CHAPTER 4

An Expanding War, 1962

_The War’s New Context--Creation of MACV and Marine Advisory Division--The Vietnamese Marine Corps, 1962--Some Conclusions_

_The War’s New Context_

More than any previous year, 1962 was to be a period of deepened commitment for all participants in the continuing struggle for control of South Vietnam. On the American side plans already set in motion by President Kennedy’s recent decisions promised to loosen the flow of dollars, equipment, advisors, and combat support personnel to South Vietnam. Administration officials envisioned that this sharp influx of assistance would stimulate a redoubled war effort on the part of the Diem government.

Viet Cong strength and operational capabilities likewise were on the upswing as 1962 opened. U.S. and South Vietnamese sources were placing total Viet Cong military strength at roughly 25,000 men. Backing these military forces was a far greater number of sympathizers. American agencies tended to divide the Communist military forces into three rough categories according to function and composition--main forces, local forces, and village activists. Thought to total around 9,000 men at the beginning of the year, the main forces constituted the pillar of Communist military strength in the South. They were organized into approximately 20 small (200– to 400-man) and highly mobile battalions and a number of independent companies. Main force units as a rule were cadred by North Vietnamese (or returnees trained in the North) and were capable of conducting operations on an interprovincial scale. (They often were referred to as interprovincial battalions and companies. Later in the war Americans came to call the main forces “hard core” units.) Next in terms of operational capabilities were the Viet Cong local forces whose aggregate strength stood at around 8,000 part-time but well-trained soldiers. The local forces were organized into platoons and companies which operated independently within their respective districts. Finally, there were some 8,000 village activists. Part-time guerrillas in the truest sense of the term, the activists commonly worked in the paddies by day and engaged in military pursuits at night. For the most part their ranks were filled with men considered either too young or too old for service with organized Viet Cong military units. Nevertheless, they played an important role in the struggle for South Vietnam’s rural areas by providing various forms of support for larger Viet Cong formations. Living and working within the rural hamlets and villages as they did, the activists were a ready source of intelligence information for the Viet Cong. Often they served as porters and guides for main force units which had been assigned to operate within their locale. Otherwise, the activists were responsible for defending their particular villages against the government’s military and police forces--a defense which normally took the form of harassment with mines and sniper fire.[4-A]

[4-A] The three-way division was the most commonly used method of categorizing the Communist forces. (See U.S. Army, _The Viet Cong_, p. I:52.) A USMAAG document published during this period, however, divided the Viet Cong into two somewhat broader categories--main forces and guerrillas. Both local force units and village activists were classified as guerrillas under this system. (USMAAG, Vietnam, _Tactics and Techniques of Counterinsurgent Operations_, p. II-5.) Other sources tended to make more elaborate divisions. (See Pike, _Viet Cong_.)

After early 1962 the activities of these Viet Cong military and paramilitary forces were carefully coordinated with Communist political activities on the national level by a Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN).[4-B] From its headquarters, believed to have been located northeast of Saigon in Binh Duong Province, COSVN exercised direct control over six military regions (MRs). Designated MR-5 through MR-9 (arranged in a north to south pattern) with an additional Saigon-Gia Dinh Special Zone, the Communist military regions served essentially the same purpose as the government’s corps tactical zones. Within these six regions COSVN utilized a province and district structure only slightly different from that of the Diem government to exercise administrative and military control. At each level within this organization a small, disciplined Communist political committee orchestrated the activities of its subordinate military units with the actions of its political apparatus.

[4-B] COSVN apparently was established in March. Prior to this the NLF had functioned through two separate geographic headquarters--Interzone V, responsible for roughly the northern three-quarters of South Vietnam, and the NAMBO Interzone, responsible for the area roughly described by the forested hills and Mekong Delta physiographic regions.

