Defend and Befriend: The U.S. Marine Corps and Combined Action Platoons in Vietnam

Notes

161 Notes Preface 1. Ricks, Making the Corps, 188. Introduction 1. One should take note of this book’s use of “Viet Cong.” The Ngo Dinh Diem regime of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) originally coined the term Viet Cong, which means “Vietnamese Communist,” to identify the enemy political cadre, guerrillas , and insurgents who comprised the National Liberation Front (NLF) and its military arm, the People’s Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF). Some scholars view the term as pejorative since various non-Communist South Vietnamese joined the NLF. The term was widely used by both RVN and U.S. civilian and military officials during the war. In writing from the perspective of the Marines and corpsmen in the program, who also used the term, I have chosen to use Viet Cong when referencing the NLF and PLAF. Moreover, the more conventional military force of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) is known as both the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN), and this work exclusively utilizes the former. 2. Trullinger, Village at War. 3. Milam, Not a Gentlemen’s War. Milam served in Vietnam as a junior officer in the U.S. Army assigned to Mobile Advisory Team 38 in Pleiku. 4. Allnutt, “Marine Combined Action Capabilities,” C-6. 5. Quoted in Moser, “To Keep a Village Free.” 6. Critchfield, “The Marines Try a New Kind of Warfare.” 7. Appy, Working Class War, 25. 8. Quoted in Ebert, A Life in a Year, 10. 9. Longley, Grunts, 14, 15. 10. The U.S. military separates the distinct jobs of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines into various occupational fields. The U.S. Marine Corps has a four-digit numerical code that describes a Marine’s occupational specialty. The first two num- 162 Notes to Pages 8–19 bers identify the general military field, such as infantry (03), artillery (08), or ordnance (05), and the last two digits describe the specific specialty. For example, (03) represents duty in the infantry, and the succeeding (11) designates that Marine infantryman specifically as a rifleman. Thus, a Marine with the designated MOS (0311) is a rifleman in the infantry, whereas (0331) is a machine gunner in the infantry. 11. In May 1965, the Marines complied with Gen. William C. Westmoreland’s request to change the III Marine Expeditionary Force to III Marine Amphibious Force. Westmoreland feared that the Vietnamese would relate “expeditionary” to the French Expeditionary Force during the 1950s. 12. Clodfelter, Vietnam in Military Statistics, 252, 107. 13. FMFPAC monthly report, August 1969. 14. See Perry, “Marines in Afghanistan Take ‘the Village’ to Heart.” 1. The Evolution of Combined Action Platoons 1. See Bickel, MARS Learning. 2. IIIMAF commanders in Vietnam such as Lewis Walt were aware of the manual but did not believe it possessed all the answers for winning the “small war” in Southeast Asia. 3. U.S. Marine Corps, Small Wars Manual, 1. 4. Isely and Crowl, The U.S. Marines and Amphibious War, 45–46. This work is the most comprehensive publication to date on the development and implementation of the Fleet Marine Force before and during World War II. 5. Quoted in Blanchard, “Pacification,” 56. 6. Millett, Semper Fidelis, 548. 7. See Lee, Utter’s Battalion. Lee, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps, served in the Second Battalion, Seventh Marine regiment from August 1964 to June 1966. Lee witnessed firsthand the conventional amphibious assault training the Marine Corps had implemented prior to the beginning of U.S. combat involvement in Vietnam. 8. See Jablon, “General David M. Shoup.” 9. Quoted in Millett, Semper Fidelis, 558. 10. U.S. Marine Corps, Operations against Guerrilla Forces, 110. 11. Roe et al., A History of Marine Corps Roles and Missions, 25. 12. See Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam. Krepinevich coined the term “the Concept” to describe the army’s dedication to conventional warfare in the years between Korea and Vietnam. 13. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, 156. 14. Puller is perhaps the most celebrated Marine in the history of the service. Even today, Marine recruits learn about the hard-nosed, aggressive attitude of Puller , known as the “Marine’s Marine.” See Davis, Marine! and Hoffman, Chesty. 15. Hoffman, Chesty, 117. 16. Walt, Strange War, Strange Strategy, 43. Notes to Pages 20–34 163 17. Ibid., 63. 18. Ibid., 47. 19. FMFPAC monthly report, April 1966. 20. Walt, Strange War, Strange Strategy, 89. 21. Mullen...