thedrifter
07-05-04, 07:03 AM
Marine Alternative to Search and Destroy
The U.S. Marine Corps Combined Action Program (CAP) just might have been a viable alternative to MACV's 'big battalions' strategy.
By James Donovan
Search-and-destroy operations in Vietnam failed as a working doctrine, and the strategy of attrition cost the needless deaths of thousands of American service personnel. That policy was based on principles the United States had employed in previous conventional wars, using superior American mobility and firepower to seize the initiative and inflict heavy losses on enemy units. The American policy and strategy during the Vietnam War should have been the pacification of the villages and hamlets, resulting in the destruction of the Viet Cong and their infrastructure. That could have been accomplished by the "clear-and-hold" tactics that the Marine Corps favored, using combined action platoons (CAPs). In his book Strange War, Strange Strategy, Lt. Gen. Lewis Walt argued, "The struggle was in the rice paddies -- in and among the people, not passing through, but living among them night and day -- a journey with them toward a better life long overdue."
As a military plan, attrition required wearing down the enemy's personnel and materiel until he lost the capacity to sustain his military effort or his will to fight. There are two principal reasons for the failure of the attrition strategy in Vietnam. First, the NVA and the VC could control the pace and intensity of the battle and therefore manage their own attrition. They initiated approximately 80 percent of all platoon- and company-size engagements. When any one of those battles started to turn against them, they simply pulled back to safe areas. Second, North Vietnam was willing to absorb large losses and still continue the war almost indefinitely. As it turned out, it was the United States that was not willing to absorb losses. Ho Chi Minh had taunted the French with his own version of attrition when he told them, "You can kill 10 of my men for every one I kill of yours but you will lose and I will win." For Hanoi, the struggle was a test of wills rather than a test of strength, and the end justified any means.
President Lyndon B. Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Earl Wheeler and the staff of MACV failed to understand the revolutionary character of the war and the value of the key concept of nation building. The United States placed little importance on the establishment of a democratic form of government in South Vietnam or the pacification of the populace. A memorandum sent in 1965 by General Wheeler to the members of his staff emphasized that the problems in Southeast Asia were not political but military. In contrast, retired French General André Beaufre, who had lived and served in Indochina, told the French high command in 1950 that the war could not be won militarily because it stemmed from political causes and could only be resolved by political means. Beaufre also said that he had discussed his views with General William C. Westmoreland and advised him to stop the "large offensive operations and to come back to the more modest strategy of the defense of the rice fields of South Vietnam."
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, writing in the journal Foreign Affairs, took the American military leadership to task for its performance in Vietnam, especially for the operational focus on destroying enemy troops rather than protecting the friendly population. Sir Robert Thompson, the noted British counterinsurgency expert, stated in his book No Exit From Vietnam that in his judgment "the American military leadership, failing to understand the nature of war, failed to adopt the correct counter strategy toward the VC and North Vietnamese, who, for their part succeeded in making the war a test of will rather than of strength."
Some American military critics also had reservations about the effectiveness of the conventional, offensive approach to the war. Ambassador Maxwell Taylor, Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp, Marine Generals Victor Krulak and Wallace Greene, and retired Army Lt. Gen. James Gavin all thought it was imperative to build up the ARVN and protect American installations rather than pursue a war of attrition. They believed American troops should have been deployed in coastal enclaves rather than conducting search-and-destroy and other types of missions that would actively engage the VC. The U.S. military, however, approached Vietnam as it did World War II and Korea, neglecting the political and social side of the conflict and never fully understanding that it was engaged in a people's war that involved all segments of Vietnamese society.
After President Johnson approved Westmoreland's March 1965 request for combat troops, 3,500 Marines landed on Vietnamese soil. The Marines hit the beach in the tradition of Tarawa, Iwo Jima and Inchon -- but instead of being met by machine gun and mortar fire, they were met by the mayor of Da Nang, photographers and girls who placed flower leis around their necks. One month later there were 5,000 Marines in Vietnam, the majority from two infantry battalions and two helicopter squadrons. The deployment of Marines to the Da Nang area marked a crucial change in America's role in Vietnam from adviser to combatant.
The specific role of the American troops and the exact tactics they would use had not been defined prior to their arrival in Vietnam. Would they assume static defensive positions, creating secure areas for the population? Or would they pursue the VC and the NVA forces in the countryside? H.R. McMasters, in his book Dereliction of Duty, wrote, "American soldiers, airmen, and Marines went to war in Vietnam without strategy or direction." It soon became apparent that MACV intended to conduct large-scale search-and-destroy type operations in what they termed "free-fire zones." There was, however, another approach: the Marine Corps' strategy of combined action platoons.
Michael Peterson, in his book Combined Action Platoons: The Marines' Other War in Vietnam, stated, "The CAP Marines waged war in the hamlets while the main force Army and Marine units all too often waged war on the hamlets." According to Peterson, the failure of the search-and-destroy and the free-fire zone approaches was implicit in a statement Westmoreland made to reporters as early as 1965. The MACV commander had said that the U.S. strategy gave the Vietnamese peasant three basic choices: He could stay close to his land, which was usually in a free-fire zone; he could join the VC, who were the targets in the free-fire zones; or he could move to an area under South Vietnamese control and become a refugee. One journalist inquired, "Doesn't that give the villager only the choice of becoming a refugee?"
