General William Westmoreland, who died on Monday aged 91, commanded the American land forces in the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1968.
Although vilified by the vociferous anti-war movement as the spokesman for a dishonest military-industrial complex fighting a technological war without end, Westmoreland declared in 1985: "I have no apologies, no regrets. I gave my very best efforts. I've been hung in effigy. I've been spat upon. You just have to let those things bounce off."
Westmoreland pressed for a large increase in ground troops at a time when American casualties were mounting, and later estimated that he would have needed two million troops to "pacify" the country; at the height of the war he had only half that number. He failed in his efforts to gain permission to engage the enemy in their sanctuaries in Cambodia, Laos and North Vietnam.
The lantern-jawed "Westy" was once asked: "What is the answer to insurgency?" He replied: "Firepower." But the strategy of attrition did not pay off, and events on the ground continued to confound the Americans.
Meanwhile, domestic support for the war suffered a serious blow near the end of Westmoreland's tenure when, in 1968, enemy forces attacked a number of towns and cities in South Vietnam in what was known as the Tet Offensive.
In the battle for Hue, 5,000 Vietcong infiltrators shed their civilian clothes in the city to reveal their North Vietnamese uniforms beneath, and Westmoreland complained that the Tet Offensive "was characterised by treachery and deceitfulness".
Although he and his troops managed to fight off the attacks, the American public was stunned that the enemy had managed to mount an assault on their embassy in Saigon. President Johnson limited further increases in the number of troops; and Westmoreland, who had asked for reinforcements, was recalled to Washington to serve as the Army Chief of Staff. The Americans finally withdrew from Vietnam in 1975.
A decade after that withdrawal, Westmoreland was arguing that the United States had not lost the war: "We held the line," he insisted. "We stopped the falling of the dominoes" - a reference to the "domino theory", which held that, if one nation fell to the Communists, other in the south-east Asian theatre would follow.
He continued to think that the Tet Offensive had culminated in an "American victory"; Vietnam was not a military debacle but "a psychological and political defeat at home".
William Childs Westmoreland was born at Spartanburg, South Carolina, on March 26 1914, the son of a textile factory manager. After attending the local high school, he spent a year at The Citadel, the military college at Charleston, before moving to the Military Academy at West Point, New York.
Although average academically, he was a gifted athlete and in his final year was first captain of cadets. His left cheek bore a scar from a childhood motor car accident, but he did not discourage the rumour among local girls that he had acquired the blemish in a duel.
Having served in Hawaii and at Fort Bragg, Westmoreland saw action in the Second World War with the 34th Field Artillery, 9th Infantry Division, in North Africa and Sicily, gaining a reputation for leading from the front. He was at Utah Beach as the division's executive officer during the Normandy landings, and after D-Day he was promoted to colonel and appointed the division's chief of staff.
In 1947 Westmoreland became chief of staff of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, and five years later was recalled to active service as commander of the 187th Airborne Regiment Combat Team in Korea. He was promoted to brigadier-general, and later served in the Pentagon as deputy to the Army Chief of Staff, Maxwell Taylor. In 1956 he became the youngest major-general in the American army.
From 1958 to 1960 Westmoreland was commander of the elite 101st Airborne (Screaming Eagle) Division, and made more than 100 parachute jumps. On one occasion freak winds over Fort Campbell killed five of his paratroopers as they jumped from an aircraft; in all subsequent training exercises, Westmoreland jumped ahead of his men to test the wind conditions.
Westmoreland became the superintendent of West Point in 1960 and, four years later was a three-star general commanding American troops in Vietnam.
Following his return from south-east Asia, Westmoreland served as Army chief of staff for four years. He retired in 1972 but continued participate in veterans' activities.
Vietnam was the first conflict fought out on the world's television screens, and Westmoreland once famously observed: "Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind." In his autobiography, A Soldier Reports (1976), he did not conceal his scorn for the press: Vietnam was, he wrote, "the first war in history lost in the columns of the New York Times".
In 1982 Westmoreland sued CBS over a documentary which implied that he had deceived President Johnson and the public about the strength of the enemy forces in Vietnam, but settled before the case went to the jury.
He is survived by his wife, Katherine, whom he married in 1947, and by a son and two daughters.
