Obituary for Dr. Lewis Sorley

An Honorable Warrior is Laid to Rest at West Point

Dr. Lewis Sorley, a respected and influential military historian and biographer was laid to rest today in the West Point cemetery above the Hudson River, near the graves of his father, uncle, and grandfather, all graduates of the United States Military Academy. I had the privilege of knowing Sorley, known to his friends and family as Bob, for more than three decades. We first met at a Vietnam War Conference at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library on the campus of the University of Texas. We were both baseball fans. We bonded while sipping whiskey and watching game 6 of the 1993 series, the longest nine inning game ever played. I remember yelling at the television as my Philadelphia Phillies lost 15-14 after The Toronto Blue Jays’ Joe Carter hit a one-out, three-run walk-off home run off closer Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams. My anguish over the Phillies loss soon faded, but my friendship with Bob and his predeceased wife, Ginny, would flourish. They became a tremendous source of support for my family and me across my military career.

Sorley’s rich life included distinguished service as a U.S. Army officer and Central Intelligence Agency official. Bob was an imminently honorable and accomplished man. His principal legacy is his profound and positive influence on generations of soldiers and the institutions of West Point and the U.S. Army.

Sorley was a third-generation graduate of the United States Military Academy. His profound influence on “the Long Gray Line” of West Pointers began as an assistant professor of English and grew over the years through his many engagements with cadets, his mentorship of officers, and his books. As some questioned the continued relevance of West Point’s Honor Code, Sorley’s book, Honor Bright: History and Origins of the West Point Honor Code and System, bolstered confidence in the code as the defining feature of the Academy and reemphasized the importance of cadets enforcing their code consistent with the “non toleration clause.”

Sorley’s influence extended across the U.S. Army. Officers learned from his criticisms of military leaders who fell short of his high standards of professionalism, such as those in Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam. But Sorley provided many more examples of effective and principled leadership in biographies such as Honorable Warrior: General Harold K. Johnson and the Ethics of Command and Thunderbolt: General Creighton Abrams and the Army of His Times. Across my decades of service in the United States Army, I did not know any armor or cavalry officer who did not read the latter book and resolve to emulate Abrams. Late in my career, as I directed teams with the missions of revising officer education and designing the future Army, I drew heavily on three primary source collections that Sorley curated -- Vietnam Chronicles: The Abrams Tapes, 1968-1972; Gavin at War: The World War II Diary of Lieutenant General James M. Gavin; and Press On!: Selected Works of General Donn A. Starry (2009).

 Sorley’s scholarship helped Americans reframe their understanding of the Vietnam War, and U.S. strategies for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. His groundbreaking 1999 book A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam blew up the facile conventional wisdom that the war was futile and foolhardy. A Better War also inspired civilians in the White House and military officials in the Pentagon to question U.S. war strategies in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many of those who read A Better War argued that insurgencies in both wars could neither be ignored nor suppressed through raids and advocated for bold shifts in strategy such as the “surge” in Iraq in 2007.

When Sorley reflected on his experience in Vietnam, he expressed pride in the actions of U.S. and South Vietnamese soldiers and sorrow about the outcome of the war. He concluded from his experience and his scholarship that the war “didn't have to end that way." It is a phrase that resonates with subsequent generations of soldiers who fought in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. On April 30, as we are about to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the fall of Saigon we should remember, as Bob Sorley did, the human cost that the Vietnamese Communists and North Vietnamese inflicted on their own people.

Lewis Sorley was born at West Point on August 3, 1934. I can think of no one who lived more fully the motto of his alma mater: Duty, Honor, Country. Sorley was, as he said of General Harold K. Johnson, an honorable warrior. He now rests in peace at his birthplace among fellow members of The Long Gray Line.

H.R. McMaster