Westmoreland responded, "I expect a tremendous increase in the number of refugees." In effect, the United States had declared war against the peasant population of Vietnam.
The Marines, following MACV orders, conducted some search-and-destroy operations while at the same time experimenting with their "ink-blot," or clear-and-hold tactics in the northern provinces of South Vietnam. From that experience, the concept of combined action emerged and developed into a viable alternative to the large-unit battles and the attrition strategy. The Marines used past experience to build a base of trust with the local population, helping them defend their hamlets and villages, borrowing ideas from standard Communist insurgency doctrine -- work with, eat with and sleep with the people. As Sir Robert Thompson commented in No Exit From Vietnam, "Of all the U.S. forces in Vietnam, the Marine Corps alone made a serious attempt to achieve permanent and lasting results in their tactical area of responsibility by seeking to protect the rural population. Realizing that the support of the Vietnamese Popular Forces (PFs) in those villages was essential to the control over the area, the Marines devised the concept of 'Combined Action Companies' (later called platoons)."
standard definition of military strategy is that it is the art and science of employing the armed forces of a nation to secure objectives of national policy by the application of force or the threat of force. More than 150 years ago Karl von Clausewitz wrote in On War, "The ends of strategy, in the final analysis, are those objectives that will finally lead to peace." To understand why, by these definitions, the United States failed to employ properly its forces in Vietnam, we must first look at the experience that influenced the strategies of search and destroy and of attrition.
American operations based on conventional methods made little real progress in defeating the VC or the NVA during the period from 1965 to 1968. MACV, nevertheless, continued to stand by the strategy of attrition as the only way to fight the war and win it quickly. The strategy of counterinsurgency and pacification operations would take too long and become too drawn out. Thus, America continued to try to replicate the massive firepower approach that had proved so successful in World War II, and to a lesser extent in Korea. But as Westmoreland argued in his book A Soldier Reports: "Critics presumably saw some alternative, for the essence of constructive criticism is alternative. Yet to my knowledge, nobody ever advanced a viable alternative that conformed to the American policy of confining the war within South Vietnam."
http://www.historynet.com/vn/villagepatrolcap.jpg
A patrol from CAP D-5 passes through the village of Tan Than on September 12, 1967. In 1970 the Combined Action Program reached its peak, with 1,750 U.S. Marines and 3,000 PFs participating (National Archives).
continued......
The U.S. Marine Corps Combined Action Program (CAP) just might have been a viable alternative to MACV's 'big battalions' strategy.
By James Donovan
Search-and-destroy operations in Vietnam failed as a working doctrine, and the strategy of attrition cost the needless deaths of thousands of American service personnel. That policy was based on principles the United States had employed in previous conventional wars, using superior American mobility and firepower to seize the initiative and inflict heavy losses on enemy units. The American policy and strategy during the Vietnam War should have been the pacification of the villages and hamlets, resulting in the destruction of the Viet Cong and their infrastructure. That could have been accomplished by the "clear-and-hold" tactics that the Marine Corps favored, using combined action platoons (CAPs). In his book Strange War, Strange Strategy, Lt. Gen. Lewis Walt argued, "The struggle was in the rice paddies -- in and among the people, not passing through, but living among them night and day -- a journey with them toward a better life long overdue."
As a military plan, attrition required wearing down the enemy's personnel and materiel until he lost the capacity to sustain his military effort or his will to fight. There are two principal reasons for the failure of the attrition strategy in Vietnam. First, the NVA and the VC could control the pace and intensity of the battle and therefore manage their own attrition. They initiated approximately 80 percent of all platoon- and company-size engagements. When any one of those battles started to turn against them, they simply pulled back to safe areas. Second, North Vietnam was willing to absorb large losses and still continue the war almost indefinitely. As it turned out, it was the United States that was not willing to absorb losses. Ho Chi Minh had taunted the French with his own version of attrition when he told them, "You can kill 10 of my men for every one I kill of yours but you will lose and I will win." For Hanoi, the struggle was a test of wills rather than a test of strength, and the end justified any means.
President Lyndon B. Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Earl Wheeler and the staff of MACV failed to understand the revolutionary character of the war and the value of the key concept of nation building. The United States placed little importance on the establishment of a democratic form of government in South Vietnam or the pacification of the populace. A memorandum sent in 1965 by General Wheeler to the members of his staff emphasized that the problems in Southeast Asia were not political but military. In contrast, retired French General André Beaufre, who had lived and served in Indochina, told the French high command in 1950 that the war could not be won militarily because it stemmed from political causes and could only be resolved by political means. Beaufre also said that he had discussed his views with General William C. Westmoreland and advised him to stop the "large offensive operations and to come back to the more modest strategy of the defense of the rice fields of South Vietnam."
