Modern History - Personalities

William Westmoreland, in full William Childs Westmoreland, (born March 26, 1914, Spartanburg county, South Carolina, U.S.—died July 18, 2005, Charleston, South Carolina), U.S. Army officer who commanded U.S. forces in the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1968.

History.com website which informs on Early life and Military Career, Strategy of Attrition, Impact of Tet Offensive and Post Vietnam life and Career

Website detailing William Westmoreland's bibliographic information.

Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the Army artilleryman and paratrooper who failed to lead United States forces to victory in Vietnam from 1964 to 1968 and then made himself the most prominent advocate for recognition of their sacrifices, spending the rest of his life paying tribute to his soldiers, died Monday night in a retirement home in Charleston, S.C., his son, James Ripley Westmoreland, announced.

An introduction the William C. Westmoreland

This essay examines the efforts of General William C. Westmoreland to stimulate areassessment of American strategy in Vietnam during' Ie years 1967. a 1968. Reflecting his misgivings about-the strategy of attrition in early 1967, Westmoreland turned to an alternate strategy"'aimed at convicing Hanoi through the isolation of the battlefield by ground operations in Laos and North Vietnam that it could not win.

ogether these late 1965 documents detail Westmoreland's theory of victory in Vietnam. The first one provides guidance to senior commanders about how he wanted them to fight the war and the second presents his evaluation of the troops' performance and rec ommendations for improvement. They show that he fully under stood the need to provide security for the South Vietnamese so pacification and nation-building programs might succeed.

After graduating from West Point military academy and serving with the paratroops in both World War II and the Korean War, U.S. General William Westmoreland arrived in Saigon, South Vietnam, in January 1964, and became commander of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam in June 1964. He held that position for nearly four years, during which U.S. forces in South Vietnam increased from about 20,000 men to over 500,000, and he directed the U.S. ground effort until March 1968.

Profiles General William Westmoreland. His early career; Receiving the Pershing Sword; Westmoreland picked by President Lyndon Johnson as the commander of the United States military advisors in South Vietnam; Vietnam seen as a perplexing military environment; Johnson refusing to allow the measures need to win in Vietnam; Westmoreland replaced in Vietnam.

In the wake of Ken Burns’ most recent series, The Vietnam War, America’s fascination with the conflict shows no sign of abating. Fortunately the flood of popular retellings of old narratives is supplemented by a number of well-researched and reasoned efforts aimed at garnering a better sense of how our presumptions about the Vietnam War are in need of reinterpretation and revision. Returning to New Books in Military History is historian Gregory A. Daddis, author of two recent accounts of the war that together offer a sharp reassessment of the American effort. In Westmoreland’s War: Reassessing America’s Strategy in Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2014) and Withdrawal: Reassessing America’s Final Years in Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2017) Daddis challenges many existing perceptions of the readiness and roles of MACV’s two most prominent commanders, Generals William Westmoreland and Creighton Abrams, as well as their struggles with the Washington defense establishment during the war. By centering his study on the strategic planning and its execution, Daddis not only acknowledges the centrality of Vietnamese agency in the outcome of the war, he also reveals how some historians have misjudged the war’s outcome to present flawed visions of possible victory.