Julian Ewell Biography Age Height Wife Net Worth Family (2023)

Ewell died in Virginia in 2009 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

In retirement, General Ewell lived in the Fairfax Retirement Community in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. He died at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Fairfax on July 27, 2009. He is interred at Arlington National Cemetery, Section 59, Grave 3854.

General Ewell was married four times. His first two marriages, to Mary Gillem and Jean Hoffman, resulted in divorces. He was married to his third wife, Beverly McCammon Moses, for forty years before her death in 1995. In 2005, he married Patricia Gates Lynch. Ewell had two children and two stepchildren.

In 1974, Ewell and Ira A. Hunt Jr., a major general who had served as Ewell's chief of staff in the 9th Division, wrote Sharpening the Combat Edge. In their book, Ewell and Hunt argued that claims of obsession with body counts were unfounded and that their effort to inflict maximum damage had "debrutalized" the war for civilians in South Vietnam.

From 1972 until his retirement in 1973, Ewell was Chief of Staff of NATO Allied Forces Southern Europe in Naples, Italy.

A 1972 Inspector General's report concluded that there may have been 5,000 to 7,000 civilian deaths during the Speedy Express out of a total of 11,000 enemy combatants reported to have been killed by troops.

From 1969 to 1970, Ewell commanded II Field Force in Vietnam, rising to lieutenant general.

During the Vietnam War, Ewell commanded the 9th Infantry Division (1968-1969) and II Field Force (1969-1970). He later served as military adviser to the US-South Vietnamese delegation in the Paris Peace Accords negotiations and Chief of Staff of NATO Southern Command. Ewell's service in Vietnam was not without controversy, particularly over concerns that his focus on "body count" as a measure of success caused his subordinates to increase their numbers by counting dead civilians as enemy combatants and committing atrocities. Among the best-known operations he participated in is Operation Speedy Express, which was estimated by internal Department of Defense documents to have killed 5,000 to 7,000 civilians. David Hackworth claims that among those he commanded in the 9th Division, it earned him the nickname "The Butcher of the Delta". According to Geoffrey Ward and Ken Burns in The Vietnam War: An Intimate History, Ewell apparently took pride in this nickname and saw nothing wrong with what the soldiers under his command had done.

From 1968 to 1969, Ewell commanded the 9th Infantry Division as a major general. During his command, the division carried out Operation Speedy Express, an effort to eliminate Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers with overwhelming force.

Critics accused Ewell of obsessively focusing on "body counts" during the Vietnam War, causing his subordinates to increase their numbers in an effort to demonstrate success by counting dead civilians as enemy combatants and committing atrocities. David Hackworth, author of Steel my Soldiers' Hearts, was critical of Ewell's performance. Hackworth, who served with the 9th Division during the Vietnam War, wrote that in 1968 and 1969 the division was credited with killing 20,000 enemies but only recovered 2,000 guns, suggesting that the number of enemy killed was inflated. John Paul Vann estimated that, of those killed in the Delta, "at least 30 percent were noncombatants". According to Hackworth, Ewell's focus on body count earned him the nickname "Butcher of the Delta" from members of the 9th Division.

That winter he commanded the 501st when the 101st Airborne Division was thrown into the emergency defense of Bastogne at the Battle of the Bulge, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his heroic actions.

General Ewell is a graduate of the United States Army Command and General Staff College (1946), the United States Army War College (1952), and the National War College (1959).

Headquarters, XVIII Airborne Corps, General Orders No. 19 (March 14, 1945) Hometown: Washington, D.C.

Having advanced to lieutenant colonel during the war, Ewell took command of the 3rd Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, part of the 101st Airborne Division. In June 1944, Ewell parachuted into Normandy and led his men into combat for the first time. Despite being unable to immediately respond for most of his battalion because many paratroopers had missed their landing zones, Ewell was still able to regroup and engage the German defences.

On 17 September 1944, Ewell's battalion parachuted into the Netherlands as part of Operation Market Garden and Ewell was soon promoted to executive officer of the regiment. With the death of the 501st's commander, Colonel Howard R. Johnson, on 8 October, Ewell rose to regimental command.

The President of the United States is pleased to present the Distinguished Service Cross to Julian J. Ewell (0-21791), Lieutenant Colonel (Infantry), US Army, for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an armed enemy while serving as Commanding Officer of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, in action against enemy forces on the night of December 18-19, 1944, in Bastogne, Belgium. In the darkness of December 18-19, 1944, Colonel Ewell's regiment was the first unit of the 101st Airborne Division to reach the vicinity of Bastogne, Belgium, then under attack by heavy enemy forces. As his regiment rallied, Lieutenant Colonel Ewell advanced alone to Bastogne to gain first-hand enemy intelligence. During the night of the 18th to the 19th of December 1944, Lieutenant Colonel Ewell made a personal reconnaissance amidst mixed friendly and hostile troops and on the 19th of December, by his heroic and fearless leadership of his troops, he contributed materially to the defeat of enemy efforts to prostrate Bastogne. On January 3, 1945, when an enemy attack threatened to dampen the momentum of the regimental offensive, Lieutenant Colonel Ewell personally led a counterattack that stopped the enemy and enabled his regiment's continuation of offensive action. Throughout the action at Bastogne, Lieutenant Colonel Ewell's heroic and fearless personal leadership was a source of inspiration for the troops he commanded. His intrepid actions, personal bravery, and zealous devotion to duty exemplify the highest traditions of the United States military and reflect great credit upon himself, the 101st Airborne Division, and the United States Army.

Ewell continued his service after World War II. As a colonel in the late 1940s, he served as an executive officer to General Maxwell Taylor during Taylor's command of American forces in Berlin. In 1953, he was assigned commander of the 9th Infantry Regiment in South Korea.

The son of a career Army officer, Ewell was a graduate of the New Mexico Military Institute and the United States Military Academy. Commissioned as an infantry second lieutenant in 1939, he volunteered for paratrooper training at the start of World War II. During the war, he commanded the 3rd Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, part of the 101st Airborne Division. He participated in a parachute jump into Normandy during the D-Day invasion and continued to participate in combat against the Nazis in Europe. Ewell later commanded the 501st Regiment, which included participation in Operation Market Garden and the defense of Bastogne at the Battle of the Bulge. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his heroism at Bastogne.

Julian Johnson Ewell (November 5, 1915 – July 27, 2009) was a career United States Army officer who served in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. He commanded the 9th Infantry Division and II Field Force in Vietnam and reached the rank of lieutenant general.

Julian Johnson Ewell was the son of Jammie Morrison (Offutt) Ewell and Colonel George W. Ewell (1879-1972), a career Army officer. He was born in Stillwater, Oklahoma on November 5, 1915, while his father was serving as an instructor in the Reserve Officer Training Corps at Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Oklahoma State University-Stillwater). He was raised in California, Panama, Pennsylvania and Washington, DC, and graduated from the New Mexico Military Institute in 1932. He attended Duke University before transferring to the United States Military Academy, where he graduated in 1939. He received his commission as a Second Lieutenant of Infantry and received paratrooper training at the start of World War II.