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Note: This is the experience of
Richard Webster, one of the members of the "2002 Peace Patrol" that
went back to Vietnam. He is writing a book about his experiences in Vietnam
called, "I was a Co Van Mi". When his book is published, it
will be carried in THE PX on this website. Rich is a retired U.S. Army officer
whom I have had the pleasure of getting to know well during our trek back to
Nam. Going to this hamlet, was an emotional and spiritual experience for all of
us who went with him that day. The following chapter from his book is presented
here for your enjoyment. You may contact Richard
Webster by email, if you have any questions, or comments for him. Bill
McDonald
THE ANGELS OF CAM TAN
Copyright May l9, 2002, by Richard Webster
It has been 33 years now since I served in the Vietnam War, first as an
infantry officer and then later as a military advisor to elements of the South
Vietnamese Army. That’s a lifetime ago in physical time, but in memory time, I
left the war only about 30 minutes ago. I was hoping that a return visit to
Vietnam would put the old ghosts and the memories of combat to rest forever.
On April 21, 2002, I left the Rex Hotel in Saigon with three other Vietnam
Veterans and a special guide/interpreter from the Ben Than Tourist Agency to
drive to the little village of Cam Tan, a distance of about 50 miles. Located on
the edge of a French rubber plantation in Long Khan Province, Cam Tan was a
place where the enemy was trying their best to kill our small adviser team, as
we were in turn trying to break their deadly control over the village.
The little village of Cam Tan has never left my mind as I remember the
Vietnamese Catholic nuns there that ran a health clinic for the rubber
plantation workers and the peasants in that small French- built village. They
were the most absolute wonderful caring people that I have ever met in my life
and as the commander of the Mobile Advisory Team 49, I did everything in my
power to assist them, supplying them with medical supplies through unofficial
channels, and also scheduling med caps (medical teams from American units to
include nurses and doctors) to provide medical care to the villagers. These
Catholic nuns were the only people that I met during my tour of duty in Vietnam
that never asked for anything or had a hidden motive. Their only motive was to
serve the people and worship God. That kind of sacrifice and noble behavior is
difficult to find in a war zone, or for that matter, anywhere.
And then there were the Vietnamese soldiers of the 4l3th Regional Forces
Company that I lived with for three months in the little compound that set next
to the village. They were commanded by a double agent, the treacherous Trung-uy
(Lieutenant) Hao, who had received his military commission not for his
competence but for his connections to people in high places. Other characters in
this tragedy were the one –armed Frenchman who had fought at the battle of
Dien Ben Phu and his Vietnamese wife and the other Frenchman, a Mr. Bennet, who
managed the French Rubber plantation there. They had been living in Vietnam
since the French War, and they occupied separate villas near our little fort.
Other characters in this tragic drama, was my chain of command, the MACV
headquarters people living in their air conditioned trailers in Xuan Loc, the
province capitol of Long Khan province, who had done everything in their power
to do me in by giving me an impossible task to motivate the Regional Forces
soldiers to get out of the compound at night and ambush the Viet Cong who were
coming into the village and terrorizing the people. The soldiers led by Lt. Hao
were not budging from the safety of the compound; they had a working
relationship with the Viet Cong that worked like this, “You leave us alone and
we will leave you alone.”
I had no authority over the South Vietnamese soldiers. I was simply a CO VAN
MI, Vietnamese for American advisor. I could only give advice, not orders, to my
counterpart.
What had happened to them all? I had been plopped down into this little
village one day along with four other American soldiers that made up my Advisory
Team 49. In retrospect, our presence there would be responsible for changing the
destiny of all of them. I had brought along several pictures in color of the
nuns in their clinic. One of the pictures was of me sharing a small meal with
them at their clinic.
