May 1962, Saigon. The Vietkong owned the night. Outposts took hits, roads died after dark, and timid commanders called it suicide to step outside. The officer who would flip that script almost never made it here at all. He missed a flight that vanished over the Pacific. Then we started patrolling after sunset and the raids began to fail.

 Here is exactly what you’re going to get. The night patrol and ambush method we drilled until it stuck. the intelligence lattice that combined human sources with broken radio traffic and the pre-dawn helicopter landings that cut off retreat routes and killed momentum in the northern Meong Delta. No fluff, just the playbook that turned their best hours into ours.

 If your plan cannot survive the dark, it is trash. This one did. He didn’t appear to be someone easy to hold back as he entered the swinging doors of Colonel Daniel Bonporter’s office in Saigon on March 23rd, 1962, just before noon. Porter soon sensed that if the commanding general handed over control of the war to this junior lieutenant colonel in crisp cotton khakis and a peaked green cap, John Van would simply reply, “Fine, General, and take the reigns.

” Ironically, he almost didn’t reach Vietnam at all. The plane that he was supposed to board, carrying 93 other officers and men, vanished over the Pacific. He missed that flight because his eagerness to go to war, led him to overlook renewing his passport. A clerk caught the expired passport during the last document check and asked him to step out of the boarding line.

 Shortly after, the Red Cross called Mary Jane to inform her that her husband was lost at sea. Mary Jane insisted he was fine. He had called her and was on a later flight. However, the Red Cross representative insisted she was mistaken. Her husband was indeed missing. Passenger rosters do not lie. At that time, everything was in a state of uncertainty. President John F.

Kennedy had established the new United States Military Assistance Command Vietnam known as MACV in Sagon. Just a month prior. He appointed General Paul Harkkins to lead it. Harkkins had built his reputation as the main staff aid to General George Patton, a brilliant strategist of World War II. That year, the president planned to nearly quadruple the number of American military personnel in South Vietnam.

 The count would rise from 3,200 in early 1962 to 11,300 by Christmas. Colonel Porter was spending more time than he desired interviewing and placing these new arrivals. His office was situated in an old French cavalry compound nestled behind trees along a bustling boulevard that linked downtown Saigon to the Chinese neighborhood of Schaon.

This compound served as the headquarters for a division of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam or ARVN, which was commonly referred to as the Arvin, reflecting the American military’s habit of turning initials into acronyms. Porter served as the adviser to the Vietnamese brigadier general in command.

 The core along with other officers from his unit collaborated with the core’s staff sections. In Vietnam in 1962, air conditioners were not yet common like typewriters in every United States Army headquarters. Porter and his advisers worked from highse ceiling offices that opened onto verandas at each level of the three-story brick and stucco buildings.

The verandas overlooked a neglected parade ground filled with weeds and dirt, but that was not their main purpose. They were meant to serve as walkways and to catch any rare breeze, directing it past the swinging louver doors to the large electric fans hanging from the ceilings. The short lieutenant colonel before Porter had an air of self-confidence.

His khaki shirt and trousers remained unrinkled despite the heat. He gave a brisk salute, more energetic than most officers, before accepting Porter’s invitation to sit. Nonetheless, there was little that made him stand out. He reminded Porter of the Banty roosters he watched in farmyards near Belton, Texas, where his father owned a feed and farm merchandise store.

 When he removed his cap while sitting, his plain appearance became more apparent. His straight ribbed nose seemed too big for his narrow face, flaring nostrils above a wide straight mouth. A high forehead and a close-cropped sandy hairstyle typical of American military men of the 1950s and 1960s framed his face. His gray blue eyes drew attention and reflected his character.

 They resembled those of a falcon, narrow and deep set beneath bushy brows. His body was live and muscular, built for speed. He had been a gymnast and a track star in school and in his early army years. He took pride in his physical fitness. He did not smoke and rarely drank, keeping in shape with basketball, volleyball, and tennis. Even at 37, he could still perform a backflip somersault.

 Van answered Porter’s questions about his career experience without pause. When he volunteered to go to Vietnam, he specifically requested one of the coveted positions as chief adviser to an Army of the Republic of Vietnam infantry division. There were nine divisions in the country with three located in Porter’s region. Van had only been a lieutenant colonel for 10 months by rank which Porter could adjust at his discretion.

 There were other officers ahead of him. Van was confident about his ability to handle the job, and he and Porter discussed it. This confidence did not bother Porter, a senior colonel of infantry, who had a sturdy build and was white-haired at 52. His calm demeanor often hid both his professional knowledge and his strong character.

 He had been commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Texas National Guard 30 years prior. He understood that confidence was helpful as long as the officer knew what they were doing. Porter was searching for a bold and unconventional man to replace Lieutenant Colonel Frank Clay. Klay was the son of General Lucius Clay who once served as proconsul in occupied Germany.

 Klay was currently the senior adviser to the seventh infantry division in the northern Meong River Delta and his tour would end that summer. Porter had thoroughly reviewed Van’s record of past assignments and education. He saw that Van had led a ranger company during behind the lines operations in the Korean War.

 Van had also shown strong management skills in various staff roles. He specialized in logistics, which was rare for an infantry officer with combat leadership experience. Additionally, he held a master’s degree in business administration from Syracuse University. Porter wanted an officer who could both organize and fight.

 Both skills were crucial for coordinating a war effort in the northern Mikong Delta. As they talked, Porter grew more convinced that Van might be the right choice. His boldness and potential for an imaginative approach impressed Porter. Even though Porter had spent less than three months in South Vietnam, he had traveled extensively and participated in operations against the communistled guerrillas.

 Everything he experienced reaffirmed that if the Vietnamese in Saigon were to succeed, they needed Americans to teach them how to fight their own war and motivate them to engage in it. He informed Van that he could consider himself a prospective candidate. Porter decided to wait for a firm decision about Klay’s replacement until just before Klay’s departure.

 In the meantime, Van would be on probation, taking on various tasks. After lunch, Porter assigned Van his first task. He explained that a previous officer had established a computerized supply system for the ARVN divisions and territorial forces. However, the Vietnamese Lieutenant Colonel, who served as the Core G4, and his team struggled to understand how to submit a supply request through the computer.

 The American adviser, also a lieutenant colonel, faced the same issue. Instead of the necessary spare parts and equipment, they received a confusing stack of paperwork, which Porter handed to Van. He asked Van to make sense of it. Porter then took Van to the G4 advisory section, introduced him to the American officers, and got him a desk.

Later that afternoon, Van returned to Porter’s office with a lengthy memorandum he had typed. It translated the complex computer language into simple terms. It outlined the systems concept clearly and provided a practical method for the Vietnamese G4 officers and their American advisers who were not computer experts to order the spare parts and supplies they needed.

 Porter was surprised. He had expected Van’s task to occupy a logistics expert for two days. Instead, Van had returned in half a day with a much better solution than he anticipated. He wondered what odd job Porter would assign next. Although he didn’t mention it to Van at that moment, he had decided that afternoon that Van would go to the seventh division.

 Over the following two months, Porter utilized Van’s various skills to prepare him for the assignment. Porter’s three corps was the largest of the three ARVN core regions. Most of the fighting was occurring there. The zone extended from the tip of the Kao Peninsula at the southern end of the Mikong Delta. A belt of provinces surrounded Saigon to the north.

 To help Van understand the war better, Porter sent him on helicopter assault missions with the division located in the rubber plantation area north of the capital. The Teik and mahogany rainforests came down from the foothills of the central highlands. He allowed Van to explore the vast rice fields fed by the Mikong River, the great river of Indochina.

 Van participated in operations with two divisions and visited the main towns and rural district centers. These centers housed the district chiefs and their families in small compounds fortified with bunkers and barbed wire. To show Van the weaknesses of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam staff system, Porter assigned him work in the core operations and intelligence sections.

On the morning of May 21st, 1962, Van shook hands with Porter and got into a jeep. He drove out of the old French cavalry camp and navigated through Saigon’s bustling streets filled with trucks and brightly painted buses coming from the countryside. The streets were crowded with Vespa scooters, Lamberta motorbikes, cycllos, motorcycos, and various French and British sedans.

Occasionally, an old swanfendered Mercury or Chevrolet from the 1950s passed by. Everywhere, tiny yellow and blue Renault taxis of an unknown vintage raced around, driven with a reckless enthusiasm that matched their endurance. Eventually, Van reached a place called Fulam and escaped the southwestern edge of the city.

 There, a construction crew was busy raising giant antennas on land that had once been rice patties, recently transformed by American bulldozers. A highfrequency radio station at Fulam connected General Harkkins’ headquarters in Saigon to a global communications network, linking it to the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon.

The state-of-the-art antennas used Troposcatter technology to bounce electronic signals off the troposphere. They would extend General Harkkins’s command reach into the Southeast Asian mainland, north along the anomite chain of the highlands and up through the narrow rice basins of the central coast to other main ports.

Van drove south in the jeep, the wind rushing against his face. He sped down the main road leading into the Mikong Delta. His destination was the 7th Infantry Division headquarters at Metho, 35 mi away. Porter had assigned him a key role in the American effort in the heart of the war. The Seventh Division was responsible for much of the Northern Delta, the area that would determine the war’s outcome.

This zone stretched across 6,000 square miles and five provinces from the swampy plane of Reeds on the Cambodian border to the South China Sea. Over 2 million people lived in this division’s territory, making up a seventh of South Vietnam’s population. In 1962, the Saigon government had already lost most of the southern delta to guerrillas, but the northern area was still contested.

 Saigon’s troops, around 38,000, faced about 15,000 guerillas. If the government the United States relied upon lost this rich region, it would struggle to survive. Van did not feel intimidated by the challenge. Instead, he embraced it with a sense of excitement tinged with arrogance. In his view, there were no limits. In 1962, he believed any unknown could be explored.

Although he lacked extensive experience in guerrilla warfare, his 19 years of military service prepared him for this new type of conflict. A counter guerrilla war was just another form of warfare, and he was determined to succeed. Last year, as directed by President Kennedy, the army had begun to formulate strategies for dealing with guerrillas.

Porter had developed ideas on how to apply these concepts to the situation in Vietnam based on his field observations. Van found Porter’s insights logical and promising. Van had noticed a lot during the past two months. He recognized that he knew very little about the Vietnamese, their culture, and their history.

 However, he did not see this lack of knowledge as a barrier to effective action. He believed that his experiences as a junior officer in Korea and Japan showed him that Asians were not mysterious figures. One of his role models was Edward Lansdale, who had a clear understanding of how to engage with people in Asia. Van admired Lansdale for knowing how to connect with Asians and recognizing their desires.

