World War II, Korean War and interbellum From 1940 to 1942, Weyand was assigned to active duty and served with the 6th Field Artillery. He graduated from the
Command and General Staff College at
Fort Leavenworth in 1942 and served as adjutant of the Harbor Defense Command in
San Francisco from 1942 to 1943. He moved on to the Office of the Chief of Intelligence for the
US War Department General Staff in 1944. He became assistant chief of staff for intelligence in the
China-Burma-India Theater from 1944 to 1945. In the immediate aftermath of the war he was in the
Military Intelligence Service in Washington, D.C. from 1945 to 1946. Weyand was chief of staff for intelligence, United States Army Forces, Middle Pacific from 1946 to 1949. He graduated from the
United States Army Infantry School at Fort Benning in 1950. He became commander of the 1st Battalion,
7th Infantry Regiment and the assistant chief of staff, G–3, of the
3d Infantry Division during the
Korean War from 1950 to 1951. Weyand served on the faculty of the
Infantry School from 1952 to 1953. Following this assignment he attended the
Armed Forces Staff College, and upon graduation became military assistant in the
Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Financial Management until 1954. He moved on to become military assistant and executive to the Secretary of the Army from 1954 to 1957. He then graduated from the
Army War College in 1958, moving on to command the
3d Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment, in Europe (1958–1959). He served in the Office of the United States Commander in Berlin in 1960 then became chief of staff for the Communications Zone,
United States Army, Europe from 1960 to 1961. He was the deputy chief and chief of legislative liaison for the Department of the Army from 1961 to 1964.
Vietnam War Weyand became commander of the
25th Infantry Division, stationed in Hawaii, in 1964. He continued to lead the division as it was introduced into operations in Vietnam in 1965 and 1966. He served as the head of the 25th Division until 1967, when he became deputy, then acting commander, and finally commander of
II Field Force, Vietnam responsible for
III Corps Tactical Zone comprising the 11 provinces around
Saigon. In 1968, he became chief of the Office of Reserve Components. A dissenter from General
William Westmoreland's more conventional war strategy, Weyand's experience as a former intelligence officer gave him a sense of the enemy's intentions. He realized that "the key to success in Vietnam was in securing and pacifying the towns and villages of South Vietnam" (Mark Salter, John McCain "Hard Call: The Art of Great Decisions"). Weyand managed to convince a reluctant General Westmoreland to allow him to redeploy troops away from the Cambodian border area closer to Saigon, significantly contributing to making the 1968 Tet Offensive a military catastrophe for North Vietnam. Before the 1968 holiday truce for Tet went into effect, Fred Weyand got the feeling that "something was coming that was going to be pretty bad, and it wasn't going to be up on the Laotian border somewhere, it was going to be right in our own backyard." Westmoreland's obsession with the enemy hitting the Marines at Khe Sanh turned out to be a tactical feint, and the Communist strategy all along was a multi-pronged, simultaneous attack of key cities (Hue', Da Nang, Nha Trang, Quinhon, Kontum, Banmethuot, My Tho, Can Tho, Ben Tre and Saigon) Weyand's disposition of his forces denied the Communists from taking Saigon. A surprise attack, a key success of the Communist offensive would have been the capture of Saigon. He "had prepared better than he could have known for a battle he could never have anticipated."
Senior commands and Chief of Staff Weyand served briefly as Commander in Chief of the
United States Army Pacific in 1973 and was
Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Army from May 1973 to October 1974. Weyand was appointed as
Chief of Staff of the United States Army from 3 October 1974 to 30 September 1976. As Chief of Staff he supervised army moves to improve the combat-to-support troop ratio, to achieve a sixteen-division force, to enhance the effectiveness of roundout units, and to improve personnel and logistical readiness. Weyand retired from active service in October 1976.
Confidential source for 1967 New York Times article In an editorial in
The New York Times on 11 December 2006,
Murray Fromson, a reporter for
CBS during the Vietnam War, stated that General Weyand had agreed to reveal himself as the confidential source for
New York Times reporter
R. W. Apple Jr.'s 7 August 1967, story "Vietnam: The Signs of Stalemate." General Weyand, then commander of III Corps in Vietnam, was the unidentified high-ranking officer who told Apple and Fromson (reporting the same story for CBS) that: The story was the first intimation that the war was reaching a stalemate, and contributed to changing sentiment about the war. ==Dates of rank==