I already knew what happened to one of the nuns. She was shot while riding in
the back of a lambretta while on the way to Xuan Loc for confession, killed by a
crazy American GI for God knows what reason. He met her on the highway, pulled
out his pistol, and shot her dead. It was a random shooting, and I’m sure that
whoever pulled the trigger, there is a special place in hell awaiting him. This
happened two days before I was unceremoniously transferred out of Cam Tan to the
Mekong Delta, rather than face a court martial. That’s a long story which I
have written in another chapter of this book.
Things were in absolute chaos in Cam Tan the last several days we were there,
with the threat of the court martial, my being flown directly to province
headquarters for a dressing down by the province senior advisor, and also the
threat from Trung-uy Hao of having us killed if we weren’t transferred out of
Cam Tan immediately. So I did not have the time to follow up on the shooting of
the catholic nun.
It is time to return to Cam Tan and in a few hours we will be there.
Saigon is an absolute traffic nightmare as there are now almost 5 million
motorbikes endlessly cruising the city with one or two family members behind the
driver. We leave Saigon and head for Bien Hoa and I am absolutely overwhelmed by
the factories that have been built along the way. What was once a two-lane road
is now a four- lane highway, lined with huge state-owned factories, built with
money from Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Malaysia, and a few other small
Asian countries.
The outward appearance gives the allusion that prosperity has come to the
people of Vietnam, but the opposite is true for most of the peasant and working
class. Those at the top are raking in unbelievable profits on the backs of the
people. A factory worker is lucky to receive between $20 to $30 a month, and
with that salary he must pay a small bribe to get the job. The bribe at every
level works its way to the top, with those at the top getting very rich, and
these are the communists, and former NVA and Viet Cong soldiers and their
offspring. Think about that when you buy your next Nike sneaker, or a piece of
clothing made in one of the over l400 garment factories in Vietnam.
As we approach Long Bien which used to be one of the largest American bases
in Vietnam, there is a huge military statue commemorating the heroes of the
North Vietnam and the Revolutionary Front in the South who eventually won the
war, after the Americans pulled their forces out. The statue is Stalinesque in
its architecture and is surrounded by beautiful manicured gardens. You can see
none of the old base now, but behind the factories the soldiers of the North
Vietnamese Army, called now the Peoples Army reside there, but it is hidden from
public view and it is absolutely forbidden to take a photo, even if one could
get close enough.
We take highway one, to Xuan Loc, and the traffic thins out, but there is
still a steady stream of motorists. The roads are filled with huge trucks
manufactured in Korea, China, and old deuce and a half US army trucks jury
rigged with an odd assortment of motors, three wheel carts propelled by motor
bikes, bicycles, and thousands of motorbikes. The honking of horns is continuous
as it is a marvel how the vehicles can wind in and around each other without
having a wreck.
I used to drive the road alone in a jeep with a rifle on the seat, with a
full magazine and the safety off when I traveled into Saigon for a day off.
There was little traffic then and I could drive like hell so that I could drive
right through an ambush. Both sides of the road 33 years ago were sprayed with
agent orange and the vegetation was killed 50 meters back from the road. There
appears to be nothing left of the effects of this deadly spray now.
We stop for a rest break at a restaurant along the road and buy bottled water
and soft drinks. You still can’t drink the water, and the water business is
buco business in Vietnam. A l6- ounce bottle will cost you from 30 cents to one
dollar (l5000 dong) depending upon where you buy one. There are thousands of
little shops along the highways now where one can buy a cold drink and a few
souvenirs. During the war, one of the amazing things that occurred wherever
American soldiers encamped for several days, an enterprising Vietnamese would
appear with cokes for sale and a block of ice to cool it with. It still hasn’t
changed.
I have Xeroxed a part of an old military map that shows the location of Cam
Tan. We drive through Xuan Loc, the province capitol, and pass the huge cemetery
for the fallen dead of the North Vietnamese Soldiers. There are over 5000 dead
NVA buried there where the last battle of the Vietnam War was fought. Another
huge statue that could have been designed by a Russian architect adorns the
highway in front of the cemetery. It depicts a North Vietnamese soldier pointing
a grenade launcher and next to his side is a peasant women with a bag of rocket
propelled grenades slung over her shoulder as she points towards the enemy.
