William Childs Westmoreland was a United States Army general, most notably commander of United States forces during the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1968.
57 Facts About William Westmoreland
2.
William Westmoreland served as Chief of Staff of the United States Army from 1968 to 1972.
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William Westmoreland made use of the United States' edge in artillery and air power, both in tactical confrontations and in relentless strategic bombing of North Vietnam.
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William Childs Westmoreland was born in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, on March 26,1914 to Eugenia Talley Childs and James Ripley Westmoreland.
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At the age of 15, William Westmoreland became an Eagle Scout in his Boy Scouts of America local council's Troop 1, and was recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award and Silver Buffalo from the BSA as a young adult.
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William Westmoreland was a member of a distinguished West Point class that included Creighton Abrams and Benjamin O Davis Jr.
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William Westmoreland served as the superintendent of the Protestant Sunday School Teachers.
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In World War II, William Westmoreland saw combat with the 34th Field Artillery Battalion, 9th Infantry Division, in Tunisia, Sicily, France, and Germany; he commanded the 34th Battalion in Tunisia and Sicily.
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William Westmoreland reached the temporary wartime rank of colonel, and on October 13,1944, was appointed the chief of staff of the 9th Infantry Division.
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William Westmoreland then commanded the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division.
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William Westmoreland was an instructor at the Command and General Staff College from August to October 1950 and at the newly organized Army War College from October 1950 to July 1952.
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From July 1952 to October 1953, William Westmoreland commanded the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team in Japan and Korea.
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William Westmoreland was promoted to brigadier general in November 1952 at the age of 38, making him one of the youngest US Army generals in the post-World War II era.
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In 1954, William Westmoreland completed a three-month management program at Harvard Business School.
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William Westmoreland then commanded the 101st Airborne Division from 1958 to 1960.
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William Westmoreland was Superintendent of the United States Military Academy from 1960 to 1963.
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In 1962, William Westmoreland was admitted as an honorary member of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati.
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William Westmoreland was promoted to lieutenant general in July 1963 and was Commanding General of the XVIII Airborne Corps from 1963 to 1964.
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General Johnson was critical of William Westmoreland's defused corporate style, considering him overattentive to what government officials wanted to hear.
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Nonetheless, William Westmoreland was operating within longstanding army protocols of subordinating the military to civilian policymakers.
21.
Viet Cong and PAVN strategy, organization and structure meant that William Westmoreland faced a dual threat.
22.
Regular North Vietnamese army units infiltrating across the remote border were apparently concentrating to mount an offensive and William Westmoreland considered this the danger that had to be tackled immediately.
23.
Consistent with the enthusiasm of Robert McNamara for statistics, William Westmoreland placed emphasis on body count and cited the Battle of Ia Drang as evidence the communists were losing.
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In public at least, he continued to be sanguine about the progress being made throughout his time in Vietnam, though supportive journalist James Reston thought William Westmoreland's characterizing of the conflict as attrition warfare presented his generalship in a misleading light.
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William Westmoreland was mentioned in another Time magazine article as a potential candidate for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination.
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At the time, William Westmoreland was focused on the Battle of Khe Sanh and considered the Tet Offensive to be a diversionary attack.
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Post 1969 William Westmoreland made efforts to investigate the Phong Nhi and Phong Nhat massacre a year after the event occurred.
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William Westmoreland was convinced that the Vietnamese communists could be destroyed by fighting a war of attrition that, theoretically, would render the North Vietnamese Army unable to fight.
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William Westmoreland repeatedly rebuffed or suppressed attempts by John Paul Vann and Lew Walt to shift to a "pacification" strategy.
30.
William Westmoreland had little appreciation of the patience of the American public for his time frame, and was struggling to persuade President Johnson to approve widening the war into Cambodia and Laos in order to interdict the Ho Chi Minh trail.
31.
William Westmoreland was unable to use the absolutist stance that "we can't win unless we expand the war".
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At one point in 1968, William Westmoreland considered the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam in a contingency plan codenamed Fracture Jaw, which was abandoned when it became known to the White House.
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In June 1968, Westmoreland was appointed by President Lyndon B Johnson to succeed General Harold K Johnson as Chief of Staff of the United States Army.
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William Westmoreland served as Chief of Staff from 1968 to 1972.
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However, to lessen the impact of this damaging report, William Westmoreland ordered that the document be kept on "close hold" across the entire Army for a period of two years and not disseminated to War College attendees.
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The report became known to the public only after William Westmoreland retired in 1972.
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William Westmoreland tried to make Army life more attractive during the transition to the all-volunteer force by eliminating reveille formations at dawn, allowing beer to be served in mess halls during evening meals, omitting bed check, easing pass policies, and other directives.
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William Westmoreland was offered the position of Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, but opted to retire on June 30,1972.
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William Westmoreland was awarded the Army Distinguished Service Medal by President Richard Nixon.
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William Westmoreland ran unsuccessfully for Governor of South Carolina as a Republican in the 1974 election.
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William Westmoreland later served on a task force to improve educational standards in the state of South Carolina.
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In 1986, William Westmoreland served as grand marshal of the Chicago Vietnam Veterans parade.
43.
In Westmoreland v CBS, Westmoreland sued Wallace and CBS for libel, and a lengthy legal process began.
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Just days before the lawsuit was to go to the jury, William Westmoreland suddenly settled with CBS, and they issued a joint statement of understanding.
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The numbers troubled William Westmoreland, who feared that the press would not understand them.
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William Westmoreland did not order them changed, but instead did not include the information in reporting to Washington, which in his view was not appropriate to report.
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William Westmoreland's anger was caused by the implication of the broadcast that his intent was fraudulent and that he ordered others to lie.
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William Westmoreland's view has been heavily criticized by Nick Turse, the author of the book Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam.
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William Westmoreland concluded that, after having "spoken to survivors of massacres by United States forces at Phi Phu, Trieu Ai, My Luoc and so many other hamlets, I can say with certainty that Westmoreland's assessment was false".
50.
William Westmoreland accused Westmoreland of concealing evidence of atrocities from the American public when he was the Army Chief of Staff.
51.
General William Westmoreland, who commanded US military operations in the Vietnam War, unhesitatingly believed Giap was a butcher for relentlessly sacrificing his soldiers in unwinnable battles.
52.
William Westmoreland met her again in North Carolina when she was nineteen and a student at University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
53.
Just hours after William Westmoreland was sworn in as Army Chief of Staff on July 7,1968, his brother-in-law, Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Van Deusen, was killed when his helicopter was shot down in the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam.
54.
William Westmoreland died on July 18,2005, at the age of 91 at the Bishop Gadsden retirement home in Charleston, South Carolina.
55.
William Westmoreland had suffered from Alzheimer's disease during the final years of his life.
56.
William Westmoreland was buried on July 23,2005, at the West Point Cemetery.
57.
William Westmoreland was inducted as a Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln by the governor of Illinois in 1970 in the area of Government.