Jungle of Snakes (23 page)
Authors: James R. Arnold
And so it went throughout the country. Whereas in Malaya the Communists had too few fighters—at most 8,000 armed men against
300,000 men in the security forces—to attack the New Villages, this was not the case in Vietnam. The South Vietnamese militia
who defended the strategic hamlets proved woefully inept. The hamlets were not mutually supporting. The Viet Cong took advantage
of their isolation by staging assaults to compel relief columns composed of regular South Vietnamese units to be dispatched
from distant bases. Then the Viet Cong ambushed the relief columns with deadly effect. Also unlike the British in Malaya,
the Strategic Hamlet Program lacked adequate local police and government forces living in the hamlet. In sum, the program
proved counterproductive by alienating the people it was supposed to convert to the government side and chewing up valuable
military units that were sent to save the hamlets from being overrun.
Moreover, it soon became apparent that Diem and his brother, who was in charge of the program, were more interested in using
the program to expand their influence rather than to protect and inspire peasants to fight the Viet Cong. The construction
of each new hamlet gave Diem an opportunity to install a party loyalist. The creation of a new government bureaucracy allowed
him to hand out even more lavish rewards while consolidating his family’s power. Numbers told a tale of strategic lunacy:
whereas the British in Malaya spent three years to establish 500 New Villages, the South Vietnamese created more than 8,000
strategic hamlets in under two years, with most of the construction and relocation taking place in the first nine months of
1963.
John H. Cushman, a future lieutenant general, received the assignment of visiting the southern tip of the country to assess
progress. Cushman ordered the American advisers and their South Vietnamese counterparts to make a simple, color-coded map
with red marking areas of Communist control, yellow showing contested areas, and blue indicating government-controlled areas.
There were only two criteria for government control: officials could move around at night without an escort and there was
no open Viet Cong taxation. South Vietnamese officers dutifully created the map. It appeared encouraging until an American
adviser pointed out a blue area and asked to visit. The South Vietnamese officer protested vehemently, explaining that it
was far too dangerous. In Saigon, a senior American staff officer complained that the program “is a disaster. They’re doing
it too fast. They’re coming in here with grandiose schemes and massive enterprises, and nothing’s happening. They don’t even
do a good whitewash job.”
7
By 1964, after the Viet Cong had overrun all of the first four “showcase” strategic hamlets, the failure became manifest to
all. The debacle had been costly. It gave the Viet Cong priceless propaganda material. It revealed Diem’s government to be
inefficient or, what was worse, aloof and out of touch with Vietnamese rural reality. It also discredited Thompson and the
British Mission, which was just fine with the American military mission in Saigon. They had never welcomed British interference
and had chafed at the defensive nature of Thompson’s approach to counterinsurgency. In their minds, tying down combat troops
in static garrisons while pursuing civic action programs was not the way to defeat a Communist insurgency. Some American planners
believed that they had a better idea and set out to prove it.
In the Central Highlands
Some twenty-nine tribes numbering more than 200,000 people lived in the central highlands along South Vietnam’s western border.
Collectively labeled “Montagnards” in the same way that native Americans were called “Indians,” they were a village-centered
tribal society practicing subsistence slash-and-burn agriculture. The fact that they occupied strategic ground that potentially
blocked Communist infiltration routes made them pawns in the war. The Communists exploited Montagnard dissatisfaction with
the Saigon government and made them prime targets for propaganda and recruitment. Diem’s government treated them as second-class
citizens and tended to ignore them as primitive, remote, and insignificant. The American mission in Saigon wanted to enlist
minority groups in the counterinsurgency fight. The U.S. Special Forces received the assignment of recruiting the Montagnards.
From Rogers’ Rangers in the French and Indian War to Darby’s Rangers in World War II, the American military had employed special
units for special duties. But the Special Forces were a unique departure. In response to Communist wars of national liberation,
the U.S. Army had created the Special Forces for the purpose of waging unconventional war within a conventional war environment.
