Following graduation from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1936, Westmoreland became an artillery officer and served in several assignments with the 18th Field Artillery at
Fort Sill. In 1939, he was promoted to first lieutenant, after which he was a battery commander and battalion staff officer with the 8th Field Artillery at
Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. In
World War II, Westmoreland saw combat with the
34th Field Artillery Regiment,
9th Infantry Division, in
Tunisia,
Sicily,
France, and
Germany; he commanded the 34th Battalion in Tunisia and Sicily. He reached the temporary wartime rank of
colonel, and on 13 October 1944, was appointed the
chief of staff of the 9th Infantry Division. After the war, Westmoreland completed
paratrooper training at the
Army's Jump School in 1946. He then commanded the
504th Parachute Infantry Regiment,
82nd Airborne Division. From 1947 to 1950, he served as chief of staff for the 82nd Airborne Division. He 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. From July 1952 to October 1953, Westmoreland commanded the
187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team in Japan and Korea. After returning to the United States in October 1953, Westmoreland was deputy assistant chief of staff, G–1, for manpower control on the Army staff until 1955. From 1955 to 1958, he was the United States Army's Secretary of the General Staff. He then commanded the
101st Airborne Division from 1958 to 1960. He was
Superintendent of the United States Military Academy from 1960 to 1963. In 1962, Westmoreland was admitted as an honorary member of the Massachusetts
Society of the Cincinnati. He was promoted to lieutenant general in July 1963 and was Commanding General of the
XVIII Airborne Corps from 1963 to 1964.
Vietnam War: Background and overview at
Cam Ranh Air Base in
Khánh Hòa province, 23 December 1967 , South Vietnam, in October 1966 The attempted French re-colonization of
Vietnam following World War II culminated in a decisive
French defeat at the
Battle of Dien Bien Phu. The Geneva Conference (26 April – 20 July 1954) discussed the possibility of restoring peace in
Indochina, and temporarily separated Vietnam into two zones, a northern zone to be governed by the Việt Minh, and a southern zone to be governed by the
State of Vietnam, then headed by former emperor
Bảo Đại. A Conference Final Declaration, issued by the British chairman of the conference, provided that a general election be held by July 1956 to create a unified Vietnamese state. Although presented as a consensus view, this document was not accepted by the delegates of either the State of Vietnam or the United States. In addition,
China, the
Soviet Union, and other communist nations recognized
North Vietnam while the United States and other non-communist states recognized
South Vietnam as the legitimate government. In the 1950s the United States had endorsed the view of the Republic of Vietnam that Vietnam should be one nation, but by the time Westmoreland became army commander in South Vietnam, the United States had shifted to a view that Vietnam should like Korea remain separated between an anti-Communist South and a Communist North, separated by a demilitarized zone. To achieve this the United States was willing greatly to increase the resources it was devoting to Vietnam, but not to make the still larger increase that would have been required by an invasion of the North. The infiltration by regular
North Vietnamese Army forces into the South could not be dealt with by an invasion of the North because intervention by China was something the U.S. government wanted to avoid, but President
Lyndon B. Johnson had given commitments to uphold South Vietnam against communist North Vietnam. General
Harold Keith Johnson, Army Chief of Staff, came to see U.S. goals as having become mutually inconsistent, because defeating the Communists would require declaring a national emergency and fully mobilizing the resources of the US. General Johnson was critical of Westmoreland's defused corporate style, considering him overattentive to what government officials wanted to hear. Nonetheless, Westmoreland was operating within longstanding army protocols of subordinating the military to civilian policymakers. The most important constraint was staying on the strategic defensive out of fear of Chinese intervention, but at the same time Johnson had made it clear that there was a higher commitment to defending Vietnam. Much of the thinking about defense was by academics turned government advisors who concentrated on nuclear weapons, seen as making conventional war obsolete. The fashion for counter-insurgency thinking also denigrated the role of
conventional warfare. Despite the inconclusive outcome of the Korean War, Americans expected the war to end with an unconditional surrender of the enemy. Consistent with the enthusiasm of Defense Secretary
Robert McNamara for statistics, Westmoreland placed emphasis on
body count and cited the
Battle of Ia Drang as evidence the communists were losing. The government sought to win at low cost, and policymakers received McNamara's interpretation indicating huge American casualties in prospect, prompting a reassessment of what could be achieved. The Battle of Ia Drang was unusual in that U.S. troops brought a large enemy formation to battle. After talking to junior officers General Westmoreland became skeptical about localised concentrated
search and destroy sweeps of short duration, because the Communist forces controlled whether there were military engagements, giving an option to simply avoid battle with US forces if the situation warranted it. The alternative of sustained countrywide pacification operations, which would require massive use of US manpower, was never available to Westmoreland, because it was considered politically unacceptable. In public, Westmoreland continued to be sanguine about the progress being made throughout his time in Vietnam, though supportive journalist
James Reston thought Westmoreland's characterizing of the conflict as
attrition warfare presented his generalship in a misleading light. Westmoreland's critics say his successor, General Creighton Abrams, deliberately switched emphasis away from what Westmoreland dubbed attrition. Revisionists point to Abrams's first big operation being a tactical success that disrupted North Vietnamese buildup, but resulted in the
Battle of Hamburger Hill, a political disaster that effectively curtailed Abrams's freedom to continue with such operations. == Commander of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) ==