William Childs Westmoreland (1914–2005) was an American Army General and commander of the US forces deployed in Vietnam between 1964 to 1968. He was also a graduate of Harvard Business School.
William Westmoreland was born on March 26, 1914, in Spartanburg, South Carolina, to an upper middle class family. In 1932 he enrolled at West Point Military Academy, graduating in 1936 at the top of his class as First Captain. During World War II, Westmoreland bravely fought in North Africa and in the European Theater of Operation, ending the war with the rank of Colonel. Although he had the reputation of a stern taskmaster, he was a man who cared about his men, taking interest in their welbeing. In 1947, he married Katherine Stevens Van Deusen. They had three children: two daughters named Katherine Westmoreland and Margaret Westmoreland and one son named James Ripley Westmoreland.
During the Korean War, Westmoreland served as commander of the 187th Regimental Combat Team, 82th Airborne Division. In 1953, Westmoreland was promoted to Brigadier General, spending five years in the Pentagon. He became the youngest Major-General in the Army, assuming command of the 101st Airborne Division in 1958. He created the concept of Recondo training in the division, later bringing the concept elsewhere in the Army.
In 1964, Westmoreland was named Deputy Commander of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam. He was known for highly publicized, positive assessments of US military prospects in Vietnam. He adopted a strategy of attrition against the National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) of South Vietnam and the North Vietnamese Army.
Although under Westmoreland’s command, the American forces won every battle, the turning point of the war was the 1968 Tet Offensive, in which communist forces, having staged a diversion at the Battle of Khe Sanh, attacked cities and towns throughout South Vietnam. US and South Vietnamese troops successfully fought off the attacks, and the communist forces took extremely heavy losses. Nevertheless, the way in which the American media reported and depicted the Tet Offensive shook American public confidence as Westmoreland’s previous assurances about the state of the war got undermined by leftist artists statement and behavior such as those of Joan Baez and drugged hippies demonstrations everywhere.
In June 1968, Westmoreland was replaced by General Creighton Abrams. Westmoreland served as Chief of Staff of the United States Army from 1968 to 1972, then retired from the Army. Many military historians have pointed out that Westmoreland became Chief of Staff at the worst time in history with regard to the Army, guiding the Army as it transitioned to an all-volunteer force.
William Westmoreland died on July 18, 2005 at the age of 91 at the Bishop Gadsden retirement home in Charleston, South Carolina. On July 23, 2005, he was buried at the West Point Cemetery, United States Military Academy.
David Haskell Hackworth (1930 – 2005) was the most highly decorated US Army Colonel who fought in the Korea War and the Vietnam War, starting his brilliant military career as a non-commissioned officer. Hackworth, or Hack, took part in the creation and command of Tiger Force, which was an elite military unit created during the Vietnam War to apply guerrilla warfare tactics to the fight against Viet Cong. It was a similar counter-insurgency tactical approach applied by the Australians in the same war. He was decorated with eight Purple Hearts, 10 Silver Stars, two Distinguished Service Cross, 8 Bronze Stars, one Distinguished Flying Cross, etc.
David Hackworth was born in California on November 11, 1930. In 1945, at the end of World War II, he enlisted in the U.S. Merchant Marine, when he was 14, lying about his age. After the war, he lied again to enlist in the United States Army. He was assigned as a rifleman to the 351st Infantry, 88th Infantry Division, and stationed on occupation duty in Trieste as a non-commissioned officer. Hackworth fought in Korea with the 25th Reconnaissance Company, the 8th Rangers, and finally the 27th Infantry (Wolfhound) Regiment of the 25th Infantry Division (Light) He gained a battlefield commission as a lieutenant and was awarded several medals for valor, and several Purple Hearts for being wounded several times. After a successful raid on Hill 1062 and battlefield promotion to 1st Lieutenant, the commander of the 27th Infantry Regiment offered Hackworth command of a new volunteer raider unit. Hackworth created the 27th Wolfhound Raiders and led them from August to November 1951. He subsequently volunteered for a second tour in Korea, this time with the 40th Infantry Division. Hackworth was promoted to the rank of captain.