Boosted by President Kennedy’s personal interest, the Special Forces enjoyed an elite status reflected by the jaunty green
berets that became their signature. Twenty-four Green Berets entered Vietnam in November 1961. At first they operated under
the CIA’s direction, and therein lay the basis for bureaucratic strife that eventually thwarted a very promising beginning.
The original mission was to organize and train a paramilitary Montagnard force to provide village security and a select “strike
force” to conduct offensive actions and border surveillance. Like the American regular forces that were to follow, the Special
Forces initially lacked an appropriate counterinsurgency doctrine. Regardless, team members were intelligent and flexible.
They worked hand in hand with the Montagnards to dig bunkers and fortify their village and provided training and weapons for
a volunteer militia. They built a dispensary where the team medic healed and cured that which answered to modern medicine,
and slowly forged bonds of trust with the tribesmen.
The Montagnard units were called Civilian Irregular Defense Groups, or, in this war that granted virtually every unit and
program a ponderous acronym, CIDGs. After the pi lot program showed progress, more Special Forces teams arrived to expand
the CIDG program by first building a cluster of fortified villages and then moving the secure perimeters outward. This was,
of course, exactly the approach recommended by Robert Thompson. It was a process of trial and error, which an official army
historian later argued was “one of the most successful programs for using civilian forces ever devised by a military force.”
8
At the time the CIA agreed. By the end of 1962, all statistical measures indicated that the CIDG program had achieved startling
progress.
Yet many senior army leaders had never liked the Special Forces, with their unorthodox conduct and culture, and consequently
had never been supportive of the CIDG program. But what really stuck in their craws was having army personnel controlled by
anyone but army brass. An army evaluation team arrived and grudgingly acknowledged the accomplishments of the CIDG program
but complained about the improper use of the Special Forces. Eventually the army replaced the CIA and took charge of the program.
Thereafter, the CIDG program continued its rapid growth but completely changed in focus. Instead of gradually building mutually
supporting, village-based security networks, American planners in Saigon either converted the Montagnard militia into Territorial
Forces or upgraded them into mobile strike forces. In either case, the change meant the abandonment of local security in the
Montagnard communities since the former militia no longer lived and operated in their home villages.
The senior American commanders at the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, particularly wanted to use the Montagnards to
block infiltration from Cambodia. So, repeating the mistake of the Strategic Hamlet Program, they assigned the Special Forces
the task of building new CIDG camps in remote border regions. These camps were far from all support and thus painfully exposed
to enemy attack. The ensuing Communist assaults overran two camps. These debacles highlighted endemic problems that were to
haunt all pacification efforts in Vietnam. The camps were vulnerable during the hours of darkness, when reinforcements were
unable or unwilling to come to the rescue. In areas where the Viet Cong dominated the villagers, the attackers were able to
complete their approach march and assemble without detection. The Viet Cong were also often able to infiltrate into the ranks
of the defenders before the attack and thus obtain detailed intelligence about the garrison. By the time the defenders knew
that they were under attack the Viet Cong were already at or inside the camp’s protective barbed wire.
Another festering problem was relations with the South Vietnamese military. South Vietnamese Special Forces held nominal command
authority over the CIDG camps. But they were often reluctant to perform their duties. Moreover, they typically detested the
Montagnards, who heartily reciprocated. In this unpromising environment, the U.S. Special Forces were supposed to defend their
bases, conduct offensive actions into Communist base areas, improve the Montagnards’ living standards through civic action
programs, and develop Montagnard support for the central government. In spite of all obstacles, the Special Forces made remarkable
progress.
THE EVOLUTION OF the Special Forces program from local defense to offensive combat operations was another recurring theme
of American counterinsurgency efforts. American officers, particularly senior officers who had learned their trade in World
War II, were imbued with an aggressive military philosophy summarized in the phrase “find ’em, fix ’em, destroy ’em.” In their
experience American mobility and firepower reigned supreme. They deemed the slow business of pacification unpalatable and
did not think that it should tie down American fighting men.
