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10: i become an officer in the south vietnamese army (1951) how ironic, I thought to myself as I awoke early one morning early in 1951. Here I was, a devout Buddhist, a man once in training to wear the saffron robe and carry the begging bowl of a bonze, a Buddhist priest. As a youth, I thought my life would be devoted to meditation and prayer, yet I had just spent nearly four-anda -half years fighting in a revolutionary army. Now, attending the military academy, I was committed to a career as a professional officer. Waves of doubt swept through me, but I recalled the words of encouragement from my father and the soul-searching they inspired. I had made my decision and could not look back. I must do everything I could to make my country free and independent, especially now when Vietnam was at a critical point in its history. It was more than a year since I decided to join the Vietnamese Army, created after French President Vincent Auriol officially recognized Vietnam as an independent state within the French union.1 I volunteered to be a member of the first class at the academy, then known as the School of Military Inter-Arms. It was patterned after the French military academy at St. Cyr. The school’s entire staff— administration, service staff, and instructors—were French,2 and French was the teaching language.3 We even ate French food, being allowed only two Vietnamese meals each week. Initial recruiting for the academy’s first class was somewhat discouraging. Only a few hundred young Vietnamese men volunteered, and fewer than 100 were accepted .4 Of the thirteen candidates selected from the Central Vietnam area, only three of us were civilian candidates. The remaining ten were already in military service , as noncommissioned officers (NCOs) in Vietnamese Regional Guard units, or as interpreters or NCOs in the French Army. Some candidates from the South came from paramilitary groups formed by religious sects (Cao Dai, Hoa Hao, and Binh Xuyen). The number of cadets who first began training was so small that authorities initiated an accelerated recruiting program that brought in about fifty additional cadets to join us. All these were civilian candidates with no military background. They also were younger, generally between nineteen and twenty-two years old, and they were not required to take the three- to four-month preparatory military training that those of us in the original group underwent before entering the School of Military Inter-Arms. Our academy occupied a former Japanese base in the beautiful city of Dalat. 117 i become an officer in the south vietnamese army French colonialists, as mentioned earlier, created Dalat as a resort in the mountains of Central Vietnam some sixty years earlier. After the Japanese withdrew and the French returned, the facility was used to train about a dozen Vietnamese holding French citizenship to serve as officers in the Republican Guard of the Autonomous State of Cochinchina (in the southern part of Vietnam).5 Among them were several who later became generals and held important positions in South Vietnam: Nguyen Khanh, who became chief of state in 1964, and Tran Thien Khiem, a prime minister under President Thieu. My first few days as a cadet disturbed me deeply. I was not used to French military discipline. Discipline in the Viet Minh had been even harsher in some ways, but then we had worked and lived under harsh conditions that demanded a strict regime . It also seemed more democratic because of the self-criticism sessions, plus constant reviews of our conduct and operations. Now we followed a strict code of military regulations that governed almost all of our behavior, even in minor respects. As cadets, our French officers and instructors ordered us how to dress, when and how to eat (using knives and forks instead of our traditional chopsticks), and how to arrange our quarters. They woke us up in the middle of cold nights to dress in combat uniforms and run around the area conducting various field exercises. This approach seemed rather superfluous to me, especially when I recalled the years I had commanded a platoon, then a company, and finally a battalion of Viet Minh troops in attacks against the Japanese and French. I admit to being somewhat resentful because I now had to take orders from a French lieutenant who had never seen a day of combat. That was not easy for me. I also...

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