“It Was A Different War”: From Senior Advisor In Vietnam To The Pentagon

General Volney F. Warner joined the Navy in 1944 during World War II, and transferred to the Army when he was accepted to West Point in 1946. He graduated from the Military Academy in 1950 and deployed to Korea. After graduating from the Command and General Staff College, he was assigned as a Province Senior Advisor in Vietnam in 1963. Later he was assigned to the Pentagon. In this interview, he talks about his time as a Province Senior Advisor, and explains how the war changed later with the invasion of the North Vietnamese and the increase of U.S. combat troops. He also discusses his observations about the war while assigned to the Pentagon, working with General Harold K. Johnson, the Army Chief of Staff. He describes the development of the Civil Operations Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) structure at the highest level of government, and contextualizes it within the scope of the war. He provides a personal view of General Westmoreland and what it was like to work for him. He discusses his experiences during the Tet Offensive in 1968 when he was sent from Washington to assess the situation in Vietnam, and stresses the importance of winning the war at the level of the South Vietnamese citizens.