early Years, 1941–1960 (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1983), 273. Another subordinate, Lt. Col. Bergen Hovell, recalled, “People were scared to death of General Williams. . . . People were afraid to speak”; Spector, Advice and Support, 295.
“Hell,” Williams responded: Meyer, Hanging Sam, 140.
“tact, judgment on other than military matters”: Meyer, Hanging Sam, 143.
“precisely the areas”: Cao Van Vien, “Reflections on the Vietnam War,” in Lewis Sorley, ed., The Vietnam War: An Assessment by South Vietnam’s Generals (Texas Tech University Press, 2010), 833.
“When fighting finally broke out”: Ngo Quang Truong, “Territorial Forces,” in Sorley, Vietnam War: An Assessment, 183, 187. For the quality of Lt. Gen. Truong, see, among other material, Kinnard, The War Managers, 86: “By a wide margin, he was considered the best combat commander in the South Vietnamese Army.”
“hasty, ill-conceived”: Spector, Advice and Support, 350.
“a long and valuable time”: Truong, “Territorial Forces,” in Vietnam War: An Assessment, 210.
“From 1954–61”: Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Military Operations, “PROVN: A Program for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of South Vietnam,” U.S. Army, March 1966, 102.
He made a habit in Saigon: Krepinevich, Army and Vietnam, 56; “Oral History of Paul Harkins,” November 10, 1981, LBJ Library, 8.
“General McGarr was not an adept change agent”: John Cushman, Fort Leavenworth—A Memoir, vol. 1, unpublished manuscript, September 2001, on file at USAMHI, 17.
“made himself thoroughly unpopular”: Graham Cosmas, MACV: The Joint Command in the Years of Escalation, 1962–1967 (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 2005), 24. The nickname, which refers to his hair being parted in the middle, is referenced in “Samuel T. Williams Oral History,” interview 2, conducted by Ted Gittinger, March 16, 1981, LBJ Library, 35.
undercut the “offensive spirit”: Krepinevich, Army and Vietnam, 67.
only “lukewarm interest”: Tran Dinh Tho, “Pacification,” in Vietnam War: An Assessment, 262.
intense “mirror imaging”: “Interview with Robert Montague,” August 26, 1982, for Vietnam: A Television History (WGBH, 1983).
“I never got the feeling”: John Dabrowski, ed., “An Oral History of General Gordon R. Sullivan,” USAMHI, 2008, 38–39.
“discontinuity between the mixed counterinsurgency strategy”: R. W. Komer, Bureaucracy Does Its Thing: Institutional Constraints on U.S.-GVN Performance in Vietnam (RAND Corporation, 1972), v–vi.
The attitude of the Joint Chiefs: Leslie Gelb and Richard Betts, The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked (Brookings, 1979), 231.
“Kennedy’s preferred battleground”: Parker, “The Colonels’ Revolt,” 84.
“The risks of backing into a major Asian war”: Taylor, “Memorandum for the President, November 11, 1961,” in Pentagon Papers (Gravel), vol. 2, 100.
“a carefully orchestrated bombing attack”: Pentagon Papers (Gravel), vol. 3, 369.
“we cannot win a conventional war”: Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and Legislative Roles and Relationships, Part II, 1961–1964 (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1985), accessed online.
“When he found it expedient”: McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 106.
“Taylor . . . had sort of adopted me”: Harkins oral history, LBJ Library, 3.
“I think General Harkins was”: “John Michael Dunn,” interview by Ted Gittinger, July 25, 1984, LBJ Library Oral History Collection, Austin, 12–13.
“I do not know anyone” . . . “Harkins should be replaced”: McGeorge Bundy, “Eyes Only” memo to President Johnson, “The U.S. Military Command in Saigon,” January 9, 1964, LBJ Library, national security files, MP, 1/33, 1–2.
“wasn’t worth a damn” . . . “You need intelligent people”: Henry Graff, The Tuesday Cabinet: Deliberation and Decision on Peace and War Under Lyndon B. Johnson (Prentice-Hall, 1970), 35–36.
“a good friend” . . . “When they relieved General Harkins”: Interview by Spruill and Vernon, in Sorley, ed., Press On!, 1094.
in May 1964 the general “abruptly”: Cosmas, MACV: The Joint Command, 123.
16. WILLIAM WESTMORELAND: THE ORGANIZATION MAN IN COMMAND
Twelve years later: McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 66.
“Lombardi was too tough”: Phillip Davidson, Vietnam at War: The History, 1946–1975 (Presidio, 1988), 376.
his aide calling a captain: Sorley, Westmoreland, 59. It is not clear whether the aide was acting on his own.
“I felt at the time”: Gen. Harold K. Johnson, interview by Lt. Col. James Agnew, May 21, 1974, Harold K. Johnson Papers, box 201, USAMHI, 19, 21.
