ABRAMS, Creighton William, Jr.

(b. 15 September 1914 in Springfield, Massachusetts; d. 4 September 1974 in Washington, D.C.), army officer who commanded U.S. forces in Vietnam from 1968 to 1972.

Abrams was the oldest of three children born to Creighton William Abrams, a railroad repairman, and Nellie Randall, a homemaker. Abrams graduated as valedictorian and senior class president of Agawam High School in Agawam, Massachusetts, a community just south of Springfield, in 1932. Abrams then graduated from the U.S. Military Academy and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the cavalry in 1936. On 30 August that same year, Abrams married Julia Harvey; they had six children. Following service with the 1st Cavalry Division, he was assigned to the 1st Armored Division in 1940, before being transferred to the 4th Armored Division in April 1941. After briefly serving as commander of a battalion in the 37th Armored Regiment and then as executive officer of the regiment, he was named commander of the 37th Tank Battalion with the rank of lieutenant colonel in September 1943.

Abrams was a demanding leader who emphasized hard training and strict discipline. Stocky, plainspoken, gruff, and noted for his short fuse, he ran his battalion in a businesslike fashion, although he always evidenced a heartfelt concern for the well-being of his men. After three years of training in the United States and England, Abrams and the 4th Armored Division landed in Normandy in July 1944. During the next ten months, as commander of the 37th Tank Battalion and for a time Combat Command A and Combat Command B, he was often in the division's vanguard as it drove across France and Germany as part of the Third Army, commanded by General George Patton, Jr. Displaying tactical acumen and usually leading from his own tank, dubbed "Thunderbolt," Abrams earned a reputation as one of the U.S. Army's outstanding tank commanders. The high point in his World War II service came during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, when he led the task force that broke through the German lines to relieve U.S. units bottled up in Bastogne, Belgium.

After the war Abrams held a variety of staff and troop assignments in which he enhanced his reputation as an expert on armored warfare. He also graduated from the Command and General Staff College in 1949 and the Army War College in 1953. During the final stage of the Korean War he served successively as chief of staff of I Corps, IX Corps, and X Corps, helping plan defenses against the last major Communist attacks. Abrams was promoted to brigadier general in 1956 and to major general in 1960. While attached to the office of the army chief of staff he commanded the troops deployed to the University of Mississippi in 1962 to quell the riots that broke out after the admission of an African-American student. A year later he commanded the troops alerted for possible intervention in Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, Alabama, at a time of tense racial unrest. Impressed by Abrams's sensitive handling of these controversial affairs and the high regard other generals had for him, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1964 appointed Abrams vice chief of staff of the army; he also was promoted to full general. As vice chief of staff, Abrams worked with Chief of Staff General Harold K. Johnson to direct the army's buildup for the Vietnam War, a task complicated by President Lyndon B. Johnson's refusal to mobilize the reserves and the National Guard. This experience convinced Abrams that, in the future, reserve components must be integrated into the army structure in a way that ensured their availability in a conflict.

In April 1967 Abrams was appointed deputy commander of U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), with the expectation he would eventually succeed General William C. Westmoreland as MACV commander. Abrams's primary responsibility was to improve the military effectiveness of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). To this point ARVN, plagued by weak leadership, inadequate training, a high desertion rate, shortages of military equipment, corruption, and excessive involvement in politics, had generally performed poorly in battles with Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese main-force units and in the pacification campaign that was designed to eliminate VC insurgents from the countryside and provide protection for the rural population. Optimistic about the fighting ability of the South Vietnamese soldier and able to work with Vietnamese authorities, Abrams tried to make up for ARVN's ills, focusing primarily on its leadership and logistical shortcomings. When ARVN performed much better than anticipated during the Communist Tet offensive in early 1968, Abrams received much of the credit.

During the Tet offensive, Westmoreland, lacking confidence in the local field commanders, made Abrams temporary commander of the I Corps area in northern South Vietnam. The heaviest fighting centered on the city of Hue, and by insisting that his mixed force of U.S. and ARVN troops had plentiful firepower and logistical support, Abrams was able to clear the city of North Vietnamese and VC forces.