 He felt confident that he could understand what motivated the Vietnamese officers he would work with. He believed he could influence them to act in their best interest and that of the United States. To him, the French defeat in Indochina did not matter. He thought that Americans were not like French colonialists whom he viewed as a fading power.

 He believed the French army had never fully recovered from being defeated by the Germans in World War II. Van had witnessed the US Army lose battles in Korea, but he had never seen them lose a war. He thought that history did not show Americans as fallible like other nations. In his mind, Americans stood apart and history did not apply to them.

 Van did not feel guilty about killing Vietnamese communists or those supporting them. He was also unfased by the idea of getting Vietnamese who aligned with the United States killed for American goals in Vietnam. He had been prepared to fight against Germans and Japanese during World War II, though the conflict ended before he could.

 In the Korean War, he had fought against North Koreans and had sent allies to their deaths without moral doubts. He believed that Americans had the right to take life when necessary in their struggle. This belief was reinforced by his pride in being one of the top officers in the US Army, which he considered the greatest army ever.

 He was also aware that he represented something larger, the American Empire, which he took even more pride in. By the time John Van entered the scene, America had established the largest empire in history. In 1962, Vietnam welcomed a significant presence. The United States had about 850,000 military personnel and civilian officials stationed in 106 countries.

 From the combined services headquarters at the commander-in-chief Pacific perched on the mountain overlooking Pearl Harbor to the naval base at Sububi Bay in the Philippines and the fortified bunkers along the truce line in Korea there were 410,000 troops spread across the Pacific’s armies fleets and air forces in Europe and the Middle East.

 From the quiet nuclear bomber bases in the English countryside to the tank maneuver grounds at Graphenir which lay on the potential invasion route from Czechoslovakia and from the attack aircraft carriers of the sixth fleet anchored in the Mediterranean to the electronic listening posts positioned along the Soviet frontier in Turkey and Iran.

 Another 410,000 soldiers, sailors, and airmen were deployed, including diplomats from the State Department, agents from the Central Intelligence Agency, and officials from various civilian agencies along with their families. The United States had around 1.4 million representatives abroad in 1962. John Van viewed himself as a leader among the expeditionary corps consisting of infantry advisers, helicopter crews, fighter bomber pilots, and special forces teams that President Kennedy decided to send to South Vietnam in November 1961.

These forces aimed to protect the endangered Southeast Asian outpost. As John Van drove toward Mtho with the wind against his face, he was determined not to let the communistled gorillas seize control of the northern Mong Delta. The Mikong Delta appeared to be a land of plenty in late May 1962, with the monsoon beginning earlier that month.

 The rice seeds sprouted, pushing green from the seed beds. Soon, it would be time for the next crucial event in a Vietnamese peasants’s year. the transplanting of seedlings into the earth submerged beneath the gray water of the expansive patty fields on either side of the road. While the landscape seemed flat, it held plenty of visual interest.

 Narrow dikes crisscross the patty fields designed to trap water for the rice plants. This checkerboard pattern was further intersected by the straight lines and sharp angles of canals used for irrigation and transport. Occasionally, the wide bend of a river would interrupt the view. Stands of bamboo and a type of water palm grew along the canals and rivers.

The fronts of the palms reached 20 ft high. Tall coconut palms clustered and stood alone along the banks. Large groves of common Vietnamese fruit trees flourished, including bananas and papayas. There were also smaller groves with individual trees of mangoes, grapefruits, limes, tangerines, oranges, peaches, and jackf fruit.

 The diversity of local subspecies would baffle a horiculturist. Peasant boys wearing conicle straw hats to shield themselves from the sun rode on the backs of buffaloos. These buffaloos pulled the plows and harrows to ready the patty fields for rice. Lean black hogs rooted around the thatched houses in the hamlets.

 Despite their fragile appearance, the houses suited the climate well. They had frames made of logs and bamboo poles above a packed earth floor. Dried fronds of the water palm thatched the steeply pitched roofs and sides, creating separate rooms inside. The roof extended beyond the walls to direct monsoon rains away and to provide shade from the sun.

 Chickens roamed the yards alongside the hogs. Ducks usually gathered in flocks, their wings clipped to prevent flying. Children or landless laborers herded them to keep them away from neighboring patty fields and vegetable gardens. The rivers and canals brimmed with fish, shrimp, crabs, and eels. In July and August, during the height of the monsoon, fish swam into the patty fields, turning them into temporary fish ponds.

 Occasionally, a soldier halted Van’s jeep at a bridge to allow traffic from the opposite direction to cross. The bridges were narrow structures built by the French from Eiffel steel beams that arched overhead. Peasant children stationed at these checkpoints would approach to sell chunks of coconut meat, sugar cane, and slices of fresh pineapple sprinkled with salt for a few pennies in Saigon government pastors.

It seemed that material wants were hardly a concern in this land. The concrete watchtowers at the bridges served as a reminder that this was not a place of contentment. As Van purchased a slice of pineapple from one of the eager children, he took a moment to observe the blockouses surrounded by rusted barbed wire.

 He noticed the soldiers patrolling along the bridges. He considered the green line of palm frrons by the canal bank he had just passed. Those fronds might soon flicker with muzzle flashes from an automatic weapon aimed at his jeep. He could foresee that the upcoming rains would cause the fields of young sugarce to grow tall and thick enough to hide an entire battalion.

He wondered if a gorilla was lying in weight on the other side of the river, perhaps along the road for a jeep like his. Jeeps made perfect targets, given they often carried officers. If a gorilla was present, he would likely be crouched behind a gravestone in one of the small peasant graveyards nestled among the rice fields.

 This man would be patient, careful not to waste his chance. He would stay alert, hands positioned over a detonator linked by wires to a mine buried in the road the night before. The cut tarmac would be neatly placed back to disguise the explosive, poised to launch the jeep and its passengers into the air. This land had experienced the ravages of war for most of the last 17 years before Van’s arrival.

The older children selling coconut and pineapple at the checkpoints could recall the final years of the initial conflict. It had started in 1945 when the French sought to restore their colonial rule in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. After the French defeat at DNBFU in North Vietnam in 1954, there were only three years of sporadic peace.

 By 1957, war reignited between the guerrillas and the Saigon regime under God denim, the leader Lansdale had helped place in power. By 1961, the guerillas had grown so formidable that President Kennedy had to send arms from the United States to prevent DM’s government from collapsing. The Americans and the Saigon government referred to the guerillas as the Vietkong, a shortened form of Vietnamese communists.

 The advisers often called them VC in daily conversation except within the field radio where they became known as Victor Charlie’s. The gorillas called themselves the Liberation Army and named this second conflict the Liberation War. They claimed both wars were part of the Vietnamese Revolution with this second war renewing the fight for the original aims against the French.

 On May 21st, 1962, there was no guerilla presence on the road to Mytho. Van reached the new base of the Seventh Division Advisory Detachment without any trouble. A soldier from Saigon opened the iron gate and allowed his jeep to enter the courtyard. This location had previously served as a school for aspiring clergy and briefly as an orphanage before transforming into a military facility.

The advisers referred to their quarters as the seminary due to this history. Two white masonry crosses on the former chapel still signified its original purpose to anyone passing by. The American military authorities had rented the building from a Roman Catholic dascese that had been forced into exile from North Vietnam and required financial support.

When Frank Clay, Van’s predecessor, arrived in Metho the previous year, the detachment had only seven officers and one sergeant. Three officers were stationed with the division’s regiments in other towns. A large house in Mtho was adequate for their needs. After Klay learned that the detachment would expand significantly in spring 1962 and would continue to grow, he arranged to lease and renovate the seminary as it was the best available facility in the area.

 The main two-story building, while simple, featured pleasant French colonial architecture with brick covered in white stucco and a red tile roof. It had an L-shaped design with the longer part of the L running alongside a narrow river. The first floor along the base of the L was turned into office spaces, while other parts of the ground floor were remodeled for sleeping quarters, a mess hall, showers, toilets, and a bar and service club.

 The messaul served as a theater for movie nights every other evening. Sunday meals featured charcoal broiled steaks and discounted liquor was available every night. All part of the privileges enjoyed by American military personnel overseas. Van and several senior officers occupied small bedrooms on the second floor above the office area.

 The rest of the second floor was divided into dormatory bays for the enlisted men. Advisers parked their jeeps and 3/4tonon trucks in the courtyard. This courtyard also hosted volleyball contests that Van organized shortly after he arrived. He had a net set up over a basketball court that the seminarians had created. A few nights after the advisers settled into the seminary in early May, the Vietkong approached to remind the Americans that they were within the gorilla’s reach.

 A group sneaked through the banana groves across the road and began shooting at the mess hall during a movie. The sergeants, some of whom had experienced World War II or Korea, found it amusing to see captains who had never been in combat running around in undershorts, t-shirts, and steel helmets, waving 45 caliber service pistols.

It was difficult to hit a target during the daytime with those weapons. The gorillas would occasionally repeat this tactic, usually firing from behind a stand of water palm on the opposite bank of the river near the building. A few gorillas would take shots at the generator or water purification equipment and then vanish into the night.

 They caused no real damage beyond some pock marks on the stucco. The following morning, the advisers would see a Vietkong flag flying from a tree. It featured a gold star on a red field with a blue stripe. A determined guerilla company could have easily overrun the seminary in just a few minutes. The two dozen territorial troops from the province, known as civil guards, were responsible for defending the compound.

 They were friendly, but seemed quite casual about ensuring the safety of the foreign advisers. The Americans could not protect themselves adequately. They did not have enough personnel to advise the seventh division during the day while maintaining a strong enough guard at night to fend off attacks.

 Almost half of the officers and men did not stay full-time at the seminary. Instead, they were spread out across the division zone with the battalions and regiments, staying in the province capitals to advise province chiefs and their staff. Training centers were set up for the territorial forces. Van decided to take necessary precautions without hindering his advisory duties.

 He accepted the risk of an attack to carry out the detachment’s mission. The behavior of the gorillas led him to believe they didn’t actually plan to harm the advisers while they slept. His intuition was correct. The Americans were privileged individuals in South Vietnam in the early 1960s. The Vietnamese communists limited their attacks against Americans during these initial years.

 They wanted to avoid provoking a larger intervention. Their hope was that patience would inspire sympathy for their cause among the American public. The headquarters of the seventh division was located in the former French army base in Mtho. In 1962, MO was home to about 40,000 people, serving as the major population center for the northern delta.

 By Vietnamese standards, it was a provincial city, while Americans considered it a large town. Like many important Delta towns, it was situated beside a large canal or river, providing easy access for small boats. This particular area was a branch of the upper Mikong River named Tien Jiang, meaning upper river.

