Sandhurst Occasional Papers
No 13
The Buon Enao Experiment and
American Counterinsurgency
Dr J.P. Harris
Central Library
Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
2013
The Author:
SANDHURST OCCASIONAL
PAPER NO 8
Dr Paul Harris is a Senior
Lecturer in the Department of
War Studies, RMAS. His
principal research interests are
military thought & doctrine;
armoured warfare; the First
World War; the inter-World War
period 1919-1939; Vietnam;
counter-insurgency; and
airmobility. Among his many
publications are the Templer
prize winning Douglas Haig and
the First World War (Cambridge
University Press, 2008); Amiens
to the Armistice: The BEF in the
Hundred Days Campaign 8
August – 11 November 1918
(Brassey’s, 1998); and Men,
Ideas and Tanks: British Military
Thought and Armoured Forces
1903-1939 (Manchester
University Press, 1995)
Series Editor: Sean McKnight
(Director of Studies, RMAS)
© 2013. No part of this
publication, except for short
extracts, may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form without
the prior permission of the Royal
Military Academy Sandhurst.
ISBN: 978-1-907628-12-2
The views expressed in this paper
are solely those of the author and
do not necessarily reflect official
thinking or policy of Her
Majesty’s Government, the
Ministry of Defence or the Royal
Military Academy Sandhurst.
Correspondence and enquiries
about the Sandhurst Occasional
Paper series should be addressed
to:
The Senior Librarian
Central Library
Royal Military Academy
Sandhurst
Camberley
Surrey
GU15 4PQ
e-mail:
[email protected]
2
In the aftermath of withdrawal from Vietnam the US military
tended to turn its back on insurgency/counterinsurgency1. Events since
2001 have, however, thrust this type of warfare back onto its institutional
agendas. How long the trend will continue is unclear but so far the early
21st Century has been another “counterinsurgency era” in American
military history.2 This may, therefore, be an appropriate moment to take a
fresh look at the Buon Enao experiment: one of the most sophisticated
counterinsurgency efforts that Americans have ever conceived and
mounted. A small village in South Vietnam’s Central Highlands, Buon
Enao became the starting point for a defence complex that embraced
much of Darlac, amongst the country’s largest provinces, checking the
Communist surge there and, to a considerable degree, rolling it back. The
Buon Enao experiment, moreover, initiated the Civilian Irregular Defense
Group (CIDG) programme: the biggest programme involving US Army
Special Forces personnel during the Second Indochina War.3
It would be inaccurate to suggest that the Buon Enao experiment
has been forgotten. It is, at least in broad outline, familiar to those with a
substantial knowledge of the history of American counterinsurgency and
that of US Special Forces. Yet, though recognized as important and
referred to in a plethora of publications,4 it lacks the full scholarly
treatment it deserves and most of the brief published accounts available
contain inaccuracies that require correction. The present article is
intended as a modest step towards a thorough academic appraisal: a
reasonably detailed, accurate record of events accompanied by some
tentative analysis of Buon Enao in relation to the further development of
the CIDG program in Vietnam and subsequent US Army approaches to
counterinsurgency.
The Importance of the Central Highlands in the Second Indochina
War: Developments there to 1961
The Central Highlands, a region where the Truong Son Mountains
(Annamite Chain) running down the spine of Indochina widen to create a
high plateau, were, from an early point in the Second Indochina War,
considered by both sides to be of potentially decisive importance. Many
branches of the “Ho Chi Minh Trail” network of infiltration routes from
North Vietnam into the southern coastal plain ran through the Central
Highlands. From a very early stage in the war, moreover, the Communist
leadership in Hanoi wanted to establish secure bases in the Central
Highlands where it could maintain powerful military units. From October
3
Figure 1: The Regions of South Vietnam
1960 the region saw significant military offensives as well as
infiltration, subversion, assassination and low-intensity guerrilla warfare5.
4
In November 1965 the valley of the River Drang in Pleiku Province
became the scene of the first brigade-sized action between the United
States Army and the Communist-led People’s Army of Vietnam.6 Nearly
a decade later, in March 1975, military events in this region did indeed
prove decisive for the war. A disaster in the Ban Me Thuot area of Darlac
Province, combined with the fatal decision by President Nguyen Van
Thieu to make a strategic withdrawal from the Central Highlands, a move
for which no contingency plans existed, precipitated a rout of South
Vietnamese government forces in that region. That in turn allowed the
Communists to sever South Vietnam’s relatively narrow coastal plain,
cutting the state in two and enveloping a large part of its armed forces. A
long-term nightmare for the anti-Communist side thus became cruel
reality. Within a few weeks Communist troops were in the presidential
palace in Saigon.7
Though they recognised the region as being strategically vital, for
many Vietnamese in the 1960s and 1970s the Central Highlands appears
to have been a strange, exotic land in which they did not feel comfortable
or at home.8 (8) Traditionally the Vietnamese were a people of broad
river valleys and coastal plains: the sort of landscape in which wet-rice
agriculture, the economic basis of their national life, could be practised
most efficiently. Over the centuries they had expanded from the Red
Delta of northern Vietnam along the coastal plain to the Mekong Delta in
the south, shattering the opposing state of Champa and displacing other
peoples as they advanced.9 But for centuries they gave relatively little
attention to the Central Highlands region, which, while claiming some
sort of suzerainty over it, they traditionally saw as an alien environment:
the domain of evil spirits. They had only recently (in part because of
pressure of population on the coastal plain) begun to colonize the region
in substantial numbers and they were still a minority of the population
there. Most of the Central Highlands’ inhabitants were not ethnically,
linguistically or culturally Vietnamese, but relatively primitive peoples
who had traditionally practised a mixture of mainly dry-rice, slash and
burn agriculture and hunting. The Vietnamese usually referred to these
people as Moi (savages). The French, who gradually took control of
Indochina from the mid-19th Century and were the first to explore the
Central Highlands systematically and scientifically, sometimes called
them Montagnards (mountain folk).10 (10) As American military
personnel became increasingly involved in this region in the 1960s, they
tended to use the French expression or, in cases of linguistic difficulty, a
variant of it such as “Mountain Yards” or “Yards”. The English term
5
Figure 2 Distribution of Ethnic Groups
6
“Highlander”, employed by some CIA personnel and some literate
Highlanders during the 1960s, is preferred here. One of the larger and
most culturally sophisticated of these peoples was the Rhade, a group
mainly inhabiting Darlac Province. It was they who became the initial
focus of the Buon Enao experiment.11
There had been heavy fighting in parts of the Central Highlands in
the latter half of the First Indochina (Franco-Viet Minh) War. When, in
1954, under the Geneva Accords, the Viet Minh were supposed to
evacuate the region and pull their military forces north of the 17th Parallel
they left stay-behind parties: cadres intended to work amongst the
Highland ethnic groups, proselytising for the Communist cause. In order
to integrate with the ethnic groups they were supposed to influence and to
be ready to mobilize for armed struggle, some of these cadres dyed their
skins darker and filed their teeth:12 practices most Vietnamese would
have regarded as very demeaning and which indicated their extreme
dedication to their task. The policies of the anti-Communist government
of Ngo Dinh Diem, based in Saigon, gave these cadres valuable
ammunition. Diem regarded the Central Highlands as South Vietnam’s
land of opportunity. He wanted Vietnamese people to go west to develop
this frontier, thereby relieving the overcrowding and resultant social
tensions on the coastal plain. The large-scale colonization of the region
by ethnic Vietnamese was, however, bitterly resented by the original
inhabitants. The armed forces of Diem’s state tended to side with the
colonists against the indigenous peoples and, in an atmosphere of intense
racial prejudice on both sides, often behaved with considerable brutality
towards the latter. Almost inevitably, movements for autonomy
developed amongst the Highland peoples: the first to have significant
influence being the Bajaraka movement of 1957-58. The Diem
government proscribed it, imprisoned its leaders and, at least in some
parts of the Highlands, attempted to confiscate all crossbows and spears
from people who had traditionally lived, at least in part, by hunting with
such weapons.13
In these circumstances, Communist cadres had fertile ground in the
Highlands in which to sow dissent and promote armed resistance as part
of an insurrection they were trying to develop throughout South Vietnam
from 1960. In order to build and maintain their support, the Communists
offered the Highland ethnic groups autonomy.14 Yet the Communists also
made demands that tended to alienate many Highlanders: recruits for their
7
armed forces, labour in support of their war effort and, most critically,
very substantial quantities of food. Throughout South Vietnam it was
Communist policy to feed their armed forces from local resources: food
often grown by the same communities from which they drew their
recruits. In most parts of the country food was, by Asian standards,
remarkably plentiful. But this was not the case in the Central Highlands.
There most communities lived fairly close to subsistence level. In
general, therefore, there was a substantial underlying resentment in
Highland communities at Communist demands. The Communists could
only obtain the food they required by vigorous propaganda and stern
insistence, backed by at least the implicit threat of violence.15
The Communists launched their first major offensive in the Central
Highlands in the northern part of Kontum Province in October 1960.
They took on government forces in some stiff firefights and overran a
series of government posts, apparently in an effort to establish a
“liberated zone” in this part of the Highlands in which powerful military
forces would ultimately be based. This was, however, somewhat
premature and over-ambitious and, after some initial successes, met with
resounding defeat followed by a vigorous government counteroffensive.16 For nearly a year the Communists seem to have been in great
difficulty in the Highlands. They achieved, however, much greater
success with an offensive they mounted in September 1961 in the Dak Ha
area of Kontum Province, using ethnically Vietnamese units brought in
from both North Vietnam (apparently via Laos) and the coastal plain. The
Dak Ha offensive inflicted serious reverses on Diem’s forces, boosted
Communist morale and led to an upsurge of guerrilla activity over a large
part of the Central Highlands.17 Most of the guerrillas, while having
ethnically Vietnamese leadership, seem to have been recruited from the
Highland tribes. By late 1961 ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam:
South Vietnamese Army) officers and their American advisors were
admitting to having largely lost control of much of the two northern
provinces of the Central Highlands: Kontum and Pleiku. Darlac,
immediately south of Pleiku, was also under serious threat. It looked,
indeed, as though the whole high plateau area might fall under
Communist control by some time in 1962.18
The Communist Challenge in Darlac Province In 1961
The situation in the large province of Darlac was, from the point of
view of the anti-Communist side, deteriorating rapidly in mid-1961.
Whereas the number of Communist insurgents in the province was
8
“believed to be negligible at the end of 1960”, by late June 1961 ARVN
intelligence “estimated armed VC in Darlac at 270”. This was “still a
small force in a province of…397 hamlets”, but its presence and activity
had been “enough to hamper normal administration to a serious extent.
