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Obituaries
General Commanded Troops in Vietnam
By Patricia Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 19, 2005; Page A01
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.
[ Imagen ]
Army Joint Chiefs General William C. Westmoreland is shown in this Jan. 5, 1972 file photo. Retired Gen. William Westmoreland, who commanded American troops in Vietnam died Monday night, July 18, 2005. (AP Photo/File) (AP)
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.
Skipper escribió:Ha muerto uno de los militares más controvertidos, y en mi opinión, injustamente tratados del siglo pasado: William C. Westmoreland.
On Dec. 31st, 2003, one of the most prominent "Rats" passed away.
Robert (BATMAN) Batten. Crestview, FL.
I had the privilege of knowing him for the last 2 years. He gave me one of his caps, which I wear constantly as my tribute to him and the Tunnel Rats.
I was an AF C-141 Loadmaster during that time period.
Dewey Larson
Viet Cong's worst enemy: Sgt. Bob 'Batman' Batten
Bob batten was a Vietnam "tunnel rat" and the only non-commissioned officer on a Viet Cong's "most wanted" list.
By JEFF NEWELL, Daily News Staff Writer
Bob Batten wears the past on his face, and all over his body.
It's a past as bitter as the wry smile that sprouts on his face when he talks about the war he believes could have been won in Southeast Asia.
It was there that he fought a war that was literally down and dirty.
Batten was a tunnel rat in Vietnam, in a place called Cu Chi.
Now a tourist attraction - the price is $4 and a little time spent watching a required videotape - the tunnels of Cu Chi were the command post for the 1968 Tet Offensive, and home to thousands of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese regulars. They were also directly under a major American military command, complete with air-conditioned buildings and swimming pools.
Batten's job was to go down into the tunnels, flush out the enemy and get out alive. He earned three Purple Hearts, the medal given to those who are wounded in action, for his efforts.
Batten, known among fellow tunnel rats as "Batman," spent his teen years in the 1950s in New Jersey, was drafted in 1962 and served his first tour abroad in Germany.
He's had the same haircut - a JFK-style bush cut - since 1957, Batten said, "except for when I was in Germany, when I tried a crew cut."
He wears a work shirt with his name on the right pocket, a Tunnel Rat tattoo inside his forearm showing a mean-looking rodent holding a pistol. His conversation is lubricated with beer by the pitcherful and punctuated by plain-end cigarettes lit end-to-end, one after the other.
Slight and wiry, Bob Batten doesn't look like the terror he was in his mid-20s, when he roped down from helicopters when new tunnels were discovered and went to war below ground as a member of the Diehard Tunnel Rats, 1st Engineer's Battalion of the Big Red One (1st Infantry Division).
Lest you doubt he's the real Batman of the Vietnam tunnel wars, read Chapter 18 of "The Tunnels of Cu Chi," by Tom Mangold and John Penycate:
"Sergeant Robert Batten was assigned to the rats from the outset and then volunteered for two extra tours of duty, staying in Vietnam for three years," they wrote. "Universally known as Batman, he was the most feared and respected of the tunnel rats."
In a recent interview, Batten said he never kept count of how many of the enemy dead he was responsible for.
But as Mangold and Penycate wrote, "During his time, the team could boast a body count of over a hundred enemy dead ... he was on the Viet Cong's 'ten most wanted' list, after the well-known generals, and was the only NCO on that list. Interrogated Viet Cong prisoners knew his name."
"I didn't know anything about that then," Batten said of being the only non-commissioned officer on the Viet Cong wanted list.
About the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army regulars he faced, Batten said, "I hate 'em. But you've got to respect them. They got rid of the Japanese and then the French. They fought for what they believed in, to the best of their abilities. They were warriors. You can't take that away from them."
In "The Tunnels of Cu Chi," Mangold and Penycate described a successful mission involving Batten's team in August 1968:
U.S. and South Vietnamese forces had sealed off the villages of Bung Dai, Chanh Long and Bou Dai, all under Viet Cong control.
"The tunnels were hot," they wrote. "Five guerrillas were flushed out on the first day at Bung Dai and captured ... The next day at Chanh Long, seven VC were discovered. Fifteen more surrendered when the rats discovered their hiding places in compartments underneath beds and living quarters, and, in one instance, under a manure pile in a pig pen.
"On the same operation a day later, Batman and his men probed a tunnel leading from the village of Bou Dai. An enormous number of Viet Cong, 150 in all, filed one by one into captivity as they backed out of the tunnel. Underground contact had been heavy, and three of the rats were wounded. All of them were awarded the Bronze Star, and Batman his third Purple Heart (for a wound received in action)."
Although wounded, Batten remained on point, at the head of his team, and kept moving forward until he collapsed.
