The start of meade river / 1968

[billcpoulton]

Would you have known Ken Frost? I was with him in 28 Marines, 1967. He was in Cap, two tours. I rode with him back from An Hoa, When 27 Marine left for Da Nang.He told me he had just come from identifying the bodies of his unit. He had told them to sleep on top of their bunker . They did not listen. It was not easy for him to be going home.

[Deduke]

No, I didn't. All Caps eventually went from compounds to 100% mobile because of being overrun. I personally would not have liked being in a compound. Even though we never stayed in one spot more than 8 hours, it was harder to find us.

[billcpoulton]

Before I went to Vietnam,they wanted me to go to language school in Monterey, Calif.I got out of that. Cap units have been a mystery to me and maybe alot more people. Someday, tell us more. Where you around when Meade River was happening?

[Deduke]

I was in country in 1970, so Meade River was before my time. A good book to read about CAP is "The Village" by Bing West. Being an officer, he was not actually in the CAP, but he was heavily involved in the concept. The idea was that a squad of Marines would live in a village, with a defined AO, and train the local militia, hold Med-caps, and befriend the civilians in order to gain intel and affect local politics. Each CAP was pretty much autonomous in that we set our own operations, when and where we decided it beneficial. ( "We" being the E-5 Sgt in command of the CAP.) The CAP shared responsibility with the PFs (Popular Forces) but, at least on paper, the PF commander was in charge of the combined unit. That was to make the civilians comfortable, and to train them for our absence. In actuality, in my CAP we figured that our PFs were probably 10% VC. It took a long time to learn who to trust. On the up side, we made some very good friends with some civilians and PFs. Some of them had real balls, and some of them were punks. The worst part of leaving like we did was the kids. They didn't stand a chance after the North took over.