Mytho was established in the late 17th century by Chinese refugees escaping the collapse of the Ming dynasty and the Manchu conquest. The Vietnamese who were in the process of migrating down the Indo-Chinese peninsula welcomed these immigrant allies to help them seize the delta from the original Cambodian inhabitants.

When the French conquered the delta in the 1860s, they expanded Mtho. The town became a garrison and administrative center and a significant commercial area for processing rice. This rice was exported to China and other rice deficit countries in East Asia as well as to Europe and Latin America. Large plantations were created from the fertile land and the landless peasantry of the delta.

This movement began with encouragement from Vietnamese emperors and was later expanded by the French and upper class Vietnamese benefiting from colonial rule. During the first war and its aftermath, those plantations were broken up. By the time Vaughn arrived, Metho had physically changed little since the French era.

 The town remained a bustling community that thrived on the labor of surrounding peasantry. Most of the rice grown in the Delta was now eaten in South Vietnam. Warehouses and mills busily stored and processed it for shipment to Saigon and the northern provinces. For Americans, the town served as a diversion on evenings or Sunday afternoons.

 Groups of advisers sometimes visited the Chinese restaurant by the river for meals. They also relaxed at open air tables around kiosks that sold beer and soft drinks. They enjoyed the breeze that brought relief to the delta at dusk. They compared the charms of the girls on the street while watching boats deliver produce to the riverfront dock.

 The enterprising Chinese operated small shops offering a range of products. These included cheap cotton cloth which peasants used to sew pajama-like outfits known as bababas and aphrodesiacs. The central market buzzed with all the vivid smells of the area. Among the fish and fruit vendors were acupuncture artists whose needles promised to ease pain and sorcerers selling ancient herbal remedies and modern magical cures.

 Vietnamese and Chinese merchants resided in sturdy brick houses while the poor lived in wooden shacks. One notable house belonged to the French, built for their provincial governor. It was located on the main avenue surrounded by attractive but slightly neglected gardens. It featured a tennis court for American officers use.

 An army of the Republic of Vietnam major appointed province chief by President Nindium occupied the villa. Van’s counterpart, Colonel Huin Vancao, commanded the seventh division. He lacked formal office privileges and lived in a modest whitewashed house in a small compound behind a row of flame trees a few blocks away. He resided there alone while his wife and seven children stayed in Saigon.

 Van believed it was crucial to change the tide of the war in the northern delta. By May 1962, the Vietkong held the strategic and tactical advantage. The communists dictated the war’s direction, choosing when, where, and how to engage in battle. The side from Saigon remained on the defensive, responding to guerilla actions instead of taking the fight to the enemy.

 Only the main road south from Saigon. Moso splits into two roads that head west and south into the lower delta. During the day, a single jeep can travel these roads. At night, two vehicles are necessary. In many parts of the five provinces, guerillas have made secondary roads impassible for vehicles. They organized the peasants to dig ditches and dismantle bridges.

 They have not yet completely removed the roads. They could do this by having peasants gradually dig up the road beds and scatter the dirt across the rice patties, but they may not get to this if they are stopped soon. For the secondary roads that remain usable, Saigon officers require an escort of at least a reinforced platoon.

 Even then, there’s no guarantee against ambushes. While not all peasants in the Northern Delta support the guerillas, most either favor the Vietkong or remain silent, which harms the Saigon government. Whether this neutrality stems from fear or sympathy does not matter. The Saigon government lacks essential support from the peasantry, and that cooperation is vital to suppress the communistled uprising.

 South Vietnam in 1962 was mainly rural with 85% of the population living in the countryside. With his statistical training, Van noted the potential for growth of the communist guerilla movement in such a society. Among the 2 million people in the division zone, only 15% lived in Mytho and other towns. Therefore, the rest were currently or potentially within the reach of the Vietkong.

 There was no doubt about who had the military power. Van estimated that two companies of Army of the Republic of Vietnam regulars, around 180 men, equipped with American weapons and artillery, could go anywhere in the five provinces. He once compared the movements of Saigon’s troops to a ship moving through the sea. While the army of the Republic of Vietnam troops were in an area, they forced the gorillas to hide.

 However, once they left, the gorillas would return. Before departing Saigon, he and Porter agreed on several goals. They believed these goals would form the foundation for a strategy to turn the tide of the war. As soldiers, their main priority was to create offensive operations to target and eliminate the guerilla forces. The ongoing operation by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam was aptly named the sweep.

 It involved marching several battalions through the countryside in scattered columns. Porter observed that the maneuver might be suitable for an armored division in North Germany, but it was ineffective against guerrillas in rice delta areas. He urged Van to leverage the helicopter’s flexibility for landing and shifting assault troops.

 The aim was to draw the best Vietkong units into battles where they could be decisively defeated. To start these unconventional tactics, Van needed to convince Colonel Cao to agree to a strategy that allowed American control over the division. This approach was referred to as joint planning. Under this plan, Van, CA, and their teams would seemingly collaborate on operations.

However, the goal was to have CO execute the operations designed by Van and his team. Van was set to serve as Clay’s deputy for a month to familiarize himself with the role before Klay returned home at the end of June. He did not have to wait long. During an operation on the plane of Reeds west of Mtho on May 23rd, 1962, just two days after Van arrived, Klay tried to drive a group of about 20 fleeing gorillas back toward the Saigon forces.

 He attempted this by strafing them from two helicopters. The Vietkong took aim and hit the lead helicopter where Klay was with another Lieutenant Colonel from Porter’s advisory team. The pilot was shot in the foot. Clay, the other lieutenant colonel, and the cop pilot were all slightly wounded by debris from the bullets that penetrated the cockpit canopy and control panel.

Van stepped in to lead while Klay was flown to Saigon for medical care, after which he embarked on an 8-day rest leave in Hong Kong. Van assumed acting command for much of June. Klay was away touring the central highlands and the coastal provinces north of Saigon. He was chosen to be the guerilla warfare specialist at the National War College in Washington.

 He aimed to familiarize himself with the various conditions of the war in those areas. When Van officially took over at the end of the month, there was no change of command ceremony, nor a trooping of the colors in the seminary’s courtyard, which is customary in the United States Army. Clay would have prohibited a ceremony.

He was an emotional man who felt embarrassed and tearary during such events. In this instance, he had no choice. The advisers were not allowed to display the flag over their compounds in 1962. They also could not receive any combat decorations. Clay and others injured on the helicopter were not eligible for a Purple Heart.

 If they had died, their families would not have received one, as the medal is typically awarded for injuries and postumously for death. President Kennedy hoped that by minimizing the US presence in South Vietnam, he could avoid the political fallout of having the American public realize that the United States was at war there.

 By late May, Klay had brought the detachment to a point where it could function effectively. Van channeled his immense energy into transforming potential into reality. The battle on May 23rd, where Klay was wounded, gave Van a beneficial start with Colonel Cow for joint planning. This success stemmed from Klay’s determination, some luck, and Captain Richard Ziegler’s operational planning skills.

 Ziggler was 30 years old and had graduated from West Point in 1954. Klay grew frustrated with Cow’s constant and friendly refusals to allow Americans to be involved in planning operations. His frustration increased with the failures that Cow oversaw. In midMay, Klay had restricted Cow’s access to helicopters until he allowed American participation.

Porter, who had been urging Klay to push for joint planning, supported his decision with Harkkins’s approval. Consequently, Cow agreed to a trial. Klay then needed an officer to draft detailed plans. The only officer he had with relevant experience was Ziegler, who had been training Ranger companies in the field since arriving at the seminary in early April.

 Ziegler had only three months of experience as an assistant operations officer for an infantry battalion in Japan. To plan the operation, he received French Army maps from 1954 and an intelligence report that was outdated by several weeks. This report indicated that a Vietkong battalion was training somewhere in a 10 square kilometer area on the plane of Reeds.

Ziegler had a talent for matching specific maneuver plans to military challenges. He could condense his strategies into a map overlay. This overlay consisted of a sketch on tracing paper with broad arrows and military symbols. It displayed the timing and positions of assault troops along with the directions and goals of their advancement.

 The sketch was drawn to the same scale as a map and placed over the operational area, allowing unit commanders to visualize their maneuvers. In this instance, Ziggler offered a practical solution for their lack of information. He determined that the best method for locating gerillas within those 10 square kilm was to conduct probing operations from various directions.

If one of the probing units encountered Vietkong, helicopters could quickly bring in reserve troops or redirect those already on the ground to force the gerillas into what Ziegler’s instructors at Fort Benning called the killing zone. However, the intelligence report was incorrect. The Vietkong battalion mentioned had already left the area.

They returned at 2:00 a.m. on the morning of the 23rd. Additionally, guerrillas from another battalion, not referenced in the report, had been lingering nearby. Ziggler’s probing task forces managed to flush out a significant number of guerrillas into the open where fighter bombers attacked them.

 As a result, 95 Vietkong were killed and 24 were captured, including one of the communist battalion commanders. The other commander was also killed. They seized 33 weapons which were more valuable than lives in this guerilla war. This included an Americanmade machine gun, a 60mm mortar, and several Thompson submachine guns.

 The gorillas returning at 2 a.m. faced the heaviest losses. Cal was extremely pleased with this first real success for his division. Due to the advisory systems nature, he could publicly take all the credit. Van was equally impressed. He was evaluating Clay’s staff to determine who would fill each role.

 He took Ziggler aside in the temporary headquarters next to a dirt airirstrip. Van said, “You will be my planner.” He explained to Ziggler how they would leverage the self-interest sparked by this success in cow to formalize joint planning and establish control over the division. We will organize this operation like an American unit.

 An American will be present with every unit. I will collaborate with CA and you will work with the operations officer to achieve our objectives. When Van proposed that Ziggler and the ARVN captain, who was CA’s G3 operations officer, coordinate all future actions, CO agreed. He also supported other initiatives Van suggested.

 These steps aimed to integrate his advisers into the division’s structure so deeply that the lines of authority would become unclear. Cow permitted Van’s intelligence adviser, Captain James Drummond, a 34year-old from North Carolina who was well suited for his role, to collaborate with the G2 intelligence officer. Previously, Cow had prohibited his G2 from sharing useful information with the Americans.

 Van selected Major Elmer Sandy Faustst, a lively 36-year-old from San Antonio, to be his chief of staff. Fost would supervise Ziegler and the other younger advisers, managing the advisory operations at the division field headquarters, while Van was out with a battalion or in a helicopter. Faust’s strong build and friendly features reflected his easygoing nature.

He was popular with women and did not conform to the army’s crew cut, instead styling his blonde hair in a wave reminiscent of the 1940s. Cao did not object to Faustst serving as a counterpart to Lieutenant Colonel Buudin Dam, his own chief of staff. He also agreed to incorporate Van’s advisers into other staff areas, including personnel and administration, as well as logistics.

