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Col David Hackworth Dies
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George Bitsoli
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May 08, 2005 13:48 PDT
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Maverick David Hackworth, 74, dies
By Dennis McLellan
Los Angeles Times
Sunday, May 8, 2005 - Page updated at 12:00 a.m.
Retired Army Col. David Hackworth, 74, the highly decorated infantry officer
who denounced U.S. policy in Vietnam during the war and later became an
outspoken journalist who offered trenchant analyses of the military, has
died.
Col. Hackworth, who lived in Greenwich, Conn., died Wednesday in Tijuana,
Mexico, where he was undergoing treatment for bladder cancer. Eilhys
England, his wife of eight years, was at his side.
Known as America's most decorated living soldier and one of the more
outrageous figures to emerge from the Vietnam War, Col. Hackworth received
78 combat awards - including a Distinguished Service Cross, a Silver Star, a
Bronze Star and eight Purple Hearts - during his 25-year military career.
The veteran of both the Vietnam and Korean wars also earned a reputation as
one of the Army's most brilliant commanding officers - and one of its most
controversial.
Disillusioned with America's conduct in prosecuting the Vietnam War, the
active-duty colonel offered a harsh critique of the conflict on the ABC-TV
news show "Issues and Answers" in 1971.
The maverick colonel became an overnight media sensation, but he incensed
Army officials, who tried to discredit him by charging him with violating
regulations in Vietnam.
Before he could be court-martialed, Col. Hackworth was forced to resign from
the Army. In protest, he gave away his medals and went into self-imposed
exile in Australia, where he became wealthy running a Brisbane restaurant
and raising ducks.
He returned to the United States more than a decade ago and assumed a new
role as a journalist: He became a contributing editor at Newsweek, a
syndicated columnist and a fixture on television talk shows.
A persistent thorn in the side of the Pentagon, Col. Hackworth in 2002
called Afghanistan a Vietnam-like disaster in the making, and last year he
told Salon.com that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "misunderstood the
whole war" in Iraq and predicted that American troops could be stuck there
for "at least" another 30 years.
"Most combat vets pick their fights carefully. They look at their scars,
remember the madness and are always mindful of the fallout," Col. Hackworth,
who still carried a bullet in his leg from Vietnam, wrote in February.
"That's not the case in Washington, where the White House and the Pentagon
are run by civilians who have never sweated it out on a battlefield."
Born in 1930, he was orphaned when he was 5 months old. After time in an
orphanage, he was raised in Santa Monica, Calif., by his grandmother, who
entertained him with stories about his family's long line of military men
dating back to the Revolutionary War. In 1946, at age 15, he used fake ID
papers to join the Army.
Col. Hackworth is survived by his wife, four children from two earlier
marriages, and a stepdaughter.
Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company
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