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4 Side Trips from the National Training Center The National Training Center was located in the sand dunes and salt marsh wastes about fifteen miles north of Vung Tau. Training areas spread along the beaches of the South China Sea and ran inland for miles. The headquarters area, at the end of a long gravel road, consisted of rows of decaying and sunbleached plywood buildings grouped around a parade ground sporting its obligatory flagpole.A rifle company from each battalion was required to man bunkers on a perimeter that encircled the headquarters area. Neglected and ramshackle barracks accommodated the rest of the troops, and the entire place appeared to be slowly rotting into the wastes. The National Training Center was a depressing and dismal place with a single function—training troops for combat. In addition to the three airborne battalions, several Cambodian battalions were also undergoing a training cycle. They had American advisors with them as well. I soon learned the Vietnamese government occasionally provided facilities for Cambodian troops who would return to their own side of the border once their training had been completed. Hopefully they would then be better prepared to fight the Khmer Rouge and North Vietnamese units that were expanding their reach in Cambodia. The South Vietnamese and Cambodian troops were kept separated as the two nationalities had a long and bloody history of conflict and there was no love lost between them. That sense of antipathy and potential trouble kept all the American advisors focused on their own units. The sensitive nature of a Cambodian training mission established another barrier that precluded getting acquainted with those other Americans, whoever they were. Soon after we arrived, Jack introduced me to the commander of the 8th Airborne Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Van Ba Ninh. Colonel Ninh was slight built, trim, and very focused on the business at hand, and he made a thought- 16 Chapter 4 ful effort to welcome me to the battalion. After returning my salute, shaking hands, and asking me to join him under a sun shade, he inquired about my previous service in Vietnam. Colonel Ninh listened closely and seemed satisfied when I told him I had served three years with the 101st Airborne Division . The fact that I had commanded both a rifle company and the division Pathfinder unit seemed to be a bonus. Although our discussion lasted only a few minutes, I left our meeting convinced that Colonel Ninh was an experienced and tough commander of combat paratroopers. The three airborne battalions were conducting unit training that would help integrate new soldiers and junior officers into their platoons and companies . The training program emphasized small unit leadership and was focused on reestablishing the cohesion that had eroded because of heavy casualties during recent battles. It seemed that all three battalions needed to rebuild from the ground up. The very fact that all three needed to reconstitute to that extent provided my first clue that Vietnamese paratrooper units accepted high casualty rates as a normal way of doing business. I was to learn a good deal more about their attitude toward combat soon enough. Unit strength continued to build as trucks loaded with new recruits and veterans returning from hospitals pulled in from Saigon every day. The daily grind at the National Training Center was demanding and rigorous , and the routine was filled with heat, flies, dust, and sweat. Training objectives emphasized small unit operations such as conducting patrols, setting ambushes, and attacking strong points. Training also included calling for and adjusting mortar and artillery fire and establishing defensive positions . Individual and unit security was a major theme stressed in all training. Sergeants and junior officers were the principal instructors and training was conducted using live ammunition. The Vietnamese Airborne liked to do night operations, and trying to get some sleep during the heat of the day was virtually impossible. Days and nights soon began to blend together. The troops were aggressive and confident, and the chain of command accepted an occasional injury from friendly fire. One evening a rifle company conducting a search operation flushed a half dozen local Viet Cong in the sand dunes and killed several. The battalion commander was delighted. No one had expected the local talent to venture within miles of our training areas. To catch an enemy reconnaissance team trying to track us was particularly satisfying to Colonel Ninh, who felt that killing a few of them added spice to what had become an otherwise bland training...

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