“He is spit and polish”: Sorley, Westmoreland, 67.
“He simply doesn’t have any interests”: Sorley, Westmoreland, 264.
“General Westmoreland was intellectually very shallow”: Sorley, Westmoreland, 212.
“the crossover point” . . . “in no way accurate”: Sorley, Westmoreland, 155.
“the fact remains”: Sorley, Westmoreland, 228.
“not only false, but reckless”: Sorley, Westmoreland, 176.
he sued CBS News for libel: Sorley, Westmoreland, 289.
“General Westmoreland’s capacity”: Sorley, Westmoreland, 118.
“platitudes of squad leading”: Sorley, Westmoreland, 119.
“He seemed rather stupid”: Sorley, Westmoreland, 212.
“no capable war president”: Russell Weigley, review of “Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime,” Journal of Military History, October 2002, 1276.
“he was not interested in theory”: Kinnard, telephone interview by author, May 26, 2011.
had attended only two Army schools: S. L. A. Marshall, The Armed Forces Officer (Department of Defense, 1960), 50.
“He was uniquely unschooled”: Davidson, Vietnam at War, 373.
the first Army officer to attend: Becca Horan, Harvard Business School executive education section, e-mail message to author, January 6, 2011.
“Westy was a corporation executive in uniform”: Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (Viking, 1983), 345.
“The U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war” . . . “that ever took to the field”: Andrew O’Meara Jr., “Who Commands Today’s Army? Managers or Leaders?,” Army Magazine, August 1975, 16–17.
“The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs”: Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, 432.
“I realized that the airfields”: “Interview with William C. (William Childs) Westmoreland,” April 27, 1981, for Vietnam: A Television History.
“The cut-and-run people”: Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, 433.
“Since I had no intention of crossing him in any way”: Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, 193.
“It is always the basic objective”: Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, 99.
“We don’t serve Vietnamese”: Schwarzkopf, It Doesn’t Take a Hero, 145.
“I, of course, was not at all happy”: “General Frederick Weyand,” interview by Lewis Sorley, November 9–15, 1999, Weyand Papers, box 1, USAMHI, 273.
“Vietnam seemed to be a war fought by committee”: John Gates, “American Military Leadership in Vietnam,” in Military Leadership and Command: The John Biggs Cincinnati Lectures, 1987 (VMI Foundation, 1987), 186–87.
17. WILLIAM DEPUY: WORLD WAR II–STYLE GENERALSHIP IN VIETNAM
“We went to war with incompetents”: DePuy Oral History, 90.
“banty rooster”: Gole, DePuy, photo insert caption.
“I wanted people who were flexibly min
ded”: DePuy Oral History, 140.
In his one year of leading: Interview by Spruill and Vernon, in Sorley, ed. Press On!, 1055–56.
“If every division commander relieved people”: Gole, DePuy, 189.
“Many a division commander has failed”: Bradley, Soldier’s Story, 65.
“he was not getting his share” . . . “with the resources he has”: Gen. Jonathan Seaman, interview by Charles MacDonald, June 16, 1973, historians’ files, U.S. Army Center of Military History, Fort McNair, Washington, DC, 4.
DePuy and his assistant division commander: Haig, Inner Circles, 157.
“You are relieving too many” . . . “save soldiers’ lives”: Gole, DePuy, 191.
“I’m not here to run a training ground”: Recollection of then-Maj. Eugene Cocke, quoted in Lewis Sorley, Honorable Warrior: General Harold K. Johnson and the Ethics of Command (University Press of Kansas, 1998), 257.
“I fought in Normandy”: William DePuy, interview by Ted Gittinger, October 28, 1985, LBJ Library, 42.
“I either would have to be removed”: DePuy Oral History, 153.
“I can’t have you be the filter”: Gole, “DePuy: His Relief of Subordinates in Combat,” 12.
“The chief of staff just left”: Sorley, Honorable Warrior, 257.
“a. LTC Simpson, William J.” . . . “with command of soldiers in combat”: William DePuy to Harold K. Johnson, December 29, 1966, William E. DePuy Papers, box 4, Correspondence 1966, USAMHI.
“I can tell if a commander is competent”: Gole, quoting Gen. William Tuttle’s account of DePuy in “DePuy: His Relief of Subordinates in Combat,” 28–29.
“When it came to the tactics”: Haig, Inner Circles, 159.
“was an ideal commander”: Paul Gorman, Cardinal Point: An Oral History—Training Soldiers and Becoming a Strategist in Peace and War (Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS, 2011), 34.
“There was no question of brilliance” . . . “to those who worked for him”: Brown, e-mail messages to author, July 29, 2008, and June 16, 2010.
“Bill would not accept officers”: Weyand oral history, Weyand Papers, USAMHI, 43.