The insurgents (whom the South Vietnamese government forces and the
Americans normally called Viet Cong or VC) “made their presence felt in
“spectacular way” when, on 24 July 1961, they “killed two members of
the National Assembly” who were “inspecting a village development
project” some 25 kilometres south of the provincial capital at Ban Me
Thuot. Officials had apparently heard reports that the insurgents intended
to disrupt this village inspection but, having provided themselves with an
armed guard, decided to go ahead with it anyway. The Communists
mounted an extremely well organized, well-executed ambush on the
small military convoy in which the inspectors were travelling, killing
nearly all the personnel in the convoy.19
The estimate of only 270 Communist troops in Darlac had to be
revised sharply upwards when the US Embassy in Saigon received news
of an offensive “reportedly involving up to two regular VC battalions
accompanied by several hundred local guerrillas”, mounted about 20
kilometres southeast of Ban Me Thuot on 18 September 1961. The object
was apparently to seize rice and other supplies from a group of newly
established, government backed Vietnamese villages. Having overrun a
Civil Guard post in the area, Communist forces occupied these villages
for several days, burned schoolhouses and administrative buildings and
“terrorized people”.20
Much of the news from Darlac, therefore, made grim reading for
the Saigon government and its Americans backers. From their point of
view there was, however, also a somewhat lighter side to the picture. Of
all the Central Highland provinces Darlac was making the greatest
economic progress. Of all the Highland tribes, the Rhade of Darlac had
the greatest number of well-educated people. Some of these held
positions of importance in the provincial administration. Y Djap (“Y”, the
Rhade word for male persons, being used here as an equivalent of “Mr”)
had been Assistant Province Chief since early 1961, when his
predecessor, Y Blong, went to work for the Directorate of Psychological
Warfare in Saigon. Another Rhade, Y Klong, was the head the province’s
malaria eradication programme and the Darlac Office of Information had
five Rhade amongst its 41 information officers.21
The Communist leadership evidently regarded the active
involvement of Highlanders in the southern state, even if confined to a
9
relatively small number of individuals, as a serious threat to Party
interests. Y Gue, the chief of Montagnard education in Darlac, was killed
in the ambush of 24 July 1961 already referred to. Y Ut Nie Buon Rit, a
member of the National Assembly, and perhaps the most distinguished
member of his ethnic group, died with him. Y Ut had reportedly been the
first Rhade to learn to read and write and had worked with the French to
develop a Rhade alphabet. The Party’s killing a man of his distinction
graphically made two related points. First, it would not tolerate cooperation with the Saigon regime by any Highlander. Second, there was
none so eminent as to escape its vengeance. Yet, while such acts would
put fear into the minds of any rational person, they were probably not best
designed to win Rhade hearts. Both Diem and some American observers
judged the Rhade, generally speaking, to be fundamentally mistrustful of
the Communists.22 The Communists, moreover, did not yet have quite the
same level of military strength in Darlac that they had in Kontum and
Pleiku. These factors appear to have played a major part an American
decision to launch, in Darlac, and amongst the Rhade, the most
imaginative initiative yet designed to win Highlanders to the antiCommunist side.
The Origins of the Buon Enao Experiment
The Buon Enao experiment had some roots in the American
“Country Team” in Saigon and others, equally important, amongst the
handful of Americans working in Darlac Province. In the crisis
atmosphere of 1961 the CIA’s Saigon station was looking for operational
initiatives that might diminish the Communist momentum. Early that year
a young American aid-worker based in Darlac suggested to Colonel
Gilbert Layton, who led the CIA’s Military Operations Section in
Vietnam (also known as the Military Assistance and Advisory Group’s
Combined Studies Division: MAAG’s CSD), that action was needed to
preserve the Rhade from domination by the Communists and that this
might mean arming some of them.23
The aid worker in question was David A. Nuttle. Brought up on a
mixed crop and livestock farm in Kansas, Nuttle had gained a college
degree in agriculture before coming out to Vietnam in late 1959, at the
age of 23, to work with the International Voluntary Service (IVS), a nongovernment organization that was the precursor of the US Peace Corps.
Nuttle’s contract with IVS stipulated that he would provide “agricultural
and community services in South Vietnam”. The IVS helped run ten
experimental agricultural stations scattered over South Vietnam. Of these,
10
the oldest, known as Ea Kmat, was at Ban Me Thuot, the capital of
Darlac Province. Ea Kmat was particularly concerned with boosting the
production of fibre crops, upland rice, livestock and vegetables. The
station was widely considered a major success and Nuttle was proud of its
record.
Nuttle worked with ethnically Vietnamese and Chinese refugees in
Darlac too, but he had forged particularly close relationships with the
Rhade. He respected their culture and customs and managed to acquire
something of their language. Though anthropology was not part of his
academic background, he became sufficiently interested in the Rhade to
write an ethnographic study that he passed to an information officer
working for the Embassy. Like many Americans brought up in the
countryside, Nuttle was an enthusiastic hunter. He used this skill to
provide meat, mostly deer and wild pig, for Rhade villages with which he
worked. Given that the government’s confiscation of their crossbows and
spears had made hunting difficult for the Rhade, this was a significant
benefit. Nuttle was also able to dispose of at least one tiger and one
leopard perceived to be threats to Rhade villages. His practical skills, the
great success of the agricultural methods he advocated and his “evident
commitment to their welfare” made Nuttle many friends amongst the
Rhade. These repeatedly warned him that the Communists were trying to
kill him. In part he attributes his survival to a hunter’s instincts. He
quickly learned not to adopt any set routine, not to make definite
appointments and always to vary the times and routes of journeys. Rhade
friends talked to him quite freely about the local political position, as they
perceived it. The Communists were gaining increasing influence with
their people, but this was mainly because of their difficult relations with
the Diem government. In general the Rhade feared rather than liked the
Communists.24
Though based at Ban Me Thuot, Nuttle went to Saigon from time
to time for both professional and social reasons. There, in February 1961,
he began to date Bonnie Layton, an American girl in her late teens whom
he met in Embassy circles. Her parents sometimes invited him to their
Saigon residence “for a home cooked meal” and, perhaps, initially, to
check his suitability as their daughter’s boyfriend. Bonnie Layton’s father
was Colonel Gilbert Layton of the CIA’s Military Operations Section.
Dave Nuttle and Gil Layton got on very well. A series of approximately
eight after-dinner conversations between them, from February to April
1961, laid the foundation for what became the Buon Enao experiment
which in turn became the starting point for the Citizens’ (later “Civilian”)
Irregular Defense Groups (CIDG) program. Nuttle’s version is that he
11
and Layton “agreed that the Montagnards would not fight for…South
Viet-Nam per se. The Montagnards had no concept of nation or national
defense…We further agreed that they would probably fight for family,
home and village if the ARVN would stay off their backs” and if the
government “provided some social and political benefits”. The Rhade,
Nuttle noted, had learned to appreciate some of the benefits of modern
medicine, education and agricultural improvement under the French
administration. They now had a taste for these things and it was
important, in order to gain and maintain their loyalty, that aid in these
areas be adequately provided.25
On 5 May 1961, Layton raised the Highlander question with
William Colby, the CIA Chief of Station in Saigon, suggesting that the
government arm up to 1,000 of them in order to check further Communist
advances. In response Colby put up a paper to his Country Team
colleagues on 25 May. He followed this with discussions with Ngo Dinh
Nhu, Diem’s brother, now playing a major part in organizing the
government’s counterinsurgency effort. At some point Colby and Nhu
apparently visited Darlac together, Colby emphasizing the need to win
the Rhade to the anti-Communist side. To deal with any concerns it might
have about the CIA arming Highlanders, Colby suggested to Nhu that the
government should have direct involvement in such a project through its
Special Forces. Diem had a high degree of personal control over these
through the Presidential Survey Office (PSO), the nearest thing South
Vietnam had to the CIA.26
The process by which the CIA gained consent from both the US
Embassy and the Saigon government for a programme to arm the Rhade
was long and involved. It seems to have taken from late May or early
June to early October. Though Layton tried to keep Nuttle informed, at
least in broad terms, of what was going on, some of the steps in this
process are obscure and our chronology is vague. At some point in late
July or early August 1961, however, Nuttle was summoned from Ban Me
Thuot for a meeting with Ambassador Frederick E. Nolting. Nuttle’s
recollection is that the meeting involved a large part of Nolting’s Country
Team. These included Lieutenant-General L.C. McGarr and Colonel M.P.
Ward from MAAG, William Colby of the CIA and Douglas Pike of the
United States Information Agency. Nolting opened the meeting,
indicating that the Country Team wanted Nuttle’s views on “how best to
stop a possible VC takeover of the Highlands”. His ideas were being
sought because of his “knowledge and experience of the area”. The
Ambassador indicated that a number of approaches to security in the
Highlands were already under consideration. The one favoured by
12
MAAG (and apparently by much of the ARVN) was to force Highlanders
onto “reservations” in government-controlled areas. All of the Highlands
not clearly under government control would be considered a “free-fire
zone”. Any Highlander moving off reservation would then be regarded as
hostile and attacked by government forces.27
According to his own account Nuttle denounced the
reservation/free-fire zone approach. “The Montagnards would resist
forced relocation and would be alienated against those attempting it. If
relocated the Montagnards could and would escape any reservations by
slipping away into the jungle. The rugged terrain, dense vegetation and
many trails made it easy for the Montagnards to elude capture. Living in
the jungle, the Montagnards would probably come under VC control.
General McGarr interrupted, saying that while my arguments might have
some credibility, there seemed to be no other realistic alternative”. In
response to a question by Colby, Nuttle then launched into the proposal
that he and Layton had worked out between them for Rhade self-defence.
Nuttle was, in his own words, determined “to find a way to save my
Rhade friends from a horrible fate”. He repeated the points he had earlier
made to Layton: that the Rhade would not fight for South Vietnam as
such but would “fight to defend family, home and village” and would
“indirectly support” the South Vietnamese government “by resisting VC
control, taxation and conscription of young men”. A small pilot project
could be used to test these concepts.28
During the months of August and September, however, the project
seems again to have hung fire. It is likely that, while the CIA had found it
relatively easy to win over Ngo Dinh Nhu, it had more work to do selling
the concept to his brother, the President. From what Nuttle heard, “This
sales effort was accomplished by the CIA Station Chief, William
Colby.…Diem agreed to ‘experiment’ with a Montagnard defended
village as a last hope to defend the Highlands”.29 Once Diem had been
won over there was no difficulty with Colonel Le Quang Tung, head of
the PSO, which controlled the South Vietnamese Special Forces, and
little with Major Nguyen Van Bang, the Province Chief in Darlac. The
Americans considered Bang an enlightened official, though he appears to
have been initially, and, in the prevailing circumstances of racial tension,
quite understandably cautious about the large-scale arming of
Highlanders. Colby had been in negotiation with Tung on the Rhade issue
since July. A trusted Diem loyalist, there are some indications that Tung
was won over well ahead of his President and that he played a part in
gaining the latter’s consent.30
13
On 3 October 1961 Nuttle was back in Saigon on IVS business.
There he saw Layton who despatched him to a dinner appointment at the
house of Jack Benefiel, one of Layton’s subordinates in the CIA’s
Military Operations Section. At that dinner, William Colby and Jack
Benefiel told Nuttle that they wanted him “to go forth and help the
military create a pilot model of a Montagnard defended village”. The
following day, 4 October 1961, while still in Saigon, Nuttle submitted his
resignation from the IVS, an organization he did not want to involve in a
warlike enterprise. Nuttle’s IVS superiors, having been briefed in
advance by the CIA, were expecting the resignation and raised no
objection. Nuttle signed a contract with the CIA later the same day.