Following Westmoreland's departure to become the army's chief of staff, Abrams became commander of MACV on 3 July 1968, a job he had unofficially been performing since the Tet offensive. He quickly made major changes in the conduct of the war. Westmoreland had emphasized a two-war strategy: U.S. forces engaged in large-scale search-and-destroy missions to destroy main-force enemy units, while the South Vietnamese focused on local security. Implementing many of the recommendations of "A Program for Pacification and Long-Term Development of South Vietnam," a study prepared in the army chief of staff's office in 1965–1966 that argued that control of the population was the key to victory, Abrams initiated a one-war operational strategy. He ended Westmoreland's division of missions between U.S. and South Vietnamese combat forces and instructed all units to concentrate on providing protection for South Vietnam's villages.

Massive sweep operations were downgraded, and primacy was given to small-unit patrols and ambushes to cut off the Communists' access to the population, interdict their movement, and locate and destroy their supply caches. These tactics were complemented by incursions into Cambodia in 1970 and Laos in 1971 to push the Communists away from the borders of South Vietnam and to destroy supplies, and by pacification programs meant to eliminate the Communist infrastructure in South Vietnam's villages and hamlets. Nation-building programs were instituted to improve South Vietnam's educational, medical, transportation, and agricultural systems. Before long, statistical indicators showing reduced VC activity among the population seemed to indicate that pacification was succeeding, although the heavy losses suffered by VC forces during the Tet offensive might have been as important as Abrams's efforts.

In the spring of 1969 Abrams was charged with carrying out President Richard M. Nixon's policy of Vietnamization, which prescribed the unilateral withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Vietnam and assigned South Vietnamese forces greater responsibility for the conduct of the war. Abrams doubted that the South Vietnamese could deal with North Vietnamese forces by themselves in the foreseeable future and believed they would need residual U.S. combat and material support for years. Nevertheless he was loyal to his superiors in Washington. While cautioning Nixon not to move too quickly in deescalating U.S. involvement, he vigorously followed through with Vietnamization, virtually ending major U.S. field operations by the fall of 1969. Abrams directed the withdrawal of U.S. forces, which decreased from approximately 550,000 troops in early 1969 to 24,000 at the end of 1972, and oversaw a vast increase in the size of South Vietnamese forces and programs to improve their leadership, training, and arms.

Abrams's efforts to prepare the South Vietnamese to fight alone had their deficiencies. He did not insist that they free up more of their regular forces from static security missions so they could be organized into a mobile strategic reserve; he was slow to make plans for more heavy equipment for ARVN; and he failed to take a hard-nosed stand on the need for South Vietnam to improve its high-level military leadership. Yet to many, Abrams's efforts seemed reasonably successful when the South Vietnamese, with the crucial assistance of U.S. airpower and advisors, repelled a major North Vietnamese offensive in the spring of 1972.

In June 1972 Abrams left Vietnam and returned to the United States to become army chief of staff in October of that year. During the next two years he devoted himself to rebuilding an army that was demoralized by its Vietnam ordeal and, when Nixon ended conscription, converting it into an all-volunteer force. Stressing combat readiness, the integration of reserve forces into the active force structure, greater attention to the welfare of soldiers and their families, the need for the most modern weapons, and new doctrines of air-land warfare, he helped lay the foundation for the professional army that performed superbly in the Gulf War in 1991. The M1 battle tank, the backbone of the modern U.S. Army armored division, is named after Abrams. Abrams died of complications from surgery for lung cancer and was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

Abrams was one of the outstanding soldiers of his era. An aggressive and inspiring leader who epitomized professionalism and integrity, he had the difficult tasks of orchestrating the withdrawal of the United States from an unpopular war and giving the South Vietnamese at least a chance for survival once U.S. military participation had ended. Although South Vietnam collapsed in 1975, Abrams fulfilled his rearguard mission as skillfully as could be expected, given his diminishing resources and South Vietnam's fundamental political and military flaws. An admiring diplomat perhaps best summarized Abrams's role in Vietnam when he remarked that Abrams, a fighting soldier and a master of offensive warfare, "deserved a better war."

Abrams's papers are at the U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. Lewis Sorley provides an admiring view of Abrams in Thunderbolt: General Creighton Abrams and the Army of His Times (1992), and A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam (1999). See also Bruce Palmer, Jr., The 25-Year War: America's Role in Vietnam (1984), and Jeffrey J. Clarke, The United States Army in Vietnam: Advice and Support: The Final Years, 1965–1973 (1988). An obituary is in the New York Times (4 Sept. 1974).

John Kennedy Ohl