To counter the strengthened NLF organization and to satisfy American demands that he adopt some form of national strategy, President Diem launched one of the most controversial large-scale undertakings of the war--the Strategic Hamlet Program. Instituted on an informal basis in the closing stages of 1961, the program became fully operative in mid-1962. Although heralded as a new concept, the campaign actually grew out of an existing program whose broad objective had been to bring improved economic and social conditions to South Vietnam’s rural areas. Named the Agroville Program, this effort had been in effect since late 1959 under the direction of Ngo Dinh Nhu, the president’s brother and principal advisor. Since its institution, however, the program had achieved little aside from the resettlement of many rural families into government constructed communities. Few meaningful reforms, either social or economic, had been realized. During the early 1960s, moreover, many of the Agrovilles had been victimized by the Viet Cong, who saw the developments as symbols of the government’s presence in contested areas. By mid-1961, in an effort to protect the more remote Agrovilles, authorities in several provinces had begun fortifying the otherwise helpless population centers.

Concurrent with this evolution of the Agrovilles into fortified communities, Sir Robert G. K. Thompson, the head of a newly formed British Advisory Mission in Saigon, suggested that President Diem consider adopting a similar scheme with broader strategic objectives. Thompson, who had helped implement such an effort in Malaya in the 1950s during the struggle there against Communist insurgents, specifically proposed that the South Vietnamese integrate various economic and social programs into an effective campaign to reestablish its influence in the heavily populated Mekong Delta. This campaign, Thompson advised, “should lead by stages to a reorganization of the government machinery for directing and coordinating all action against the communists and the production of an overall strategic operational plan for the country as a whole....”[4-1]

Under pressure from the U.S. Embassy to develop some sort of national strategy for countering the insurgency, President Diem accepted the concept of Thompson’s proposal. Shortly thereafter, Diem named Ngo Dinh Nhu to head a campaign formally designated the Strategic Hamlet Program. Nhu was instructed to plan the program and to create a combined agency that would insure its coordination within the various government ministries. These instructions resulted in the creation (in February) of the Interministerial Committee for Strategic Hamlets. A counterpart American organization, the U.S. Interagency Committee for Province Rehabilitation, was formed in April to provide assistance to Nhu’s agency.

With advice from Thompson and the U.S. Embassy, the Vietnamese formulated a program which in theory was to evolve in several rather distinct phases. First it would be necessary to select specific geographic areas wherein the Strategic Hamlet Program would be implemented. Once specific objective areas had been established, regular military units would initiate operations to clear those areas of Viet Cong formations. Following the completion of these operations RVNAF units would resettle the inhabitants of the area in fortified hamlets. Initially these hamlets were to be defended by Civil Guard units while regular forces continued screening operations in the surrounding countryside. In the final phase, Self Defense Corps units would assume responsibility for local security while regular units continued to screen Viet Cong forces from the developments. During this phase district civil authorities would initiate economic and social programs within the newly formed communities in an effort to recapture the allegiance of the local populace. Thus, in this final phase, it was expected that the Communist political infrastructure would be broken.

Following the pacification of a few contiguous hamlets, the same process was to be repeated over and over, in an expanding pattern. In this manner Diem hoped to expand the GVN’s control progressively outward from the initial secure hamlets over large areas of the countryside. Ultimately the GVN intended to construct nearly 11,000 such protected communities in several of the country’s most critical rural areas.

A principal shortcoming of this method of pacification was that the success of the entire program within a specific area depended on the successful completion of virtually every developmental phase in every strategic hamlet. Should the Communist infrastructure remain intact in even one hamlet, that hamlet could precipitate the collapse of the entire campaign by contaminating the surrounding communities in a geometric progression.

Given this critical requirement that all phases be accomplished in a deliberate and orderly manner, it was unfortunate that Nhu initiated the program in an uncoordinated fashion. By the first of the year, months before the appropriate American and South Vietnamese agencies had been formed to guide the program, the construction of hamlets had begun on a scale which already suggested a nationwide campaign. Furthermore, the government failed to test the plan in a pilot project such as Thompson (as well as U.S. advisors) had recommended. Instead, it launched rather extensive campaigns simultaneously in several traditional Communist strongholds during the spring of 1962.