He accepted Van’s idea to establish a tactical operations center. This center would monitor military activity across five provinces, alert cow and van of emergencies, and maintain communication with the military headquarters of each province chief. Requests for fighter bombers to assist struggling outposts came in often.

 The tactical operations center operated around the clock. Radios and maps filled a spacious office on the first floor of Cow’s two-story residence. Since his family lived in Saigon, Cow did not need most of the rooms. He transformed nearly the entire house, except for a bedroom and kitchen, into a compact division headquarters. Ziegler and his counterpart used the tactical operations center to plan operations.

 It became a crucial resource for Americans to gather information. Daily briefings for the commanding general are a tradition at division level and higher headquarters in the United States Army. Van proposed a joint command briefing every afternoon at 400 p.m. when the division was not in the field. Cow agreed to hold it in his war room on the second floor.

 This office was elegantly furnished compared to the one downstairs which served as the tactical operations center. It featured maps and a podium at the front for the briefer. Ziegler and the division operations officer reported on significant actions within the area. Drummond and the G2 captain shared intelligence insights while the G1 and G4 officers also updated the group whenever they had important information.

Cow sat in a chair near the podium with Van beside him and Foust and Dam behind. Before Ziggler and the operations officer met to plan a helicopter assault on the gorillas, Van insisted on a session in the war room. During this time, Cow provided command guidance on his objectives. At first, Ziegler questioned the value of these daily briefings and command guidance sessions.

 They felt forced and reminiscent of training models at the infantry school at Fort Benning. However, he soon realized that Van used these sessions to boost Cow’s self-esteem. Cow enjoyed forgetting his rank as a colonel and assumed the heirs of a general. He relished speaking in grand strategic terms during the command guidance sessions.

 When he became overly enthusiastic at one of the early meetings, Van quietly told Ziggler, “Don’t worry about what he’s saying. I will instruct you on what to do when we return to the seminary.” Ziggler outlined a plan for a helicopter assault on a guerilla area using the walllength map in the seminary’s combined operations and intelligence office.

 The map had transparent acetate on top, allowing notes to be made with a grease pencil. He integrated Van’s ideas with his own to create the final plan. Van approved and Cow accepted it. They eliminated more gorillas, making Cow even happier. Ziggler thought the success of the May 23rd action had made Cow feel like a lucky gambler who wins big at a casino while wearing a specific tie.

 From that point onward, unless he had a compelling reason not to, that gambler would wear that tie every time he returned. The plans Van had Ziggler create became Cow’s lucky tie. Cow responded positively to Van’s training proposals for the Saigon troops in squad and platoon tactics. These tactics were essential for defeating guerillas in the small unit combat typical of this war.

The training of the 10,000 army of the Republic of Vietnam regulars in the division zone was adequate in peace time. There were 8,500 regulars in the division along with an armored regiment and 1,500 in independent Ranger companies. They could march well for a parade, but most of the 28,000 territorial troops would struggle to parade. Despite more than $1.

65 $65 billion in American military aid from 1955 to mid 1961 and guidance from a 650man training mission for most of those years. Van found that few regulars or territorials could properly adjust their rife carbine sights enough to hit a target much less a gorilla. The army of the Republic of Vietnam and the territorial forces had roots in the French colonial military.

 The Americans had since modified their structure. The Army of the Republic of Vietnam combined Vietnamese officers and soldiers from the former French Colonial Army with personnel from a predecessor Vietnamese National Army established by France in 1948 for Baoai, the former emperor who had worked with the French. The Army of the Republic of Vietnam was organized in the triangle model of the old American Infantry Division.

 three regiments per division, three battalions per regiment, and three companies per battalion. The more effective of the two territorial forces, the civil guard or bawon in Vietnamese originated from a colonial formation called Lagard Indigene or the Native Guard created before World War II. Near the end of the World War, Japanese sponsorship was significant.

There was a provincial level force resembling a state national guard in the United States. This force was organized into companies and battalions overseen by province chiefs except when assigned to divisions for specific operations. The division zone included around 10,000 civil guards. The second territorial group was a disheveled militia recruited by the French.

 They were tasked with manning the brick watchtowers and mudwalled outposts built during the French effort to restore colonial rule. Now the Saigon government was trying to defend these positions. This group was organized into squads and platoon operating at the district level and below. They were known as the Self-Defense Corps or Danve in Vietnamese and often referred to as the SDC by advisers.

The SDC was the largest force in the five provinces with about 18,000 men. Unfortunately, they were also the least wellarmed. The militia men had to make do with bolt-action rifles given to them by the French. Theoretically, the SDC resembled the early American village militia as the men were local residents without uniforms.

 They typically wore pajama-like blouses and black calico trousers similar to what their fellow peasants wore for work. However, unlike the early American militia, the SDC fought for pay. Van sought to address the training gap by organizing a three-week refresher course for the division regulars at an old SDC training camp near the center of Tanhip village about 6 milesi from Saigon.

 This location also included the MO airrip. Cow agreed to have all nine battalions in the division attend the course one by one. They would also undertake marksmanship and small unit training at their home bases when not engaged in operations. Klay had already initiated training programs for the territorials. Van expanded these courses to expedite bringing the Civil Guard and the SDC up to standards.

 To track progress, he set clear training and operational goals for each division battalion and for the territorials under each province military headquarters. Every adviser was required to submit a monthly critique, also shared with their Vietnamese counterpart to report on whether the goals were being met. Cow was not receptive to the arguments Van presented for additional measures.

Van and Porter had agreed on a key priority. They needed to stop the expansion of the communistled insurrection by taking away the Vietkong’s freedom during the night. When Van explained the importance of training the troops to patrol and set ambushes at night, Cow would either frown or become expressionless.

Cow often said it was unsafe to go out after dark. The five province chiefs shared this fear. They reported night patrols and ambushes just to satisfy the Americans. In reality, no one ventured out. If someone did, it was only to rest near the closest canal. When persuasion did not work, Van resorted to bravado.

 He ordered that all American officers and any sergeant involved in combat training had to participate in at least one night patrol or ambush each week. Cow and the province chiefs could have ignored this order and embarrassed Van. The advisers could not go out on their own. Cow knew Porter supported Van and Harkkins had also emphasized the importance of night operations to DM.

After a heated exchange the previous November when the Kennedy administration urged DM to implement political and administrative reforms for United States military aid, Deem’s relationship with senior American officials had improved. The presidential palace encouraged cooperation with the Americans when it would not cause any issues.

 Cow and the province chiefs complied. A consistent, though limited, number of night patrols and ambushes began. Van led by example, visiting various regular and territorial units at least once or twice weekly for night operations. His ability to function on just a few hours of sleep made long nights manageable.

 Despite Cow’s worries about his safety, Van insisted on going out with small groups of around a dozen men. He believed smaller units had a better chance of successfully conducting ambushes and were less likely to be caught in a counter ambush during the night. Unfortunately, he often struggled to ambush gerillas. He realized it was not because there were few Vietkong moving at night.

 He informed Porter that they had much work ahead with this army. These soldiers, both regulars and territorials, felt inferior to their enemy. They were hesitant to engage in direct combat. He was with the guerillas. He noticed that whenever he heard what could be a group of Vietkong approaching, one of the Saigon soldiers would often give away their position.

This happened too frequently to be mere coincidence. Porter suspected a sense of inferiority. He was relieved that for the first time in this conflict, the United States had an infantry officer who was experienced and had a clear perspective. This officer insisted on staying at the forefront of their efforts to tackle their challenges.

 They required accurate information and insight. Van provided both because he held rank and had the right credentials. His reports could not be dismissed by the generals and colonels in headquarters as just the thoughts of a novice captain. Van kept his promise to Ziggler. Every unit involved in an operation would have an American adviser.

 The advisers who worked with regional forces were assigned to various training centers, not to individual units. Often the division battalions participating were split into two task forces. This division increased their chances of encountering guerillas. The American captain advising the battalion commander couldn’t be present with both task forces.

Van addressed this issue by seeking volunteers before operations. His aim was not just to establish control. He believed that Saigon troops might act more boldly if the commander had an American officer or sergeant alongside to motivate and support him. He hoped that American enthusiasm would be contagious. John Van’s enthusiasm spread within the advisory group.

 The environment had been spirited under Clay. Clay was the type of brave and dedicated officer admired in any military. Under Van, the atmosphere became electric. After a couple of long days in the sun and the mud, the exhausted advisers would return to the seminary. Then a familiar voice would ring out, playful and energetic.

 Come on, let’s get those volleyball teams out there. He had taken less rest than anyone else, yet he would quickly have everyone out in the courtyard ready to play. If his team started losing, he would shout and pound his fist against the ground. One of the posts supported the net in frustration, encouraging his team to try harder.

 He would never stop attempting to outjump a 6-foot 185-lb Hawaiian captain named Peter Kama. Kama would serve under him 10 years later in the Central Highlands. In 1962, the war felt like an adventure. As one officer stated, “It was the greatest continuing war games we’ve ever come up with.” Despite the challenges Van and his unit faced in improving the combat capabilities of the Saigon troops, the thrill of danger added excitement.

 The occasional gunfire created tension, yet it lacked the harsh reality of death. The Vietnamese were suffering the casualties almost entirely. By late May 1962, when Van arrived in Metho, fewer than 20 Americans had died in Vietnam. No one in the seventh division advisory detachment had been unfortunate enough to perish.

 The older men aimed to recapture the thrill of previous wars. The younger men were eager to prove themselves in their first real conflict. Major General Charles Tims was the head of the original military assistance and advisory group in South Vietnam. This group was responsible for training and equipment programs. Tims had received the Distinguished Service Cross for leading a battalion of paratroopers into Normandy on D-Day.

 He captured the spirit of the moment during a pep talk at the seminary. He stated, “It isn’t much of a war, but it’s the only war we’ve got, so enjoy it.” Tims’ words reflected more than just the excitement of an adventure. These men were seasoned soldiers who had grown restless under President Dwight Eisenhower’s strategy of massive retaliation.

The army’s mission seemed limited to occupying the desolate areas of Eastern Europe, Russia, and China after the Air Force and the Navy had won World War II in a nuclear catastrophe. The military budget had adjusted to these constraints. The army had become reliant on support. Now the army had a new president in John Kennedy.

 He aimed to make the sword an effective instrument of foreign policy as noted by his military adviser, General Maxwell Taylor. Kennedy envisioned a military force that could employ whatever level of power was necessary to assert American interests whenever challenged. He advocated for a strengthened army equipped with advanced mobility and weaponry as the main method of using force according to his strategy of flexible response.

