American Valor Quarterly Issue 4 - Autumn 2008 | Page 21

(“irregular” to use the current term) war. An intelligent approach trapped, but for the most part they evaded the sweeps, fading
to counterinsurgency started to disappear.
back into their base areas. While our military MAAG provincial
advisors were clearly tied in with the strategic hamlets, MACV
I became re-involved in Vietnam in 1962 when I was asked by headquarters and the corps and division advisory levels were not,
the Director of USAID in Washington to take a month’s leave and with few exceptions were more interested in traditional combat
of absence from the family engineering business to go back to operations. There was an over-reliance on air support and
South Vietnam to survey how our Saigon economic aid office, indiscriminate artillery interdiction, too often striking civilians but
the U.S. Operations Mission (USOM), could constructively become hitting few Vietcong. There was little understanding that the war
involved in counterinsurgency. The Vietnamese had adopted the could be fought more effectively by protecting and winning over
Strategic Hamlet Program, which was at its heart a village self- the population, and little appreciation, particularly at the top, of
defense, self-government and self-development program, as their its political and psychological aspects.
main response to the Vietcong insurgency. I found the program
promising but generally under funded, poorly planned in a number The disconnect between regular army units and the civilian
of provinces with too much uncompensated population population was also in large measure responsible for troop
relocation and lacking sufficient security support. Except for one misbehavior, alienating the people we needed to win over. The
experimental province in the Center, there was little tie-in between people first doctrine instilled in the army back in 1955 and 1956
combat operations by regular ARVN units and the strategic had been lost. There was talk of civic action but few American
hamlets. While senior American advisors at the Corps and Division military advisors to ARVN knew what it meant or thought it
level were pushing ARVN units of never less than battalion size important. Things were different with our military advisors at the
to conduct sweeps (the predecessor to “search and destroy” provincial level as they could ͕