During and after the move to Camp Haskins, III MAF Headquarters was plagued with communications difficulties. Just before 9 March, the automated teletype machines at Camp Horn stopped working, creating a pileup of paper and tape. The staff hauled bags of this material with them to Camp Haskins. On 9 and 10 March, the teletypes at Force Logistic Command Headquarters, which were to serve III MAP at Camp Haskins, also broke down. Compounding the problem, the ditto machines which reproduced messages for distribution failed at the same time. Hurried repairs restored all the machines to operation by 12 March, and personnel from III MAF, FLC, and the 5th Communications Battalion cleared up the message backlog and established normal communications. Even then, the system proved cumbersome, with couriers running back and forth between FLC and Camp Haskins every 30 minutes or so. General Dulacki, recalling the experience, hoped that "next time we're a little bit closer to communications."64

The reduction in the size of the III MAF staff was a reflection of its reduced role. The difficult question was, how lean a staff could be organized to satisfactorily perform the mission? Ill MAF realized that the old "Marine Corps Schools concept," in which a skeleton III MAF staff would parasite off division and wing staffs, just wouldn't work. On the other hand, the argument made by some to keep the large existing III MAF staff intact was equally impractical.65

The decision was ultimately made to develop an austere T/0 with no fat. "It was to be a lean organization, adequate to perform the new III MAF mission with no frills, and one which recognized the inexorably continuing redeployment. Although, at times, seemingly draconian measures were necessary to achieve that goal, in the end it was accomplished and accomplished successfully."66 When General Chapman visited III MAF in early 1970, he was pleasantly surprised to see the realistic approach that III MAF had taken in sizing the staff.

The reduced III MAF staff had barely enough personnel to carry out its command functions. Colonel Wilkerson commented in July that III MAF Headquarters ". . .strictly maintains a command center for monitoring what's going on. . . . The command center . . . has a watch of one staff officer and one staff NCO and one general clerk, and that's the extent of our participation. . . . [CG, III MAF] can't really participate other than to advise people and try to keep up to date on what's going on. . . "67

XXIV Corps Headquarters had its problems, also. From concentrating primarily on tactical control of troops, General Zais and his staff had to assume the many logistic, administrative, and political responsibilities formerly discharged by III MAF. They had to adjust their thinking to deal with all of I Corps rather than only the two northern provinces, and they had to establish a relationship of trust and cooperation with General Lam, who had worked closely with III MAF. XXIV Corps Headquarters, like III MAF, discovered that it had underestimated the number of men required for its job. The Army staff expanded to meet its new responsibilities and by June was overflowing the old Marine compound at Camp Horn.68

By mid-1970, both XXIV Corps and III MAF had recovered from the confusion of their alteration of roles. The small-unit war being waged required no large transfers of troops between division TAORs, and XXIV Corps usually left direction of day-to-day operations in Quang Nam Province to the 1st Marine Division. In June, General Dulacki said:

In general I think the relationship between III MAF and XXIV Corps is very good. There are no serious problems. ... I think a lot of the staff sections in XXIV Corps couldn't quite understand that III MAF was the senior headquarters insofar as the division and wing was concerned. It took them a little while to understand that if they have any orders and directions for the wing or the division they had to come through us, and in general there are no problems in this regard.69

Although he initially had objected to III MAF's continued control of the division and wing, Lieutenant General Zais proved "very understanding, very considerate" in his dealings with the Marines. "At the lower staff levels, occasionally, Service parochialism or jealousy (on both sides) would rear its ugly head, due to a failure to understand the other Services' normal modus operand!. But the longer the two headquarters worked together, the trust, confidence and respect between the two grew and solidified." As General Dulacki observed more than a decade later, "Neither General Zais nor General McCutcheon would have had it otherwise."70