Download or read book Our War was Different written by Albert Hemingway and published by Naval Inst Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shares the experiences and observations of Marines who were part of the CAP, or Combined Action Program, one of the few successes in Vietnam

Download or read book War in the Villages written by Ted N. Easterling and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2021-03-15 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much of the history written about the Vietnam War overlooks the U.S. Marine Corps Combined Action Platoons. These CAPs lived in the Vietnamese villages, with the difficult and dangerous mission of defending the villages from both the National Liberation Front guerrillas and the soldiers of the North Vietnamese Army. The CAPs also worked to improve living conditions by helping the people with projects, such as building schools, bridges, and irrigation systems for their fields. In War in the Villages, Ted Easterling examines how well the CAPs performed as a counterinsurgency method, how the Marines adjusted to life in the Vietnamese villages, and how they worked to accomplish their mission. The CAPs generally performed their counterinsurgency role well, but they were hampered by factors beyond their control. Most important was the conflict between the Army and the Marine Corps over an appropriate strategy for the Vietnam War, along with weakness of the government of the Republic of South Vietnam and the strategic and the tactical ability of the North Vietnamese Army. War in the Villages helps to explain how and why this potential was realized and squandered. Marines who served in the CAPs served honorably in difficult circumstances. Most of these Marines believed they were helping the people of South Vietnam, and they served superbly. The failure to end the war more favorably was no fault of theirs.

Download or read book Combined Action Platoons In The Vietnam War written by Major Ian J. Townsend and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Vietnam, the III Marine Amphibious Force used Combined Action Platoons (CAPs) as one part of its operational level counterinsurgency campaign. These platoons provided security assistance to the South Vietnamese Popular Forces and civic action to the village based population. To measure the operational effectiveness and the current relevancy of this specific type of combined action their activities are evaluated against current Army counterinsurgency doctrine. This monograph demonstrates the value of the CAPs as one element in the context of a counterinsurgency campaign, and how this form of combined action may serve as a tool for Army commanders conducting operational art in future. Independent operations are not the future of American warfare in the 21st Century. Contemporary thought about the future of American warfare is that the “conventional forces of the United States Army will have an enduring requirement to build the security forces and security ministries of other countries.” Some form of combined action will be a required in American military operations for the foreseeable future. Given this truth, CAPs provide a practical historical example of a combined action technique that can serve as a tool for the future.

Download or read book The Combined Action Platoons written by Michael Peterson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1989-06-26 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first comprehensive history for the academic reader of the Combined Action Program (CAP) in Vietnam. Created as a response by the U.S. Marines to what was known as the other war in Vietnam, the CAP Program was comprised of platoons each combining a fourteen man marine rifle squad, a navy corpsman, and a platoon of South Vietnamese militia. These CAP units were unique to the war. Their function was to capture and hold rather than to search and destroy. While the main forces of the Army and Marines all too often waged war on the Vietnamese hamlets, the CAP marines waged war from the hamlets. Their intent was to keep the hamlet intact. The uniqueness of the CAP Program justifies this study not only from an historical and political perspective but also sociologically. The CAP Marines were among the few Americans who lived with the Vietnamese in their own setting for long periods of time, developing community projects and civic action programs. The 1980s has brought about a resurgence of valuable research, the declassification of official documentation, and most important, an emotional distance from the trauma of defeat. The author takes full advantage of these conditions to present a thorough and comprehensive history and civic program analysis. Many critics of the Vietnam War now agree that the tactics of the Combined Action Program were among the most promising of the war. The CAP Marines fought a deadly and personal war with the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army. In this volume, the author achieves his twofold objective. He not only provides a valuable historical account of the Program, but also analyzes the civic action and community development projects undertaken by the CAP Marines. His study is done with an eye to the future as U.S. counterinsurgency has again found expression in other Third World conflicts.

Download or read book Defend and Befriend written by John Southard and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-07-11 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Defend and Befriend is the first comprehensive study of Americans assigned to Combined Action Platoons in Vietnam. Tracing the development as well as the implementation of the program, author John Southard intertwines the experiences of enlisted Marines and corpsmen with an examination of the colonels and generals in charge.