On 5 October 1961 Nuttle and Colby met Nhu in the latter’s
Saigon office. Nhu formally gave his blessing to the project but within
tight limits. It was to begin with a single village only. Initially Rhade selfdefence forces would be armed only with traditional weapons: crossbows
and spears. Firearms would be issued and training in their use provided
only when only when villagers had put a fence around their village with
signs declaring their allegiance to the Saigon government and threatening
with death any Communist soldier or cadre attempting to enter. Major
Bang, the Darlac Province Chief would oversee the project on behalf of
the regime. Captain Nguyen Duc Phu of the Presidential Survey Office
was assigned to work closely with Nuttle and would handle liaison with
Bang and with major ARVN headquarters in the area including Brigadier
General Ton That Dinh’s II Corps at Pleiku and Colonel Le Quang
Trong’s 23rd Division at Ban Me Thuot. On 8 October Nuttle flew on a
CIA aircraft from Saigon to Ban Me Thuot, where Phu, making his own
travel arrangements, agreed to join him the following day.31
Jack Benefiel became the CIA’s case officer for the Rhade village
defence project. Over the next few weeks, as the project was being set up,
Benefiel would divide his time between Saigon, where he was based, and
Darlac. Hugh Murray, who arrived in Darlac in mid-October and had a
Special Forces background, was the professional CIA officer who worked
most closely with Nuttle, helping him to develop and run the project on a
day-to-day basis. Y-Rit, a Rhade colleague of Nuttle’s from the
agricultural station at Ban Me Thuot, was vital to the project from the
outset. His command of all three relevant languages: Rhade, Vietnamese
and English, was crucial for negotiations and planning. Also sent to work
with Nuttle was Sergeant First Class Paul Campbell, a US Army Special
Forces medic who had come to Vietnam to train counterparts in the
Vietnamese Special Forces. Commencing on or about 10 October, Nuttle
and Campbell, the latter working in civilian clothes, made initial
14
approaches to Rhade villages. Introducing themselves as “Mr Dave” and
“Dr Paul” respectively, they toured Rhade villages up to 70 kilometres
from Ban Me Thuot. Campbell would treat the sick while Nuttle talked
politics and defence with village elders.32
The villagers were courteous but also very wary. The Rhade sensed
that, like the French before them and the Vietnamese on both sides, the
Americans had a particular agenda and were trying to manipulate them to
fit in with it. Nuttle and Campbell soon decided that that the project of
arming the Rhade should start at Buon Enao, a village of about 400
people just six kilometres from Ban Me Thuot. Buon Enao was not under
direct Communist threat at this time and could thus become a firm base
from which further development might take place. Nuttle knew the
village well and regarded its chief, Y-Ju, as a personal friend. At some
point in the first half of October 1961, moreover, Campbell “assisted”
Buon Enao’s traditional sorcerer in curing the village chief’s daughter
who had fallen ill, apparently with dysentery. Even this, however, did not
make the village defence concept an easy sell. Negotiations involving
Phu, Murray, Nuttle, Campbell and Y-Rit and on the one hand and Y-Ju
and the village elders on the other took up much of the second half of
October.33
Figure 3 Buon Enao 1962
Buon Enao’s village elders proved themselves tough negotiators
with a keen sense of their own interests and those of their ethnic group.
They would resist the Communists, they said, but only on certain
conditions. First, all attacks by government forces on Rhade villages and
on villages belonging to their neighbours and friends, the Jarai, even if
such villages were perceived to be co-operating with the Communists,
should cease. Secondly Rhade “who had been forced to train with or
15
support the VC would be given an amnesty upon declaring their
allegiance” to the government. Third the government would guarantee the
Rhade medical, educational and agricultural assistance. If the government
accepted these conditions, Buon Enao would act as the test village. Once
a self-defence force, initially armed with crossbows and spears, had been
trained, they would erect a fence around their village, forbidding entry to
Communist personnel. Underground shelters would then be dug for the
women and children, village medics would be trained and a dispensary
built. Finally they would expect the self-defence force to be issued with
modern firearms.
Captain Phu played a vital role in convincing Major Bang, the
Province Chief, Colonel Trong, the ARVN 23rd Division commander and
General Dinh, the II Corps commander (within whose area of military
responsibility Buon Enao fell), that virtually all these terms should be
accepted. The only caveat the Vietnamese authorities introduced at this
stage was that, “Any Rhade who had co-operated with the VC in any way
was to be identified, re-educated to the government cause and carefully
observed. Amnesty would not be granted immediately.” Such was the
agreement between the village elders of Buon Enao and the South
Vietnamese government. Concluded on or about 4 November, it was
made entirely by word of mouth. Because of the importance of what was
at stake, it was, however, taken very seriously by all parties. The
negotiators and the village as a whole celebrated the deal in the traditional
manner with drums, a feast and plenty of rice wine.34
The Buon Enao Experiment Begins
Two or three days after the agreement was concluded a Captain
Khoai of the Vietnamese Special Forces arrived with ten soldiers from
the 77th Observation Group. These had been carefully chosen for their
task. The Rhade, as we have noted, had difficult relations with ethnic
Vietnamese and were generally reluctant to have them in their villages.
The soldiers chosen were Highlanders: roughly half of them Rhade and
half Jarai. Khoai himself was a native of Darlac and, according to some
reports, was himself Jarai. He understood Highlanders and their problems
and was a skilful tactician and commander: altogether a major asset to the
project. He and his men began training a thirty-man village defence force
while Sergeant Campbell trained four Rhade paramedics. In early
November work also began on the dispensary, civilian shelters and the
bamboo fence around the village: the CIA paying the villagers and Rhade
16
from the surrounding area 35 piastres (about 50 American cents) per day
for their labour.35
A trail-watch system was established to warn of approaching
Communist forces. Though still armed only with traditional weapons, the
Village Defenders patrolled and set ambushes. As promised, progovernment, anti-Communist notices were placed on the fences and
South Vietnamese flags were flown. The villagers were drilled in the use
of the shelters in the event of attack. The village chief, Y-Ju, identified
three villagers as having attended training camps run by the Communists.
Nuttle and Phu organised “re-education” for them and this was effective.
The individuals concerned subsequently identified other Rhade who had
been involved with the Communists. From the outset the village defence
leadership team, consisting of Nuttle, Phu, Khoai, Murray, Campbell and
Y-Rit, gave intelligence and security a very high priority. To maintain
security they asked Y-Ju to certify the loyalty of each villager and, during
inspections, each man in the village defence force was asked to vouch for
the loyalty of the man to his right.
Figure 4; Dave Nuttle and Y-Ju (Nuttle Collection)
17
In mid-November, after the completion of the dispensary, a
government inspection team led by Colonel Le Quang Tung of the PSO
and accompanied by Layton came from Saigon to review Buon Enao. The
inspectors recognised that the villagers had completely fulfilled their part
of the bargain and responded by authorising the immediate issue of
firearms to the self-defence force. A CIA shipment of arms, consisting of
1903 vintage Springfield rifles, M2 carbines and Madsen 9mm submachineguns, was, to their great delight, issued to the village defenders
during or soon after the inspection. Training in their use began without
delay, bringing to an end perhaps the most dangerous period of the whole
experiment.36
At some point in the first half of December (possibly on 4
December) the village was further reinforced with half a US Army
Special Forces A-detachment: a dozen soldiers from A-35, commanded
by Captain Lawrence Arritola, who had been flown in from Okinawa via
Saigon and Ban Me Thuot. About half of these men did not long remain
at Buon Enao, but were quickly sent to carry out another mission
elsewhere.37 Nevertheless, a force of unpaid Village Defenders having
been trained already, Arritola’s team began work on the creation of a
Strike Force of paid volunteers that could patrol beyond the village and,
to a degree, hit back at Communist forces in the vicinity. Then, in midDecember, there was a further inspection, this time involving Ngo Dinh
Nhu, accompanied by both Colby and Layton. Nhu seemed greatly
impressed with what he saw and authorized the inclusion of other Rhade
villages in the project. What Colby had christened the Citizens’ Irregular
Defense Group (CIDG) program grew with astonishing rapidity, with
Buon Enao as the first CIDG Area Development Center. The expansion
was not accomplished without a great deal of fighting. But the combat
against Communist units of all types, apparently including ethnic
Vietnamese “regular” units raised and trained in the North, went to a
remarkable degree in favour of the programme’s paramilitary forces.38
Fundamental to the programme’s combat effectiveness was an
extraordinarily sophisticated, remarkably holistic approach to
counterinsurgency. This approach provided the mainspring of motivation
for its participants to risk their lives on the anti-Communist side. For the
Buon Enao experiment was not conceived in the minds of conventional
military men as a military response to purely military threats. Rather it
was developed by a former aid worker, operating in conjunction with an
intelligence agency, as an answer to the problems, considered in the
broadest terms (political, military, social, economic, educational, medical
and psychological), of an entire people: the Rhade. Indeed the
18
experiment’s prime movers and principal promoters: Nuttle, Layton and
Colby, appear to have had a still wider vision. They considered the
approach adopted at Buon Enao a possible solution to the dilemmas
facing the Highland tribes as a whole. Ultimately rather less than half of
the Highlanders involved in the Buon Enao project were Rhade. The
project involved people from all the Highland tribes (including the Jarai
and the Mnong and other, smaller groups) in Darlac and it seems to have
developed great symbolic and emotional significance for politically aware
Highlanders more widely.39
Leadership and Management
The term most commonly associated with the Buon Enao in the
literature of the Vietnam War is “Civilian Irregular Defense Group”
(CIDG): a modified version of the name that Colby had originally given
the concept.40 In Darlac Province in 1962, however, the project was most
commonly called the “Village Defense Program” or VDP. In 1962 the
leadership group/command and control element of this project, initially
called the “village defense leadership team” also normally referred to
itself as “the VDP”. In overall command of the project, at least
nominally, was Darlac’s Province Chief, Major Bang. Bang did not, of
course, reside at Buon Enao. But his office in Ban Me Thuot was close
enough for a group of three key planners, Nuttle, Phu and Y-Ju (Buon
Enao’s village chief), to have weekly meetings with him there. Between
such meetings this three-man group took the most important day-to-day
decisions.
The other members of the VDP’s directing staff changed over time.
But early in 1962 they included: the commanders of the Special Forces
teams (Vietnamese and American); Hugh Murray, who ran intelligence
and counter-intelligence; Y-Rit who, as both an agricultural expert and a
gifted linguist, ran the agricultural improvement programme, the
interpreter training program and a Radio School for propaganda
broadcasts; Y-Cha, who with the help of Paul Katz of the United States
Operations Mission, ran the VDP’s early-warning radio-network and
provided training in the use of HT-1 and HT-2 radio sets for the its
militias; another Y-Ju (not the Buon Enao village chief) who ran
Information Teams (of which more below) and Dr Ksor Dun who ran the
medical program and the dispensary, which also came to function as a
field hospital. Ksor Dun, a Jarai, was reportedly one of the first
Highlanders to qualify as a medical doctor. An exceptionally gifted man,
his presence at Buon Enao added prestige to the project and emphasised
19
its inter-tribal nature. His vivacious and charming wife Georgia, who
spoke seven languages, became the VDP’s office manager. Other, Rhade
members of the VDP management team ran the educational and
commercial and industrial micro-enterprise parts of this highly complex
project.41
Civic Action
The myriad aspects of the VDP were closely linked. They ran
simultaneously. It seems fitting here, however, first to discuss the nonmilitary aspects of the project. Nuttle was, of course, helping with the
economic welfare of the Rhade, mainly through agriculture, long before
he became involved with paramilitary matters. Efforts to improve
agriculture, the basis of Rhade life, continued under Y-Rit’s direction. In
mid-1961 Nuttle, with financial aid from the CIA organized by Layton,
had started a seed farm to encourage the Rhade to experiment with new
crops. This continued to be useful. Peppers, cucumbers, watermelons and
beans were all found to grow successfully and proved popular. The use of
improved compost fertilizer greatly improved the quality of the soil,
which assisted the generation of a significant food surplus. Surplus rice
was purchased by the project’s leadership team and used to feed refugees
and prisoners.42
The VDP, backed financially by Layton’s branch of the CIA, also
initiated a number of commercial and industrial enterprises. One of the
first was a village store, operating on a non-profit basis and selling basic
goods needed by the Rhade at reasonable prices: undercutting
Vietnamese itinerant traders who tended to charge exorbitant rates and
who were, in some cases, suspected of being spies for the Communists.
