When Schwarzkopf Met Westmoreland, by Don North

Don North was a free-lance photographer and videographer who happened one day, in August 1965, upon a chance encounter between General William Westmoreland, commander of the U.S. Military Assistance Command in Vietnam and one of his young officers who would one day command the U.S. led coalition in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.  That officer was just a major then.  His name was H. Norman Schwarzkopf.

General Westmoreland (L), Major Schwarzkopf (C)
Photo by: Don North

North explains the two officers’ meeting as a photo opportunity for Westmoreland.  Microphones were not allowed but cameramen and photographers could shoot film and take pictures at a respectable distance.  They were quite a study in contrasts.  Schwarzkopf, filthy from field duty and smelling of death, made the general “recoil a little.”  The general, arriving from his headquarters in the rear, was turned out in freshly laundered and starched fatigues. 

Footage of the two officers speaking with one another appeared on the nightly news.  Without audio the video created an impression quite different from what actually transpired, according to Schwarzkopf.

This is interesting because, in the two men’s histories there are some notable similarities.

• As senior commanders, both men chose to command operations from the rear.
• Westmoreland is widely blamed for losing the war in Vietnam; Schwarzkopf took a lot of heat for the coalition’s not winning outright in the Gulf War.
• Both men addressed joint sessions of congress.

North reports that Schwarzkopf characterized the meeting as a photo op, saying that Westmoreland asked him nothing about his mission, not even an “atta-boy” for a job well done.  Instead, according to Schwarzkopf he asked about the quality of the chow the troops were getting and if they were receiving mail. 

Schwarzkopf’s mother, wrote North, happened to catch the news when that segment ran.  Without the benefit of sound, her impression was that Westmoreland was a most caring man and capable leader.  Then-major Schwarzkopf said that the episode caused him to lose whatever respect he had for the general. [1]

General Scharzkopf during
DESERT STORM

Loss of respect is something else Schwarzkopf has in common with his Vietnam counterpart.  Schwarzkopf wasn’t given to the kind of photo-op described in North’s article, of the type made to enhance his public image.  On the contrary, his public image needed no enhancement.  Instead, as the supported combatant commander in the Gulf War, Schwarzkopf earned the disrespect of nearly everyone who worked for him, up to and including officers of flag rank, by failing to control his temper.  Characterizing the infamous Schwarzkopf temper as a “sweeping [of] his headquarters with verbal grapeshot month after month,” author Rick Atkinson described the CENTCOM headquarters as “a dispirited bunker, where initiative withered and even senior generals hesitated to bring him unpleasant tidings.” [2]  Others have written about Schwarzkopf’s “counterproductive, fear-inducing tirades.” [3].   Retired Army colonel, David Hackworth put it this way when trying to explain the CENTCOM commander’s leadership style.  “Schwarzkopf,” he wrote, “sat in his bunker and bellowed and fretted.” [4]

Implications

I actually learned more in this article about General Westmoreland than I did about General Schwarzkopf.  The article itself was not all that informative.  However, General Westmoreland as a subject, linked this to one of the articles analyzed last week.  That one, painting the general in a more positive light; and, this one, showing a negative side of him, suggests that General Westmoreland was a very complicated man.  At the same time, reading the article and writing this synopsis made me realize how little I still actually know about General Westmoreland and the war in Vietnam.  Several avenues of thought, prompted by this study, run out to inconclusive ends.  One concerns the Army’s attitude, at the time of the Vietnam War, compared to its frame of reference at the time of the Gulf War.  General Schwarzkopf led an Army that was still emotionally scarred by Vietnam.  A large part of the motivation to win in the Gulf seemed to be to finally get over the ‘Vietnam syndrome.’  “No more Vietnams,” was a phrase we heard often.  My curiosity is piqued over what were the Army’s and the nation’s attitudes about Vietnam in relation to the Korean War, a conflict for which we were very much unprepared and which also was considered lost.  Why did we not hear talk of “no more Korea’s?”   The other still significantly unformed conception about Vietnam is about the actual fighting and whether or not it is true to say that the U.S. won the engagements on the battlefield but lost them in the press.  Was it our political leadership that failed us, or was it the military?  See, all this is why I signed up to study military history.

Notes.

1.  Don North, “When Schwarzkopf Met Westmoreland,” History Net (March 17, 2011),   http://www.
historynet.com/when-schwarzkopf-met-westmoreland.htm (accessed December 14, 2011).

2.  Rick Atkinson, Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War (New York, Houghton-Mifflin, 1993), 3.

3.  Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, The Generals’ War: The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf (Boston, Little, Brown, and Co., 1995), 148.

4.  David H. Hackworth, Hazardous Duty (New York, William Morrow and Co., 1996), 59.