They were about to get the opportunity to impose their vision of how the war should be fought, because American political
leadership had come to the realization that the Communists were winning the war. The Viet Cong main-force fighters were routinely
defeating Saigon’s regular soldiers, thereby opening the way for the guerrillas to return to the villages and undo whatever
progress the South Vietnamese government had made. Equally alarming, while the South Vietnamese military was losing control
of the countryside, Viet namese politicians in Saigon engaged in a seemingly endless battle for power. The resultant political
instability meant that America’s ally could neither fight nor govern.
With defeat looming, President Lyndon B. Johnson and his advisers decided that the only way to stem the tide was to send regular
American ground forces to Vietnam.
Enter the Marines
ON MARCH 8, 1965, TWO MARINE BATTALIONS began landing in South Vietnam, the first wave of an American commitment that surged
to a peak strength of 549,500 men. The marines came to provide security for a key airfield and related installations, including
a top-secret intelligence center. Airlifts brought one battalion directly onto the Da Nang airfield. The other battalion conducted
an amphibious landing complete with tanks and artillery. As they waded ashore in full battle gear it appeared that they were
restaging the Iwo Jima invasion. Instead of encountering blistering machine-gun fire, they met a throng of South Vietnamese
dignitaries and a collection of attractive girls who presented colorful leis of tropical flowers. Before the marines landed,
some 23,700 American advisers and support troops were on the ground in Vietnam. Two hundred and six had died the previous
year. The arrival of the marines in Vietnam marked a watershed. In the sad words of General William C. Westmoreland, “The
time when we could have withdrawn with some grace and honor had passed.”
1
The Marine Corps retained some institutional memory of how to conduct counterinsurgency operations. Between 1909 and 1926
the marines had intervened in Central America four times. During these “Banana Wars,” they fought local guerrillas or bandits,
established an armed constabulary, and became involved in various forms of civic action. By 1934 a marine major concluded
that despite its successes the Marine Corps was making unnecessary errors. He issued a challenge: “We might well ask ourselves
‘Have we fully profited by past experiences?’ ”
2
In response, the Marine Corps published the
Small Wars Manual
, a distillation of lessons learned from previous interventions. It was a practical compendium of how to fight an insurgency.
It explicitly recognized that pure military strength might be unable to overcome an insurgency whose basis lay in economic,
political, or social causes. It promoted a blended approach to counterinsurgency with a heavy dose of psychology. It advocated
the employment of as little violence as possible in order to avoid native bitterness that would obstruct the return to peace.
However, with unfortunate ill-timing, the Corps issued its final version of the
Small Wars Manual
in 1940, which guaranteed its quick passage to apparent permanent irrelevancy. World War II saw the Marine Corps change focus
from counterinsurgency to amphibious assault. The change was so thorough that the officer who wrote the 1960 training manual
on fighting guerrillas did not even know that the
Small Wars Manual
had ever existed.
But the Marine Corps is a tight tribe, and even in 1965 some marines still remembered their counterinsurgency history.
3
Senior marines, including the commandant of the Corps, had been commissioned in the early 1930s when the experiences and
stories of fighting Sandino in Nicaragua and Charlemagne in Haiti were still fresh. Lewis Walt, commander of the marine expeditionary
force that landed in Vietnam, had been a young cadet in 1936 whose company commander was the renowned Lewis “Chesty” Puller.
Walt recalled that Puller “told us tales about fighting in Haiti and Nicaragua” and “every story had some point.”
4
However, when trying to apply historical experience to Vietnam the marines confronted two fundamental differences. The Guardia
Nacional in Nicaragua and the Haitian Gendarmerie were local constabulary forces commanded by marine officers. In Vietnam,
all Americans had a strictly advisory relationship with the South Vietnamese forces. Second, during the Banana Wars the marines
had been their own boss. In Vietnam, the U.S. Army was boss.
Moreover, in 1965 the marines labored under two flawed doctrines. Their own doctrine had been revised only three years earlier.
In an astonishing understatement of both the lessons of history and the Corps’ own experience, the 1962 field manual
Operations Against Guerrilla Forces
paid lip service to the
Small Wars Manual
by observing that success against guerrillas was affected by the attitude of the civilian population instead of emphasizing
that the battle for popular support was the key conflict in fighting an insurgency.”
