General William E. DePuy by Henry G. Gole

Author:Henry G. Gole
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780813173016
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky

First, General DePuy politely knocked at the office door. Weyand beckoned for him to come in and said,

“Hi, Bill!”

DePuy approached Weyand’s desk, stood at attention, and saluted.

“Good morning, Sir!”

Weyand motioned him to a chair, introduced me, and they proceeded with some small talk for the next five or ten minutes. Finally, DePuy got to the central issue. He told Weyand that he was planning a large operation in War Zone C for the next day. He needed all the available helicopter support in order to get the job done. Weyand leaned back in the swivel chair and looked at the ceiling in silence for several moments. Then he said,

“The 25th Division is also planning a large operation in the Rung Sat Special Zone. They are going to need a lot of helicopter support, too.”

Then he leaned forward, looked DePuy squarely in the eyes and said,

“Bill, our helicopter assets are limited. What would you do?”

Without a moment’s hesitation, DePuy said, “Sir, I would allocate the helicopter support to the highest priority mission.”

Weyand nodded slowly.

“You’re right, Bill. Tomorrow, the 25th Division has the highest priority.”

General DePuy replied,

“Yes, Sir.”

He rose, saluted, did an about face, and left the office. General Weyand turned to me and said,

“Thanks, Gerard.”

What did I learn? While I was sure that General DePuy was furious in not getting his way, it reminded me that General DePuy was a soldier. He understood the chain of command. He understood the word “no.” He understood the relationship between subordinates and seniors, and he did not challenge his boss, even though General Weyand was in charge temporarily, until General Seaman’s return. Why couldn’t Seaman just say, “No”?25

DePuy’s reputation attracted some officers seeking command and apparently frightened others away. Richard Cavazos (GEN, USA, Ret.), a decorated veteran of Korea and charismatic commander, arrived in Vietnam in January 1967. While at the replacement center he saw a notice on the bulletin board signed by LTC Jim Pennington. It said that any newly arriving lieutenant colonel seeking battalion command should call Pennington at the telephone number provided. Cavazos expected a “huge waiting line,” but, he remembered, “I was the only person within a two- to three-day period who responded to the note.” He assumes that the buzz about DePuy discouraged many of his contemporaries. Cavazos served for only a short period before DePuy left the division, but he reflected warmly about 1967 and chance encounters with DePuy over the years following. He said that DePuy was “the most brilliant officer I have ever run across, and it was a pleasure to be around him. He is a teacher more than he was anything else. . . . I was never in the inner circle like Paul Gorman and some of the others, but I must say I couldn’t have been treated better by anybody.”26

But Bruce Palmer (GEN, USA, Ret.) recalls Army Chief of Staff Harold K. Johnson “calling me and Abe (Creighton Abrams) [into his Pentagon office] one day and saying, ‘Goddamn it, what am I

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