The obituary page is the one I'd just as soon not read. It usually announces bad news. The latest obit certainly was one of them to me. The headline said, "Frederick C. Weyand, 93, Vietnam Commander Dies".
Having reported on more than a dozen wars, I've come in contact with a countless number of generals. But Fred Weyand was a memorable one, an acquaintance that I daresay blossomed into a friendship, beginning with our first conversation at a cocktail party during the height of the Vietnam war in August 1967. Here's the way, in part, that I described it in an op-ed piece, titled Name That Source, that appeared in the New York Times on December 11, 2006:
"...He whispered to me, "Westy just doesn't get it. The war is unwinnable. We've reached a stalemate and we should find a dignified way out." He was referring to General William Westmoreland, the commander of United States forces in Vietnam..."
Weyand was willing to expand his views with me and R.W. (Johnny) Apple of the New York Times when we flew down to the Mekong Delta to talk to him off the record. We agreed and it was a pledge that we kept for more than 40 years until days after Apple died when I convinced the General to release us from our commitment of confidentiality out of respect for Johnny.
Here, in part, is what he told us:
"I've destroyed a single division three times. I've chased main force units all over the country and the impact was zilch. It meant nothing to the people. Unless a more positive and more stirring theme than simple anti-Communism can be found, the war appears likely to go on until someone gets tired and quits, which could take generations."
Producers at CBS News in New York reacted indifferently to the interview. Apple, on the other hand, included an excerpt from it without attribution to Weyand in a compelling analysis of the war on August 7, 1967, It was entitled "Stalemate." The report enraged President Johnson, General Westmoreland and General Earle Wheeler, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
I recalled that the "Stalemate" story arose again during a multi-million dollar libel suit Westmoreland brought against CBS News for reporting that he had knowingly understated the strength of North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces. On the witness stand, he was asked by a CBS lawyer for his reaction to the assertion in Apple's piece that an unnamed general had said in our interview that "the war is unwinnable." The normally composed Westmoreland was shaking as he replied 'no general of mine would ever have said that." Of course, Weyand had said it, not once when I first met him, but again during the off-the-record interview with Apple and me.
The remainder of our interview can be found here.
Eventually, after serving as the U.S. commander of all forces in Vietnam, Weyand supervised their final withdrawal. He ultimately served as the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, before retiring to Honolulu, from where we had several lengthy telephone conversations. Today, I regret the number of times I assured him of my intention to fly out to Hawaii to meet with him again. He repeatedly told me that he had some important things he wanted to get off his chest. I took it as a plea; that he trusted me and wished to unburden himself. It was only by reading some articles that I realized that what he was trying to say rang with true eloquence.
Here is one observation passed along to me by a mutual friend, Richard Halloran, a retired Washington Post military affairs correspondent, who lives in Hawaii. In 1976, Weyand wrote:
"Vietnam was a reaffirmation of the peculiar relationship between the American Army and the American people. The American Army really is a people's army in the sense that it belongs to the American people who take a jealous and proprietary interest in its involvement. When the Army is committed, the American people are committed; when the American people lose their commitment, it is futile to try to keep the Army committed. In the final analysis, the American Army is not so much an army of the executive branch as it is an arm of the American people."
"Americans have a long and proud tradition of irreverence toward and distrust of their military."
(He asserted that officers were honor-bound to refrain from politics and to obey legitimate orders even if they disagreed with them. - RH)
"During the Vietnam War, there were those -- many with the best of intentions -- who argued that the Army should not obey its orders and should refuse to serve in Vietnam. But their argument that soldiers should obey 'the dictates of their own conscience' is a slippery slope indeed. At the bottom of this slope is military dictatorship."
The general's comments about American troops who fought in Vietnam and the press that covered it also appeared in an interview conducted by Col. Harry Summers in a 1988 issue of Vietnam magazine. Here are some excerpts:
"What particularly haunts me, what I think is one of the saddest legacies of the Vietnam War is the cruel misperception that the American fighting men there did not measure up to their predecessors in World War II and Korea. Nothing could be further from the truth.
"...(following the initial stages of the Tet Offensive in 1968): I can understand the initial reporting. After all the glowing reports that the war was about to wind down, the Tet Offensive came as a terrible shock. But the Battle of the Bulge in 1944 also was a terrible shock. Like the VC's Tet Offensive, it was a desperate gamble to win the war in a single stroke and it too initially provoked some sensationalist headlines as the U.S. forces reeled back and entire units surrendered to the enemy. But as it progressed the news media finally got it straight... Don't get me wrong. I believe strongly that a free press is essential to our democracy and I've never subscribed to the simple-minded notion that the media lost the Vietnam War. I think that most of the war correspondents in Vietnam were competent and capable professionals. But I also think--and the reporting of Tet was a prime example -- that the media wields such great influence in shaping public opinion that it must be especially careful to get the story straight. The American people deserve at least that."