Building a Nation Beyond the Killing

Numbers tell much of the progress of the war in Viet Nam. Last week the U.S. announced that its troop strength there has risen to 400,000 and may go as high as 475,000. A combat battalion of 1,000 men from the U.S. 9th Infantry Division moved into position in the Mekong Delta--the first of at least 25,000 Americans who will open a new phase of the war in an effort to break the 20-year Red domination of the area. The numbers of Viet Cong dead also rose inexorably: 720 in Operation Cedar Falls northwest of Saigon, 114 in a major clash with Vietnamese paratroopers west of the capital, another 77 in a Marine sweep called Operation Tuscaloosa 15 miles south of Danang. Yet beneath all the numbers a subtle change is taking place in the priorities of the war. During 1967 the emphasis will shift more and more away from the killing of Communists to the less spectacular--but equally demanding-- tasks of land control, population security and nation building.

In less than a dozen years, South Viet Nam has witnessed nine separate pacification programs, none of them very successful. Indeed, the once enthusiastic phrase about "winning the hearts and minds" of the peasantry has been reduced by some officials to a slightly cynical acronym: WHAM. Still, pacification is getting to be as big a job as fighting in Viet Nam, and none take the job more seriously than those dedicated fighters, the U.S. Marines. In several provinces of Viet Nam, the Marines have been given the job of entering, securing and pacifying villages and hamlets that have been under Communist influence or control for so long that they were scarcely touched by the French during their long war. The men now doing that job are the 70,000 "jarheads" of the 3rd Marine Amphibious Force, headquartered at Danang but spread out to Hue and along the 17th parallel. Most of the 3rd's men are now involved in pacification.

Rev-Devs & Love. Operating in consort with Saigon's "Revolutionary Development" cadres and "Political Action Teams" (Rev-Devs and PATS to the Marines), and aided by civilian personnel from Deputy Ambassador William Porter's civil-affairs staff, the Marines have done much to change the lives of their charges for the better. Corpsmen, doctors and dentists have treated more than 1,250,000 Vietnamese in the five northern provinces that constitute the Marines' Tactical Area of Responsibility (TAOR). Over the past 22 months, Marines have built everything from markets and roads to schools, dispensaries and meeting halls. They serve as financial counselors, schoolteachers, carpenters, plumbers-- even midwives. At the root of the Marine pacification program is the CAC program (for "Combined Action Companies"). There are now 62 CACs working in the TAOR, each composed of one squad of Marines and two of Vietnamese militia. All the Americans are volunteers, and many of them ask to have their tours of duty extended. "If they aren't motivated strongly toward something more than storming enemy positions, then they aren't for CAC," says Colonel Scott Holmgrain, 46, chief civic-affairs officer for the Marine Amphibious Force.

In their first task, the job of providing security for the villages of the area, small units of Marines have been involved in more than 100,000 separate actions against the Viet Cong. They have increased their kill ratio over the Viet Cong to as high as 8 to 1 and have killed or captured a total of 15,000 Communists--a high for any American unit. In what they call their "Kit Carson Program," the Marines often use Viet Cong defectors as scouts, paying them $41 a month. "They point out the guy we'd been walking right past for so long," says Colonel Donald Mallory, 50, commander of the 5,000-man 1st Marine Regiment. The scouts frequently enable the Marines to set ambushes, recently were instrumental in helping the Marines discover a secret meeting of regional Viet Cong leaders. In a fierce battle, the Marines killed 61, thus largely stripping the V.C. of their area leadership in one blow. For the first time, the Marines now control the night with their patrols and thus, as one Marine put it, "give the average peasant a chance to make love to his wife without the Viet Cong shooting at him."

Rock V Roll. When they are not patrolling, the Marines help the villagers and try to get to know them better. In Phuoc Trach, a fishing village on the populous coastal plain below Danang, CAC protection allowed Navy Seabees to build a bridge connecting the village with the main road to the provincial capital. In the past, villagers had to sail up a Viet Cong-controlled river to reach their market--and pay plenty of fish in tribute along the way. The Phuoc Trach Marines have even taught their Vietnamese friends how to dance to rock 'n' roll. Says Lance Corporal Leroy Lomax, a 20-year-old Negro from California: "They go, man, they go."

When it comes to civic action, though, the Marines insist that the "gimme and giveaway" days are gone for good. Says Colonel Holmgrain: "We will not lay so much as the first brick or provide the first pound of cement for a school or clinic until Saigon first produces a teacher or a medical technician." Moreover, the villagers themselves must participate. If the villagers put three or four months of their own sweat into a project, the Marines figure, they will take better care of it and fight any Viet Cong attempts to take over or destroy it.

Another Thermometer. One Marine who carries that philosophy to perfection is Lieut. Colonel William Corson, 41, a former Naval Academy professor, economist and engineer who controls 50 sq. mi. of jungle west of Danang. After months of patrolling and night ambushes, Corson's 1,500-man battalion set up what he likes to call "my laboratory for capitalism." The first step was to engage the interest of the villagers, which Corson achieved by the un-Clausewitzean technique of teaching his men the local game: co tuong, a variant of chess that uses "elephants, cannon and 14th century infantry tactics." Corson himself took on the village champion, managed to achieve a tie. "The game gave us our breakthrough in overcoming the reserve of the people," he says. "Next step was how to help them make a buck."

Corson did that by dynamiting the Song Cau Do River and producing a sampan-load of stunned fish, which the villagers sold in a nearby market (built by Corson's Marines). As profits from dynamite fishing mounted, Corson set up a big, Community Chest-style thermometer in the village square "just to make certain nothing rubbed off" on the Vietnamese elder who was holding the funds. The money later went to buy shoats for a pig-farming project, and Corson now believes that "we will have to put up another thermometer."

As a result of such programs, the Viet Cong in the Marines' section of Viet Nam have been forced to shift their attention away from control and tax collection to an attempt to recapture the peasants--usually by terror. Thus, the circle returns through killing, ambush and the necessity of more security. "This is the last chance for pacification," warns Colonel Corson. "If this one fails, we can all go home and forget it." Adds civilian Province Chief Nguyen Huu Chi, 31, who has witnessed the Marines' efforts: "When I took this job a year ago, I was told I had a 5% chance of succeeding. Now the optimists say I have a 10% chance. I think it's a chance worth taking."

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