 Taylor coined this term to highlight the apparent reasonleness of this method compared to Eisenhower’s strategy of massive retaliation. This strategic idea was the logical extension of Taylor’s concept of limited war. After retiring as chief of staff of the army in 1959, he promoted this concept in his well- reggarded book, The Uncertain Trumpet.

 Kennedy embraced Taylor’s ideas eagerly, using them during his 1960 campaign for the presidency. He made the doctrine, along with Taylor’s catchy title, the national strategy. Following his election, he also appointed Taylor as his military adviser at the White House. The new American president and his advisers viewed the guerilla insurgency that va that van aimed to defeat in the northern delta as a particularly insidious challenge from the communists.

Fidel Castro had risen to power in Cuba through a guerilla revolution and similar uprisings were anticipated across the third world which includes the poor nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America. This concern led Kennedy to direct the army to use Vietnam as a testing ground for developing counterinsurgency techniques.

The Pentagon created an acronym for this mission calling it COIN. The Soviet leader at the time, Nikita Kruef, announced the guerrilla war strategy during a conference of communist parties in Moscow in January 1961. Kruef claimed that the Soviet Union would avoid an atomic war with the United States, but would support liberation wars and popular uprisings in the poorer countries of the third world.

The Chinese seemed to have similar intentions. Kennedy described these revolutions as wars of subversion, covert aggression. The conflict in Vietnam represented more than just a test of Taylor’s concept of limited war. It became a trial to determine whether the free world or the communist world would dominate.

Americans in the early 1960s largely ignored the tensions between the Soviet Union and China along with other fractures within what they labeled international communism. The conflict between Moscow and Ping had been clear and increasing for some time. In the summer of 1960, Kruev halted all aid to China and withdrew thousands of military personnel.

 Soviet technicians were engaged in various development projects there. The split between Yugoslavia and Russia in 1948 hinted that native communists could lead a nationalist movement. However, this idea did not receive much attention from Americans. Van and his contemporaries were accustomed to viewing the world as divided between light and darkness.

 Their ideology shaped their perspective, supporting their beliefs. The army’s security clearance forms reflected this by categorizing all communist nations as part of the Sinos Soviet block. While none of the team matched Van’s level of certainty in this morally charged adventure, they carried themselves with confidence. The captains were particularly boastful.

Many wore parachutist wings and a gold-lettered Ranger tab on their combat shirts. Ziegler exemplified this confidence. He had been an instructor at Ranger School at Fort Benning for two years until he learned that the Army personnel branch at the Pentagon had chosen 150 standout captains to serve as field advisers in Vietnam.

 He was one of them. Raised by a salesman, he excelled on the high school football team in East Greenville, Pennsylvania. He attended West Point to become a significant player on the football team and to secure a free education. Two renowned coaches, Earl Red Blake and Vince Lombardi, recognized his talent and made him a varsity middle linebacker and running guard as soon as he finished his first year.

 Having a leader like Van boosted the men’s confidence even further and added energy to their mission. Soldiers respect a leader who is skilled. They admire one who possesses both skill and courage. When that leader thoroughly understands warfare, takes bold actions, and stakes his own life, he becomes remarkable. Cautious officers may disapprove of this love for risk and label it as recklessness.

However, they secretly admire it and wish they shared his faith in luck and his ability to inspire others. Van’s good fortune was often referred to as the van luck. Van was aware of which secondary dirt roads the Vietkong had abandoned. He explored usable roads in a jeep during his frequent trips to district centers, outposts, and hamlets that piqued his interest.

 In the usual American way, roads were surveyed from helicopters or observation planes. This method ensured safety as the sky was free of mines and ambushes. However, Van believed this aerial approach was inadequate. To truly assess how much of the countryside the Vietkong controlled, he needed to get on the ground.

 He would often say, “You can drive these roads with a 95% chance of survival if you just use your head.” He avoided patterns, steering clear of returning by the same route. He did not linger too long in any one spot to prevent guerrillas from tracking him or planning an ambush ahead. He refused to take the reinforced platoon of troops usually deemed necessary for escorting him as he felt it would slow him down.

 He drove quickly and always took the wheel himself. The ARVN soldier assigned to him remained in the back seat with a carbine. If a situation arose where a Vietnamese driver was injured or hesitated, Van wanted to sidestep that possibility. He believed that staying mobile was key to his survival, and he was determined never to be captured.

 Porter did not attempt to stop him. He understood that if he told Van to avoid such risks, Van would simply take them without informing him. Like Van’s night patrols, these ventures provided Porter with insights he would not have gained otherwise from someone he trusted. Instead of trying to restrain Van, he would joke about his reckless behavior during visits to the detachment when Van mentioned a new place he wanted to explore and invited Porter to join him.

Is this another of your suicide drives, John? Porter would tease. The advisers at the seminary grew to expect a prank Van played on staff officers who arrived from Saigon to witness the war. These visitors were mockingly called Saigon commandos or strap hangers, a term for extra passengers who grab overhead straps on public transportation.

 Often the visiting staff officer arrived dressed in elaborate combat gear complete with a wide-brimmed bush hat and a hunting knife strapped to his leg. He announced that he would not settle for briefings at the seminary. He was determined to get out where the action is. Van smiled and mentioned there was action happening in a nearby province.

He instructed the visitor to be ready to leave at 4:30 a.m. for a reconnaissance mission heading to the operation. At 4:20 a.m., while the staff officer was still lacing his boots in one of the bedrooms upstairs, Van was already at the bottom of the stairs, he shouted up for the officer to hurry.

 “All right, we’re ready to go,” he hollered. “Get your butt down here.” As Van switched on a flashlight, he led the officer to his jeep in the dark courtyard. He explained that they were going to check the security on the road to Bent Tree, the next province capital about 10 miles south. After that, they would drive to the action.

 Van climbed into the driver’s seat, placing a fastfiring rifle called the Armalite and a couple of grenades beside him for easy access. Throughout the drive, he instructed the officer on how to play dead if they were ambushed. If the officer were lucky enough to be wounded instead of killed outright, he needed to know what to do.

 The gorillas executed prisoners too injured to march with a bullet to the back of the head. Then Van revved the Jeep engine, shouted at the Vietnamese guard to open the gate, and sped off down the road toward Ben Trey. The staff officer assumed they would have an army of the Republic of Vietnam squad, or at least another jeep with advisers for company.

 Instead, he found himself in a lone Jeep. The black mass of foliage rushed by with flickering candle light or kerosene lamps shining from peasant homes. Van, the wild man driving, shouted above the wind for him to be ready to fire his weapon if they encountered a Vietkong roadblock. Van had no intention of being captured alive like a monkey in a cage.

 They approached a ferry crossing which stretched the visitors nerves even further. The crossing was guarded and the Vietnamese on the boat were only travelers or farmers heading to market in Ben Trey. The visitor likely didn’t notice the guards, and he had never stood in such a situation before. Van had encountered a crowd of Vietnamese farmers.

 This experience often convinced the staff officer to remain in Ben Tree until he could get a helicopter ride back to Saigon. If he shared a sense of humor about this initiation, he received a warm welcome on his next visit to the seminary. The early morning trip was a bit risky. Van faced gunfire from a nighttime sniper. However, he figured that any gorillas at a roadblock had likely returned home to sleep by 4:30 a.m.

 Major Herbert Pvos was the one person in the team who embraced danger as much as Van. His luck seemed just as remarkable. Pvost represented a nostalgia for the thrill of past wars. An impishl looking 38-year-old pilot, he served as the Air Force liaison officer to the seventh division. While the United States Air Force favored strategic bombing to win wars, Herb Pos danced to his own rhythm.

 He preferred to fly smaller planes and keep his conflicts personal. During World War II in Europe, he managed to get multiple P47 Thunderbolt fighter bombers damaged while attacking Germans who blocked the advance of armored and infantry units. He received the distinguished service cross when he and his wingman took off with a new incendiary weapon called Napalm and discovered German tanks lying in weight in a wooded area ready to ambush an American unit advancing along the road.

The wingman was shot down and killed by German machine guns from the tanks. Post’s aircraft suffered so much damage that the mechanics planned to scrap it after he miraculously brought it back to the airfield. The German ambush was thwarted and five tanks along with their crews were destroyed.

 In Vietnam, it seemed Pvost had been tamed. The Air Force assigned him the smallest aircraft in its fleet. A Cessna observation plane known as the L19 or the 01 Bird Dog. This single engine two-seater had a pilot seat in front and an observer seat in back. The L19 did not come armed. Post responsibilities involved coordinating requests for support from fighter bomber and transport planes for the seventh division and the territorial forces across five provinces with the second air division in Saigon which was part of General Harkkins’s command. Post

received the L19 to stay connected with three air force captains who worked for him in the provinces. He was a creative pilot, convincing Van to give him a pair of lightweight Armalite rifles. These rifles were officially called the AR-15 and later became the M16 when adopted as the standard infantry rifle of the United States.

 The Army was testing this weapon, distributing Armalites to a group of seventh division soldiers to evaluate their performance against gerillas. The Armalite featured a selector switch for full or semi-automatic fire and fired a smaller bullet at a higher velocity than the traditional 30 caliber M1 rifle.

 This high speed caused severe wounds when the bullet did not result in death. Post attached the armalytes to the support struts under the wings of the L19. He created a mechanism from wire to trigger the rifles from the cockpit, allowing him to strafe gorillas in sight. He also bombed the Vietkong by throwing hand grenades out the windows.

Occasionally, he managed to drop 20 pound anti-personnel bombs when he could get some from acquaintances in an air commando squadron based at the former French air base at Ben Hoa, located 15 mi north of the capital. Herb Pvost’s friends informally called their squadron Jungle Gym. Officially, it was named Farm Gate, a darkly humorous reference to the World War II saying about dying. He bought the farm.

The squadron flew propeller-driven planes that dated back to World War II and the Korean War, including twin engine A26 Invaders designed for low-level attacks. These planes boasted 6 to 1050 caliber machine guns mounted in the nose. They also used T28 Trojan trainers converted into fighter bombers outfitted with 50 caliber machine guns, bomb racks, rockets, and napalm canisters.

 Although these aircraft were owned by the United States Air Force, they had been repainted to display the markings of the Vietnamese Air Force. This force was called Venoth based on the abbreviation VNAF used by Americans. The repainting was straightforward because the VNAF had simplified its original marking system, moving away from French style roundles in national colors.

 The aviators in Saigon adopted the United States insignia featuring a white star within a blue circle. American military aircraft featured red, white, and blue bars spreading out from a central point. In contrast, the Vietnamese Air Force had bars in red and yellow representing the Saigon government. By adding a touch of red and yellow paint, the Air Commando Squadron’s planes took on a Vietnamese appearance.