The VDP also developed a cottage industry in making clothing from
discarded ARVN uniforms. This used sewing machines operated by
Rhade women and powered by treadles in order to avoid dependency on
an electricity supply that might not survive the American presence. Nuttle
and his CIA backers also encouraged the development of a blacksmithing
industry using scrap metal from vehicles in ARVN dumps to manufacture
simple tools such as machetes. Within a short time the success of the
Buon Enao brought a substantial number of visitors. Some of these were
interested in purchasing articles of traditional manufacture such as
weaving, jewellery and crossbows. A trading post was established to sell
such items and to bring in much-needed cash.43
20
One of the VDP’s most powerful draws for Highlanders was its
stress on improving their health. This included both public
health/preventative medicine on the one hand and the actual treatment of
illness and wounds on the other. Vital to the preventative side were clean
water and good sanitation. The project helped provide drills for digging
wells and expertise in constructing them. In keeping with the emphasis on
a self-sustaining project using local resources, in one village bamboo was
used for the pipes in a water-distribution system and buffalo hide for the
valves. Sanitation was improved through the building of proper latrines
and insistence on their use. The VDP, with the support of Major Bang,
the Province Chief, and Dr Niem, the Provincial Medical Officer, also
mounted an attack on the malaria that was endemic in the region through
the use of DDT on areas of standing water. In early 1962, with the
dispensary at Buon Enao already completed, the VDP organized a
training programme for village health workers. It was so successful and
expanded so rapidly that by July 1962 eighty-eight villages within the
complex had at least one such worker. As the VDP expanded and further
Area Development Centers were established as satellites of Buon Enao,
each was provided with a dispensary, which, though modest and austere,
represented a considerable advance for the communities it served. As
South Vietnamese military hospitals sometimes proving reluctant to treat
Highlanders, the central dispensary at Buon Enao doubled as a field
hospital, even performing amputations, and doing so with great
competence.44
There was an educational dimension to the project too. The Rhade,
the most advanced of the Highland tribes, had, with French support,
devised a way of writing their own language. Many had a positive desire
for literacy and some for a broader education. The VDP organized not
just elementary schooling to teach children reading, writing and basic
arithmetic, but also home economics classes for the women and language
classes for all interested adults. Though, for political reasons, it might
have been better to teach the Rhade Vietnamese, they often showed
greater interest in learning English. English was indeed useful,
particularly in facilitating communication with US Special Forces
personnel, few of whom spoke any Highland language. Soon quite
substantial numbers of Rhade spoke some English and quite a few spoke
it fluently.45
In a sense the entire Buon Enao project can be seen as a
psychological exercise: an effort to transform Darlac’s Highlanders from
downtrodden victims, living in poverty and in fear of all Vietnamese, into
a self-confident, healthy, assertive population committed, through an
21
accurate perception of their own interests, to the anti-Communist side in
the war going on around them. Fundamental to this transformation was
the matter of arms. Having traditional roles as hunters and warriors,
Highland men had felt almost emasculated by the government’s
confiscation of their spears and crossbows. Even getting these relatively
primitive weapons back was of great benefit, both practical and
psychological. The issue of modern firearms was greeted with positive
delight. With these, proper training and American backing, Highland men
could lose their fear of their enemies and regain their self-respect.46
The VDP also made sophisticated use of modern media for
propaganda purposes. When a new village joined the project the chief
was given a transistor radio. Only a minority of Highlanders could
understand Vietnamese or English, but local government radio stations
also started broadcasts in Rhade and Jarai. The VDP helped provide
suitable material for broadcast and, under Y-Rit’s direction, established a
radio school that trained local people in giving radio interviews and talks.
Colonel Wilbur Wilson, Senior MAAG Advisor at ARVN II Corps, based
at Pleiku, appreciated the VDP’s psychological warfare efforts, crediting
Nuttle personally: perhaps unaware that it was a Rhade member of the
team who ran that side of things. Films, whether overtly propagandistic,
educational (in such matters as agriculture, health and hygiene) or purely
entertaining, proved popular with villagers and were good for morale.
The VDP obtained two trucks to carry movie-showing equipment which
Rhade personnel had been trained to operate. These, however, only
operated in areas declared “white” (secure) and, even in those areas, were
provided with a Strike Force guard.47
Live shows, involving the singing of folk songs and the
performance of short plays, often with a political message, were a more
flexible and, perhaps, even more effective form of propaganda. They
were widely used by Buon Enao’s Information Teams (of which more
below) to spread the word about the VDP to villages that were currently
outside it, but which might wish to be incorporated.48
Buon Enao’s Militias and their Enemies
The Buon Enao project’s potential material and psychological
benefits for Highland villages would have been of no use had its armed
forces failed. The overriding missions of these forces were to protect the
22
people already in the project and to influence others to join rather than to
seek and destroy enemy troops. The militias employed were of three
types. Unpaid but reasonably well-trained units of Village Defenders
were, as noted, the first to be raised and were armed mainly with boltaction rifles, carbines and sub-machine guns. Each new village entering
the programme developed its own Village Defense Group, trained by
Vietnamese or American Special Forces. Essentially just a home guard
sub-unit, each was intended primarily to repel attacks on its own village
and, if facing a scale and intensity of onslaught that it could not handle, to
call for reinforcements, normally by radio. In some circumstances it
might go to the assistance of a neighbouring village in trouble but it was
not intended to operate more than a very short distance from home.49
The second type of unit to be raised was the Strike Force. Strike
Force personnel were full-time paid professionals with the normal range
of infantry weapons, including medium machine guns, grenades and
mortars. The Strike Force’s principal function was to act as a reserve:
going to the rescue of villages under Communist attack. It would also
patrol the perimeter and probe further out, looking for opportunities to
bring new villages into the VDP. Very occasionally Strike Force troops
would attack Communist bases in the VDP’s vicinity. The basic sub-unit
of the Strike Force was the section, the rough equivalent of an infantry
platoon.50
The third type of armed force belonging to the VDP consisted, like
the Strike Force, of full-time paid professionals. These were the
Information Teams, the first of which was raised not long after the first
Strike Force troops were trained. In most accounts of Buon Enao they are
not specifically mentioned or regarded merely as a branch of the Strike
Force. Nuttle insists that they were separately organized and had their
own particular function. Essentially armed propaganda teams, each was
about 30 strong. They were entirely composed of Highlanders, mostly
Rhade. They were predominantly male but included some female singers
and performers. They visited villages within the VDP and also adjacent
villages, to encourage them to declare against the Communists and
become part of the programme. They became crucial as intelligence
gatherers, observing carefully and listening acutely during their
conversations with villagers. Sometimes they would help recruit agents to
be run by the VDP’s intelligence staff. Because of their obvious
importance they were prime targets for Communist attack. These teams,
therefore, did a significant proportion of all the VDP’s fighting and
suffered the heaviest casualties of any of its militias. Because they never
23
operated with Americans there is, however, practically no record of their
endeavours, these being all but lost to history.51
What was the VDP up against? The intelligence picture was never
completely clear and in 1962 things were changing fast. But, as in other
parts of Vietnam, there were three basic types of Communist troops.
Village militia who, in the vicinity of Ban Me Thuot, were normally
ethnically Rhade, were unpaid, only part-time and devoted most of their
effort to farming or other civilian work. In the Highlands there were
normally half a dozen such militiamen per Communist-controlled village.
Their role seems to have been not so much village defence as village
control on behalf of the Communist leadership: a leadership that made
demands for food to support its troops, for recruits and for simple
munitions such as panji (sharpened bamboo) stakes used in booby traps.
The next category of Communist troops consisted of those belonging to
local “irregular” or guerrilla units. These were fulltime. In central Darlac,
when the Buon Enao project started, they were racially mixed and usually
at least 50 per cent Highlanders, though the leadership seems to have
been mostly Vietnamese. They operated from jungle bases and were
organized as local companies and battalions. Their numerical strength
was very variable, as was their equipment. There was no standardization
and weapons were in short supply. French MATs-36 rifles seem to have
been fairly common, MAS-49 automatic rifles rather less so. Captured
American carbines were also found amongst them as were a great variety
of other types. But some local force soldiers altogether lacked firearms.
An interrogation report of a Communist guerrilla captured on 10 May
1962 read:
“The group that I was with numbered 100 men: 60 were Rhade and
40 were Vietnamese. About 50 men were armed with a mixture of French
rifles and American carbines. They had one 60mm mortar and four
British Bren guns. The cadre wore pistols and carried grenades. Our area
of operation was always within 10-15 kilometers of Buon Knoup
(village). We had no uniforms and we wore mixed clothing.”52
Communist “regular” units (or “main force” units as they tended to
be referred to later in the war) had made appearances in Darlac in late
1961. They still normally operated only in company or battalion strength,
but tended to be far better armed than the local force units. Their small
arms, commonly a mixture of French and Chinese, were more
standardised within the unit, and they normally also had a variety of
crew-served weapons: machine guns and sometimes mortars and
recoilless rifles. They were usually uniformed. It appears that with the
24
growing success of the VDP in the first half of 1962, the motivation to
fight of Rhade and other Darlac Highlanders in Communist ranks, never
especially strong in most cases, declined markedly. Later in the year the
Communists reacted by using “regular”, largely ethnically Vietnamese,
units to assault VDP villages in an effort to wreck or at least disrupt the
programme. They had, however, very limited success.53
The Expansion of the Buon Enao Program
The programme started expanding as soon as it began. When the
first Village Defender and Strike Force personnel had completed their
training, some 39 neighbouring villages elected to join the programme.
This had happened even before the arrival of the first US Army Special
Forces, probably on 4 December 1961. By April 1962 there were 972
trained Village Defenders and a 300-strong Strike Force to defend 40
villages, with a total of 14,000 inhabitants. Up to that stage there was
only the one Area Development Center: the village of Buon Enao where
the Strike Force was based and from which the defence of the other
villages was organised. Continued expansion from April to October 1962
involved the creation of further Area Development Centers at Buon Ho,
Buon Krong, Ea Ana, Lac Tien and Buon Tah. Each of these became a
hub for both civic and paramilitary action and each had a small group of
US Special Forces soldiers. In Nuttle’s time at Buon Enao this was hardly
ever a complete A-detachment, sometimes a half-detachment, but
commonly just a four-man group. The whole Buon Enao complex
contained, by October 1962, about 60,000 people in 200 villages,
protected by 10,600 Village Defenders and 1,500 Strike Force personnel
and would reach 214 villages by early 1963.54
The VDP’s expansion was achieved mainly by a kind of
magnetism. In contrast with the Strategic Hamlet programme in other
parts of the country, no village was forced to join. Highlanders around the
VDP could see the benefits and were drawn in. The village chief and
elders expressed a wish to join and had their people erect fences around
their village as a symbol of this, work for which there was no immediate
financial compensation. Eventually two concentric bamboo fences were
normally erected with panji stakes fixed to the ground in between. The
chief and elders requested that some of their men be trained as Village
Defenders. Often there was something of a time lag before the VDP could
spare the personnel to carry out the training and so erecting the fences (in
effect a declaration of war on the Communists) entailed some risk.