When the cease-fire in Korea was signed, Hackworth was demobilized. He attended college two years, but he soon became bored with civilian life and reentered the Army in 1956 as a captain. In 1965, he was sent to Vietnam as a Major, serving as an operations officer and battalion commander in the 101st Airborne Division. He quickly developed a reputation as an eccentric but effective soldier. After he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, Hackworth co-wrote "The Vietnam Primer" with General Marshall. The book adopted some of the same tactics as Mao Zedong, the Cuban rebels, and the Viet Cong in fighting guerrillas. Hackworth described the strategy as "out-G-ing the G."
In 1971, Lieutenant Colonel David Hackworth was raised to the rank of colonel, and received orders to attend the Army War College, but he rejected this offer. Hackworth was nearly court-martialed for various infractions such as running a brothel for his troops in Vietnam, running gambling houses, and exploiting his position for personal profit by manipulating U.S. currency. At the same time, he was experiencing personal problems that resulted in divorce. He was allowed to retire, in order to avoid a court martial, at the rank of colonel, and in an effort to rebuild his life, Hackworth moved to Australia with a smutch of corruption on his military career. When he returned to the US, he became a Democratic-party-leaned journalist.
Hack Hackworth died on May 5, 2005, in Tijuana Mexico. He was 74 years old. The cause of death was a form of cancer now appearing with increasing frequency among Vietnam veterans exposed to the defoliants called Agents Orange and Blue.
Carlos Hathcock (1942 – 1999) was a US Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant who served as a sniper in the Vietnam War. With 93 confirmed kills, he was the 4th most effective sniper in American history, trailing behind Adelbert F Waldron (109), Charles Mawhinney (103), and Eric R England (98). His exploits, both as a courageous soldier and a sniper, made him a legend in the Marine Corps. Hathcock became a major developer of the United States Marine Corps Sniper training program. Not only was Carlos extremely lethal as a sniper, but he was also a brave marine; he was awarded the Silver Star for his act in 1969 of saving the lives of seven fellow Marines after the amphibious tractor on which they were riding struck a mine. Hathcock was knocked unconscious, but awoke in time to race back through the flames to save his comrades.
Carlos Hathcock was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, on May 20, 1942. Since his parents had separated, he lived with his grandmother in the country where he grew up. At a young age, Carlos learned to use a rifle, which his father had brought from Europe after World War II. Then, he would hunt wild animals to help feed his poor family.
In 1959, at the age of 17, Carlos Hathcock joined the Marine Corps. Before being shipped to Vietnam, he showed his natural skills as a marksman on the rifle range at Camp Pendleton where he was undergoing recruit training, winning the Pacific Division rifle championship while he was deployed in Hawaii as a member of Company E, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines. In 1966, he was sent to Vietnam and became a sniper after Captain Edward J. Land Jr. had pushed the Marines into raising snipers in every platoon.
Operating from Hill 55, about 35 miles South-West of Da Nang, Hathcock and his fellow Marine snipers would decimate and sometimes annihilate whole columns of Viet Cong guerrillas. Once he was given the extremely dangerous solo mission of killing a Northvietnamese General, which he did from a 900-yards distance. This led the North Vietnamese Army to putting a $30,000 bounty on his head.
The Viet Cong called Hathcock "Long Trang," which means "White Feather," because of the white feather he kept in a band on his bush hat. After a platoon of trained Vietnamese snipers were sent to hunt down "White Feather," many Marines in the same area donned white feathers to deceive the enemy. These Marines were aware of the impact Hathcock’s death would have and took it upon themselves to make themselves targets in order to confuse the communist counter snipers.
In the jungle near Hill 55, Hathcock and John Roland Burke, his spotter, were stalking an enemy sniper. The sniper had already killed several Marines and was believed to have been sent specifically to kill Hathcock. When Hathcock saw a flash of light in the bushes, he fired at it, shooting through the scope and killing the sniper. Surveying the situation, Hathcock concluded that the only feasible way he could have put the bullet straight down the enemy’s scope and through his eye would have been if both snipers were zeroing in on each other at the same time and Hathcock fired first, which gave him only a few seconds to act.
To kill the enemy, Hathcock generally used the standard sniper rifle: the Winchester Model 70 .30-06 caliber rifle with the standard 8-power Unertl scope. On some occasions, however, he used a different weapon: the .50-caliber M2 Browning Machine Gun, on which he mounted the Unertl scope, using a bracket of his own design.
