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… - William Westmoreland

Among some of my military colleagues I nevertheless sense a lingering concern that the military served as the scapegoat of the war in Vietnam. I fail to share that concern. The military quite clearly did the job that the nation expected of it, and I am convinced that history will reflect more favorably upon the performance of the military than upon that of the politicians and policy makers. The American people can be proud that their military leaders scrupulously adhered to a basic tenet of our constitution prescribing civilian control of the military. As the soldier prays for peace he must be prepared to cope with the hardships of war and to bear its scars.

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 about George is that he didn't concern himself with his last name. He went out and made a career, earning everything on his own... He did a very good job in command of the 11th ACR and handled himself professionally. It's quite a burden the son of a senior officer has to carry and I must say, to his credit, he did it well. Because down through history, when you look at the sons of famous people, they were not all winners.

Ignoring the restrictions which the United States imposed upon itself in conducting the war in Indochina, some observers have seen in the outcome some special military genius on the side of North Vietnam. They have in large measure attributed that alleged genius to my apparent counterpart, Vo Nyugen Giap. In reality, Giap was hardly my counterpart, for my position was never so exalted as Giap's. While he was apparently an influential member of his country's government, I was a field commander restricted to decisions and actions within the boundaries of South Vietnam, subject to the dictates of my country's government, and influential in policy matters only to the extent that Washington chose to act on my recommendations. Yet since Giap was for long his own field commander, there was enough direct confrontation between the two of us to enable me to some degree to analyze and judge his military performance.