Though the first year of the project represented dramatically successful
25
growth there were inevitably some setbacks along the way. In May 1962
two small villages that had joined the VDP, Buon Cu Bong and Buon
Tong Dok, fell to Communist assault with very little resistance and some
loss of weapons. The indications were that the Communists had enjoyed
inside help. The VDP’s response was stern but humane. The villages
were forcibly evacuated and their inhabitants, though not harmed,
dispersed to other villages within the complex.55
Figure 5
As the Buon Enao complex expanded, Gil Layton of the CIA
realised that there were parallels between what was happening in Darlac
26
and the “oil spot” approach used by the French General Louis Hubert
Lyautey in Morocco before the First World War. But the Buon Enao
complex was not deliberately based on this or any other theoretical
model. Layton was only an occasional presence in Darlac. The principal
American director of the project was Nuttle, who, at this stage in his life,
had little knowledge of military theory or history. The approach adopted
at Buon Enao was based on Nuttle’s understanding of local conditions
combined with the pragmatism of a practical man, working as part of a
team and attentive to the ideas of those he endeavoured to serve.56
The Fighting
Martial activity in and around the VDP was continuous. Nuttle’s
recollection is that substantial fire fights (lasting for 30 minutes or more
and involving the expenditure of hundreds rather than just dozens of
rounds) averaged about two per week. Major Communist assaults on
villages generally took place at night. Some villages were repeatedly
attacked without success. A few were overrun but chose to rebuild and
remain within the programme. Quite detailed accounts of some of these
actions do survive, but there is not the space to examine them here. No
American died or suffered a major wound up to the beginning of October
1962, though several dozen served there in that time. Nuttle can
remember no fatalities amongst Vietnamese Special Forces personnel
either. Amongst the project’s Highlanders he recollects that there were 40
to 50 fatalities up to October 1962, about ten per cent of them amongst
civilians not enrolled in any of the project’s militias. These losses were
undoubtedly serious for the Highlanders involved in the VDP but its
continuing expansion indicates that they were not considered disastrous
in relation to the many thousands of people involved.57
Losses on the Communist side are not known with any precision or
certainty. A CIA report of 1966 indicates that by September 1962 at least
“160 Viet Cong had been killed, 90 wounded and 400 captured or
surrendered”,58 though the credibility of this is somewhat damaged by the
claim that the Highlanders involved in the project had lost only 15 killed
over the same period, a figure that Nuttle, a surviving witness in a good
position to know, considers to be far too low. A recent account based on
CIA sources indicates that the VDP captured 460 enemy personnel in the
course of 1962 and killed over 200.59
Given that it was sometimes dealing with attacks by Communist
main force units Buon Enao, from August 1962 had an increasing need
27
for air support. The Vietnamese Air Force had sometimes been able to
help but could not always be counted upon. In the second half of 1962,
however, the VDP gained, for a few months, its own private branch of the
mighty United States Air Force. As well as providing increased air lift for
ground forces the USAF, by this stage in the war was running a
programme called “Farm Gate”, which involved both interdiction
bombing and close support to ground forces. Farm Gate’s aircraft were
piston-engine machines, mostly of Second World War vintage, including
C-47 flare-ships and T-28 and B-26 combat aircraft. A USAF Special
Forces branch known as the Air Commandos flew these aircraft. In 1962
the Air Commandos were seeking missions. Layton of the CIA was,
according to the Agency’s semi-official account, quick to seize on their
potential to support CIDG, especially in defeating Communist assaults on
defended villages. At least initially, CIDG meant mainly the Buon Enao
complex and some aircraft were specifically assigned to it. The Air
Commandos found this work much to their taste and developed an
affinity for their Army Special Forces colleagues. Some of their NCOs
lived within the VDP full time to help co-ordinate action.60
Public Relations
The management team at Buon Enao understood the importance of
public relations. As the complex expanded, the village of Buon Enao
itself became a fairly safe rear-area location. Increasingly it functioned as
a tourist centre for VIP visitors. Diem’s brother Nhu had been the most
important of these in the initial stages of the project. A significant
proportion of the ministers in the Diem government visited Buon Enao at
one time or another. The Australian counterinsurgency guru, Colonel
“Ted” Serong and Richard Noone, a British intelligence officer who had
served in the Malayan Emergency, paid multiple visits in 1962.
Lieutenant-General Victor H. “Brute” Krulak, US Marine Corps
counterinsurgency specialist and advisor to the Joint Chiefs on that
subject, had been to Buon Enao at least three times by the end of
September 1962. A high proportion of the senior US Army officers
serving in Vietnam also visited, including the MAAG chief, MajorGeneral Charles Timmes, and General Paul Harkins, who headed Military
Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV), the organization that gradually
replaced MAAG. Chalmers B. Wood, Deputy Director of the Kennedy
administration’s Task Force Viet-Nam Washington, visited in May 1962
and was greatly impressed. Nuttle received able assistance in organizing
such visits from Major George Patton Jr., son of the renowned Second
World War commander and MAAG’s liaison officer with Buon Enao at
28
this time. They worked out a standard tour that included the VDP’s
headquarters building, aspects of the industrial and commercial projects
and the hospital/dispensary. Special Forces officers would always be on
hand to discuss military training and operations. For those with an interest
in such things, village chief Y-Ju would be available to show visitors his
longhouse.61
Termination
The Buon Enao complex was, therefore, a showpiece, of the antiCommunist war effort in Vietnam in 1962. Indeed there is evidence that it
was considered, at a very senior level in the US military, to be the most
impressive thing Americans had yet achieved in Vietnam.62 By January
1963 the VDP had spread over much of Darlac and was generally
acknowledged to have brought about a major improvement in its security.
Lieutenant Colonel Billado, the senior American advisor to the ARVN
23rd Division, based at Buon Me Thuot, considered that, though the
number of Communist troops in the province, “a runway for VC moving
from the North to the South”, had not significantly diminished, there had
been “a marked decrease in VC incidents”: a “favorable
situation…created by the effectiveness of the Buon Enao concept.”
Following “three abortive attacks on the village of Buon Trap in the
summer of ’62,” the Communists had developed “considerable respect for
the combat posture of Buon Enao villages.” Billado’s immediate superior,
Colonel Wilbur Wilson, senior American advisor at III Corps, agreed
with this assessment. He reported to General Paul Harkins, MACV’s
commander, that, “Darlac Province in recent months” had been
“relatively quiet”. Indeed, as “a consequence of the success of the Buon
Enao Program”, the “pacification of Darlac Province” was “considered
well along toward success.”63
Yet within a few months the whole enterprise had largely
disappeared, leaving a lasting legacy of increased racial bitterness and
tension between Highlanders and Vietnamese. By July 1963 the
Communists were again seizing the initiative in Darlac and by the end of
the year the Joint General Staff in Saigon regarded the security situation
in the province as extremely serious. How can this reversal of fortune be
explained?64
The short answer is that in the second half of 1962 Ngo Dinh
Diem’s government began radically to reverse its policy on Buon Enao,
demanding that most of its Village Defenders be disarmed, that its Strike
29
Force be dissolved or dispersed, and that all the villages in the complex
revert to its direct control through Darlac’s provincial authorities. The
Buon Enao complex was the victim of its own success. Within it
Highlanders had become more prosperous, confident, proud and
assertive. Apparently Diem feared that such self-assertion would lead to a
resurgence of Bajaraka: a movement for Highland autonomy that had
been led mainly by educated Rhade and ultimately to an armed revolt by
Highlanders.65 How exactly he became so alarmed by this rather limited,
long-term threat that he ended up, in effect, handing much of Darlac back
to the Communists – a far greater and more immediate menace to his
regime – is not entirely clear.
A particularly malign influence seems to have been Colonel Le
Quang Trong, commander of the ARVN 23rd Division, based at Ban Me
Thuot. Trong could be duplicitous. He expressed admiration for Nuttle’s
work with the Rhade and presented Nuttle with a South Vietnamese
government award. But he was involved in a power struggle with Major
Nguyen Dinh Bang, Darlac’s Province Chief, over who should control the
anti-Communist war effort in that province. Whereas Bang had cooperated with the Buon Enao endeavour, Trong apparently became
increasingly hostile to it. According to some reports Trong was
instrumental in bringing about Bang’s removal in summer 1962. He was
also, apparently, involved in a power struggle with Colonel Le Quang
Tung of the PSO, which had supported the VDP from the outset.66
Though instrumental in setting up the Buon Enao project, the
American establishment in Vietnam offered little effective resistance to
its closure. This was, at least in part because, just as the Diem regime
began moving against it, ownership of the project within that
establishment was in the process of change. During 1962 CIDG was
being extended from Darlac to other Highland provinces and to
marginalized ethnic and religious groups in other parts of the country.
The CIA realized it could not go on administering and financing a
program as complex and expensive as CIDG was becoming. The
Department of Defense and MACV, the US military command in
Vietnam, would have to take over. The takeover process was designated
Operation Switchback.67
Some of those in the Military Operations Section of the CIA in
Vietnam, including Layton and Benefiel, apparently hoped that they
would continue to have some involvement in the CIDG program under
Switchback and exert a significant influence on the way it was run.68 But
it gradually became clear that this was unlikely to happen. MACV
30
intended to take over CIDG completely and to militarize it. MACV
placed less emphasis than had Nuttle and his CIA backers on a
population-centric approach to counterinsurgency that emphasized
material and psychological benefits to the social groups involved.
MACV’s priorities were border surveillance, reconnaissance and kinetic
action against enemy troops.69 Whatever small chance Layton and
Benefiel might have had of preserving something of the Buon Enao
project and having a long-term influence on CIDG was further
diminished because they got little support from their Chief of Station.
CIDG had been William Colby’s baby. John Richardson, who replaced
Colby in mid-1962, seems to have done little to preserve CIA
involvement with it.70 Seeing the way the wind was blowing, as early as
August 1962 Nuttle came to the conclusion that he could do nothing to
save the project he had done so much to initiate, lead and manage. In late
September he resigned from the CIA in protest and, after a huge farewell
feast that his Highland colleagues provided in his honour, departed
Darlac on 2 October 1962 and Vietnam on 3 October. Though he worked
for the CIA on subsequent occasions and in other countries, including
Laos, he has never returned to Vietnam.71
Colonel George C. Morton, who took command of all US Army
Special Forces in Vietnam under Operation Switchback, was an officer of
very wide experience. He appears, however, to have been somewhat
conventionally minded. Until late 1962 American Special Forces in
Vietnam adopted informal attire appropriate to local conditions. Morton,
however, started to insist that his men wear their proper uniforms,72
though at least one feature of those, the iconic green beret, was proving
quite unpractical on operations.73 Morton was an aggressive bureaucratic
in-fighter. Though the US Army Special Forces had only a very limited
involvement (through Sergeant Campbell) in planning and setting up the
Buon Enao project, and though the first US Army Special Forces Adetachment personnel had arrived at Buon Enao only after the experiment
had been running about a month, Morton seems to have wanted to claim
the entire credit for the Buon Enao achievements for his branch of the
army. He wanted the CIA’s MOS, and, apparently, the Air Commandos
(whom he also considered rivals) out of it altogether.74
In early 1963, however, as he was taking control of CIDG from
Layton’s people, Morton was finding that the Buon Enao complex, by far
its most important and successful element, was facing extinction. While
continuing to insist that most of the Village Defenders of the Buon Enao
complex were disarmed, that the Strike Force was broken up and that
direct American involvement in administering its villages cease, the
31
South Vietnamese authorities were offering Darlac’s Highlanders
virtually nothing in return. Village chiefs and elders indicated that, if
stripped of the bulk of their arms, they would, in effect, retreat into
neutrality. They would no longer risk their lives to keep the Communists
out of their villages. Indeed when the Communists mounted an offensive
in central Darlac in late July 1963, they met little resistance: villagers
apparently surrendering quite readily the inadequate armament the
government had left them.75
The Diem government’s seemingly wanton destruction of possibly
the most successful counterinsurgency programme in the country, at a
time when the outcome of the war hung in the balance, apparently
generated no major objection by MACV. It did, however, produce highly
articulate and quite impassioned protests to General Paul Harkins,
commanding MACV, by senior American officers. These included
Lieutenant-Colonel R.J. Billado, the senior American advisor to the
ARVN 23rd Division, Colonel Wilbur Wilson, senior advisor to the
ARVN III Corps76 and, rather belatedly, Colonel George C. Morton, now
observing the annihilation of the most conspicuously successful part of
CIDG: a programme he had long striven to take over.77 But the most
unrestrained comments sent to Harkins came from Colonel “Ted” Serong,
his Australian advisor. Serong argued that the Diem administration’s
intent to destroy the Buon Enao project was motivated by a desire to
extinguish the Highland tribes as distinct peoples. Like Diem, a Catholic
and a fanatical anti-Communist, Serong realized that the President did not
wish physically to exterminate Highlanders, merely to assimilate them
into his (essentially Vietnamese) state. Serong nevertheless characterized
this as a form of “genocide” and doubted that it was appropriate to go
along with it.78
It was not only Highlanders and westerners who thought Diem was
committing a major error in turning against Buon Enao. A number of
Vietnamese officers loyal to Diem had, as we have noted, actively
supported the programme. Colonel Le Quang Tung, head of PSO, had
been involved in its inception. He seems to have done his best to stick by
it, or at least to delay its dissolution,79 despite the evident displeasure with
it of his immediate boss, President Diem. Captain Nguyen Duc Phu, also
of PSO, had played a truly pivotal role until removed at some point in late
1962 or early 1963. His successor, Captain Hy, who, under new
arrangements, was given the title of “camp commander” or
“commandant”, declared in conversation with American Special Forces
officers, in March 1963, more than six months after Diem had started to
move against the programme, that:
32
“Buon Enao is a symbol; it means a great deal to the
Montagnards. Its name and spirit should not die”.80
Consequences and Reflections
Neither Captain Hy nor anyone else could, however, halt the
dissolution of the complex. Buon Enao’s destruction greatly exacerbated
racial tensions in the Central Highlands, tensions that led to the
“Montagnard Revolt” of September 1964, generally regarded as a major
crisis for the anti-Communist war effort in Vietnam.81 Though, when the
Americans oiled the wheels, Vietnamese and Highland troops on the antiCommunist side would sometimes co-operate successfully,82 race
relations generally remained very poor for the rest of the war.83
It is one of the many weird paradoxes of this conflict that, while
the American authorities in Vietnam were accepting the virtual
annihilation of the Buon Enao complex in Darlac, they were
simultaneously promoting the frenetic expansion of the CIDG programme
into other parts of the country. As the CIA was gradually edged out,
increasingly it was the Army Special Forces themselves that ran CIDG.