After the Vietnam War, Hathcock helped establish a scout and sniper school at the Marine base in Quantico, Virginia. Due to his extreme injuries suffered in Vietnam, he was in nearly constant pain, but he continued to dedicate himself to teaching snipers. In 1975, Hathcock’s health began to deteriorate and he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He stayed in the Corps but his health continued to decline and was forced to retire just 55 days short of the 20 years that would have made him eligible for full retirement pay. Being medically retired, he received 100% disability. He fell into a state of depression when he was forced out of the Marines because he felt as if the service kicked him out. During this depression his wife Jo almost left him, but she finally decided to stay. Hathcock eventually picked up the hobby of shark fishing with the locals, which helped him overcome his depression.
Carlos Hathcock died on February 23, 1999, in Virginia Beach, Virginia, after a long struggle with multiple sclerosis.
Adelbert Waldron (1933 – 1995) was a US Army sniper who served in the 9th Infantry Division during the Vietnam War. Collected and self-possessed in an extremely dangerous environment, he was the most effective sniper in the war, holding the record of 109 confirmed kills, which is the highest number for any American sniper in history. The legendary Carlos Hathcock had 93 confirmed kills, Eric R. England had 98 and Chuck Mawhinney had 103 —all were members of the US Marine Corps. However, despite Hathcock and Mawhinney being fairly well known, Waldron and England are all but unheard of. Waldron was decorated with a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, Two Distinguished Service Crosses, and a Presidential Unit Citation.
Adelbert F. Waldron was born on March 14, 1933, in Syracuse, New York. Before being an Army Sergeant, he served first 12 years in the US Navy from 1953 to 1965. Then, Waldron enlisted in the US Army in May 1968 as a Sergeant, which was the equivalent rank he held in the Navy. When he was transferred to South Vietnam that year, Waldron found himself attached to Company B, 3rd Battalion, 60th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division. As an expert marksman with a rifle, Waldran had been chosen to attend the 9th Infantry’s sniper school, which was run by members of the Army Marksmanship Unit and formed with the blessing of the division commander Lt Gen Julian J. Ewell.
The 9th Infantry was the only major U.S. Army combat unit to conduct operations in the Mekong Delta where it was part of the Mobile Riverine Force (MRF). Riding shotgun on US Navy brown water ‘Tango Boats” and PBRs the MRF attempted to clean out the multitude of insurgent units operating in that lawless area. In this high tempo hazardous environment Waldron was placed as a sniper. In the first half of 1969, 36-year old Sgt Waldron was credited with 109 confirmed kills, which made him the highest scoring US sniper in history.
When Adelbert F Waldron finished his tour in Vietnam, he was promoted to Staff Sergeant. Before leaving army service in 1970, he taught at the US Army Marksmanship Unit as a senior instructor. Then he worked for noted mercenary, firearms engineer and former CIA operative Mitchel WerBell III. Waldron was WerBell’s resident firearms instructor in his private training schools at the “Farm” in Powder Springs GA. It was in that school the Waldron’s name became linked to such groups as Lyndon LaRouche’s NCLC. Adelbert F. Waldron died in quiet obscurity on October 18, 1995, in California. He was 62 years old. He was buried in Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, California, Columbarium A (shelter F), Court B, Row B, Site 37.
Eric R England was an American marine who served in the US Marine Corps 3rd Marine Division during the Vietnam War. With 98 confirmed kills, England was the third most effective sniper of that war, trailing behind Aldelbert Waldron (109 kills) and Chuck Mawhinney (103).
Eric England was born in 1933, in Union County, Georgia. At 17 he joined the US Marine Corps. In 1952, after two years in the force, England became a National rifle shooting champion. He received his first competitive training in USMC bootcamp from his cousin, Dr. James Harry Turner, at that time a Marine weapons instructor. This led to a 24 year career on the USMC rifle team, winning national and international competitions as participant and coach.