One Arvin Division defeated two NVA divisions here before they were finally
worn down. They were waiting for the American bombers that never came. This was
at the time in l975 when America deserted their South Vietnamese allies.
Of course, there is no recognition of the valiant effort of the South
Vietnamese Army in this battle. There are no ARVIN cemeteries now as they have
all been bull dozed into oblivion, and those families who dared, came to dig up
the bones of their relatives, before they were lost forever in the scrap heap of
history.
About 4 kilometers beyond Xuan Loc, we find a dirt laterite road. The earth
is a dark red like the peanut country in Georgia, and we take it. We ask several
peasants where Cam Tan is, but no one knows. A vendor along the road tells us
there is a village back off the road if we turn right at the next road. We take
it and it parallels a new power grid line. We follow it. The tourist van jumps
up and down as the road is filled with potholes. We have had to obtain a permit
from the police authorities to visit the town. Our guide has already done this.
There are workers in the rubber trees, practicing their craft, each one
capable of taking care of 400 trees on a daily basis. Back when the French ran
the plantations before l954, assignment as a rubber tree worker was almost an
assignment to death. The rubber worker still scrapes by on a meager existence.
Our interpreter, explains that back during the days when the reeducation
camps were in existence, “They moved the city people to the camps in the
jungle, and they say if you work hard, the stone will become rice. They forced
people to go to the new economic zones. My father was in the camps for two
years, and the favorite saying was, ‘How many calendars do you have?’
meaning one year for one calendar.
They told him that you must go fishing in your rice bowl with your
chopsticks, like fishing in the ocean for fish, and you will find the meat, but
of course there was very little if any.”
The people in the rubber trees began to starve during the collective farm
period, when the politburo was still trying the failed economic theories of
communism. The rubber tree worker would put aside a little rubber each day, and
when they had a considerable supply, sell it at night to the black marketers who
came in vehicles along the roads for such purposes. Thank God, they ditched
their crazy idea of collective farms, and punishment camps, because they weren’t
working.
The person who taught me English was a Diuy, (Vietnamese for Captain) in the
Arvin who spent l2 years in the camps and he has never really recovered his
health.”
There were more people now working in the rubber trees than when I was living
in Cam Tan. The war was going on then in l968, and the llth Armored cavalry
regiment was just down the road about l5 klicks from Xuan Loc.
“ We were starving when I was a young boy,” continues the interpreter,
“And to survive, my mother smuggled cigarettes from Cambodia, and sold them in
Saigon. She wrapped her stomach with them and said she was pregnant. My father
being an ex Arvin, he was not eligible to work after he came out of the camps,
and he still can’t get a job, and the war has been over for 28 years.”
We’re taking a different road now to Cam Tan that parallels a new power
line that has been built. I am getting nervous, and have a few butterflies in my
stomach. Would there be anyone in the village who would remember me? I had
brought a picture of the four nuns, and me when I was young, and served there.
I hoped several of the nuns would still be working there and I would be able
to converse with them and possibly find the grave of the dead nun, who always
smiled at me when I was in her presence.
Cam Tan appears in the distance. I see the water tower built by the French
where the Saigon General once told me to hang a South Vietnamese flag on the
top, so that those flying overhead would know that it was a South Vietnam
controlled village. Of course, that wasn’t true. We controlled the village
during the day, and the VC/NVA controlled the village at night. To show their
power, the VC poured scalding water on the lady that we had hired in the village
to do our laundry. The message was simple. Don’t cooperate with the Americans,
or worse will happen.
