DEATH OF AN OLD SOLDIER

He was an old man when he died last night.

Ninety-one by official reckoning. That’s what it said on the news. An old warrior. Passing in review one last time.

He was a national figure, a war hero, his name known to everywhere four short decades ago. He was a familiar on the flickering black/white TV screens of the day. He was as well known to us as Walter Kronkite.

And he did almost as much in undermining the military might and authority of the United States.

No unrepentant liberal this man. He stood four square for country, god, honor, and duty. Duty above all.

His name? William Westmoreland. General William Westmorland. And he led our troops into the sweating Hell Mouth that was ‘Nam. He was a soldier and fought with all the weapons at his disposal. He lost a war. We all lost that war. Trouble is. Right up to the moment of his meeting with Saint Pete, Westy never knew we got our asses kicked by a determined, effectively led little, yellow antagonist now well on the path to reconciliation with the superpower it humiliated.

Viet Nam brought us two towering soldier figures. Westmoreland was the better known, but working hand in mailed glove with the chief was WW2 veteran, the architect of firebombing the Japanese homeland, Air Force General, Curtis LeMay.

“Bombs away with Curt LeMay,” was an often heard chant in the old hippie days when thousands of young protestors took on the cause of the Viet Nam war itself. How dare they send American lads to bleed in jungles and rice paddies just to defend the right of investors to build high rise hotels. After the big war, LeMay went on to plan and direct the notion of the Strategic Air Command, keeping bombers in the air at all times ready to enter Soviet airspace at the drop of a fail-safe. Anybody remember the brilliant movie DR. STRANGELOVE?

The General died back in 1990 appreciated by military historians; still hated by the aging liberals who reviled him in their youth.

Fighting a very a-symmetrical war such as was Southeast Asia was not fully appreciated by LeMay. Westmoreland had a much better grasp on the Vietnamese reality. The former preferred massive amounts of dropped ordinance…carpet bombing, assaults on strongholds real and imagined, expressing the desire to ‘bomb them back to the stone age’.

General LeMay would not have survived in the modern era where warfare is increasingly more political and less blow ‘em to hell.

One of Westmoreland’s major tactical innovations was the firebase. He put these all over the southern half of the ravaged land. A firebase was a strong point, with lots of artillery and troops a-plenty deep in the heart of VC territory, a thorn in the side and a tempting target. They were often attacked, but never taken.

In an earlier conflict the tactic worked, for the Cong. Back in 1954 a kind of firebase was created by the Phrench Foreign Legion at a place called Dien Bien Phu. It came under guerilla attack as was slowly squeezed until it surrendered. That battle kicked the imperial Frog out of S. E. Asia, opening the way for Americans in small numbers, non-combatant advisors we were told, to take their place. The rest is sad history.

With all the weapons and resources at his disposal, Westmoreland could not win the war in SouthEast Asia using the traditional tactics he had been schooled in. The enemy could afford to take more casualties than we and would usually fight at a time and place of his own choosing. He was intelligent, well-trained, and, above all, dedicated to the re-unification of his country. America couldn’t match that. We were high tech invaders in a primitive land and lost to a foe who relied on captured American weapons, home made mines, tunnels, camouflage, and sharpened stakes.

Westmoreland’s death last night has brought all the bitterness of that long ago war back into focus. It remains very much with us thirty years later. Think only back to the last presidential election. John Kerry portrayed himself as the epitome of the Viet Nam era vet. He overplayed that hand and went down in flames largely due to a group called ‘the swift boat vets’.

John Kerry was, perhaps, the last casualty of that nasty and stupidly waged war.