5
In addition, the marines operated under the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, headed by General Westmoreland. Westmoreland
was an army general whose views had been formed by his conventional war experience. He followed the army doctrine that focused
on achieving victory by destroying the enemy’s army in open combat. General Walt quickly found the army doctrine unhelpful
at best. Walt later recalled that shortly after arriving in Vietnam he realized that he personally “had neither a real understanding
of the nature of the war nor any clear idea as to how to win it.”
6
But he and his men had to learn fast because like it or not, the mission to provide airfield security plunged the marines
into the pacification business.
A “Good Start” in Le My
The airfields were located in northern South Vietnam, a five-province region designated by allied commanders as I Corps. The
vast majority of the residents of I Corps lived along the fertile coastal strip where they grew rice and fished. Along a 100-mile
sector of the coast the marines established three huge enclaves—from north to south, Hue/Phu Bai, Da Nang, and Chu Lai—and
set to work preparing to defend the airbases and their associated infrastructure.
The Viet Cong dominated the hamlets surrounding the middle of the three enclaves, Da Nang. When marine commanders pondered
how to accomplish their mission they realized that about 150,000 civilians lived within 81 mm mortar range of the airfield.
Since hit-and-run mortar bombardment was a Viet Cong tactic of choice, this was a problem. They decided to conduct an experiment
based on the Corps’ heritage of small-wars operations. The first target was the village of Le My, located on strategic ground
eight miles northwest of Da Nang. A marine battalion commander surveyed the neighborhood on May 8, 1965. A Viet Cong sniper
killed one of the marine scouts, thus providing persuasive evidence that the enemy was present. Three days later, two marine
companies swept through Le My, easily evicting the two Viet Cong platoons based in the village. The marines made the male
villagers destroy punji traps (concealed pits full of sharpened bamboo stakes), fill in trenches, and dismantle bunkers. Meanwhile,
South Viet namese government officials verified the identifications of the 700 village inhabitants and sent fifty-odd to Da
Nang for further questioning. Three days later a mixed force of militia, including recently recruited local villagers, relieved
the marines.
While the militia purportedly worked to eliminate any remaining Viet Cong, marine patrols saturated the area to provide security
for the village. The marines also initiated a comprehensive civil affairs program much like what had been done during the
“benign assimilation” phase of the Philippine insurgency. They built a school house and medical dispensary, established a
central market, and trained local nurses. In sum, the marine pacification effort in Le My followed the approach advocated
in the
Small Wars Manual
. Lieutenant General Victor Krulak, widely regarded as the Corps’ leading theoretical counterinsurgency expert, visited Le
My and pronounced it a good start: “The people are beginning to get the idea that U.S. generated security is a long term affair.”
7
Le My became a model for future marine pacification efforts. It also did not work.
In the absence of locals willing to denounce Viet Cong military and political operatives embedded inside Le My, the so-called
Viet Cong infrastructure, marines remained clueless about their presence. The Viet Cong infrastructure were the people who
provided political and military direction to the Communist war effort. They recruited youth who fought in the Viet Cong regular
forces. They collected food and taxes to support the fighting units. Most important, as a Viet Cong defector related, was
the fact “8 that the people were willing to cover for us at all times. They would not report our activities or locations to
the government forces.”
8
The Viet Cong infrastructure formed a highly structured bureaucracy that presented the South Vietnamese government with a
deadly political and military challenge. Quite simply, the war could not be won unless this infrastructure was destroyed.
The task of identifying the insurgent infrastructure should have fallen to the Vietnamese National Police. But most police
were too inefficient, corrupt, or frightened to perform this job. Consequently, within months of the marines entering Le My,
the Viet Cong were back in place, their operatives secure through a combination of genuine popular support and the threat
of terror. In December 1965, some seven months after the marines had first entered Le My, the Viet Cong gave the villagers
a chilling lesson by capturing and torturing a prominent South Vietnamese pacification official and then burying him alive.