The air strip next to the Frenchman’s villa who managed the rubber
plantation has now grown up in weeds and small trees, and I search for our old
compound, first built by the French Foreign Legion during the first French
Indochina war. It had a moat around it and an old flaming arrow device that the
French used to point to the enemy at night if they were attacked, so the planes
would know where to bomb. Cans of kerosene were placed along the arrow and then
lit and the arrow was swung towards the enemy. The fort was no larger than the
perimeter of a baseball diamond. I can’t seem to see it. Have we come to the
wrong village? Surely there must be some remnant of it left. But no there isn’t.
We cruise past the people’s party headquarters on our left and enter the
village. Many of the old houses built of concrete and masonry with red tile
roofs are now in a state of disrepair. I thought the houses were new 33 years
ago, but now they look old and decrepit. There are some new houses built now,
and many of the houses fly the flag of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, a
bright red flag with a yellow star in the middle. We pass the old rubber
processing plant that looks like it is missing the roof and only the walls are
standing. There is rubble near the walls. It wasn’t in bad shape back then,
and the South Vietnamese soldiers used to hide in the building at night when
they did go outside the compound. Several nights I had stayed there with one
platoon of the regional force soldiers on ambush.
We get out of the van, and I spot what looks like the front of the building
that used to be the Catholic nun’s house and clinic. During the war, they gave
medical aid and comfort to everyone, to include the VC who would come into the
village at night and demand medical treatment. As long as we kept supplying them
with medical supplies, the VC would allow them to stay there. It was my decision
to keep giving them supplies, and I never told them to stop treating the enemy.
That would have only endangered their lives.
The nuns were providing healthcare to over two thousand villagers in Cam Tan,
and they were also running the small school there for the children.
Our first mission in Cam Tan was to win the hearts and minds of the people
and the second one, a more dangerous one, was to defeat the enemy in battle. To
do this, our adviser team had to convince the 100 soldiers of the 413th
Regional Force Company to get out of the military compound and set up ambushes
around the village during nighttime hours, and quite simply, to kill the VC/NVA
when they made their nightly forays into the village. But Trung-uy Hao wasn’t
buying this course of action as he had reached a compromise with what was in my
opinion a large force of North Vietnamese Army regulars resting up in a camp in
the jungle not far from us.
To confirm my suspicions, a North Vietnamese soldier walked out of the jungle
one day and gave himself up, and Trung-uy Hao trotted out of the compound and
welcomed him with open arms. He ordered his batman (servant) to bring the
prisoner hot tea and cookies. It didn’t take a genius to know that Lt. Hao was
a North Vietnamese sympathizer.
The nuns’ building looks dirty and disheveled now. It needs a paint job,
and the old well is still in front with a handle to wind up buckets of fresh
water. The front porch is missing. No one is around, and I’m doubting myself
that this is really the building where the Catholic nuns lived.
Is this really where I stood 33 years ago walking a deadly tightrope between
the hidden power of the VC/NVA that actually controlled the village and the
Vietnamese forces that I was assigned to, who were fighting a paper war, sending
out false coordinates of phantom ambushes and patrols? In addition to being
caught between these two forces, I had the additional pressure from higher
headquarters in the CORDS (Civil Operations for Revolutionary Development
Support) echelon chain of command in the form of a newly assigned district
senior adviser, a Major just recently arrived from stateside. He was hell bent
on promotion wanting immediate results, and he could care less if it came over
my dead body. My little 5-member mobile advisory team 49 was expendable.
The other returning vets that were accompanying me on our peace patrol were
Bill McDonald, a former crew chief with the Tomahawks, Robert Reese an
infantryman with the First Infantry Division, and Dave Gallo, a former
Lieutenant who served as a forward observer with lst Air Cavalry Division. This
is Dave’s 7th trip back to Vietnam, and he now serves as the
promoter and leader of Peace Patrols Incorporated, the organizer of our two-week
tour in Vietnam.
They fanned out in the village and within moments a crowd assembled with
young kids and teenagers and several old villagers appearing out of nowhere, and
stared at us with a friendly demeanor. They were shy and laid back, unlike the
street kids that we encountered in Saigon. We had brought pencils and small
pieces of candy for such occasions and they started to give each youngster a
small gift to break the ice.
