A general’s chief of staff requires a diverse set of skills — tactical, supervisory, coordinating, leading and negotiating. He must fulfill many roles, on occasion acting as the commander’s most ardent advocate, harshest critic, closest adviser and alter ego. Major General Walter T. ‘Dutch’ Kerwin, who served as General William C. Westmoreland’s chief of staff during the 1968 Tet Offensive, understood those challenges very well.

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Even today, General Kerwin can vividly recall how U.S. forces fought their biggest battle since the end of the Korean War. Twenty-three years of retirement have not dulled the 84-year-old Kerwin’s remembrance of the harrowing days following the outbreak of the battle or the grueling weeks of fighting that turned back the North Vietnamese invasion.

Kerwin’s assignment as MACV chief of staff topped an action-filled career. He graduated from West Point in 1939 and received a commission in the field artillery. When World War II broke out, Kerwin rose quickly to become the 3rd Infantry Division’s artillery operations officer, participating in campaigns in North Africa, Sicily, Italy and southern France. No operation was more trying than the landings at Anzio, Italy, in 1944. After an almost effortless landing, the Allies found that well-dug-in Germans were holding the Alban Hills, blocking the route to Rome and claiming an unrestricted view of the beachhead. The German advantage in observation made artillery fire a significant threat to Allied troops. The challenge of organizing effective counterbattery fire against the enemy guns thoroughly tested Kerwin, bringing out the best of his organizational and tactical skills.

Wounded in southern France, Kerwin returned to the United States. After World War II he rose through the ranks of America’s postwar Army to command the 3rd Armored Division and serve as assistant deputy chief of staff for operations on the Army Staff before deploying to Vietnam.

In a recent interview conducted by Lt. Col. James Jay Carafano, General Kerwin recalled the difficult and complicated world of the MACV chief of staff. Kerwin’s May 1967 assignment was no matter of chance. He previously had served under MACV’s deputy commanding general, Creighton Abrams, who had a reputation as a difficult and demanding boss. Kerwin, however, thrived on pressure and challenges. The two officers had long ago earned each other’s respect and confidence, and Abrams had become a friend and mentor. When Abrams was posted to South Vietnam, Kerwin received three days’ notice to follow him.

Dutch Kerwin arrived in Vietnam as the level of the U.S. Army’s involvement in the war was nearing its peak. While military operations were expanding throughout South Vietnam, the theater’s complicated organizational arrangements strained to keep up. Although General Westmoreland, or ‘Westy,’ was the military leader most visibly connected with the war, his command, MACV, did not directly control all the forces involved. The air and naval units, for example, answered in part to the theater commander in chief in Hawaii.

Kerwin was appalled by the inefficiency of the organization when he arrived in-country. ‘The Marines were sitting up there in I Corps almost entirely by themselves,’ Kerwin recalled. ‘The bombing and other fire support was being run out of many other organizations. It was split…initially MACV was in a small headquarters downtown [in Saigon], and, in my opinion, not organized to get the best out of everything.’ According to him, the staff was simply not taking full advantage of the preponderance of power available from the various forces crammed into the theater. Theater rotation policies that moved officers through the MACV staff in less than a year did not help. ‘In retrospect,’ Kerwin said, ‘the one-year tours were a mistake.’ The staffs were never as cohesive and competent as the ones he had seen in his service with the 3rd Infantry Division during World War II.

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