Download or read book Combined Action Platoons in the Vietnam War written by U S Army Command and General Staff Coll and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-11-10 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Vietnam, the III Marine Amphibious Force used Combined Action Platoons (Cap's) as one part of its operational level counterinsurgency campaign. These platoons provided security assistance to the South Vietnamese Popular Forces and civic action to the village based population. To measure the operational effectiveness and the current relevancy of this specific type of combined action their activities are evaluated against current Army counterinsurgency doctrine. This book demonstrates the value of the CAPs as one element in the context of a counterinsurgency campaign, and how this form of combined action may serve as a tool for Army commanders conducting operational art in future. Independent operations are not the future of American warfare in the 21st Century. Contemporary thought about the future of American warfare is that the "conventional forces of the United States Army will have an enduring requirement to build the security forces and security ministries of other countries." Some form of combined action will be a required in American military operations for the foreseeable future. Given this truth, CAPs provide a practical historical example of a combined action technique that can serve as a tool for the future.

Download or read book War in the Villages Volume 5 written by Ted N Easterling and published by . This book was released on 2021-03-15 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much of the history written about the Vietnam War overlooks the U.S. Marine Corps Combined Action Platoons. These CAPs lived in the Vietnamese villages, with the difficult and dangerous mission of defending the villages from both the National Liberation Front guerrillas and the soldiers of the North Vietnamese Army. The CAPs also worked to improve living conditions by helping the people with projects, such as building schools, bridges, and irrigation systems for their fields. In War in the Villages, Ted Easterling examines how well the CAPs performed as a counterinsurgency method, how the Marines adjusted to life in the Vietnamese villages, and how they worked to accomplish their mission. The CAPs generally performed their counterinsurgency role well, but they were hampered by factors beyond their control. Most important was the conflict between the Army and the Marine Corps over an appropriate strategy for the Vietnam War, along with weakness of the government of the Republic of South Vietnam and the strategic and the tactical ability of the North Vietnamese Army. War in the Villages helps to explain how and why this potential was realized and squandered. Marines who served in the CAPs served honorably in difficult circumstances. Most of these Marines believed they were helping the people of South Vietnam, and they served superbly. The failure to end the war more favorably was no fault of theirs.

Download or read book CAP Mot written by Barry L. Goodson and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Water buffalo dung to keep the mosquitoes away. Ordinary villagers like Mamasan Tou would set up a security network so the CAP marines could afford the occasional luxury of a nap or a few minutes to write a letter home. The only time a CAP marine left the jungle was when he was rotating home, wounded or dead. Goodson's thirteen-month tour of duty was almost over when he was wounded. He spent several weeks in various hospitals before going home, and facing a whole.

Download or read book U S Marines In Vietnam The Landing And The Buildup 1965 written by Dr. Jack Shulimson and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2016-08-09 with total page 666 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the second volume in a series of chronological histories prepared by the Marine Corps History and Museums Division to cover the entire span of Marine Corps involvement in the Vietnam War. This volume details the Marine activities during 1965, the year the war escalated and major American combat units were committed to the conflict. The narrative traces the landing of the nearly 5,000-man 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade and its transformation into the ΙII Marine Amphibious Force, which by the end of the year contained over 38,000 Marines. During this period, the Marines established three enclaves in South Vietnam’s northernmost corps area, I Corps, and their mission expanded from defense of the Da Nang Airbase to a balanced strategy involving base defense, offensive operations, and pacification. This volume continues to treat the activities of Marine advisors to the South Vietnamese armed forces but in less detail than its predecessor volume, U.S. Marines in Vietnam, 1954-1964; The Advisory and Combat Assistance Era.

Download or read book Tiger Papa Three written by Edward F. Palm and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2020-06-03 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. Marine Corps' Combined Action Program (CAP) in Vietnam was an enlightened gesture of strategic dissent. Recognizing that search-and-destroy operations were immoral and self-defeating and that the best hope for victory was "winning hearts and minds," the Corps stationed squads of Marines, augmented by Navy corpsmen, in the countryside to train and patrol alongside village self-defense units called Popular Forces. Corporal Edward F. Palm became a combined-action Marine in 1967. His memoir recounts his experiences fighting with the South Vietnamese, his readjustment to life after the war, and the circumstances that prompted him to join the Corps in the first place. A one-time aspiring photojournalist, Palm includes photographs he took while serving, along with an epilogue describing what he and his former sergeant found during their 2002 return to Vietnam.