 The pilots always flew with a junior officer or non-commissioned officer from the Vietnamese Air Force in the back seat. If one of these aircraft marked with Vietnamese symbols and having a Vietnamese officer aboard was shot down or crashed, the Kennedy administration could claim that American pilots were simply conducting training in a combat environment.

 Other American aviators were directly assigned to the Vietnamese Air Force to train and advise the Saigon pilots on how to use their fighter bombers, such as the T-28s and AD6, also known as A1 Skyraiders, which were Navy planes from the Korean War era. These American trainers acted as extra pilots for air strikes against guerillas, again with a Vietnamese officer seated behind them.

 The small foreign press corps in Saigon was initially barred from entering the BN Hoa base to report on how the system functioned except during critical operations when he was tied to the command post coordinating air support. Post was keen to take Van Ziegler or Jim Drummond the intelligence adviser on reconnaissance missions in his small fighter bomber.

 Army observation pilots flying unarmed L19s out of Tan Sonute were available for reconnaissance work, but Pvost was often the preferred choice when he was available. Van liked to fly low to examine the countryside closely. Pvos preferred to fly even lower, almost clipping the tops of rice stalks until he had to soar over tree lines.

The new Air Force liaison officer who replaced Pvost when he was reassigned many months later asked Van if Major PvOS typically flew at 1500 ft which was deemed a safe altitude from small arms fire. Van responded that Major Pvost didn’t reach 1500 ft during his time with that detachment. The sense of war as an adventure was strengthened by the emotional connections many advisers formed with the Vietnamese people.

 Believing they were fighting for their benefit and the future of their own country, the captains advising the battalion commanders remained committed to their mission. Battalions, whether stationed in base camps or on the move, consumed Vietnamese food and adapted to the lifestyle of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam captains they were sent to support.

Sergeants teaching weaponry to the soldiers shared in this experience. Advisers to the civil guards and the self-defense corps militia lived close to the training centers. They accompanied their local troops in daily actions against the guerillas. These shared experiences fostered a natural affection from the Americans.

 Vietnamese soldiers would curiously tug at the hair on the Americans forearms, intrigued by their smooth skin. They would ask for cigarettes and giggle when an American recoiled at the strong fish oil sauce known as newuk ma’am. This sauce added concentrated protein to their diet. They laughed when one of the larger Americans wobbled and fell off palm logs that the peasants used as bridges over the canals.

Van developed a fondness for the common soldiers who were peasants like their guerilla counterparts. The fact that he was also slightly built and not much taller than their average height of about 5’2 in made him connect with them. Their American gear was always too big and cumbersome.

 Helmets dwarfed their heads, and the semi-automatic M1 rifle was too heavy at 9 12 lb for them. The Browning automatic rifle that light machine gunners carried weighed 16 lb, far too much for men, averaging 105 lbs to carry comfortably. What Van admired most in them was their cheerfulness and resilience. They looked deceptively fragile but were strong by Asian standards.

 Their strength often went unnoticed as the Americanstyle fatigues concealed their wiry frames. Their peasant backgrounds made them tough both physically and mentally. They rarely complained during marches in the heat. They smiled frequently, joked with each other, and maintained composure even when wounded. Their ability to endure pain was a cultural trait.

 They lay still, moaning or gritting their teeth against the pain. Van concluded they could be excellent soldiers who deserve to win their war and not have their lives wasted. Van viewed the conflict mainly through a military lens during his first year in Vietnam. He concentrated on the priority he and Porter had set, the elimination of the main striking forces of the Vietkong through unexpected helicopter assaults.

 These troops were similar to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and the Civil Guard. They included elite guerrilla battalions known as the main force by the Communists and the Regulars or Hardcore by the Americans along with provincial battalions and companies called the regionals. By late May 1962, the main force battalions consisted of about 250 to 300 men each.

 They operated across two to three provinces, while the regionals typically stayed in their home provinces. Advisers often grouped these forces together, referring to them as hard hats due to their turtles-shaped sun helmets. This style mimicked the colonial sun helmets seen in movies about British India and worn by the French in Indochina.

The Vietkong crafted their sun helmets using green canvas or plastic stretched over bamboo frames. Both the main force and the regionals were full-time soldiers. Their uniforms made by their families or sympathetic women from local villages using market fabric varied during these early years. They often fought in the black al baba typical of peasants or in cocky shirts and trousers.

 Although the regulars sometimes wore green battle gear for ceremonial occasions. The Vietkong’s dress uniform was a standardized outfit of deep blue cloth commonly sold in rural towns. The main force excelled in combat proficiency, political motivation, and had access to the best captured weapons. Most officers and non-commissioned officers were party members known as cadr.

 The term cader encompassed anyone in a leadership role, including officers, non-commissioned officers, and specialists like medical personnel. Some provincial battalions rivaled the main force in combat ability. By the end of May, about 2,000 Vietkong regulars were estimated to be operating within the division’s five provinces along with around 3,000 regional guerrillas.

 The situation was clear. The communist strategy was working. The guerillas were seizing more weapons. This allowed them to carry out larger and more frequent attacks. The Saigon government’s civil guard and local militia were growing increasingly fearful. They started to stay close to their bases and district centers, leaving more of the rural population to the guerillas.

Van believed the best way to stop this revolution was to disrupt its core. If the main guerilla forces were eliminated or scattered, the communists could no longer organize large ambushes against supply convoys or territorial troops from Saigon. The Vietkong would struggle to seize outposts at night as easily as they did before.

 This would restore some security and create an opportunity for lasting peace. Van often said security is fundamental. It may be 10% of the problem or it may be 90%. Either way, it’s the first step. He believed without security, our efforts won’t endure. Van thought that once the process of weakening the main guerrilla forces began, the war would shift against the Vietkong.

 He shared a belief common among many Americans in Vietnam at that time. They thought the Vietnamese peasants were largely apolitical. Just because most peasants appeared either supportive of the Vietkong or indifferent did not imply any political stance. The belief was that the peasants lacked the political awareness to form opinions.

 Aside from a few with specific grievances against local officials, the peasants were simply siding with whoever seemed stronger. Van was particularly convinced of this. He had seen during intelligence missions with his ranger company in Korea that Korean peasants also seemed to lack political beliefs. They reacted to whichever force was dominant.

 Van was sure that what all Asian peasants truly desired was peace and security to work their land. Their priorities did not include political views. Whether those who created the law and order were communists or capitalists, farmers witnessed the regular and provincial guerilla battalions being defeated one after another.

 They realized the communists were unlikely to win. If the Saigon side ceased its mistreatment, the peasants would begin to support the regime. With improved intelligence, more peasants would be willing to share information. This would make it easier to identify and target the remaining forces of the Vietkong. The communists would lose their local armed support, particularly from the guerrillas at the hamlet and village levels.

These local guerrillas, known as the guerilla popular army, were part-time soldiers. By day, they worked as farmers. By night, they fought when ordered or motivated. There were about 10,000 local guerillas in the division zone, greatly benefiting the main force and regional guerrillas. They formed a critical support system for the Vietkong.

 These local fighters provided a training ground for larger forces. They acted as an intelligence network, offering scouts and guides familiar with the area and local sentiments. They were also a resource for transporting ammunition and caring for the wounded during battles. Furthermore, they helped enforce the objectives of the hidden communist leadership.

Van reasoned that these part-time guerillas would eventually return to being peaceful farmers. Supported by the United States, the Saigon authorities could then begin the difficult work of identifying and apprehending the secret communist agents responsible for the insurrection. The economic and social assistance from the United States would further strengthen the farmers loyalty.

Providing drilled wells for clean drinking water and teaching how to build latrines would have a lasting impact. They aimed to free the farmers from the parasites and intestinal diseases that plagued them. They would receive dispensaries for regular medical care and elementary schools to combat illiteracy in their children.

The plan included introducing fat Yorkshire hogs to replace the lean black native variety. Additionally, they sought better rice yields through improved seeds and chemical fertilizers. Van believed it would take about 10 years to build a healthy rural community of content farmers and effective local government, making any communist resurgence more difficult.

He expected to dismantle the main force and regional guerillas in the northern delta within 6 months. This would mark the beginning of restoring peace in the country’s most crucial area. Van felt fortunate to have Jim Drummond assigned as the intelligence officer for his detachment, just as he was grateful that Ziegler was available as an operations planner.

Van had shown his leadership by recognizing Drummond’s skills and allowing him the freedom to use them effectively. He guided Drummond to ensure collaboration with Ziegler. The two formed the team Van needed for his six-month campaign. The Vietkong’s fighting forces were cloaked in secrecy, much like the operations of the Communist administration.

 As long as their whereabouts and movements remained hidden, the guerillas could train unbothered and execute surprise attacks. For the first time in this conflict, that secrecy was being disrupted. Drummond was dismantling their protection with intelligent gathering methods that the United States Army had developed through two world wars in the Korean conflict.

 Drummond also had a special affinity for his work that enhanced his skills. He showed a deep passion for understanding his targets. Everything about the gorillas intrigued him. He collected homemade shotguns the Vietkong manufactured in their thatched roof arsenals alongside crude yet functional copies of advanced weapons like the Thompson submachine gun.

 He scrutinized the seams and cuts of uniforms to identify regional differences. Van found this fascination remarkable. He realized he would not need to remind Drummond, as he might have needed to with other intelligence officers, that simply interrogating prisoners was not enough. To understand the enemy better, one had to leave the headquarters and venture into the field.

 Insights could only be gathered through firsthand experience. Drummond, a two-time recipient of the Bronze Star for Valor during the Korean War, began his operations right after arriving in late April. Van often met him in the field after he reached the seminary in May. Despite their intelligence, the Vietkong had a notable weakness.

 They had become predictable in their actions. This was in contradiction to their doctrine which warned against such predictable behavior. However, being human meant they could not escape their habits. They had fought the same war in the same rice patties for so long that their humanity eventually showed. Drummond recognized this weakness early, and he discussed it with Van during one of their initial meetings.

 Van was eager to convince Cao to allow his intelligence officer to work with Drummond. This was driven by the desire to exploit their vulnerability and to gain some control over the division. From that point, Drummond focused on creating a system to generate information for Van’s planned six-month campaign.

 He and his assistant, an Army sergeant with expertise in intelligence, guided cows G2 and his team on how to create a profile for each regular and provincial guerilla battalion and company. The sergeant patiently taught the Vietnamese to organize captured Vietkong reports, messages, diaries, letters, maps, and other materials by unit.

 They would extract anything that might be useful. All the gathered information was categorized and organized with folders, charts, and cross reference cards. This system was meant to allow continuous updates, enhancing their understanding of the units and improving their ability to anticipate their actions. Distinctive traits were recorded meticulously as they acted like fingerprints.