The man on point was responsible for going in first when trap doors were discovered in the tunnels, or when a turn in the tunnel was found. Batten recalled using a six-shot, .38-caliber revolver, and shooting three shots into the dark spaces behind those doors or turns before going on.
"The VC could count just as well as anybody, and you can't yell 'time out' to reload," he said, explaining the practice. "You wanted them to know you had some rounds left, so if you fired three, they would know you had three left."
While the .45-caliber semi-automatic service pistol packs a heavier punch in close quarters, Batten and the tunnel rats didn't use it.
Not only can semi-automatic weapons jam at the wrong time, especially in dirty, muddy environments like the tunnels, but "that thing was too damn loud," Batten said. "A .45 is better than a .38, but it would blow your ears out in a tunnel."
He was nearly deafened going into a tunnel in March 1969, in an area known as the Iron Triangle. Batten and an officer were wounded by grenades tossed from a trapdoor in a tunnel. It wasn't the first time Batten sustained a ruptured eardrum from grenade concussions.
Unable to drive the enemy out of that tunnel, engineers set charges at tunnel entrances, collapsing the tunnel and smothering those inside.
Batten and the officer each received the Bronze Star for their efforts that day. Batten shrugs it off, saying only, "I just went and did my (expletive) job."
When the Army wouldn't let him stay in Vietnam or send him back there, Batten left the service in 1970 to return to construction work in his native New Jersey. He moved to Okaloosa County in 1990 and now lives in Crestview, working for a burial vault company.
He has seldom thought of going back to Vietnam as a civilian, but would like to return and look up the South Vietnamese scouts who accompanied his team in the field.
Batten believes U.S. forces could have won the war without political interference, and "going there was doing a job for our country.
"I would rather have been there, rather than have it (the war) brought to my house. You fight for yourself, and for the generations after you. You do it for all people."
CASTELO escribió:Esta es la típica guerra que un ejército muy superior a otro pierde porque no ha conseguido imponer su voluntad al enemigo: el primer concepto de Clausewitz. Y al no haber conseguido imponerle su voluntad al Vietnam del Norte y a la guerilla del Vietcong, simplemente Norteamérica se desmoralizó y dejó de apoyar a un aliado renuente como era Vietnam del Sur, que se desplomó como un castillo de naipes.
Saludos.
Nurgle escribió:No te equivoques los americanos perdieron la guerra de Vietnan porque los vietnamitas estaban mucho mas dispuestos al sacrificio que los norteamericanos. Solo les falto aniquilar el pais con armamento atomico y eso no hubiese sido muy presentable
Antonio_1939 escribió:Se pueden describir múltiples causas por las que EE.UU perdió la guerra; todas ellas (e incluso algunas pocas) combinadas, hacen la derrota inevitable.
En lo esencial, EE.UU no podía invadir Vietnam del Norte; no, sin provocar una implicación China directa. Invadir Laos o Camboya, sólo hubiese provocado el desplazamiento de la ruta Ho Chi Minh más al interior de estos países. Y la insurgencia en el sur (el verdadero y original problema) hubiese proseguido.
El planteamiento de Westmoreland (choque de grandes unidades), no dió esencialmente grandes resultados; un informe estadounidense señalaba que aproximadamente el 80% de los combates se inició por decisión del EVN. Esto significaba que la gestión de las bajas permanecía bajo control del EVN. Asimismo, existía un importante déficit tecnológico para combatir en ese terreno. Los sensores, la vigilancia, la adquisición de objetivos no estaban a la altura deseada; prueba de ello son las misiones "Ranch Hand" (agente naranja), que denotan un claro intento estadounidense de "remodelar" un campo de batalla más favorable a cualquier precio.
http://www.militar.org.ua/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=203786#203786
En estas condiciones, la "guerra de la pulga" estaba asegurada; desangrar paulatinamente a las tropas americanas se convirtió en el camino (el único que el norte vió factible, pagado generosamente en tiempo y sangre) Giap sabía que la victoria se haría esperar, pero que sería inevitable.
Un incremento de los bombardeos del norte no hubiese significado gran diferencia; se estaba atacando un país esencialmente agrícola, no una sociedad industrial. Las pérdidas, por tanto, no tenían el mismo impacto que una guerra europea, por ejemplo.
Saludos.
karhu escribió:...en tu opinion, que tactica hubiera podido usar EEUU y Vietnam del Sur para ganar la guerra de Vietnam ? o la victoria era imposible ?
...
Te paso dos interesantes enlaces acerca de la lucha contra la insurgencia que es un tema muy de moda en el USARMY por lo de Irak.
http://usacac.leavenworth.army.mil/cac/ ... 5/sepp.pdf
http://usacac.leavenworth.army.mil/cac/ ... assidy.pdf
Un saludo
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