a farmer went out to his field or paddy "he could only take his spade, could only take his little bag of rice." The villagers were also cautioned to avoid even in�cidental contact with the VC/NVA. Medical and propaganda teams were to work among the villagers, seeking to explain to them the requirements of the program and to win their support for the GVN. Throughout, the plan emphasized humane but firm treatment of the people.7
Only the 2d Battalion, operating around FSB Ross, fully implemented the plan. On 15 April, the battal�ion deployed three of its companies, each with a PF platoon and police and CORDS detachments, to cor�don nine D- and C-rated hamlets west and south of FSB Ross. The companies set up their checkpoints, and the PFs and police searched the hamlets for caches of arms and supplies. Each inhabitant received a pamph�let in Vietnamese explaining movement and curfew restrictions, promising rewards for information on the location of enemy troops, caches, and boobytraps, ex�plaining how to obtain medical aid from the teams working in the hamlet, and offering families the chance to resettle in government-controlled areas. Those willing to move, the pamphlet promised, could take all their household goods and property with them. The Marines reinforced the pamphlets with air-dropped leaflets, MedCaps, and frequent visits by GVN propaganda and political drama teams.8
The program soon produced results. Within 15 days of the establishment of the cordons, according to the 2d Battalion's report, 350 civilians requested resettle�ment in GVN-controlled villages. In several target hamlets, people pointed out alleged members of the VCI. The military proficiency and self-confidence of the RFs and PFs working with the Marines improved. Most important, the cordons physically separated the VC and NVA from what had been their supply sources and rest areas. Colonel Derning said:
. . . We cut Charlie right off his hot chow, and we cut him right off his conjugal visits. He couldn't get in or out of the ville. If he got in, he was had; if he got out, he couldn't get in. Naturally we cut the NVA off also. And early in this game we caught quite a few of them drifting in and out of the ville, not knowing we were there . . ..8
Operating under this altered approach, those units of the 7th Marines involved were able to efficiently control their areas of operation, minimizing enemy movement among the people. The Marines were briefed and rested during the day in the relative safe�ty of the occupied villages and sought the enemy at night. "The fact was we had an advantage because at night under these circumstances anything moving was, in fact, an enemy force," said Derning, "so that we had not much problem then in identification and not much opportunity to injure or to kill innocent people."10
While apparently effective, the program was limit�ed in scope and lasted only a short time. The 7th Ma�rines' 1st Battalion operating around LZ Baldy, and scheduled to take part, did not fully apply the con�cept, although it did increase its operations with RFs and PFs. Most of the 3d Battalion, operating against base areas in the Quo Sons, never participated. The 2d Battalion kept three of its companies on cordon operations during April and May, but in June it divert�ed one of them to other activities. In July, the entire battalion left the Que Son Valley for Operation Pick�ens Forest. In August, it moved into the mountains on Operation Imperial Lake, and in September it stood down for redeployment with the rest of the regiment.11
Other infantry units had their own special pacifi�cation efforts. The 2d Battalion, 1st Marines, for ex�ample, formed a combined Marine-PF unit to control Nui Kim Son, a small village at the gates of Camp Lauer, the battalion's headquarters cantonment just south of Marble Mountain. The Viet Cong had strong influence in Nui Kim Son. Repeatedly they put up NVA propaganda posters, and occasionally they set a mine or boobytrap. The GVN village chief refused to stay in the village, living instead in a hut in Camp Lauer. Nui Kim Son acted as a staging point for Com�munists infiltrating toward Marble Mountain and Da Nang East, and it also harbored prostitutes, drug ped�dlers, and black marketeers.
On 2 September, the 2d Battalion established a squad of 12 enlisted Marines selected from through�out the battalion for CAP experience and Vietnamese language proficiency. Under operational control of Major John S. Grinalds, the battalion operations officer, the unit was stationed permanently in Nui Kim Son to work as a combined force with the local PFs. The Marines, reinforced to 13 men in November, set up checkpoints to control movement through the village and tried to curtail vice. In their first two months of operation, Marines and the PFs captured 24 confirmed Viet Cong agents trying to pass their checkpoints. Nevertheless, the 2d Battalion, accord�ing to Major Grinalds, never fully pacified Nui Kim Son, a fact attested to by the continued refusal of the village chief to live there.12