Eric England currently holds a record as one of the five American soldiers with the highest number of confirmed kills. He is listed as having had 98 confirmed kills, with dozens more listed as "probables". When the US Army snipers are included, England shows to be ranked at third overall, with US Army sniper Adelbert Waldron moving to first with 109 confirmed kills. However, Eric England had 98 confirmed within only 7 months in war, before being medically evacuated from Vietnam. England had many solo sniping missions, and witnesses were not always available to confirm his kills which may have been 200 or 300. England has never mentioned his number of kills; this estimate had to be obtained from former USMC officers who knew him. The same situation was true for Carlos Hathcock and other scout-snipers.
England became a highly respected marine, and was the subject of the book Phantom of Phu Bai, written by Dr. J. B. Turner. A sculpture in England’s honor was erected in front of the county courthouse in Union County, Georgia, in 2006. One of the guest speakers was former Georgia governor and US Senator Zell Miller, who also is a former Marine, and a personal friend to England.
Chuck Mawhinney was a US Marine Corps sniper who served sixteen months in the Vietnam War. Although he was less well known than his more famous counterpart sniper legend Carlos Hathcock, Mawhinney actually had 103 confirmed kills to Hathcock’s 93. Mawhinney had another 216 that are listed as "probables" by the U.S. Marine Corps.
Charles Benjamin "Chuck" Mawhinney was born in Oregon in 1949. He was the son of a World War II Marine Corps veteran. When he was young, he would spend a lot of time in the woods hunting alone. At the age of 18, Mawhinney joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 1967. When he left the Marine Corps in 1970, he slipped into obscurity, and went without notice for his number of confirmed kills for more than two decades. He returned home to Oregon, married, and began to work for the U.S. Forest Service, where he worked until his retired in the late 1990s.
Collected and laid back, Chuck Mawhinney had never spoken of his exploits back in Vietnam ever since he had left the Marine Corps in 1970. Nevertheless, a book titled Dear Mom: A Sniper’s Vietnam, which was written by fellow Marine sniper and author Joseph T. Ward, exposed him as a self-possessed, extremely skillful sniper. But the book recognized him as having 101 confirmed kills and many disputed the claim, believing that Carlos Hathcock had more confirmed kills than any other American sniper. However, after carefully research had been done, it was revealed that US Army sniper Adelbert Waldron actually had 109 confirmed kills, and Mawhinney actually had 103 confirmed kills and 216 probable kills, while a third Marine Corps sniper, Eric R. England, had 98 confirmed kills. This led to Mawhinney replacing Carlos Hathcock as the USMC sniper with the greatest amount of confirmed kills on record, and ranking number two overall behind Waldron.
M40-A1 Remington Rifle used by Chuck Mawhinney in Vietnam
Ngo Dinh Diem (1901 – 1963) was the first President of South Vietnam (1955–1963). Prime Minister of Emperor Bao Dai, Diem became President after the 1955 referendum to determine the future form of government of the State of Vietnam, the nation that was to become the Republic of Vietnam, which was widely known as South Vietnam.
Ngo Dình Diem was born in Hue, the original capital of the Nguyen Dynasty of Vietnam. Diem came from the village of Phu Cam in central Vietnam. Portuguese missionaries had converted his family to Catholicism in the 17th century. Diem would often claim that he descended from a noble family of mandarins. He studied at a French Catholic school. Then, Diem moved to Hanoi to study at the School of Public Administration and Law, a French school that trained Vietnamese bureaucrats. Having graduated at the top of his class in 1921, he followed in the footsteps of his eldest brother Ngo Dinh Khoi, joining the civil service. Starting from the lowest rank of mandarin, Diem steadily rose.
Ngo Dinh Diem served in Emperor Bao Dai’s administration under French colonial rule until 1933. During and after World War II, he opposed both French colonial rule and the Viet Minh, which was the communist-led national independence movement. Already staunchly anticommunist, he rejected an offer to serve in Ho Chi Minh’s brief postwar government in 1945. As the Viet Minh forces fought against the French during the First Indochina War, he spent several years in exile, making political contacts and gaining crucial American support in hopes of leading a postwar government. Diem believed that Vietnam needed the benevolent, authoritarian rule of enlightened elites.
