A Soldier Reports

Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc, 1976. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. Very good/Good. x, 446 pages. Endpaper maps. Occasional footnotes. Illustrations. Maps. Glossary. Index. DJ worn, torn, soiled, and chipped. Signed by the author on the half-title page and immediately below inscribed by the author "with hugs and kisses" and signed "Westy"! William Childs Westmoreland (March 26, 1914 - July 18, 2005) was a United States Army general, who most notably commanded U.S. forces during the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1968. He served as Chief of Staff of the United States Army from 1968 to 1972. Westmoreland adopted a strategy of attrition against the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army, attempting to drain them of manpower and supplies. He also made use of the United States' edge in artillery and air power, both in tactical confrontations and in relentless strategic bombing of North Vietnam. Many of the battles in Vietnam were technically U.S. victories, with the U.S. Army in control of the field afterward; holding territory gained this way proved difficult, however. Public support for the war eventually diminished, especially after the Battle of Khe Sanh and the Tet Offensive in 1968. By the time he was re-assigned as Army Chief of Staff, U.S. military forces in Vietnam had reached a peak of 535,000. Derived from a review posted on-line: This is the first full-fledged war memoir by a senior member of the American Government. "A Soldier Reports," by the commander of United States forces in Vietnam from 1964 to mid-1968, deserves to be reviewed on its own terms, as a soldier's version of events. Gen. William C. Westmoreland does not explore the moral aspects of the war and displays virtually no understanding of the struggle as seen from the United States. But therein lies much of the book's value; this is the view from inside. The Westmoreland thesis is that the war was winnable, and was lost only because civilian leadership in Washington failed to supply the necessary means. It is when the General comes to his own role that interest accelerates. He writes that he was not truly in charge of the war; that what he wanted was to head a Southeast Asian Command, overseeing all aspects of the war throughout Indochina. He portrays himself as a field commander at the end of a long string that wound back to CINCPAC, Defense, State, the various embassies, the C.I.A. and finally the White House. The civilians imposed the strategy of "graduated response" on him and, when it failed, blamed him.