I take out my pictures and show them to several of the older villagers, women
who look old enough to have been there during the war. The interpreter tells me
that they remember the nuns and this is indeed the site of the old clinic. Yes,
it was true and I have remembered correctly as they tell again the story of how
the one nun dressed in the black habit was shot one day on the road to Xuan Loc.
What a stroke of luck. We immediately find two villagers that remember the
Catholic nuns.
Ask them if they remember me, I say to the guide/interpreter.
“No, they do not remember you, because at that time they were afraid to
look into the faces of the soldiers and they always closed their shutters at 4 o’clock”
“ What about the other nuns? What happened to them? Where did they go?”
They explain in Vietnamese. The interpreter says, “A big battle happened
here and they were killed over there by bombs and rockets from the air. They
pointed to a dead tree, indicating the spot where they died, barely 20 meters
from the entrance to the clinic. Many soldiers also died and the fort was
destroyed.”
I am shocked. I had come back to find out where the first nun was buried, and
now I find out the other two died also. Apparently what happened was that during
the battle, in which our old outpost that sat on the edge of the village was
overrun and many soldiers were killed, the nuns had rushed out from their clinic
to provide medical care for the wounded in the battle, and they were killed by
the bombs.
Another scenario would be that during the attack, the VC/NVA would have come
through the village to use the village houses and the people as shields, because
they would have provided cover for their advance. The people in the village
would have been safe, because under every house was a mud bunker that could
withstand the impact from a large bomb. Is it possible they could have been
forced out of their clinic and used as shields by the VC/NVA, hoping the
soldiers at the fort wouldn’t fire at them?
On one of my visits to the clinic with the team medic, they had shown me a
bomb shelter underneath the clinic.
So the nuns could have survived if they had chosen to wait out the battle,
but they didn’t. It wasn’t in their nature. They were the most wonderful
people that I have ever met in my life. To be in their presence, made me feel
good. They were the epitome of the most absolute good and self-sacrifice. I was
in absolute awe of their humility. Without sounding corny, they were volunteers
in Jesus’ army.
I choose to believe that they of their own free will and accord, rushed out
in the heat of battle to save lives of the wounded soldiers. That would be true
to their nature.
Thinking back to those days, they were living examples of absolute
unconditional love, the kind of love that Christ talks about in the bible. They
wore black and white habits, depending upon the duties that they were performing
that day, and large Christian crosses dangled from their necks falling almost to
their waists.
I was hoping to find them again and talk to them because before I left Cam
Tan, I gave them our refrigerator and all the medical supplies and food that we
had. I told them before I left that they were the most absolute wonderful people
that I had met while I was in Vietnam.
Oh no, how could that happen? All these years, I never knew that two more
nuns had died.
It wasn’t fair that these nuns had been killed in a nameless battle here,
that had little significance in the outcome of the war. I and my other four
members of the MAT (Mobile Advisory Team) team had escaped the battle and
possible death or capture by being kicked out of Cam Tan by the military
hierarchy, who considered us failures in our duty. We had done our best, and no
matter what we did, it wasn’t good enough. So our lives had been saved by this
twist of fate.
Even sadder is the fact that there is nothing here in the village to even
commemorate their presence or the tremendous good that they did for the poor.
The communists have even changed the name of the village now to Xuan Que.
So basically, the military rear echelon who didn’t know a damn thing what
it was like to serve on the front lines had saved our lives by their
incompetence, so what at the time I considered a military failure of leadership
and a bad OER report turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Our karma
apparently was not to die there at that time.
I had my picture taken in front of the tree where they died. I think you can
feel where people die in combat, because I was now feeling an intense inner
pain, a sudden tragic remembrance of what should have been a holy place, and I
could still picture their smiling happy faces. This spot is a sacred place for
me and I believe that one can sense such places, where those of absolute good
die and their spirits enter the other dimension of life after death.