In 1954, after the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, Ngo Dinh Diem became prime minister of South Vietnam, just as the defeated French forces left. The peace accord called for elections in 1956 and unification of the divided country. With American support, Ngo cancelled the elections, knowing full well that Ho Chi Minh would have easily won the presidency. Over the next seven years, he presided over an increasingly corrupt, nepotistic and repressive regime. Communist guerrillas backed by North Vietnam launched a new rebellion, but a civil disobedience campaign led by the country’s Buddhist monks contributed more directly to his downfall. Brutal persecution of the dissident monks in 1963 damaged the regime’s already shaky international reputation.
On November 1, 1963, Ngo Dinh Diem was ousted from power by Vietnamese generals, who called the palace offering Diem exile if he surrendered. Nevertheless, that evening, Diem and his entourage escaped via an underground passage to Cholon, where they were captured the following morning, on November 2. Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother were executed in the back of an armored personnel carrier by Captain Nguyen Van Nhung while en route to the Vietnamese Joint General Staff headquarters.
Bao Dai (1913 – 1997) was the emperor of Annam under French protection, during the period Annam was a protectorate within French Indochina. From 1926 to 1945, he was the 13th and last ruler of the Nguyen Dynasty. Bao Dai took the throne in 1926 at the age of 13. During World War II, the Japanese ruled French Indochina through Bao Dai. At this time, Bao Dai renamed his country "Vietnam." He abdicated in August 1945 when Japan surrendered. From 1949 to 1955, during the First Indochina War, he was chief of state of the State of Vietnam (South Vietnam). Bao Dai was criticized as being closely associated with France and spending much of his time outside of Vietnam. Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem ousted him in a referendum held in 1955.
Bao Dai was born Prince Nguyen Phuc Vinh Thuy on October 22, 1913, in Hue, central Vietnam, French Indochina, to Khai Dinh. Having been educated in France, he was named emperor in 1926 after the death of his father, adopting the name of Bao Dai. Since Indochina was a French colony, his reign was under the control of France. In 1934, he married Jeanne Marie-Thérèse (Mariette) Nguyen Huu-Hao Thi Lan, who became Empress Nam Phuong.
In 1940, the Japanese invaded French Indochina. Although they did not expell the French, the Japanese politically controlled Indochina. But, in 1945, before the end of the World War II, the Japanese military forced Bao Dai to declare the independence of Indochina, renaming it Vietnam, from the French. When the Japanese surrendered to the Allies on August 15, 1945, the Viet Minh insurgent movement, led by Ho Chi Minh, temporarily seized power on August 25, 1945, and Bao Dai abdicated as emperor the same day, but remained as an adviser of the new government. When the French returned to Indochina, the political situation of the country turned chaotic and extremely violent and Bao Dai had to run away into exile in Hong Kong. However, the French persuaded him to return in 1949 to serve as "head of state", not as "emperor". He soon travelled to France, showing little interest in the affairs of his own country when his own personal interests were not directly involved.
Without external aid, the communists, led by Ho Chi Minh, would have probably been beaten by the French Far East Expeditionary Corps and French Foreign Legion units. Nevertheless, the victory of the communist forces, under Mao Tse Tung, in China in 1949 led to a revival of the fortunes of the Viet Minh. To counteract both Soviet and Chinese political and military support for the Viet Minh, the United States extended diplomatic recognition to Bao Dai’s government in March 1950 soon after communist nations recognized Ho Chi Minh’s government. The outbreak of the Korean War in June led to U.S. military aid and active support of the French anti-communist war effort in Indochina.
The war between the French colonial forces and the Viet Minh raged on until 1954, when the French Far East Expeditionary Corps was defeated by the Viet Minh at the Battle of Dien Biên Phu. The 1954 peace deal between the French and the Viet Minh, known as the Geneva Accords, involved a Chinese-inspired, supposedly temporary partition of the country into "Northern" and "Southern" Vietnamese administrations. Bao Dai moved to Paris, France, but remained "Head of State" of South Vietnam, appointing the Roman Catholic nationalist, Ngo Dinh Diem, as his prime minister. Nevertheless, in 1955, Diem used a referendum to remove Bao Dai and establish a republic with Diem as president. The referendum was widely regarded as fraudulent, showing an alleged ninety-eight percent in favor of a republic. Bao Dai abdicated once again and remained in exile for the remainder of his life in Paris, France. Bao Dai died in a military hospital in Paris, France in 1997. He was burried in the Cimetière de Passy.