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, writing in the journal Foreign Affairs, took the American military leadership to task for its performance in Vietnam, especially for the operational focus on destroying enemy troops rather than protecting the friendly population. Sir Robert Thompson, the noted British counterinsurgency expert, stated in his book No Exit From Vietnam that in his judgment "the American military leadership, failing to understand the nature of war, failed to adopt the correct counter strategy toward the VC and North Vietnamese, who, for their part succeeded in making the war a test of will rather than of strength."
Some American military critics also had reservations about the effectiveness of the conventional, offensive approach to the war. Ambassador Maxwell Taylor, Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp, Marine Generals Victor Krulak and Wallace Greene, and retired Army Lt. Gen. James Gavin all thought it was imperative to build up the ARVN and protect American installations rather than pursue a war of attrition. They believed American troops should have been deployed in coastal enclaves rather than conducting search-and-destroy and other types of missions that would actively engage the VC. The U.S. military, however, approached Vietnam as it did World War II and Korea, neglecting the political and social side of the conflict and never fully understanding that it was engaged in a people's war that involved all segments of Vietnamese society.
After President Johnson approved Westmoreland's March 1965 request for combat troops, 3,500 Marines landed on Vietnamese soil. The Marines hit the beach in the tradition of Tarawa, Iwo Jima and Inchon -- but instead of being met by machine gun and mortar fire, they were met by the mayor of Da Nang, photographers and girls who placed flower leis around their necks. One month later there were 5,000 Marines in Vietnam, the majority from two infantry battalions and two helicopter squadrons. The deployment of Marines to the Da Nang area marked a crucial change in America's role in Vietnam from adviser to combatant.
The specific role of the American troops and the exact tactics they would use had not been defined prior to their arrival in Vietnam. Would they assume static defensive positions, creating secure areas for the population? Or would they pursue the VC and the NVA forces in the countryside? H.R. McMasters, in his book Dereliction of Duty, wrote, "American soldiers, airmen, and Marines went to war in Vietnam without strategy or direction." It soon became apparent that MACV intended to conduct large-scale search-and-destroy type operations in what they termed "free-fire zones." There was, however, another approach: the Marine Corps' strategy of combined action platoons.
Michael Peterson, in his book Combined Action Platoons: The Marines' Other War in Vietnam, stated, "The CAP Marines waged war in the hamlets while the main force Army and Marine units all too often waged war on the hamlets." According to Peterson, the failure of the search-and-destroy and the free-fire zone approaches was implicit in a statement Westmoreland made to reporters as early as 1965. The MACV commander had said that the U.S. strategy gave the Vietnamese peasant three basic choices: He could stay close to his land, which was usually in a free-fire zone; he could join the VC, who were the targets in the free-fire zones; or he could move to an area under South Vietnamese control and become a refugee. One journalist inquired, "Doesn't that give the villager only the choice of becoming a refugee?"
Westmoreland responded, "I expect a tremendous increase in the number of refugees." In effect, the United States had declared war against the peasant population of Vietnam.
The Marines, following MACV orders, conducted some search-and-destroy operations while at the same time experimenting with their "ink-blot," or clear-and-hold tactics in the northern provinces of South Vietnam. From that experience, the concept of combined action emerged and developed into a viable alternative to the large-unit battles and the attrition strategy. The Marines used past experience to build a base of trust with the local population, helping them defend their hamlets and villages, borrowing ideas from standard Communist insurgency doctrine -- work with, eat with and sleep with the people. As Sir Robert Thompson commented in No Exit From Vietnam, "Of all the U.S. forces in Vietnam, the Marine Corps alone made a serious attempt to achieve permanent and lasting results in their tactical area of responsibility by seeking to protect the rural population. Realizing that the support of the Vietnamese Popular Forces (PFs) in those villages was essential to the control over the area, the Marines devised the concept of 'Combined Action Companies' (later called platoons)."
standard definition of military strategy is that it is the art and science of employing the armed forces of a nation to secure objectives of national policy by the application of force or the threat of force. More than 150 years ago Karl von Clausewitz wrote in On War, "The ends of strategy, in the final analysis, are those objectives that will finally lead to peace." To understand why, by these definitions, the United States failed to employ properly its forces in Vietnam, we must first look at the experience that influenced the strategies of search and destroy and of attrition.
American operations based on conventional methods made little real progress in defeating the VC or the NVA during the period from 1965 to 1968. MACV, nevertheless, continued to stand by the strategy of attrition as the only way to fight the war and win it quickly. The strategy of counterinsurgency and pacification operations would take too long and become too drawn out. Thus, America continued to try to replicate the massive firepower approach that had proved so successful in World War II, and to a lesser extent in Korea. But as Westmoreland argued in his book A Soldier Reports: "Critics presumably saw some alternative, for the essence of constructive criticism is alternative. Yet to my knowledge, nobody ever advanced a viable alternative that conformed to the American policy of confining the war within South Vietnam."
http://www.historynet.com/vn/villagepatrolcap.jpg
A patrol from CAP D-5 passes through the village of Tan Than on September 12, 1967. In 1970 the Combined Action Program reached its peak, with 1,750 U.S. Marines and 3,000 PFs participating (National Archives).
continued......