Nevertheless, once formally initiated, the Strategic Hamlet Program constituted the government’s first real effort to implement a concerted counterinsurgency strategy on a national scale. Regardless of its weaknesses and its somewhat abortive start, the program would serve as the context within which the Diem government would wage its battle with the Viet Cong during 1962 and most of 1963. From this military standpoint, moreover, Diem’s adoption of the Strategic Hamlet Program marked somewhat of a watershed in the evolution of ground strategy in the Vietnam war. Inherent in its selection was the decision to opt for a “clear-and-hold” as opposed to a “search-and-destroy” strategy. In accordance with the dictates of the pacification campaign, RVNAF ground forces would focus primarily during the next two years on operations to clear Communist military formations from the more densely populated rural areas.

_The Creation of MACV and Marine Advisory Division_

The American military build-up called for by the Washington decisions of December 1961 was well underway as the new year opened. Several U.S. units introduced in the closing weeks of 1961 had already begun operations by January. These included two U.S. Army transport helicopter companies and a composite U.S. Air Force detachment. Designated FARM GATE and composed initially of 151 officers and men, the Air Force detachment had a dual mission of training VNAF elements and conducting attack sorties in support of President Diem’s forces. The arrival of another U.S. Air Force unit, a C-123 transport squadron, another Army helicopter company, and an Army communications organization, the 3d Radio Research Unit, just after the first of the year raised the number of American military personnel serving on permanent assignment in Vietnam to over 3,000. Assigned to the Army’s radio unit, which immediately began operations from Pleiku in II Corps Tactical Zone, were 42 Marines from the 1st Radio Company, FMF. Designated Detachment A, 1st Radio Company, these were the first U.S. Marines to participate in the ongoing build-up.

Thus far, however, the U.S. troops arriving in Vietnam were for combat support rather than advisory type duty. At a meeting held in Honolulu in mid-January, Secretary of Defense McNamara ordered the ranking American military officials concerned with Vietnam to make substantial increases in the number of advisors serving with the Vietnamese armed forces.

Less than a month after the Honolulu conference, a new U.S. command was created in Saigon to manage the expected influx of advisors and the intensified military assistance effort more efficiently. On 8 February, the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (USMACV or MACV) supplanted the MAAG as the senior American command in the Republic of Vietnam. Its commander, Army General Paul D. Harkins (ComUSMACV), assumed direct responsibility for all U.S. military policy, operations, and assistance to President Diem’s government. Harkins was directly subordinate to the Commander in Chief, Pacific, Admiral Harry D. Felt, whose headquarters was in Hawaii.

The number of U.S. Marines assigned to MACV’s staff indicated that they would play an important role in its operations. In all, 21 staff billets in the new command were allocated to the Marine Corps. The most important of these was the chief of staff billet. This assignment went to Major General Richard G. Weede, a veteran who had commanded an artillery battalion during the campaigns for Saipan and Okinawa during World War II. Later, in Korea, he had distinguished himself as the commander of the 5th Marines. Weede arrived in Saigon from Hawaii where he had commanded the 1st Marine Brigade since 1959. Other Marines joined General Harkins’ command as Deputy Chief of Staff, J-2 and as branch chiefs for the J-3 through J-6 divisions. Two other positions assigned to Marine officers were the project officer for a Joint Operations Evaluation Group and a research and development project officer for a Department of Defense agency. Both of these were operationally controlled by the newly organized Military Assistance Command.

[Illustration: _Major General Richard G. Weede, USMC, Chief of Staff, U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam. (USMC Photo A150562)._]

Under the new U.S. command arrangement, the old Military Assistance Advisory Group became subordinate to General Harkins’ command. Headed by Major General Charles J. Timmes, U.S. Army, the MAAG was now responsible primarily for the advisory aspect of the assistance program. To accommodate the impending increases in the number of advisors, the MAAG’s staff was restructured. Under its new table of organization, Marine officers were to serve as deputy chief of staff and head of the plans branch of the J-3 division. Later, in 1963, the MAAG’s table of distribution would be modified with the effect that the chief of staff billet would be held by a Marine colonel. The first Marine to serve as General Timmes’ chief of staff would be Colonel Earl E. Anderson, a much-decorated aviator who eventually would become the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps.

