Quotes by William Westmoreland

“When I took command in Vietnam, I gave great emphasis to food and medical care - and to the mail.”

“When the soldiers came home from Vietnam, there were no parades, no celebrations. So they built the Vietnam Memorial for themselves.”

“War is fear cloaked in courage.”

“President Johnson did not want the Vietnam War to broaden. He wanted the North Vietnamese to leave their brothers in the South alone.”

“It's the first war we've ever fought on the television screen and the first war that our country ever fought where the media had full reign.”

“We were succeeding. When you looked at specifics, this became a war of attrition. We were winning.”

“I do not believe that the men who served in uniform in Vietnam have been given the credit they deserve. It was a difficult war against an unorthodox enemy.”

“War is fear cloaked in courage.”

“Patton looked like his father and had similar mannerisms. Their speech was somewhat alike as well. It was pretty evident that young Patton was the son of the old man. However, the impressive thing ...”

“Well, the Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does the Westerner. Life is plentiful, life is cheap in the Orient. And, as the philosophy of the Orient expresses it - life is - is no...”

“The Green Beret... proudly worn by the United States Army Special Forces... and acclaimed by our late President, John F. Kennedy, as a symbol of excellence, a badge of courage, a mark of distinctio...”

“To Kitsy, Stevie, Rip, and Margaret, and to the valiant men and women of the United States and other nations who served the cause of freedom in South Vietnam.”

“Serving one's country as a military man is rewarding experience. It is nevertheless a life of constraint. A military man serves within carefully prescribed limits, be it as enlisted man, junior off...”

“An officer corps, my West Point education emphasized, must have a code of ethics that tolerates no lying, no cheating, no stealing, no immorality, no killing other than that recognized under intern...”

“Returning home on leave following my second year at West Point, I called on a great-uncle who had joined the Confederate Army at the age of sixteen and had fought in a number of major Civil War bat...”

“As graduation neared, neither my classmates nor I could know, of course, that World War II was in the offing. It was destined to expose us to trying and often tragic events. My roommate, Billy Huls...”

“Despite a number of near misses, I came through the war unscathed. In Tunisia a shell hit my vehicle but without harm to me, and in Sicily an exploding mine blew up my vehicle, but I was thrown cle...”

“Russians and vodka, I soon learned, were virtually synonymous. Twice I accompanied my division commander, General Craig, with his Russian opposite beyond the Elbe. Since General Craig was an abstai...”

“Being in Germany in the 1940s brought back recollections of my first visit long before as a Boy Scout, when I had had my first encounter with German appreciation of dueling. As as child I had been ...”

“During the war years, it was my privilege to associate on a number of occasions with prominent personalities, such as Senator Harry S Truman, for whom my battalion staged an artillery demonstration...”