I turned and walked back to the clinic and a door opened and a scraggily
mustachioed Vietnamese man came out and walked towards me with a quizzical look
on his face. We were creating quite a stir in the village now. Foreigners seldom
came to Cam Tan. It was way off the beaten path.
I shake his hand, and it is wet and clammy, and the smell of booze is on his
breath and it is not even time for lunch yet. His clothes are dirty and he hasn’t
bathed recently. He is not very friendly and he won’t let loose of my hand.
Drunks have a habit of doing this wherever you meet them.
Our interpreter tries to tell him who we are, and he seems not to be happy
that we are here. He is the only one of about 25 people who is not smiling. In
English, the interpreter says to me, “This guy is former VC. He was given this
clinic house as a reward for serving with the VC. That happened all over
Vietnam. The houses now belong to the Viet Cong and the children of the Viet
Cong.” He won’t answer any of our questions. It’s best we move on, before
the village police show up and begin to ask questions.
So the clinic where the four nuns lived and three who sacrificed their lives,
was now a run down hovel occupied by a former Viet Cong who was now drunk before
noon. How does one figure that? Is there any justice or karmic balance in this?
I discover that one nun who is quite old now is still alive and working in
another health clinic in another rubber plantation in Long Khan province. I
obtain her address later as we stop at the Catholic Church in Xuan Loc, and I
plan to write her a letter.
We hop back into the van and head back to the road where my old compound
should be. I notice on the water tower a loudspeaker where the peoples’ party
broadcast their daily propaganda to the villagers.
We stop at the village chief’s house. The shutters are closed. His wife has
just died and he is now in mourning. It would not be polite to ask him questions
now about what happened to the old out post and the Frenchmen and the
treacherous Trung-uy Hao, who forwarded a letter up his chain of command
demanding to have my team 49 removed from the outpost, under the veiled threat
that he could not guarantee the safety of Lieutenant Webster life.
I spot the one armed Frenchman’s house, he lost his arm in the French
Indochina War, and it is abandoned with holes in the roof and weeds and brush
growing up around it. The Vietnamese were afraid of him because it was rumored
that he took his old black Citroen and a bottle of whisky and drove through the
rubber trees at night and howled at the moon and talked to ghosts. Now I know
from personnel experience that he was haunted with post- traumatic stress
disorder and that was his way of dealing with it. I remember now that after a
hospitable visit there and having an afternoon drink with him and his wife, that
his beautiful daughter left a fresh cut rose on the seat of my jeep. What
happened to them all?
Now that I had spotted the old one-armed Frenchman’s villa, I could place
where our outpost used to be, and built right on top of it was the peoples party
headquarters, a new expensive looking building, surrounded by gates, and no
doubt filled with petty communist party bureaucrats. Someone had to be in charge
of the propaganda that was broadcast daily to the people. And someone had to
screen applications for employment in the new Vietnam, where the background for
three generations is checked to discern which side your family was on during the
war. Any connection with the old South Vietnamese government or army
automatically fails the applicant for a position in the Socialist Republic of
Vietnam.
I wish I could go back in time now and be there at the battle and try to save
them all, or at least to do my best. Would 5 Americans have been able to stem
the tide against the attack? We had a M-60 caliber machine gun, a M-79 grenade
launcher, and M-l6s plus boxes of hand grenades, and also clay more mines that
we could have set up maybe to stem the tide. We could also have probably gotten
artillery and air support much quicker than the Vietnamese, because the American
forces would spare no effort in rescuing and coming to the aid of American
soldiers on the front lines in a battle. We would have had medevac capability
immediately after the battle.
Who knows, maybe we could have saved the nuns, because no one will ever know
whether they were killed instantly, or died because of their wounds. Those
questions will never be answered.