The reorganization of the MAAG brought about a dramatic change in the size and scope of the U.S. Marine advisory effort. The new table of organization included a provision for an 18-man Marine Advisory Division within the MAAG’s Naval Section. The organizational charts for this division included advisor billets for a lieutenant colonel, a major, six captains, a gunnery sergeant, and four staff sergeants. Administrative positions were to make up the balance of the new organization.

As had been the case previous to this expansion, the lieutenant colonel was to serve as the Senior Marine Advisor to the Vietnamese Marine Corps. The inclusion of the major’s billet was expected to enhance the overall effectiveness of the advisory division as he was to double as Assistant Senior Advisor and as senior artillery advisor. The gunnery sergeant was to assist in the artillery advisory duties. Of the six captains, four were to be assigned as advisors to VNMC infantry battalions while the two others were slated to advise on engineer and supply matters. The four logistics-trained staff sergeants were to be assigned as assistant infantry battalion advisors and were expected to free the officer advisors from direct involvement in time-consuming supply matters.

Marines required to man this enlarged advisory unit began arriving in Vietnam as early as February. All of the new officer advisors were graduates of either Junior School at Marine Corps Schools, Quantico or the U.S. Army Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Following their assignments, but before departing for Vietnam, many advisors received schooling in military assistance operations. This normally included a five-month course of instruction in the French language, a requirement which more and more Marine advisors were beginning to question as a result of the Vietnamese desire to converse in their own language rather than French. Upon arrival in Saigon, the Marines were given two days of orientation briefings at MACV headquarters before assuming their jobs in the Marine Advisory Division.

Lieutenant Colonel Brown continued to serve as the Senior Marine Advisor and headed the new advisory division throughout the summer of 1962. In October he was relieved by Lieutenant Colonel Clarence G. Moody, Jr., a veteran who held the Navy Cross for heroism as a company commander during the Korean War. Having served with the British Royal Marines following Korea, Moody was somewhat familiar with the problems involved in dealing with foreign military services.

[Illustration: _Lieutenant Colonel Clarence G. Moody, Jr., USMC, Senior Marine Advisor. (USMC Photo A412981)._]

Encouraged by both Brown and Moody, the U.S. Marine advisors participated in every combat operation undertaken by the VNMC during 1962. Prior to planned operations they helped their Vietnamese counterparts coordinate the more sophisticated means of support which became available as the American military build-up took hold. During planning phases, for example, they assisted with the development of detailed orders and helped plan for employing artillery fire and air support. If the impending operation was to be amphibious in nature, the Marine officers coordinated with the U.S. Navy advisors assigned to the supporting Vietnamese Navy units, thereby insuring that planning for embarkation had been accomplished. On occasion the advisors were required to coordinate helicopter support for the VNMC units--a task sometimes complicated by the Vietnamese Marines’ lack of experience in heliborne operations. Unfortunately, the almost constant combat assignments being drawn by the handful of U.S. and VNAF helicopter units available in Vietnam made training in such operations impossible.

Even more difficult were the advisor’s responsibilities after their units deployed to combat. The U.S. Marines were experiencing the often frustrating task of actually searching out the elusive Viet Cong on a continuing daily basis. Additionally, the Americans found themselves faced with the unenviable task of advising Vietnamese officers, who, in some cases, had been fighting Communist guerrillas since the French-Indochina War. These circumstances presented a unique set of challenges for the advisors. For American officers with relatively little actual experience in this brand of warfare to offer tactical advice in a form acceptable to their Vietnamese counterparts demanded a combination of tact, patience, and subtle persuasive powers.

The U.S. Marine advisors quickly learned that success in this peculiar assignment depended largely on the degree of respect they commanded among the Vietnamese Marines. To help build this intangible yet vital foundation of mutual understanding and confidence, the Marine advisors stayed with their units in combat, sharing with the Vietnamese Marine the same foods, the same dangers, the same discomforts, and the same routines. The Marine advisors lived in U.S. bachelor quarters in Saigon when their respective battalions were in garrison. Nevertheless, they spent much of this time at the Marine base camps, inspecting troops and equipment and making preparations for the battalion’s next combat assignment. Among others, Lieutenant Colonels Brown and Moody viewed this continuous association with the Vietnamese Marines as the single most essential ingredient to a successful advisory program.