There were problems with this arrangement. At this stage in the war
Special Forces personnel serving with A-detachments (i.e. at the “sharp
end”) did tours of duty of only six months. If they returned for a
subsequent tour, as many did, it was normal for them to go to a quite
different location. Even if they did successive tours in the Central
Highlands, they would usually be operating in different areas with
different tribes. It was about equally likely that, after serving with a
detachment in the Highlands, a Special Forces officer or soldier would do
his next tour on the coastal plain or in the Mekong Delta. It was difficult
for Special Forces personnel, administered in this fashion, to build real
area expertise, even in terms of local geography. The level of knowledge
of language, culture and customs and the range and intimacy of contacts
with local people that Nuttle had enjoyed in Darlac was, with the best will
in the world, quite impossible for Special Forces personnel to achieve.84
In late 1962 and early 1963 there was also a shifting emphasis in
CIDG “from the establishment of mutually supporting village defense
systems to carrying out offensive strike operations”.85 Putting this in
more present-day language, there was a shift from population-centric
counterinsurgency (winning the allegiance of population groups and
securing them from insurgent penetration and harassment) to an enemy33
centric approach (in which the main object is to locate and liquidate the
opposition). Tension between these approaches is still evident in the
theory and practice of counterinsurgency in the US and other armies.86 In
this context it may be worth reviewing the comments on CIDG at this
period of the official US Army study:
“The expansion of the CIDG program from 1 November 1962 to
1 July 1963, the end of Operation Switchback, was fairly rapid.
Approximately forty CIDG camps were opened and eight closed.
The rapidity of this expansion did not permit the kind of
developments that took place at Buon Enao, where a great deal of
time was taken to prepare the area and the people…this time the
emphasis was on speed. The usual approach was to establish
security first, undertake civic action later, and work through
province and district chiefs rather than tribal leaders. In general
these projects were not as successful as the Buon Enao
experiment”.87
The last sentence, perhaps, puts the case rather mildly.88
It is commonly hoped that, in wartime, armed forces will give
evidence of a “learning curve”, improving with experience. For US Army
Special Forces in Vietnam, however, the most holistic, sophisticated and
successful example of counterinsurgency campaigning arguably came not
towards the end of that lengthy conflict but remarkably close to its
beginning. In the Buon Enao complex they started in a sort of
counterinsurgency Garden of Eden prepared for them by American
ministering angels including Dave Nuttle, Gil Layton and William Colby,
not to mention a small number of exceptionally broad-minded
Vietnamese and a larger number of extremely able Highlanders. Finding
this relative paradise closed down by the darker forces on their own side
and themselves expelled from it, they were not able to recreate it
elsewhere.
Though many senior officers of the US Army observed the Buon
Enao project and professed to admire it, it seems likely that many did not
fully understand it. They did not appreciate the extent to which it was
based on the local expertise and the network of trusting relationships
developed, over a period of years, by an unusually charismatic individual
whose initial preoccupation was with welfare rather than warfare. The
local expertise and range and quality of contacts that Nuttle had offered in
the area around Ban Me Thuot could not quickly be replicated whenever
and wherever the staff of a military command chose to stick a pin in a
34
map. As CIDG developed under MACV, the welfare and protection of
minority populations quickly became, in any case, a relatively small
consideration. Civilian Irregular Defense Groups rapidly became (to
paraphrase Voltaire on the Holy Roman Empire) neither civilian, nor
irregular nor defensive. Rather than being networks of defended villages,
the programme evolved into a series of fortified camps, located on the
basis of military considerations and manned by Strike Forces who were
essentially indigenous mercenaries in American pay. In some cases the
families of Strike Force members were the only civilians being offered
any direct protection or substantial civic aid at CIDG camps. Increasingly
the CIDG role was offensive: to seek and engage enemy troops, to
destroy their shelter and sources of food and to round up and relocate
civilians on whom they depended for labour and sustenance.89
Though, in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive of 1968, the
Communist insurgency in South Vietnam, including its political and
social infrastructure, was severely eroded by American and South
Vietnamese military action,90 it is doubtful whether a truly populationcentric approach to counterinsurgency ever really took root in the US
Army during the 1960s and early 1970s, even in its Special Forces. For a
generation after withdrawal from Vietnam, the US Army tried largely to
ignore counterinsurgency. Inevitably, therefore, its initial response to the
outbreak of revolt against its occupation of Iraq, early in the 21st Century,
was overwhelmingly kinetic – at least in most units.91 Whether the
official adoption of a population-centric counterinsurgency doctrine
during the Petraeus era will have a lasting impact on its institutional
culture remains to be seen.
35
Notes
1
A.R. Lewis, The American Culture Of War: The History of U.S. Military Force from World
War II to Operation Iraqi Freedom (New York, Routledge) 2007, p. 300
2
D.S. Blaufarb, The Counter-Insurgency Era: US Doctrine and Performance 1950 To The
Present (New York, Macmillan) 1977 (henceforth Era) deals with the period up to the end of
American involvement in Vietnam
3
F. Kelly, US Army Special Forces: 1961-1971 (Washington DC, Department of the Army)
1973 (henceforth Special), pp. 3-18.
4
See for example, T.L. Ahern, Vietnam Declassified: The CIA and Counterinsurgency
(Lexington, University of Kentucky) 2010 (henceforth Declassified, pp. 47-60. C.K. Ives, US
Special Forces and Counterinsurgency in Vietnam: Military Innovation and Institutional
Failure (New York, Routledge) 2007 (henceforth Counterinsurgency), pp. 15-27. A.F.
Krepinevich Jr., The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press) 1986,
pp. 70-71. J. Prados, Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby (New
York, Oxford University Press) 2003 (henceforth Lost), pp. 83-88. C.M. Simpson III, Inside
The Green Berets: The First Thirty Years: A History of U.S. Army Special Forces (London,
Arms and Armour) 1983, pp. 100-105. S. Stanton, Green Berets At War (London, Arms and
Armour) 1986, pp. 41-43
5
Trinh Nhu (ed.) Van Kien Dang, Tap 21 (Hanoi) 1960, pp, 296-299 trans. M. Pribbnow,
quoted in M. Moyar, Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (New York,
Cambridge University Press) 2006, p. 101. Joseph Mendenhall, Foreign Service Despatch, US
Embassy to State Department, 14 January 1961, “Viet Cong Attacks in Kontum Area”
(henceforth “Attacks”), Historians’ Files, Center of Military History, Fort McNair,
Washington DC (henceforth CMH). “The Highlanders of South Vietnam; A Review of
Political Developments and Forces”, CIA, June 1966, (henceforth “Highlanders”), p. 31,
CMH.
6
J.M. Carland, Stemming The Tide: May 1965 To October 1966 (Washington D.C., Center
of Military History) 2000, pp. 113-150.
7
G.J. Veith, Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam 1973-1975 (New York, Encounter)
2011, pp. 142-234 and passim.
8
The unfamiliar, potentially terrifying nature of the Central Highlands environment is noted
in a North Vietnamese medical officer’s memoir: Le Cao Dai, The Central Highlands: A
North Vietnamese Journal of Life on the Ho Chi Minh Trail (Hanoi, The Gioi) 2004, p. 71
and passim.
9
J. Buttinger, The Smaller Dragon: A Political History of Vietnam (New York, Praeger)
1958, pp. 129-324.
10
G.C. Hickey, Sons of the Mountains: Ethnohistory of the Vietnamese Central Highlands to
1954 (Yale) 1982, pp. xv-xx and 1-290.
11
“Highlanders”, pp. 32-43. G.C. Hickey, Free in the Forest: Ethnohistory of the Vietnamese
Central Highlands, 1954-1976 (Yale) 1982 (henceforth Free) p. 110
12
B. Fall, Street Without Joy (Mechanicsburg, Pa., Stackpole) 1994, pp. 185-250.
13
“Highlanders”, pp. 10-27.
14
“Highlanders”, p. 13.
15
“Highlanders”, pp. 41-42. An indication of Communist demands made and pressure placed
on Highland villages can be found in the report on the interrogation of 18 year-old female
Viet Cong suspect, H’Ngon-Eban, at Buon Enao on 14 November 1962: “About February
1962 there were 5 enemies (1 Highlander and 4 Vietnamese…) came in the village…and
said…our people must work hard to get rice to food [sic]…soldiers who went to battle against
the Americans and Ngo Dinh Diem’s Government. People are forbidden to supply the
Government and become his soldiers – [those who wanted] to work for Americans and Ngo
Din Diem would be killed”. 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) Records of A-detachments,
36
Box No. 40, Detachment A-223 (1st Special Forces Group), Buon Tah Mo, Darlac Province,
II CTZ, September Thru December (shelf location 490-37-11-4) RG 472, Archives II, NARA.
16
Mendenhall, “Attacks”; “Highlanders”, pp. 32-33; History of the Central Highlands
People’s Armed Forces in the Anti-U.S. War of Resistance for National Salvation (Hanoi,
People’s Army Publishing House) 1980, translated by Foreign Broadcast Information Service,
April 1994 (henceforth People’s Armed Forces), p. 15, CMH
17
Saigon Embassy to State Department, 5 September 1961, Foreign Relations of the United
Sates (FRUS), 1961-63, Volume I, Vietnam 1961 (Washington DC, United Sates Government
Printing Office) 1998, p. 292. People’s Armed Forces, Chapter 1, pp.15-16.