Download or read book The Marine Corps Combined Action Program in the Vietnam War written by Gene Hays and published by . This book was released on 2019-09-25 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Marine Corps Combined Action Program was a part of the Vietnam War that is not commonly known. Marines and Navy Corpsmen were embedded in the villages and hamlets of Vietnam. Marines were augmented by Vietnamese Popular Forces somewhat akin to a local militia. The mission of the Marines was to protect themselves and the villagers they lived with, provide the Popular Forces with weapons training, defense and operations tactics with the Marines learning the local language and customs. The end goal was to deny sanctuary to the enemy that would terrorize villagers to support them, forcibly recruit all the able bodied young men and rob the villagers of food and money. When not busy defending their villages, Marines would perform civic action projects that included Navy Corpsmen providing medical services and sanitation, providing materials and assistance for improving living conditions, providing clothing and school supplies donated by supporters in the United States while educating them about their government and democracy. This Combined Action of Marines and Vietnamese was about winning "hearts and minds" leading to a successful pacification program throughout the Marine's tactical area of responsibility. With the Marine Corps assigned responsibility for the northern most section of Vietnam, referred to as I Corps (pronounced Eye Corps). By 1968, this program increased exponentially, succeeding driving the enemy (Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army, known as NVA) away from the I Corps area. Using the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos and Cambodia, the NVA bypassed the Marines and moved through the delta. This program was one of limited success as noted by Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) leaving some historians to ponder if that success would have also borne fruit throughout all of South Vietnam. This book describes in detail all the above, including the many acts of valor and courage of Combined Action personnel.

Download or read book U S Marines in Vietnam written by Jack Shulimson and published by U.S. Government Printing Office. This book was released on 1997 with total page 828 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book was donated as a part of the David H. Hugel Collection, an archival collection of the Special Collections & Archives, University of Baltimore.

Download or read book The Village written by Bing West and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2003-02-11 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of seventeen months in the life of a Vietnamese village where a handful of American Marines and Vietnamese militia lived and died together attempting to defend it. In Black Hawk Down, the fight went on for a day. In We Were Soldiers Once & Young, the fighting lasted three days. In The Village, one Marine squad fought for 495 days—half of them died. Few American battles have been so extended, savage and personal. A handful of Americans volunteered to live among six thousand Vietnamese, training farmers to defend their village. Such “Combined Action Platoons” (CAPs) are now a lost footnote about how the war could have been fought; only the villagers remain to bear witness. This is the story of fifteen resolute young Americans matched against two hundred Viet Cong; how a CAP lived, fought and died. And why the villagers remember them to this day.

Download or read book Keeping the Fish Out of the Water written by Theodore Easterling and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States is often criticized for using ineffective strategies and tactics to fight the Vietnam War, but the United States Marine Corps attempted to use strategies and tactics it considered appropriate for a counterinsurgency war in Vietnam. As part of its counterinsurgency plan, the Marine Corps used Combined Action Platoons, and whether or not these units were effective as a counterinsurgency tactic in the war is the topic of this study. This study concludes that Combined Action Platoons were not a successful counterinsurgency tactic in the Vietnam War. To the extent the Combined Action concept might have been well-conceived and successful, it was overwhelmed by a number of problems. The conflict over strategy between the Marine Corps and the US Army hampered the development and the performance of the Combined Action Platoons. Other critical problems for the Combined Action Platoons resulted from the weakness of the government of the Republic of South Vietnam and the strategic ability of the North Vietnamese Army. The primary problem was that Vietnam was a poorly chosen battlefield , and the war was unwinnable. This study of the US Marine Corps Combined Action Platoons is a qualitative study based on research in a variety of primary and secondary sources. Research at the US Marine Corps Archives at Quantico, Virginia was especially useful for acquiring original information related to the Combined Action Platoons (CAP) in the Vietnam War. Primary sources for the study included books written by participants in the war, and veterans of the CAP. A collection of the private letters of a CAP veteran was also used. Among the secondary sources for the study were books by historians who studied the war, and books by counterinsurgency theorists who study counterinsurgency warfare.

