The Peter Principle. Along with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a useful guide for insuring I never became “that guy.”
By the way, the fact that he was Airborne does not mean he would automatically have had an affinity towards SF - most Airborne types really don’t care for us. Especially the ones who bolo’ed the Q course I would imagine…
oh i agree, West Moreland probably wasn’t that great either.
MACV-SOG had warned Saigon time and time again that the North Vietnamese had tanks and were moving down the “trail” but were told they had mistaken tank track for that of bulldozers. That the T54’s didn’t have the rear external fuel tanks which meant there was a fuel pipeline running down the trail (some of it was found at target site Oscar 8).
When the tanks attacked at Lang Vie and later at Ben Het, Saigon was totally surprised despite all the intel SOG had supplied.
I view West Moreland as the lesser of the two incompetents but the other major was security at every level but especially in Saigon.
John Plaster’s book details a lot of this including one SOG mission run by Pat Watkins where he and his team were greeted by a personal message to Pat Watkin from the North Vietnamese, that if they left the area not that no harm would come to them…so much for a highly classified top secret mission.
A similar incident happened with another SOG member at CCN Lynne Black