The Silent Tears of Hue City

[travisab1]

I thought you folks might want to read this, soooo I'm passing it along...



From: "Jack Cunningham (Proud CAP Marine)" ProudCapMarine@earthlink.net

target=_blank>http://home.earthlink.net/~ducducvie...uc_duc_023.htm

The American People will soon start asking questions about things like the Hue City' Massacres. The above link will take you to the subject article... The best teachers of this information are the Vietnam Veterans who honorably and bravely saved the people of Hue.

The Myth About The Vietnam War
target=_blank>http://home.earthlink.net/~ducducvie...uc_duc_006.htm

Some Vietnam Statistics
target=_blank>http://home.earthlink.net/~ducducvie...uc_duc_022.htm

Dirty Little Secrets of the Vietnam War

James F. Dunnigan & Albert A. Nofi..

Pages 90 - 92

Copyright 1999

St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010

Marine Combined Action Platoons

The Marine Corps had spent most of the period between the two world wars in counterinsurgency operations in the Caribbean. Their experience was embodied in the Small Wars Manual of 1940. Unfortunately, World War II, and the general lack of any small war-type actions, led to the neglect of this publication. For many years the manual was largely ignored as the [Marine] Corps concentrated on amphibious operations against the Japanese, then conventional operations in Korea, and finally to adjusting to the demands of a potential nuclear battlefield in the 1950s. Some attention was paid to counterinsurgency, but when the [Marine] Corps came to publish a new manual for guerrilla [terrorist] operations in 1962, most of the lessons of the Small Wars Manual were ignored. Fleet Marine Force Manual 8-2, Operations Against Guerrilla Forces, was an ill-organized collection of borrowings from the Small Wars Manual, combined with some alleged lessons of more recent guerrilla wars and some theoretical musings on the subject. But some people in the [Marine} Corps remembered. One of the recommendations of the Small Wars Manual was the combination of Marine personnel with local personnel in operational formations. Almost as soon as they arrived in Vietnam, the Marines began organizing what became known as Combined Action Platoons (CAP.) A combined action platoon integrated a Marine squad into a Vietnamese local defense platoon. Typically, a CAP included fourteen Marines (a squad leader, grenadier/assistant squad leader, the three fire teams of four each), plus three Navy Corpsmen, with a Vietnamese local defense platoon of thirty-eight men (a platoon leader, four staff personnel, and three squads of eleven each).

CAP personnel lived with the local people, working closely with Vietnamese military and political leaders. Although primarily intended to strengthen and train local defense forces, they were responsible for many rural developing projects, such as running medical clinics, building schools, delivering supplies, and so forth.

Personnel assigned to Combined Action Platoons were routinely drawn from the general pool of available Marines. Since living conditions in the typical Vietnamese rural hamlet were pretty primitive, most Marines [and Navy Corpsmen] were in for some serious culture shock when they joined their assigned platoons?

The CAP program was responsible for securing many villages in the Marine Corps areas of Northern [South} Vietnam. Convinced of the effectiveness of the program, Marines wanted to expand it ( only a small proportion, c 10 percent, of ARVN's local defense forces was ever involved in the program ). However, this proved very difficult. Not only was the ARVN reluctant to supply troops, but senior U.S. Commanders in Vietnam saw it as a "waste" of fine infantry. In fact, at its peak in 1969, the program only involved about 2,000 Marines, about two battalions' worth of manpower at a time when the United States had well over a hundred combat battalions in country. With the introduction of Vietnamization in 1970, the program was abandoned.

Grass- Roots Security

A Fellowship of Valor The Battle History of the United States Marines

THE HISTORY CHANNEL

Col. Joseph H. Alexander, USMC (RET.)

with Don Horan and Norman C. Stahl

Foreword by. Brig. Gen. Edwin H. Simmons, USMC (Ret.), Director Emeritus, Marine Corps History and Museums

Page 326

Despite its unpopularity at the highest levels, the CAP Program was the major and most successful Marine Corps contribution to the Vietnam War.

Physical security for the Vietnamese village's leaders-its chief, teachers, priests, and militia honchos- was a powerful local concern in this war, true to Communist objectives, the Viet Cong made no bones about replacing the existing leadership hierarchy of a village with their own "ringers." The VC assassinated 6,000 village officials in this manner during the war. Marine commanders would always ask when moving into a new area: "Where does the village chief sleep at night?" If he retreated to the city at sunset, he is effect forfeited his village to marauding VC. But if he remained in the hamlet, he did so at great risk, often with a price on his head. (South of Da Nang in 1969, the Viet Cong offered big bucks to anyone who could knock off a brash Catholic priest who stayed his ground and protected his walled convent with a Thompson submachine gun.)

Beginning quietly in 1965, and spreading rapidly throughout Eye Corps in subsequent years, was a Marine Corps innovation known as the "Combined Action Program" The CAP concept was simple. A handpicked, carefully trained (language, customs, weaponry) Marine rifle squad, with a Navy medical corpsman attached, would be assigned to a village to be integrated with several dozen Popular Forces troops, the much maligned, barely trained local militia. The Marines would move into the village to stay (sleep, eat, fight), patiently teaching military skills and virtues to the PFs, in exchange for their intelligence about local VC operations. Cultural misunderstandings abounded, but gradually-some said, miraculously- the PF's and other villagers accepted the Marine presence, gained confidence, and began producing villages and hamlets that were secure day and night. In nocturnal firefights against the VC, some PF's "skied" at first, but most stayed to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with the Leathernecks. In the words of General Brute Krulak: "The Vietnamese knew who the guerrillas were and where they hid; the Marines knew how to kill them." Before long the number of CAPs grew to the size of a full regiment, which made the top brass in Saigon uncomfortable. They thought the Marines should stop frittering away their resources in civic action projects and get on with the grandiose "search and destroy" missions, which were sure to bring victory.

One fact illustrated the viability of the Marine CAP program. During the 1968 TET Offensive, when the VC or NVA overran so many of these villages, not a single one reverted to Communist authority.

The senior American in each of these vulnerable villages was a Marine sergeant, typically twenty-one years old. Few NCOs in any war, in any service, ever dealt so effectively with so much responsibility with so much on the line. Many voluntarily extended their tours.

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Travis