_The Vietnamese Marine Corps, 1962_

For the Vietnamese Marine Corps 1962 was characterized by expansion, redesignation, and continued combat operations against the Viet Cong. On 1 January the former Vietnamese Marine Group was redesignated the Vietnamese Marine Brigade and was enlarged to 5,483 officers and men. Under its new table of organization, the number of infantry battalions remained at four but two new battalions were added. One battery of eight 105mm howitzers, two batteries of eight 75mm pack howitzers, and a headquarters and service battery comprised an artillery battalion which was created to provide artillery fire support to the infantry units. An amphibious support battalion of 1,038 officers and men was also formed. This unit contained the personnel necessary to provide the entire Marine brigade with reconnaissance, communications, motor transport, medical, engineer, and training support. Lieutenant Colonel Khang continued in his position as Commandant of the expanded and restructured Vietnamese Marine Corps.

The infantry battalions of the Vietnamese Marine Brigade performed a variety of combat missions ranging from security duty around key government installations to helicopter landings in suspected Viet Cong redoubts during 1962. The four infantry battalions (the 4th Battalion became available for combat assignment at midyear) participated in 23 combat operations which involved 404 days in the field. These operations included 12 amphibious landings and eight heliborne assaults. With the exception of two howitzer batteries which saw some combat, the artillery battalion devoted the year to training. Supervised by Major Alfred J. Croft and Gunnery Sergeant William A. Loyko, their new Marine advisors, the Vietnamese artillerymen learned their skills in a number of field firing exercises conducted on ARVN artillery ranges.

In terms of casualties the VNMC battalions fought no major engagements with the Communists during the year. A typical operation was one conducted in An Xuyen, South Vietnam’s southernmost province, early in the year. The 2d Battalion, which was assigned to the An Xuyen province chief for the period between 18 February and 26 April, conducted one helicopter landing, provided troop escorts for numerous truck convoys, and fought several minor engagements with the Viet Cong. Although the Vietnamese commander reported 112 enemy killed and another 40 wounded during the two-month assignment, the figures contradicted those of Captain Evan L. Parker, the Marine advisor, which placed the Viet Cong casualties at about 40 dead and 20 wounded. This difference, which was not uncommon, stemmed largely from the fact that the Marine advisors limited their reports to enemy dead and wounded actually sighted. Still, the conflicting reports sometimes led to tensions between the Vietnamese commander and the Marine advisor.

In other instances the Vietnamese Marine battalions were ordered to serve as the reserve force for one of the three corps tactical zones. The 1st Battalion, for example, accompanied by Captain Bradley S. Snell, assumed the mission as II Corps reserve on 16 May and remained in that role until mid-September. Based at Ban Me Thuot deep in the Central Highlands, the battalion provided security for government installations while remaining ready to react to enemy threats. As the corps reserve it conducted one heliborne operation and several search-type missions. In one of these searches the Vietnamese Marines uncovered and destroyed a Viet Cong small arms factory. During its assignment in II Corps, the 1st Battalion accounted for only four Viet Cong dead and one wounded while suffering 16 dead and 28 wounded. These statistics attested both to the grim effectiveness of enemy sniper fire and mines and to the enemy’s elusiveness.

[Illustration: VNMC (MARINE BRIGADE) TABLE OF ORGANIZATION AS OF 1 JANUARY 1962

AUTHORIZED STRENGTH 5,483]

The newly activated 4th Battalion, advised by Captain Don R. Christensen, entered combat for the first time during an operation in Binh Thuan Province in the first week in August. Supported by Battery A (a 75mm howitzer unit) of the artillery battalion, it joined the 43d ARVN Infantry Regiment in an attempt to locate and destroy Viet Cong forces operating around Phan Thiet, the provincial capital, located on the coast 95 miles east of Saigon. Following the conclusion of this operation on 22 August, the Marine units reverted to the control of the Binh Thuan province chief. In this capacity they assisted in clearing and resettlement operations being conducted in conjunction with the Strategic Hamlet Program. Between 4 August and 15 October, when its assignment in the province ended, the 4th Battalion reported 12 Viet Cong killed and seven captured. Vietnamese Marine casualties were one killed and five wounded. During the assignment the Marines resettled some 600 civilians in fortified hamlets.[4-2][4-C]

