Lt. Gen. William Yarborough, 93, Put Hats on the Green Berets

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Lieutenant General William Yarborough, who died Tuesday at 93, was the Army’s highest ranking intelligence officer in the later phases of the war in Vietnam, and an innovator in paratroop warfare and special operations.


Within the armed services, he is credited as the man who convinced President Kennedy to make the Green Beret the official headgear of the Special Forces, at a time when such covert soldiers were increasingly being used in places like Vietnam and Cambodia. As commandant of the U.S. Army School for Special Warfare, located at Fort Bragg, N.C., Yarborough also approved “The Ballad of the Green Berets” as the official song of the U.S. Army Special Forces. The song became the no. 1 hit of 1966.


In 1971, Yarborough became embroiled in controversy when it became clear that he was involved in an intelligence operation that collected information on domestic groups involved in protesting the war in Vietnam. There were no charges of wrongdoing, but feathers were ruffled when it was found that intelligence had been collected not only on groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the Black Panthers, but also on the Daughters of the American Revolution.


Yarborough saw extensive combat during World War II. In 1942, he planned and participated in the first American combat jump, called Operation Torch, as part of the invasion of North Africa. He led four jumps, participated in the invasion of Sicily, and saw heavy fighting in Italy. In the war’s aftermath, Yarborough coordinated the four-power international patrol that kept the peace in Vienna. While there, he helped the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky escape to England. Nijinsky, a mental incompetent since 1919, spent most of the war in the Hungarian countryside, occasionally living in caves. Yarborough found him living in one of Vienna’s finest hotels, where delighted Russian troops had deposited him.


William Pelham Yarborough was born in Seattle, the son of an Army intelligence officer, and grew up in part on Army bases in California and Georgia. He graduated from West Point in 1936, in a class that included several future generals: William Westmoreland, Bruce Palmer, Creighton Abrams, and Benjamin Davis.


After initially serving in the Philippines, Yarborough was given command of Company “C” of the newly formed 501st Parachute Battalion in late 1940. Parachute warfare was a relatively new concept, and Yarborough designed the paratrooper’s boot and uniform, as well as the qualification badge awarded to paratroopers who have made five training jumps. He also patented several aerial delivery containers, according a biography released by the U.S. Army Special Forces.


After planning the airborne phase of the North African invasion, Yarborough went on to Sicily, where he was a battalion commander in a battle where a tragic mix-up occurred and 410 paratroopers were killed by friendly fire from warships that had just been attacked by German planes. He later landed at Salerno on D-Day in a night drop, commanded the 509th Parachute Battalion at Naples, made the initial landings at Anzio, and sent his paratroopers into Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo, and the Cote d’Azur. He was then named commander of the 473rd Infantry Regimental Combat Team, which fought its way up the Ligurian coast to the French border under his command as the war drew to a close.


After serving as provost marshal of Vienna, Yarborough studied at British Staff College, and in 1952 took a teaching post at the Army War College. He then worked as a military attache in Cambodia, and commanded the 66th Counterintelligence Corps in Stuttgart, Germany.


In 1961,Yarborough was appointed commandant at the School for Special Warfare, later named for President Kennedy. He diversified the curriculum to include unconventional warfare and counterterrorism, and instituted language instruction. His was a vision of a warrior as anthropologist, psychologist, doctor, mechanic, and politician, a combination very unlike traditional Army roles. The U.S. Army Special Forces had worn green berets at least since the mid-1950s, but the Army traditionally – especially during the Eisenhower years – frowned on such frippery. Under Kennedy, who saw proselytizing for democracy as part of his electoral mandate, the approach was different, and the Green Berets were born. Not only did Yarborough legitimize the beret and the song, he later came up with the official U.S. Army Special Forces Knife, a 12-1/2 inch slashing tool that only Green Berets are permitted to own. Named for him, a copy of it is part of his bust at the Airborne & Special Operations Museum in Fayetteville, N.C.


Yarborough left the school in 1964, and in 1965 represented the joint United Nations command in negotiations with North Korea. The scene in contemporary news accounts was almost surreal, with Yarborough trading energetic epithets across a table with his truculent counterpart. Yarborough “quoted Shakespeare and made scathing references to a play recently staged in Peking named ‘A Bucket of Manure,'” according to one contemporary account. Little was accomplished, but the account continued, “Most observers believe General Yarborough is the toughest American negotiator seen in many years at Panmunjom.”


After working on domestic intelligence gathering, aimed at establishing whether there was significant foreign influence in the anti-war movement, Yarborough held a variety of commands, including chief of staff and deputy commander in chief, U.S. Army Pacific, stationed in Honolulu.


He retired in 1971 to Southern Pines, N.C., but continued to write about the military, and occasionally visited Africa on behalf of the State Department. He also published two books, “Trial in Africa: The failure of U. S. Policy” (1976) and “Bail Out Over North Africa: America’s First Combat Parachute Missions, 1942” (1979).


He is survived by his daughter, Patty Reed, and his son, retired Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel Lee Yarborough. His wife, Norma Tuttle, a former Miss Topeka, died in 1999.


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