{"id":67539,"date":"2016-08-19T06:45:12","date_gmt":"2016-08-19T10:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=67539"},"modified":"2016-08-19T06:20:18","modified_gmt":"2016-08-19T10:20:18","slug":"gen-john-w-vessey-passes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=67539","title":{"rendered":"GEN John W. Vessey Passes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>GEN John W. Vessey, US Army (Ret), <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/2016\/08\/19\/former-chairman-joint-chiefs-staff-gen-john-vessey-dies-at-94.html\">has died<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 He was 94.<\/p>\n<p>Vessey was the 10th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, serving in that capacity from 1982-1985.\u00a0 As CJCS, he oversaw the peak of the Reagan military revival.\u00a0 US success in both Gulf Wars can be traced to changes in the US military made or begun during that period.<\/p>\n<p>Vessey enlisted in the MN ARNG in 1939.\u00a0 He served in World War II in both North Africa and Italy.\u00a0 He received a battlefield commission at Anzio in 1944, having previously served as a company First Sergeant.\u00a0 After World War II, Vessey chose to make the Army his career.<\/p>\n<p>As a commissioned officer, Vessey held multiple commands.\u00a0 He commanded 2\/77th FA during the Battle of Suoi Tre and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions during that battle (his unit was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation).\u00a0 His later commands included the 3rd Armored Division&#8217;s DIVARTY, the 4th Infantry Division, and Eighth US Army in Korea.<\/p>\n<p>In the last assignment, Vessey had the distinction of being one of the few people able to prevent that &#8220;wonderfully competent&#8221; POTUS, Jimmuh-the-Clueless, from doing something monumentally stupid.\u00a0 Vessey is reputed to have convinced Carter to delay, then finally cancel his plan to withdraw US combat forces from Korea.\u00a0 Doing this is believed to have caused Vessey to be bypassed for Chief of Staff of the Army in mid-1979 (he was named Vice-Chief instead and the newly-promoted GEN Edward C. Meyer was appointed by Carter as Chief-of-Staff).<\/p>\n<p>Vessey retired in 1985.\u00a0 At the time of his retirement he had served in uniform for 46 years.<\/p>\n<p>Post-retirement, Vessey served under two Presidents as special emissary to Vietnam.\u00a0 His primary focus in both assignments was accounting for US personnel still missing in Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n<p>Rest in peace, General.\u00a0 The nation is better off today due to your service.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>(The\u00a0current <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_William_Vessey_Jr.\">Wiipedia article on GEN Vessey<\/a> was also used as a source in preparing the above.)<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GEN John W. Vessey, US Army (Ret), has died.\u00a0 He was 94. Vessey was the 10th &hellip; <a title=\"GEN John W. Vessey Passes\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=67539\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">GEN John W. Vessey Passes<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blue-skies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67539\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}