Erich von Falkenhayn was a German soldier and Chief of the General Staff during World War I and he became a military writer after the war. Falkenhayn is most associated with the Battle of Verdun of 1916, one of World War One’s bloodiest battles. Falkenhayn was in many ways a representative of the Prussian generals; he was a militarist in the literal sense, as he had undeniable political and military competence. His blood-mill approach was copied and successfully used by the Allies, who had larger resources, and, in that sense, Falkenhayn’s method would, indirectly, have led to Germany losing the war.
Erich von Falkenhayn was born on September 11, 1861, in Burg Belchau, West Prussia. As Prussia had a strong military tradition, it was not unusual that young Falkenhayn joined the army. He served in Qing China between 1896 and 1903, and saw action during the Boxer Rebellion. Afterwards, he was stationed in Braunschweig, Metz, and Magdeburg, with ever-increasing rank. He became Prussian Minister of War in 1913, serving with one of Germany’s most famous military men; Helmuth von Moltke, and the two did not get on as they argued over most everything.
Erich von Falkenhayn succeeded Moltke as Chief of Staff after the Battle of the Marne on September 14, 1914. Confronted with the failure of the Schlieffen Plan, Falkenhayn attempted to outflank the British and French in what has been called the "Race to the Sea", a series of engagements throughout northern France and Belgium with the aim to reach the North Sea coast. The Germans were eventually stopped by the British and French at the First Battle of Ypres.
As a strategist, Falkenhayn preferred a fast offensive campaign on the Western Front while conducting a limited war in the east in the hope that Russia would accept a separate armistice much more easily if it had not been humiliated too much. This brought him into conflict with Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who favored massive offensives in the east.
In the hope that a massive slaughter would lead Europe’s political leaders to consider ending the war, Falkenhayn staged a massive battle of attrition at Verdun in early 1916. Not being able to take Verdun and with more than a quarter million men dead during the unsuccessful assault, Falkenhayn was replaced as Chief of Staff by Hindenburg.
Erich von Falkenhayn then assumed command of the 9th Army in Transylvania, and in August, 1917, launched a joint offensive against Romania with Mackensen. Falkenhayn’s forces captured the Romanian capital of Bucharest in less than four months. Following this success, Falkenhayn went to take military command in then Turkish Palestine, where he eventually failed to prevent the British under General Edmund Allenby from conquering Jerusalem in December 1917.
Falkenhayn witnessed the end of the Great War as commander of the 10th Army in Belarus. In 1919, he retired from the Army and withdrew to his estate, where he wrote several books on war, strategy, and his autobiography. He died at Schloss Lindstedt near Potsdam on April 8, 1922. Militarily, Falkenhayn had a mixed record. His offensive at Verdun was a failure, but his planning and subsequent conquest of Romania was a near perfect example of how to conduct an offensive against superior forces.
Alfred von Schlieffen was a German field marshal that served as Chief of General Staff in Germany between 1891 and 1905. He was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1833. He joined the army in 1854 at the age of twenty. Between 1858 and 1861, Alfred von Schlieffen attended the Berlin War Academy, and he was a staff officer during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871.
In 1884 Schlieffen became head of the military history section of the general staff, and in 1891 he replaced Alfred Graf von Waldersee as Chief of General Staff. In 1905, Alfred von Schlieffen presented the Schlieffen Plan, which would stipulate that fighting a two-front war should be avoided by first defeating France in a lightning campaign and then throwing its full weight against Russia. The rest of Schlieffen’s career was spent inculcating the operational ideas required to make this strategy work.
After fifty two years of service, Alfred von Schlieffen retired as Chief of General Staff of the German Army in 1906 and died in 1913, one year before the outbreak of World War I. Schlieffen was perhaps the best known contemporary strategist of his time. Schlieffen’s operational theories were to have a profound impact on the development of maneuver warfare in the twentieth century.
Alfred von Schlieffen was a German field marshal that served as Chief of General Staff in Germany between 1891 and 1905. He was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1833. He joined the army in 1854 at the age of twenty. Between 1858 and 1861, Alfred von Schlieffen attended the Berlin War Academy, and he was a staff officer during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871.
