CHAPTER 29

Pacification

Prelude-The Tet Offensives and Operation Recovery-III MAF and Pacification Homicide in the Countryside-Changing Attitudes The Boys Next Door: The Combined Action Program-The Accelerated Pacification Plan

Prelude

From the beginning of the III MAF expansion of its base areas during the spring and summer of 1965, the Marine command was involved in a pacification campaign. Employing the 'ink blot' or 'spreading oil spot' theory, the Marine strategy was to build upon success in one area to reinforce that in another to provide momentum for the linking together of the Marine enclaves. During their first year in country, both through trial and error and possibly a residual institutional memory of their early 20th century Caribbean interventions, the Marines developed several pacification techniques that showed some promise.'

In one of its first efforts, III MAF established a civic action program which emphasized village and hamlet self-help projects and medical assistance. Marine units provided materials and equipment to local villagers in the building of schools and other local improvement facilities. Navy corpsmen and occasionally doctors visited nearby hamlets where they would dispense soap, hold sick call, treat minor injuries and diseases, and teach basic hygiene to the inhabitants. The idea was to win the good will of the local populace, gain intelligence, and hopefully enhance the prestige of local government officials, especially the village and district chiefs.

As the Marines expanded their area of operations into the populated area south of Da Nang, they soon realized that security from the Viet Cong guerrillas was a decisive factor if the South Vietnamese government were to retain or establish control of the countryside.** In this connection, the Marine units employed relatively innovative tactics that they called 'Golden Fleece' and 'County Fair.' Golden Fleece operations were basically rice protection missions. A Marine battalion would provide a shield behind which the villagers harvested and kept their crops from the VC tax collectors. The County Fair operations were cordon and search affairs with psychological overtones. A Marine battalion would surround a hamlet, bring its population into a large clearing where the troops had erected large tents. While the division band and Vietnamese drama groups provided entertainment, the Marines would search the village and provide medical and dental assistance. Local officials would conduct an informal census and hold any suspicious persons for further questioning. By the end of 1967, however, while the Marine units continued to use County Fair and Golden Fleece tactics, III MAF no longer kept a statistical account of these types of operations.***

*See also the discussion in Chapter l on the 'inkblot' concept. While the link to the Caribbean experience is rather indirect. General Lewis W. Walt, who commanded III MAF in 1965, observed that he was taught the fundamentals of his profession 'from men who had fought Sandino in Nicaragua or Charlemagne in Haiti.' Still, as others have pointed out, most Marine officers who served in Vietnam were much junior to Walt and obtained most of their training on counter-insurgency in U.S. Army Schools based on doctrine articulated by the British from their experience in Malaya and adopted by the Army. For the Walt quote and the development of III MAF pacification in 1965, see Shulimson and Johnson, U.S. Marines in Vietnam, 1965, pp. 133^16. The quote is on p. 133.

**Lieutenant Colonel William R. Corson, who in 1967 headed the Marine Combined Action Program and helped to articulate Marine pacification concepts, commented that pacification was not the equivalent of giving the Vietnamese in the countryside 'the Great Society War on Poverty' and hoping that they in return would give 'their hearts and minds to those who provided them with the dole.' Corson defined pacification as a condition rather than merely a series of processes: 'In the case of the hamlets in South Vietnam, it was the belief and perception of the Vietnamese people that they were safe in their own homes. This idea, or feeling of safety was the sine qua non without which there was no 'pacification purpose' or potential gain simply from providing the humanitarian assistance that the indigenous government had never provided.' The people needed to believe that they 'at least would be protected.' LtCol William R. Corson, Comments on draft, dtd 30Jan95 (Vietnam Comment File), hereafter Corson Comments.

***As in most aspects of the pacification campaign, there are varying views of its impact in the local hamlets and villages. William D. Ehrhart, a Marine veteran who served as an enlisted intelligence specialist with the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines in 1967 and early 1968 and participated in County Fairs, wrote, 'my experience was that 'County Fairs' worked much better in the telling than in the doing; that is, the theory sounded good, but the reality fell far short of the theory.'