These details help Drummond track a unit using incomplete reports that would otherwise be ineffective. During this initial stage, all Vietkong battalions were significantly outgunned compared to their Army of the Republic of Vietnam counterparts. Their weapons were a mix of French and American arms collected from the Seon troops.

 Some battalions had mortars while others had none. A few had two 30 caliber machine guns, and the rest were lucky to have one. The variety of weapons indicated the threat level of each battalion and served as a key identifier. Drummond and his sergeant began compiling personnel rosters for each battalion and its components. They also created biographical files for officers and non-commissioned officers.

The Vietkong used aliases for safety. However, since they were local men rather than northern communists, it was sometimes possible to uncover their true identities and learn about their personalities. Their aliases served as useful identifiers for the unit. Occasionally, Drummond found photographs of deceased guerillas or images taken during raids on camps.

 The Vietnamese tend to be sentimental. Despite the risks, the Vietkong enjoyed taking souvenir photos of one another. Whole platoon would pose together, resembling a high school class photo. Another file was created to establish the usual operating areas for each battalion and company. Their movements were tracked to understand the routes they commonly took and the hamlets where they paused while on their missions to overtake outposts and set ambushes.

Drummond was also interested in the escape routes they might use if they were attacked in specific areas. He discovered that his counterpart, Captain Lenuen Bin, was a Catholic from North Vietnam. He had fled South after the French defeat in 1954. Bin was a dedicated officer whose abilities had been underestimated by both Cao and the Americans.

 He was friendly and willing to share information. One reason Bin had been overlooked earlier was the absence of a professional intelligence officer from the American side to collaborate with him even if Cow was open to cooperation. No one with expertise had informed Cao of Bin’s value. The unit profiles that Drummond and his sergeant created alongside Bin and his staff were basic and had significant gaps.

 Nevertheless, Drummond was surprised by the amount of useful information in Bin’s raw files. He was also taken aback to discover that Bin had built a valuable network of secret informants. Bin had created this network after his division assignment a year earlier and managed it himself, fearing that a staff member might compromise it.

 He might be a communist infiltration agent. He compensated his spies with funds that were not tracked. This was similar to the case noir system used by the French colonial army. His most valuable informant was a water buffalo dealer. This informant had a perfect reason to travel throughout the northern delta to buy and sell these animals.

 He could move in and out of areas controlled by gorillas without raising suspicion. He could be sent on missions to confirm reports from other informants or to gather specific information. Van also developed another source of intelligence. This source was an American Protestant missionary residing in Mtho.

 Like many American missionaries in Asia, he promoted anti-communism alongside Christianity. Klay informed Van about his views and Van began to visit him regularly. The missionary willingly shared what he learned from Vietnamese pastors in the surrounding towns. In their pursuit of security, the Vietkong often revealed their presence.

 When they gathered in villages to rest to spread propaganda or to prepare for an attack, they restricted the movement of the local population. If someone from Saigon was observant, they would notice fewer peasants at the market. Like any effective military group, the guerillas aimed for efficient operations. Over the years they redesigned their sampens to maximize available space.

 Their packs, cook stoves, rice, firewood, and containers of newakm were organized at the bow. This arrangement left ample room for sitting and sleeping at the stern. Once you understood the setup, it was clear these sand pans did not belong to farmers. The gorillas maintained well-hidden training camps and hospitals.

 These camps were located in wooded areas on the plain of Reeds close to the Cambodian border or in mangrove swamps and water palm jungles in the more populated eastern provinces. They could also hide in wooded areas when resting during their marches. Each gorilla carried a hammock they could hang between two trees. Sleeping outside in a country filled with malaria, monsoon weather, and various biting insects is neither healthy nor comfortable.

 The gorillas believed they could not survive unless they lived among the local people. Because of this, they sought shelter in small villages whenever possible. They also created way stations and safe houses in populated areas to avoid burdening the villagers. The abandoned roads indicated the locations under their control.

 Hence, the villages where they rested and established these structures were easily identifiable. At first glance, these buildings appeared to be regular peasant homes. However, on closer inspection, there were no animals nearby and little to no farming, apart from perhaps a small garden. Unbeknownst to the Vietkong, they were unintentionally marking their movements for a tracker in the sky.

 The United States Army Security Agency began its operations in South Vietnam in 1962 under the seemingly harmless name of the Third Radio Research Unit. By June, there were 400 technicians stationed in the country. Most operated from the military side of Tanson airport using planes that seemed innocuous just like their code name.

 The aircraft built by De Havland of Canada were designed for bush flying. They were long and boxy single engine propeller planes known as the Otter. These planes could carry a communication intercept team along with advanced monitoring equipment. They could stay airborne for hours over suspicious areas while collecting and recording Vietkong radio traffic.

 The gorillas used older American radios from World War II that they had captured from the forces in Saigon or from the French before them. They relied on voice radios for short distances and used a basic but dependable Morse code method for longrange communication. They transmitted short messages and encrypted everything, believing they were fairly secure.

 They did not realize until an otter carrying an intercept team crashed a year later that the Americans were breaking their codes and that their very transmissions were exposing them. The operator strikes the key with a unique rhythm known in the electronic spy world as his fist. Voices can be tape recorded, compared, and identified.

 The fist or the voice became the key feature of the radio. Electronic emissions differ from one radio to another. The advanced ASA methods of interception and analysis gathered this special intelligence. The results arrived in a separate pouch for Drummond. By combining the discoveries from this electronic espionage with information from his human network, Drummond often confirmed which radio belonged to a specific company or battalion.

 The AS8A technicians could also frequently locate the general area from which the radio was transmitting. This allowed them to track the unit and map its movements. With all this information coming from various sources, Drummond began filling out profiles. He provided Van with new tactical intelligence about the locations and intentions of various regular and provincial guerrilla units.

His limited knowledge sometimes made his information unclear. However, there was enough solid data for Van to initiate systematic attacks. In June, the same American technology that tracked the gorillas from above allowed Van to carry out effective assaults. The Vietnamese communists no longer enjoyed the safety of geography that had helped them during the conflict with the French and against the regime of Goind DM before President John F.

 Kennedy’s involvement. Previously, the guerillas could hide in natural strongholds that resisted surprise attacks. The largest and most famous of these in Van’s area was the plane of reeds. This vast expanse of swamp, waist high reeds, and clusters of brush covered much of two provinces in the northwestern corner of the Mikong Delta near Cambodia.

The plane had few roads and a sparse population. The black clay soil made rice farming challenging, even with annual flooding from the Mikong River. Reaching a gorilla hideout on the plane required a grueling 2 to three-day march. The smaller strongholds the Vietkong established in populated areas were also protected from unexpected assaults.

 The ditches and a network of vigilant pickets and supportive peasants often provided crucial warnings. The Saigon forces were were approaching with minimal notice. The helicopter soared over the challenging terrain, cutting down days of effort into just minutes of excitement. Most guerilla hideouts were within 20 m of a province capital or a district center controlled by the Sean government.

The army’s helicopter in Vietnam, the H21 Shauni, was an awkward bulky aircraft from the Korean War era. It looked like a fat bent pipe with large blades on both ends. The crew called it the flying banana. Yet, this helicopter could pick up a dozen soldiers and transport them at 80 mph, 20 m in just 15 minutes.

 The Marine Corps had the newer H34 Chakaw, also known as the US1 Seahorse. This model resembled a sideways tadpole and could carry the same squad 20 m in 13 minutes at a speed of just over 90 mph. Only 14 helicopters were needed to transport a standard assault force of about 165 soldiers, complete with weapons, ammunition, and food for a few days.

 Half an hour later, these helicopters could return. They would drop off a second unit along the route the fleeing gorillas intended to use for their escape. There would be no advanced warning, just a minute or two if the pilots flew at treetop level, which they did whenever possible. The sound of the engines was absorbed by the ground thanks to the spinning rotor blades.

US industry also provided van with another vehicle that struck fear in the gorillas. This was a mobile box made of aluminum alloy, rectangular in shape, featuring various hatches and doors. A strong engine inside drove Caterpillar tracks on each side. It was an armored personnel carrier officially named the M113.

 Soldiers called it an APC, a track, or simply a carrier. In June, a company of 12 joined the division. Each vehicle was equipped with a 50 caliber heavy machine gun mounted at the front hatch on top. Inside, a reinforced company of 140 infantrymen took cover. This massive machine weighed 10 tons and could navigate water.

 When traversing flooded rice patties, it would move at speeds of 10 to 20 mph, crashing through small dikes. The fields were marked with tracks and vehicles bounced over them. The armor could withstand the bullets from the gorilla’s rifles and machine guns. The Vietkong lacked significant anti-tank weapons.

 The infantrymen were trained to exit through the rear hatches on command. They were to launch an attack supported by a dozen 50 caliber machine guns. As gorillas fell and weapons were regularly seized, Colonel Cow grew more pleased and cooperative. Van believed he could finalize his plan to operate the seventh infantry like an American division.

 He aimed to execute a campaign that would effectively dismantle the main force and regional Vietkong battalions in the northern delta. A crucial part of this plan involved transforming cow into a more assertive leader reflecting the image of the United States Army. Van wanted to shape Cao into the tiger of South Vietnam.

 The challenge was that cow did not possess a fierce personality. The closest he resembled a cat was in his rounded, sleek body and cunning character. However, he lacked the necessary claws. Van felt he could overcome this shortcoming by modeling himself after his hero Lansdale. The Ugly American, a novel by Eugene Berdick and William Letterer, further added to Lansdale’s legend.

 When Van read it, the story made sense to him. It served as a political warning, illustrating how the United States was losing its ideological battle against communism for the hearts and minds of Asian people. The book suggested ways for Americans to win this struggle by encouraging Asian people to act in favor of both America and Asia.

The Ugly American became a bestseller and inspired a movie after its release in 1958. Throughout the 1960s, it was recognized as a significant political commentary. In the novel, Colonel Edwin B. Hillendale is dispatched from the Philippines. He had recently outsmarted the communist Hookbalah Hop gerillas and aided his friend Ramon Magsay in winning the presidential election by a substantial margin.

Hillindale is then sent to Sarcan, a small country near Burma and Thailand, where the United States is vying for the favor of Sarcan leaders against the Russians and Chinese Communists. Hillendale enjoys reading palms and casting horoscopes as one of his hobbies. He holds a diploma from the Chunging School of Occult Science.

While walking through the capital city of Haidho, he observes that palm readers and astrologers enjoy the same respect in Sarin as fashionable physicians do in the United States. Important decisions are rarely made without a palm reading or a horoscope. After some spying and researching the personalities and backgrounds of the Sarin leaders, Colonel Hillendale begins to influence political events.