The Le My experience was only too common. That same December, near the southern enclave of Chu Lai, marines participated in
a banquet with the village elders of Tri Binh. The next day, with the enthusiastic participation of the hamlet’s chief, marine
and South Vietnamese officials staged a flag-raising ceremony. On December 24, a marine Civil Affairs Team held a Christmas
party for the villagers. On Christmas Day the marines invited the children to attend a celebration at battalion headquarters.
On the last day of December, a Viet Cong assassin killed Tri Binh’s chief.
The failure to provide real security and the failure to follow up on the first village clearing operation at Le My were reminiscent
of the Philippine Insurrection experience. In Vietnam, a handful of insightful people understood the importance of civilian
confidence in American fortitude. One such person was a Viet namese official in Le My. He asked General Krulak, who was inspecting
a newly “pacified” village, “All of this has meaning only if you are going to stay. Are you going to stay?”
9
Vietnamese peasants had seen first the French and then the Saigon government commit and then withdraw forces, leaving the
villagers to cope with the consequences. These villagers may have wanted relief from the Viet Cong and their forced requisitions
and military draft. But before they aligned with the Americans or the central government, they needed to know that the counterinsurgents
were going to be there to protect them for the long term.
The Combined Action Program
In the summer of 1965, the northernmost marine enclave centered around the airfield of Phu Bai. Because the marines here were
stretched thin, the battalion civic affairs officer suggested utilizing an overlooked resource, the local militia, called
the Popular Forces (PF). The battalion developed a plan to integrate a PF platoon with a marine rifle squad. An accommodating
Vietnamese divisional commander concurred, and so was born the war’s most innovative pacification approach, the Combined Action
Program. A young lieutenant named Paul R. Ek received the assignment of implementing this vision through the establishment
of the first Combined Action Platoon (CAP).
Ek had prior experience as an adviser in Vietnam. More important, he had taken an intensive two-month course in Viet namese
and could understand and speak well enough to communicate in most situations. From a pool of volunteers Ek picked the best
men to form four rifle squads. He gave them a one-week primer on Viet namese language and culture so they could know their
place in this rural society—“who to call ‘sir’ and whom to call ‘you,’ ” as Ek phrased it—and the marines entered four villages
to live and work with four militia platoons.”
10
Ek’s mission was to “run counterinsurgency operations” to defend the military installations at the nearby Phu Bai airfield.
11
Foremost in Ek’s mind was the need to handle things differently than the French. Although the marines would be occupying
villages, they were not to behave as an occupying force. Ek thought that by assisting the people and training the militia
the marines could build an infrastructure to compete with and eventually replace Viet Cong influence.
The terrain consisted of densely grouped homes surrounded by open rice paddies. The Viet Cong dominated the area but did not
maintain a regular military presence. Instead, several times a week Viet Cong tax collectors or propaganda teams made nocturnal
visits. The propaganda teams held meetings and distributed leaflets to spread the message that the Vietnamese had successfully
resisted powerful foreign armies in the past and they could do so again. With slogans such as “Unite the People, Oppose the
Americans, Save the Nation,” they kept patriotic and revolutionary fires burning. They also warned against cooperating with
the Americans and issued threats against those who served as American “puppets.” Although the CAP soldiers seemingly controlled
the villages, such visits sought to remind the villagers who was truly in charge.
Ek figured that the Viet Cong would react to the marines in one of two ways: by immediately attacking to wipe out his platoon
or by leaving them alone to make blunders that would alienate the villagers. The Viet Cong chose the latter but failed to
reckon with the resolution of Ek and his marines to avoid such blunders. Unlike the French, they did not try to impose their
own methods but rather adopted and used local approaches. The PFs, many of whom were seasoned anti-Communist fighters, particularly
appreciated this attitude. Ek’s marines also adopted a special policy that whenever there was firefight they made sure the
militia participated. That way, if a mistake or a stray round injured a noncombatant, the blame would come to the combined
PF-marine team instead of falling solely on the Americans.