Download or read book Small Unit Action in Vietnam Summer 1966 written by Francis J. West, Jr. and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-06-10 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The origin of this publication lies in the continuing program at all levels of command to keep Marines informed of the ways of combat and civic action in Vietnam. Not limited in any way to set methods and means, this informational effort spreads across a wide variety of projects, all aimed at making the lessons learned in Vietnam available to the Marine who is fighting there and the Marine who is soon due to take his turn in combat. Recognizing a need to inform the men who are the key to the success of Marine Corps operations—the enlisted Marines and junior officers of combat and combat support units—the former Assistant Chief of Staff, G-3, Major General William R. Collins, originated a project to provide a timely series of short, factual narratives of small unit action, stories which would have lessons learned as an integral part. Essential to General Collins' concept was the fact that the stories would have to be both highly readable and historically accurate. The basic requirement called for an author trained in the methodology of research, with recent active duty experience at the small unit level in the FMF, and a proven ability to write in e style that would ensure wide readership. This publication, then, is based upon first-hand, eyewitness accounting of the events described. It is documented by notes and taped interviews taken in the field and includes lessons learned from the mouths of the Marines who are currently fighting in Vietnam. It is published for the information of those men who are serving and who will serve in Vietnam, as well as for the use of other interested Americans, so that they may better understand the demands of the Vietnam conflict on the individual Marine.

Download or read book The Twins Platoon written by Christy W. Sauro and published by Zenith Press. This book was released on 2006-03-20 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the evening of June 28, 1967, 150 young Americans were sworn into the Marine Corps as part of the pre-game ceremonies of a Minnesota Twins baseball game. Before the end of the fourth inning these volunteers were being hustled on to buses, on their way to boot camp. It was a journey that would take them from a boyhood of baseball in the American heartland to manhood on the killing fields of Vietnam. Christy Sauro was one of the Twins Platoon, and in this book he tells what it was like-from the pomp and ceremony of induction to the all-too-real initiation by fire that would shortly follow: in mere months, he and most of the Twins Platoon were on the ground in Vietnam and promptly faced with some of the toughest fighting of the war, the Siege of Khe Sanh and the Tet Offensive, including the brutal Battle for Hue. From baseball to boot camp to brutal combat, his is a firsthand story of American life being lived at the limits-and changed forever.

Download or read book Combat at Close Quarters written by Edward J. Marolda and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2015 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work describes riverine combat during the Vietnam War, emphasizing the operations of the U.S. Navy’s River Patrol Force, which conducted Operation Game Warden; the U.S. Army-Navy Mobile Riverine Force, the formation that General William Westmoreland said “saved the Mekong Delta” during the Tet Offensive of 1968; and the Vietnam Navy. An important section details the SEALORDS combined campaign, a determined effort by U.S. Navy, South Vietnamese Navy, and allied ground forces to cut enemy supply lines from Cambodia and disrupt operations at base areas deep in the delta. The author also covers details on the combat vessels, helicopters, weapons, and equipment employed in the Mekong Delta as well as the Vietnamese combatants (on both sides) and American troops who fought to secure Vietnam’s waterways. Special features focus on the ubiquitous river patrol boats (PBRs) and the Swift boats (PCFs), river warfare training, Vice Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., the Black Ponies aircraft squadron, and Navy SEALs. This publication may be of interest to history scholars, veterans, students in advanced placement history classes, and military enthusiasts given the continuing impact of riverine warfare on U.S. naval and military operations in the 21st century. Special Publicity Tie-In: Commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War (Commemoration dates: 28 May 2012 - 11 November 2025). This is the fifth book in the series, "The U.S. Navy and the Vietnam War." TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction The First Indochina War The Vietnam Navy River Force and American Advisors The U.S. Navy and the Rivers of Vietnam SEALORDS The End of the Line for U.S. and Vietnamese River Forces Sidebars: The PBR Riverine Warfare Training Battle Fleet of the Mekong Delta High Drama in the Delta Vice Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. Black Ponies The Swift Boat Warriors with Green Faces Suggested Reading