The turncoat Trung-uy Hao shot himself in the foot when he got rid of us,
because we were the only ones who could have saved him. And he in turn probably
saved our lives. No advisors were ever sent to Cam Tam again. We were the first
and the last. It was deemed too dangerous an assignment. It was only a short
time after our MAT team 49 arrived in Cam Tan, that we learned that the last
four village chiefs had been assassinated by the Viet Cong. No one in the
command structure had thought it important to tell us that.
No one will ever remember what happened in Cam Tan. It was such a small
insignificant place in the whole scheme of things in the war. But it was a very
important place for me, a young lieutenant and four other American soldiers who
gave their best to win our little part of the Vietnam War over a three-month
period.
We did our best to make the South Vietnamese soldiers fight there, and we
gave our all to help the nuns provide medical care to the villagers, which was
all our part in trying to win the hearts and minds of the people.
There never will be any type of closure for me over my experience in Cam Tan,
because I never want to forget my experience with the Catholic nuns there, those
wonderful fantastic women whom I now call, “The Angels of Cam Tan.”
My only mission now is to record what happened there, and to remember always
the heroic actions of the nuns who died there, and someday I know I will meet my
former friends in the afterlife. Cam Tan was the most significant thing that
ever happened in my life. It won’t let me go.
Every emotion is magnified in the adrenalin rush of war, not only evil
emotions like hate, killing, and revenge, but also the greatest emotion-that of
love for your fellow human being. The nuns died expressing absolute
unconditional love for their fellow human beings, just as Jesus commanded in the
bible.
I have searched the bible and have found a verse that best exemplifies this:
“ And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from His love. Death
can’t, and life can’t….Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow,
and even the powers of hell can’t keep God’s love away…Nothing in all
creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of god that is revealed
in Christ Jesus our Lord.---Romans 8:38, 39b
Surely now, the catholic nuns that I knew in that faraway place of Vietnam in
the little village of Cam Tan are now angels in heaven. Until I die, I will now
always call them “The Angels of Cam Tan”
Rich Webster-former Trung-uy (Lieutenant)
Military Advisor Team 49 assigned to the 413th Regional Force Company,
Village of Cam Tan, Long Khan Province, South Vietnam, from December l968
thru Feb l969.
This story is a true story and it will be one of the chapters in a book about
my experiences as a military advisor to the Regional Forces/Popular Forces
(sometimes referred to as the RUFF/PUFFS) of the South Vietnamese Army.
The Regional Forces were a part of the South Vietnamese Army assigned within
a province or district, and the popular forces were assigned only to the village
level. The theory was that if the South Vietnamese soldier was assigned nearer
to his home and family, he would less likely desert and he would have more
incentive to fight the enemy.
A mobile advisory team consisted of two officers and three non-commissioned
officers. The teams were supposed to be commanded by a Captain, but there were
more Lieutenants commanding the teams than any other rank. The NCO’s were
supposed to be Sergeants First Class, but that was also a rare event. I had two
Sergeants who carried a rating of E-5’s on my team 49.
Not much has been written about the advisory teams that fought with the
RUFF/PUFFS. It was a dangerous assignment and we were comparable to a poor man’s
special forces A-team, but instead of l2 men, we only had 5.
The mobile advisory teams were a part of MACV/CORDS and this was the first
time in military history that military officers were commanded by a civilian.
The commander of CORDS (Civil Operations for Revolutionary Development Support)
while I was in Vietnam was William Colby, former director of the CIA for the Far
East. The III CORPS commander who was one of my bosses was the famous John Paul
Vann, also a civilian, and former Army Officer, written about in” A Bright and
Shining Lie.”
At the conclusion of a short two-week advisory school in Dian, John Paul Vann
and William Colby addressed our graduating class before we deployed out into the
field to our assignments. This was all a part of the Vietnamization program as
started by President Nixon to hand the war over to the Vietnamese.
*Webmaster note: This story has slightly been edited from the original on
11/17/02
Bill McDonald and author Richard Webster
at the rubber tree plantation marker, in Cam Tan, April 2002
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