 He convinces the prime minister that he is the world’s greatest palm reader and astrologer. Hillindale tells the American ambassador to Saron, “Every person and every nation has a key that can unlock their hearts. If you use the right key, you can influence anyone or any nation.” While Hillendelle relied on palm reading and horoscopes in Saron, Van planned to use ego appeal to transform cao into a powerful leader, ensuring that the Vietnamese communists would face the consequences.

In the summer of 1962, Queen Vanca was 34 years old. He had quickly risen to command a division by age 29, which was unusual in any army. When an American correspondent asked him about his rapid ascent, Cal pointed to himself with his swagger stick and proclaimed leadership. He created a briefing office on the second floor of his house, calling it his war room.

 He wanted it to replicate Napoleon’s map room precisely. However, he could only create a partial replica because imitating Napoleon perfectly would mean having a door open through the center of the most crucial province on his enlarged division map. Cow wrote an autobiographical novel titled He Grows Under Fire. Although the title was somewhat misleading, he had not experienced much combat and was perhaps miscast in the role of a soldier.

 He lacked the instincts of a true warrior. During one operation, overwhelmed by stress, he ran from the command tent, vomited, and called for the Maul for. He asked the artillery to stop firing support for an infantry unit that was engaged with the guerrillas. The noise bothered him too much. He had a bit of military knowledge from his training with the French and United States armies.

 His intelligence and charm allowed him to present this knowledge as true competence to visiting American generals who never witnessed him under pressure. In any case, his perceived competence had little to do with the rapid promotions he received or his command of the seventh division. This division was positioned along the main road 35 miles south of the capital.

He was appointed division commander because he was a central Vietnamese and a Roman Catholic. He was born and educated in the former imperial capital of Huie, which was also the home city of President DM. His family had connections with the Nongodins. Like many young men from Vietnamese Mandarin families who supported the French during the first war, he joined the military for status, not out of a desire to fight.

He started his military career in 1946 when it was still respectable for a young Vietnamese of good family to serve as a non-commissioned officer. He joined the French sponsored regional militia for central Vietnam which was similar to the civil guard after World War II as a staff sergeant. The French secondary education he received allowed him to work in the operations section of a headquarters.

 This education provided by the church at Lay Pellerin in Hugh also kept him safe from danger most of the time. Two years later, he earned a spot in the first class of a cadet school the French opened in Hugh to train officers for the new Vietnamese National Army they were forming for Baai. In 1949, he completed a six-month course and became a second lieutenant.

 He quickly moved up through the ranks during the early 1950s, becoming a platoon leader, then a company commander, and later a staff officer of a battalion. These roles were more formal titles than actual leadership or combat experience. The French, under pressure from the United States to build a local army, did not properly prepare these young men for real challenges.

Cow caught DM’s attention in 1954 when he was part of a battalion staff that sided with DM. While Lansdale guided him, DM successfully navigated the power struggle against his non-communist rivals. He invited Cow to work on his personal military staff at the palace for two years. Within a few months, he made Cow the chief of that staff.

 DM believed that Cow’s two years of service and his family background prepared him well for a division command. In 1957, DM assigned Cow to one of the smaller divisions. After Cow attended a series of three-month courses in the United States at the Army’s Command and General Staff College in Fort Levvenworth, Kansas, he was put in charge of the seventh division.

 Cow’s primary duty was to be ready at all times to deploy his troops to Saigon. This was to protect the president and his family in case dissident elements in the armed forces attempted another coup like the failed one by paratroopers in November 1960. DM established a special radio telephone network that connected him directly to Cao along with other division commanders and most of the province chiefs.

Cao kept his family secure in Saigon, which was one reason he turned his house into a secondary headquarters. This also had communication systems similar to those at the division headquarters in the old French Casern. The house headquarters acted as an alternate command post in case disloyal subordinates took control of the main one.

 Cao was supposed to take orders from the brigadier general at the core headquarters in Saigon. However, in reality, he reported directly to DM and often disregarded orders he did not like. Cow would express his loyalty to DM by saying, “He is my king.” DM, a clever strategist, had set up various failsafe mechanisms. While Cal was a trusted officer, the brigadier general did not have direct control over the troops in the three divisions.

 At the same time, another officer who held a nominally lower rank could question Cao. The major serving as the province chief in Mtho also commanded the armored regiment assigned to the division. DM appointed this major to ensure that Cao did not develop any unexpected ideas or fail in his duties toward DM and his family.

 tanks could protect the president or pose a danger to him. The major came from one of the landowning families in the Mikong Delta who had aligned themselves with the Nongodins. He was a distant cousin but also a close associate of another commander. This commander had come to DM’s aid with troops in 1960. He showed his loyalty by joining his relative during the crisis.

 Like the other province chiefs, the major in Metho also reported directly to the president. He was supposedly serving as the civil governor of the province. In the summer of 1962, Van felt sure that Cow’s flaws along with the muddled authority around him would not stop his efforts to make Cao an aggressive military leader.

 Van believed that if he made Cow appear to be a fierce leader often enough, Cow’s vanity would push him to act like one, even if he was actually timid. Throughout June and into July, whenever the division killed several gerillas during operations, Van would compliment Cao. He would tell him what an excellent commander he was.

 He praised Cow in front of me and the other reporters who came to cover these events while Cow listened and smiled. I had arrived in South Vietnam as a rookie foreign correspondent in April 1962. This was about a month after Van had arrived to serve as the Saigon Bureau chief for the United Press International. The Kennedy administration had lifted its ban on reporters riding along in helicopter assaults and accompanying advisers on operations in late May, right as Van reached Metho.

Nothing Van said publicly revealed his true intentions. Instead, after dinner at the seminary messaul the evening before an operation, he would encourage the assembled correspondents to emphasize the positive in our stories to boost morale. Sandy Faustst, the outgoing major and Van’s chief of staff, along with Ziegler and other officers, found it amusing to watch Van influence Cow during operations.

 To guide Cow’s actions in the direction he wanted, Van would say things like, “I know what you plan to do next because you are that type of commander.” Before Cow could ask for clarification, Van would act as if he had heard his question and explain the move. Often Cow would smile and agree, then issue the order.

 If Cow didn’t like the suggestion, he would respond cheerfully, saying he had a better idea. Van may not have approved of all of Cow’s ideas, but he made sure never to show disagreement. Cow would never contradict Van in front of the American or Vietnamese staff. Later, he would explain his concerns in private.

 Cow’s behavior clearly showed that Van’s influence was working. He became more confident and seemed to take on a more arrogant manner. He recognized that the hero image Van was crafting for him could boost his career. His division was killing Vietkong at a rate unmatched by other divisions. Van shared with Ziegler his belief that his approach with Cao would soon lead to a significant victory.

 At the pace they were pursuing the Vietkong, the gorillas were bound to make a serious mistake when trying to flee from a helicopter attack. When that time arrived, Van aimed to either kill or capture an entire battalion of Vietkong or their equivalent in smaller groups. He envisioned achieving this through a bold attack he had devised in June, and he was encouraging CA to move forward with it in late July.

Van wanted to show the guerrillas that the night did not completely belong to them. He planned to carry out the first night helicopter assault of the war to catch the Vietkong offg guard just before dawn. Van felt especially optimistic about this operation because cow had gained enough confidence to accept risks he normally would have avoided.

 Initially cow had been cautious about Van’s idea at the start of July. His favorite saying was, “We must be prudent.” He agreed to the proposal but insisted on a different target. Post flew Van out to see Cow’s suggestion, which turned out to be a couple of thatched huts that local gorillas might occasionally gather in.

 Van needed to visit several more sites, including groups of huts or rice patties near larger outposts before he could ease Cow’s fears about the potential casualties from the landing force. Cal was particularly anxious because the locations Van had chosen for the pre-dawn landing and subsequent daylight assaults were out of artillery range.

 the troops would rely on fighter bombers for support. Van’s hopes rose even higher after he pushed Cao to take this bold risk. He aimed to capture and decisively destroy the 504th main force battalion. This battalion was one of the two regular units affected during the operation Ziggler had planned on May 23rd. Some gerillas from the 500 of 4th who survived that day’s chaos had offered to surrender in exchange for amnesty at the end of May.

 However, Deem refused to grant amnesty to communists and their supporters, leaving their offer unanswered. Drummond had traced the battalion to a remote area of the plane of Reeds. There were signs that elements from the second regular battalion damaged on May 23rd might be with the 504th. According to Drummond’s information, the 504th’s troops and the second battalion were mainly focused on refitting and training.

Still, one company from the 504th was reported to be hiding with friendly residents of several hamlets near the confluence of two small rivers about 9 miles from the Cambodian border. They planned to launch an attack on an outpost that protected a significant settlement of Catholic refugees from North Vietnam.

Drummond suspected that a second company, either from regular forces or provincial guerrillas, was nearby to support the first company during the upcoming assault. He believed there was a strong possibility of spotting other units from either battalion when they conducted follow-up landings in daylight. Van chose the River Junction for the pre-dawn landing.

The report on the company there provided the most current and detailed information that Drummond had. The Y-shaped confluence of the rivers should be easy for the pilots to see in the dim pre-dawn light. To confirm his decision, Van conducted a final reconnaissance in a helicopter with Drummond. He instructed the pilots to make two passes at 1500 ft, circling for 10 minutes in between.

This way, the gorillas would think the aircraft was on a routine mission and not realize they were being observed. Drummond crouched in the open door of the helicopter, steadying his Leica camera against the wind to capture clear images of the target. Meanwhile, Van asked the pilots if they thought the river junction would be visible enough for an aviator during pre-dawn conditions, and they believed it would.

Bin had a good relationship with the owner of a photography shop in Mtho. He arranged for Drummond’s film to be developed and printed as 8×10 in photographs. These prints were given to the pilots and the leader of the landing task force along with his company commanders. This helped them identify their target.

There were plans for a series of five additional landings following this first early morning operation. The upcoming landings aimed to catch any gorillas trying to escape north up the larger stream formed by the two smaller ones. They would also investigate suspected areas along a canal that extended west from the river junction to Cambodia.

Cow would set up his command post in a hanger next to the dirt air strip at Makoa. This area was a cluster of poor wooden and thatched houses surrounding a church, a pagota, and the home of a province chief situated about 40 mi northwest of Mtho. Van planned to keep three additional companies in reserve there.

 He and Cao agreed that once they located guerrillas, they would deploy the reserves in front of the Vietkong and engage them. They would have nearly 30 helicopters, allowing them great flexibility with all the troops available in the open fields and swamps. Some landings would likely be unsuccessful. However, those task forces could be converted into reserves for the helicopters to retrieve and reposition wherever necessary to catch fleeing gorillas.

They intended to use the newer Marine H34 chakaws for the first landing as these helicopters were equipped with instruments for night flights.