18
“Highlanders”, p. 33. John J. Helble, American Vice-Consul in Hue, Foreign Service
Despatch to State Department, “Security Conditions and Tribal Problems in Pleiku and
Kontum Provinces”, 12 October 1961, CMH. Embassy, Saigon to State Department, Foreign
Service Dispatch No. 131, 21 September 1961, “Provincial Notes: Darlac Province”
(henceforth, Darlac), pp. 1-5, CMH.
19
“Darlac”, pp. 3-4 and on the convoy ambush, Hickey, Free, p. 70 and D. Nuttle, “They
Have Stone Ears Don’t They”, (henceforth “Stone”), pp. 2-3. “Stone” is an unpublished
account of an American aid-worker’s and subsequently CIA employee’s activities in Darlac
Province in the early 1960s. Dave Nuttle provided it to the present writer as an e-mail
attachment, but there are versions in US archives, including one under the title “Buon Enao”
in the Colby Papers, Center for the Study of the Vietnam War, Texas Tech. University,
Lubbock, Texas, referred to in Prados, Lost, p. 351, n. 12.
20
US Ambassador Nolting, Saigon Embassy to State Department, 7 p.m., 26 September 1961,
FRUS, 1961-1963, Vol. I, pp. 309-310.
21
“Darlac”, p. 7
22
“Darlac”, p. 7 and “Highlanders”, pp. 32 and 39.
23
Ahern, Declassified, pp. 39-42.
24
Nuttle, “Stone”, pp. 1-5 and Nuttle’s e-mail correspondence with the author June 2011September 2012 (henceforth, “correspondence”). D. A. Nuttle, Ede (Second Printing, July
1962), his ethnological account of the people more commonly known as the Rhade, is to be
found within CIA document, “Ethnic Area Development Concepts” (henceforth “Ethnic”), 1
March 1963, pp. 90-120, CIA-RDP78-06091A00010001-4, CREST, Archives II, NARA.
Prados, Lost, p. 84. The phrase “evident commitment to their welfare” is from Ahern,
Declassified, p. 45. Ahern does not name Nuttle, referring to him only as the “NGO man” or
the “volunteer”, and did not correspond with or interview him. Nuttle queries some parts of
Ahern’s account of Buon Enao.
25
Nuttle, “Stone”, pp. 5-6 and correspondence. In e-mail correspondence with the present
writer Bonnie Ensor (formerly Bonnie Layton) has endorsed Nuttle’s account of their
relationship and of his meetings with her father in their Saigon home.
26
Ahern, Declassified, pp. 45-46.
27
Nuttle, “Stone”, p. 8.
28
Nuttle, “Stone”, pp. 8-9.
29
Nuttle, “Stone”, pp.11-12.
30
Ahern, Declassified, pp. 45-48. Hickey, Free, pp. 73-75. Captain R. Shackleton, “Manual
for Village Defense and and Associated Development: Based on Experiences at Buon Enao,
Ban Me Thuot, Vietnam, Darlac Province, 1 November 1961 – 1 July 1962” (henceforth
“Manual”), p. 8, in “Ethnic”, pp. 49-66.
31
Ahern, Declassified, pp. 45-48. Hickey, Free, pp. 73-75. Captain R. Shackleton, “Manual
for Village Defense and and Associated Development: Based on Experiences at Buon Enao,
Ban Me Thuot, Vietnam, Darlac Province, 1 November 1961 – 1 July 1962” (henceforth
“Manual”), p. 8, in “Ethnic”, pp. 49-66.
32
Nuttle, “Stone”, p. 12 and correspondence. Ahern, Declassified, p. 47.
33
Nuttle, “Stone”, p. 13. Prados, Lost, p. 86.
34
Nuttle, “Stone”, pp. 13-14 and correspondence.
37
35
Shackleton, “Manual”, p. 7 Ahern, Declassified, p. 48. Nuttle, “Stone”, pp. 13-15. Nuttle
correspondence.
36
Nuttle, “Stone”, pp. 1415 and correspondence. Prados, Lost, p. 86. Correspondence with
Bonnie (Layton) Ensor, containing extracts from her father’s unpublished account of Buon
Enao.
37
The first US Special Forces soldiers at Buon Enao belonged to Captain Lawrence Arritola’s
A-35, as both Dave Nuttle and Larry Arritola have confirmed in e-mail correspondence with
the present author. Some accounts, including those by Ahern and Prados, incorrectly state that
Captain Ronald Shackleton’s A-113 was the first at Buon Enao. The mistake is not universal.
Kelly, Special, p. 25, Ives, Counterinsurgency, p. 19 and Hickey, Free, p. 77, all correctly
identify A-35, though Hickey incorrectly states that the men of that detachment came to Buon
Enao from Laos. The date of arrival of members of A-35 at Buon Enao is not certain, but
Kelly, Special, p. 184, gives 4 December 1961 as the date Buon Enao opened as a US Army
Special Forces camp and that date seems probable. Ahern gives 12 December 1961 as the
date of arrival of the first US Army Special Forces A-detachment troops: almost certainly a
few days too late.
38
Nuttle, “Stone”, pp. 15-17 and correspondence. Ahern, Declassified, p. 51.
39
Nuttle, “Stone”, pp. 5-8 and correspondence. Lt. Col. J.J. Sawbridge, to Col. Wilbur
Wilson, Senior Advisor III Corps, 26 March 1963: “Integration of defended villages into the
Strategic Hamlet Program of Darlac Province”, p. 4, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne)
Records of A Detachments, Box 6, Detachment A-113 (1st Special Forces Group), Ban Don,
Buon Enao and Buon Tah, Darlac Province, January Thru July 1963, (shelf location 490-3711-4), RG 472, Archives II, NARA.
40
Ahern, Declassified, p. 51.
41
Nuttle correspondence.
42
Nuttle correspondence. “Ethnic”, p. 120: “Rhade Plant Nursery”. Hickey, Free, p. 75.
Ahern, Declassified, p. 46. R.A. Shackleton, Village Defense: Initial Special Forces
Operations in Vietnam (Arvada, Colorado, Phoenix Press) 1975 (henceforth “Village”), pp.
113-114. Shackleton commanded A-113 at Buon Enao for six months in 1962 and wrote
studies of it for MACV, designed to assist with Operation Switchback, studies on which his
book is based. Without actually saying so, Shackleton’s published account appears to indicate
that his was the first A-team at Buon Enao: initiating the project. This seems to have misled
some authors.
43
Nuttle correspondence. Shackleton, Village, 114-115. Prados, Lost, p. 86. Ahern,
Declassified, p. 57.
44
“Highlanders”, pp. 42-44. Shackleton, Village, pp. 57-58.
45
Nuttle correspondence, Shackleton, Village, p. 115.
46
Nuttle correspondence and extracts from Gil Layton’s unpublished account of Buon Enao
provided by his daughter, Bonnie Ensor.
47
Nuttle correspondence. Shackleton, Village, pp. 116-117.Col. Wilbur Wilson to General
Ton That Dinh, Commanding General II Corps, “Radio Stations Banmethuot and Dalat”, 20
November 1961, Box 1, Wilbur Wilson Papers, United States Army Military History
Institute, Carlisle, Pa. (henceforth USAMHI).
48
Nuttle correspondence and Shackleton, Village, p. 120.
49
Nuttle correspondence. Shackleton, Village, pp. 60-64.
50
Shackleton, Village, pp. 55-59.
51
Nuttle correspondence.
52
Shackleton, Village, pp. 14-19. A batch of reports on Communist suspects interrogated at
Buon Enao, giving information on Communist units, weapons, propaganda methods and
demands on Rhade villagers is included in 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), Records of
A-Detachments, Box 40, Detachment A-223 (1st Special Forces Group), Buon Tah Mo,
Darlac Province, II CTZ, September Thru December 1962 (shelf location 490-37-11-4) RG
472, Archives II, NARA.
38
53
Telegram from the Embassy in Vietnam to the Department of State, 7 p.m., 26 September
1961, FRUS, 1961-63, Vol. I, Vietnam 1961, pp. 309-310. Shackleton, Village, pp. 118-119.
54
Ives, Counterinsurgency, p. 20. Lt. Col. J.J. Sawbridge to Senior Advisor III Corps, 26
March 1963, para. 2 (b) 5th Special Forces Group, Records of A Detachments, Box No. 6,
Detachment A-113 (1st Special Forces Group), Ban Don, Buon Enao and Buon Tah, Darlac
Province, January 1963 Thru July 1963, RG 472, Archives II, NARA.
55
Shackleton, “Manual”, Section V, “Area Growth Systems for Village Defense”, pp. 9-11.
Nuttle correspondence. Shackleton, Village, pp. 18-119.
56
Nuttle correspondence. That Nuttle was the principal American manager of the Buon Enao
project on a day-to-day basis is clear not only from his own account but also from
“Highlanders”, p. 50 and from Chalmers B. Wood, “Memorandum: Impressions of Darlac,
Pleiku, Kontum and Kien Hoa” (henceforth “Impressions”), pp. 3-4, Enclosure No. 1 to
Saigon Embassy to State Department, Despatch No. 496, 28 May 1962, CMH.
57
Nuttle correspondence. On particular firefights see Shackleton, Village pp. 18-23, 105-106,
109-112 and “After Action Report Buon Tang Ju” in “Ethnic”, pp. 234-235. Nuttle’s
recollection that no American was killed or suffered a wound in the Buon Enao complex in
his time there is confirmed in Benefiel to Chief MOS [Layton], CSD/397. 9 January 1963,
Annex 2, “Casualty Report”, 5th Special Forces Group, Records of A Detachments, Box No.
6, RG 472, Archives II, NARA. Benefiel records a total of three American fatalities by
January 1963: 1 Army Special Forces and 2 Air Force. We know from other sources that
these were Captain Terry D. Cordell of Army Special Forces and Captain Herbert Booth and
Team Sergeant Richard L. Foxx of the Air Commandos. They died on 15 October 1962 in a
light aircraft shot down during “Operation Powder Blue”: a strike operation on a Communist
base area well outside the VDP. “Buon Enao Project, October 1962”,
http://www.glanmore.org/Buon Enao/Buon Enao.html, pp. 1-2 and correspondence with
Hugh Murray.
58
“Highlanders”, p. 43.
59
Ahern, Declassified, p. 59.
60
On South Vietnamese air co-operation with Buon Enao, both rotor wing and fixed-wing:
“Weekly Report Buon Enao”, Section 2: “Operations”, para. a, 13 May 1962 in “Ethnic”, p.
227 and Shackleton, Village, pp. 109-112. For background on the Air Commandos: R.L
Gleason, Air Commando Chronicles: Untold Tales from Vietnam, Latin America and Back
Again (Manhattan, Kansas, Sunflower University Pres) 2000, passim. On Air Commandos at
Buon Enao: Nuttle, “Stone”, p. 16 and Ahern, Declassified, pp. 58-59.
61
Nuttle correspondence. Wood, “Impressions”, pp. 3-4. Captain Terry, the senior US Army
Special Forces officer at Buon Enao in late 1962-early 1963 noted that: “Gen. Taylor, Gen.
York and Sen. Jackson and many others had to be briefed and escorted by detachment
members”. Captain Curtis D. Terry, Detachment A-334, Company “C”, 1st Special Forces GP
(ABN) to Commanding Officer 1st Special Forces Gp. (Abn.), “Problem incurred while in
Viet Nam”, (henceforth “Problems”), 26 January 1963, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne)
Records of A Detachments, Box No. 6, Detachment-113, (1st Special Forces Group), Ban
Don, Buon Enao and Buon Tah, Darlac Province, January 1963 Thru July 1963 (shelf
location 490-37-11-4), RG 472, Archives II, NARA.