[4-C] Major Croft, the Assistant Senior Marine Advisor during this period, later recalled that province chiefs tended to misuse the Marine units by assigning them unproductive missions such as static security. (Col Alfred J. Croft, Comments on 2d Draft MS, Whitlow, “Marine Activities in Vietnam, 1954–1964,” hereafter _Croft Comments_.)

[Illustration: _Vietnamese Marines search dense jungle for Viet Cong base areas. (Photo courtesy of Lieutenant Colonel Michael J. Gott, USMC)._]

In the last week of September General David M. Shoup, Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, arrived in Saigon to begin a four-day tour of South Vietnam. Shoup, who held the Medal of Honor for his actions as a regimental commander on Tarawa in World War II, was recognized as one of President Kennedy’s most trusted military advisors. Acting in his role as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Commandant was scheduled to visit a number of U.S. and South Vietnamese installations, including several strategic hamlets.

[Illustration:

CORPS TACTICAL ZONES 1962 ]

After a series of briefings at MACV and MAAG headquarters in Saigon, the Commandant and his party journeyed by automobile to the base camp of the 3d Vietnamese Marine Battalion at Thu Duc on the outskirts of the capital. There, accompanied by Lieutenant Colonels Brown and Khang, Shoup reviewed a Vietnamese Marine honor guard and inspected the 3d Battalion. Impressed with the units he had seen, General Shoup commended President Diem on the status of his Marine Brigade. “From my observation,” he wrote from Washington, “the Vietnamese Marine Corps is in an excellent state of readiness from the standpoint of equipment as well as the degree of training of its members.” “Indeed,” he added, “your Corps of Marines seemed to be a splendid and competent fighting organization.”[4-3]

The Commandant was less complimentary of the Strategic Hamlet Program. After visiting several of the developments, he concluded that the government’s effort to concentrate the Vietnamese civilians into defended communities was counter-productive to the program’s stated objective of winning the allegiance of the rural population. As Shoup reported to the Joint Chiefs of Staff upon his return to Washington, the forced resettlement of the peasants from their native hamlets and villages into what amounted to fortified camps seemed to be generating antagonism rather than good will.[4-4]

At the close of 1962 Vietnamese Marine commanders reported a total of 192 Viet Cong killed, 77 wounded, and another 158 taken prisoner. U.S. Marine advisors felt that even these moderate figures were inflated. They estimated that only about 98 enemy soldiers had been killed, 27 wounded, and roughly half as many actual Viet Cong captured as had been reported by their Vietnamese Marine counterparts. The Vietnamese Marines also had failed to inflict any serious damage on the enemy’s logistic system, capturing only 16,000 rounds of small arms ammunition, 45 grenades, 31 mines, and 50 individual weapons, a printing press, two typewriters, several motors, and an assortment of medical supplies.[4-5]

_Some Conclusions_

In retrospect, 1962 bears assessment as an important watershed in the chronicle of U.S. Marine activities in Vietnam. As the year began only three Marine advisors and a handful of embassy guards were serving in the Republic. The initial months, however, brought a dramatic expansion of that role, both in terms of numbers and responsibilities. By March Marines were functioning on MAAG and MACV staffs in Saigon, in U.S. Army communications facilities in the Central Highlands, and throughout the provinces where Vietnamese Marine units operated. Their contributions to the war effort, therefore, were broad and varied, ranging from high level planning to infantry advisory duties. The Marine role had expanded in rough proportion to the broad-based expansion of the overall U.S. military assistance program. In this connection, Marine contributions tended to be concealed within the context of the American assistance effort. Still, by mid-1962 it could be said that the Marines in Vietnam were leaving the impact of their service on virtually every stage of the ground war.

PART II

MARINE HELICOPTERS GO TO WAR