62
“Tell Captain Shackleton that his operation impressed the C/S more than anything else in
SVN [South Vietnam]”. Lt. Col. Ralph Kinnes, GS, Special Warfare Branch, The Pentagon to
Col. George C. Morton (in charge of Special Forces at MACV), 19 July 1962, Box 1, Col.
George C. Morton Papers, USAMHI. Kinnes was commenting on a report on the Buon Enao
project by Captain Ronald Shackleton, commanding Special Forces detachment A-113.
63
On the perceived success of Buon Enao: Billado to Senior Advisor III Corps [Wilson],
“Pick Up of Weapons from Buon Enao Trained and Equipped Villages”, 16 January 1963,
esp. para. 1(c), and Wilson to COMUSMACV [Harkins], 17 January 1963, esp. para. 2, Box
3, Wilbur Wilson Papers, USAMHI.
64
On the closure of Buon Enao and its consequences: “Highlanders”, pp. 39-71. On the
Communist resurgence in Darlac from July 1963: “JOC Weekly Resume of RVNAF
39
Activities in Support of the National Campaign Plan: 19-26 July 1963”, 29 July 1963, paras.
1b and 1e, pp. 1 and 3, JGS Joint Operations Center Weekly Resume, Box 1: 19 April Thru 9
October 1963, RG 472, Archives II, NARA. A map showing “Comparison of VC Activity
With Infiltration Routes (November 1963)”, Enclosure 8 to “JOC Weekly Resume, 19-25
December 1963”, JGS Joint Operation Center Weekly Resume, Box No. 2, 10 October 1963
Thru 01 January 1964, RG 472, Archives II, NARA, indicates that Darlac had “75 VC
Incidents per unit population by province”: one of the highest rates of Communist activity in
the country in relation to population size.
65
Wilson to Harkins, 17 January 1963, para. 1. Box 3, Wilbur Wilson Papers, USAMHI.
“Highlanders”, pp. 19-27.
66
“Highlanders”, pp. 49-50. Jack Benefiel to C/MOS (Layton), 23 November 1962: “Meeting
Held in Ban Me Thuot, 19 November, 1962”, para. 7, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne),
Records of A Detachments, Box 6, Detachment A-113 (1st Special Forces Group), Ban Don,
Buon Enao and Buon Tah, Darlac Province, II Corps, January 1963 Thru July 1963 (shelf
location 490-37-11-4), RG 472, Archives II, NARA.
67
Ahern, Declassified, pp. 91-92.
68
Colonel Morton, in charge of Special Forces under MACV, claimed to have “warm and
cordial relations” with “Mr, Richardson”, the CIA Chief of Station in Saigon, but thought
that, “problems occur with Layton and certain of his para-military staff who have been
reluctant to relinquish the CIDG Program.” Morton to Col. George Blanchard, Director of
Special Warfare, ODCSOPS, The Pentagon, 22 May 1963, Box I, Morton Papers, USAMHI.
69
Kelly, Special, 37.
70
Nuttle correspondence. Morton to Blanchard, 22 May 1963, Box 1, Morton Papers,
USAMHI. Ahern, Declassified, pp. 95-96.
71
Nuttle correspondence.
72
Morton had served in the Navy as an enlisted man in WW1, in the Army as an officer in
both the European and the Pacific theatres in WW2, in the Hukbalahap insurrection in the
Philippines and in the Greek Civil War. See “Biographical Sketch of George C. Morton, Col.
US Army-Ret.”, Box 2, Morton Papers, USAMHI. On Morton’s insistence that Army Special
Forces personnel wear proper uniforms: “I do realize that…as a result of the Army taking
over this operation [CIDG] there have been considerable changes in the control and direction
of Special Forces personnel. The free wheeling days of cowboy suits and double holster pistol
belts [a caricature of the sort of garb adopted before Switchback] are over”. Morton to Col.
Robert W, Garrett, 1st Special Forces Group (Abn.), 18 January 1963, Box 1, Morton Papers,
USAMHI.
73
“The green beret was not adequate for patrolling. It proved too hot and did not shield the
face from the sun or rain”. See “After Action Report of Det A-2 for period 9 Sep 62 to 24 Feb
63”, 28 February 1963, Section IV, “Problems Encountered”, A (4), in 5th Special Forces
Group (Airborne), Records of A Detachments, Box No 6, Ban Don, Buon Enao and Buon
Tah, Darlac Province, II Corps (shelf location 490-37-11-4), RG 472, Archives II, NARA.
74
Morton was cheered that, “Layton leaves in a few days, for several months at least.
Benefiel and other less desirable case officers have gone or are going.” Morton to Blanchard,
22 May 1963. On Morton’s concern about “Air Commandos…encroaching in a field that
belongs to the Special Forces of the US Army”, see Morton to Lt. Col. Kinnes, Special
Warfare Branch, Pentagon, 19 July and 21 July 1962. Yet Morton was later to complain that,
“My biggest problem is that I have no aviation.” Morton to Col. Ed Mueller, Chief of Staff,
Army Aviation Center, Fort Rucker, Alabama, 16 November 1962. All letters quoted in this
note from Box 1, Morton Papers, USAMHI.
75
“Highlanders”, pp. 48-49. Morton to COMUSMACV, 9 April 1963, “Position Paper –
Darlac Province” (henceforth “Position”), 9 April 1963, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne),
Records of A Detachments, Box No. 6, Detachment A-113 (1st Special Forces Group), Ban
Don, Buon Enao and Buon Tah, Darlac Province, II Corps, January 1963, Thru July 1963, RG
472, Archives II, NARA. “JOC Weekly Resume, 19-25 July”, see note (63). Col. Wilbur
40
Wilson to General Paul Harkins, “Ban Me Thuot District Attacks”, 29 July 1963, Box 3,
Wilbur Wilson Papers, USAMHI.
76
Lt. Col. Billado went through chain of command, to his immediate superior, Col. Wilbur
Wilson, Senior Advisor to ARVN III Corps. (Responsibility for Darlac and the ARVN 23rd
Division were transferred from II Corps to III Corps at the end of 1962/beginning of 1963.
Wilbur Wilson was transferred between these corps at the same time.) But Billado’s protest
was clearly intended to go to MACV, where Wilson promptly sent it: “Pick Up of Weapons
from Buon Enao Trained and Equipped Villages”, Billado to Wilson, 16 January 1963 and
Wilson to COMUSMACV (General Paul Harkins), 17 January 1963, Box 3, Wilson Papers,
USAMHI.
77
Morton, “Position”.
78
Report by Colonel F.P. Serong to General Paul D. Harkins, COMUSMACV, “Current
Operations in South Vietnam”, October 1962, pp. 43-44 and Serong to Harkins, March 1963,
p. 17, CMH. In the second report Serong writes of President Diem and Counsellor Nhu:
“Their aim in the High Plateau is the subjugation of the Montagnards, their destruction as an
ethnic identity, and the incorporation of the Montagnard people and the Montagnard land in
an integrated Vietnamese community.” Serong doubted that Australians and Americans
should “allow ourselves to be used as a catspaw in an operation that has an excellent prospect
of finishing as genocide.” For a very favorable treatment of Serong: A. Blair, There to the
Bitter End: Ted Serong in Vietnam (Crow’s Nest, New South Wales, Allen and Unwin) 2001,
passim.
79
Apparently realising how badly the Highlanders in the Buon Enao complex were reacting to
attempts to disarm them, in January 1963 the PSO (i.e. Col. Tung) ordered the commandant
there, Captain Hy, to halt the process of disarmament till further notice. Lt. Col. E.B.W.
Smith to Commanding Officer, United Sates Army Special Forces, Vietnam [Morton],
“Weapons Pick Up Buon Enao”, p. 2, para. 3 c. (2), 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne),
Records of A Detachments, Box 6, Detachment A-113 (1st Special Forces Group), Ban Don,
Buon Enao and Buon Tah, Darlac Province, January 1963 Thru July 1963 (shelf location 49037-11-4), RG 472, Archives II, NARA
80
Lt. Col. John J. Sawbridge to Col. Wilbur Wilson, Senior Advisor, III Corps, 26 March
1963: “Integration of defended villages into the Strategic Hamlet Program of Darlac
Province”, p. 3, para. h (1), 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) Records of A-Detachments,
Box 6, RG 472, Archives II, NARA.
81
Hickey, Free, pp. 90-109.
82
For example Highland and Vietnamese troops co-operated in the defence and relief of the
Special Forces/CIDG camp at Plei Mei during the Pleiku campaign of 1965. J.D. Coleman,
Pleiku (New York, St Martin’s Press) 1988, pp. 70-90. C.A. Beckwith and D. Knox, Delta
Force (New York, Harcourt) 1983, pp. 62-75.
83
Hickey, Free, pp. 109-292.
84
J. Morris, War Story (Boulder, Co., Sycamore) 1979, an officer’s memoir of three Special
Forces tours in Vietnam, is (pp. 1-195) highly informative on the strengths and weaknesses of
US Army Special Forces in the early 1960s. See also Ives, Counterinsurgency, pp. 101-104
and Captain Terry, “Problems”.
85
Kelly, Special, p. 37.
86
A population-centric approach to counterinsurgency is embodied in Department of the
Army, Field Manual 3-24 Counterinsurgency (Washington: Headquarters Department of the
Army) 2006, which emerged as result of experience in Iraq from 2003 onwards, incorporating
the thinking of General Petraeus and those around him. But that approach is fiercely criticized
in, for example, Gian P. Gentile, “A Strategy of Tactics: Population-centric COIN and the
Army”, in Parameters Vol. XXXIX, No 3, Autumn 2009, pp. 5-17 and much current
American military activity in Afghanistan is actually focused on killing the insurgent
leadership.
87
Kelly, Special, p. 37.
41
88
Kelly’s work on the early 1960s is based, in some places word for word, on R.D. Burke et.
al., “US Army Special Forces Operations Under The Civilian Irregular Defense Group
Program In Vietnam (1961-1964)”, Research Analysis Corporation, McLean, Virginia, CMH.
On p. 48, this study makes the same point a little more definitely: “None of these other
projects proved as successful as the effort at Buon Enao”.
89
Blaufarb, Era, p. 107; Ives, Special, p. 103.
90
On the impact of post-Tet counterinsurgency on the Communists in one of their former
strongholds see J. Race, War Comes To Long An: Revolutionary Conflict In A Vietnamese
Province (Berkley, University of California) 1972, pp. 267-276.
91
T.E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (London, Allen Lane) 2006,
pp. 214-297. Col. Peter Mansoor, who studied military history at Ohio State, a civilian
institution, seems to have been better intellectually prepared for counterinsurgency than most
American commanders in 2004. He indicates that his brigade adapted quite quickly to this
form of war. P. Mansoor, Baghdad At Sunrise: A Brigade Commander’s War in Iraq
(London: Yale University Press) 2008, pp. 14-15 and passim
Illustration Acknowledgements
Fig 1 : Courtesy of US Army Center for Military History: From: Base development in
Vietnam by Carrol H. Dunn. Washington: USACMH, 1991
http://www.history.army.mil/books/Vietnam/basedev/chapter1.htm
Fig 2: Source- http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/clpp/images/langmaps/
Fig 3 Courtesy of US Army Center for Military History. From US Army Special Forces in
Vietnam1961-71. Washington: USCMH http://www.history.army.mil/books/Vietnam/90-23/9023C.htm
Fig 4: Courtesy of David Nuttle
Fig 5: Courtesy of US Army Center for Military History. From US Army Special Forces in
Vietnam1961-71. Washington: USCMH http://www.history.army.mil/books/Vietnam/90-23/9023C.htm
42