The U.S. Army Campaigns of the Vietnam War

THE 

U.S. ARMY 

BEFORE 

VIETNAM

1953 –1965
CMH Pub 76–3
by

Donald A. Carter

Center of Military History

United States Army

Washington, D.C., 2015

THE 

U.S. ARMY 

BEFORE 

VIETNAM

1953 –1965

5

Introduction

To many Americans, the war in Vietnam was, and remains, 

a divisive conflict. Now almost fifty years after the beginning 

of major U.S. combat operations in Vietnam, the war has faded 

from much of America’s consciousness. Over half of the U.S. 

population was born after the war and has no direct memory of 

the conflict, yet this does not lessen its importance. The massive 

American commitment—political, military, and diplomatic—to 

the independence of South Vietnam beginning in the 1950s and 

continuing with U.S. direct combat operations in the 1960s and 

early 1970s makes it important to remember those who served. 

U.S. involvement in this corner of Southeast Asia began after 

World War II when Vietnam was fighting for independence from 

France. Although generally favoring Vietnamese independence, 

the United States supported France because the rebels—or Viet 

Minh—were led by Communists and in the days of the Cold 

War U.S. officials considered any and all Communists to be little 

more than the puppets of Moscow and Beijing. France’s defeat in 

1954, the bifurcation of Vietnam into a Communist North and 

non-Communist South, and America’s assumption of the job of 

training the armed forces of the newly created non-Communist 

Republic of Vietnam pulled the United States deeper into the 

conflict. Framed primarily as a fight to defend democracy against 

the forces of international communism, the United States gradually committed more troops and materiel to fight Communist-led 

Southern guerrillas (or Viet Cong) and the regular military forces 

sent to South Vietnam by the politburo in Hanoi.

By the time President Lyndon B. Johnson committed major 

combat units in 1965, the United States had already invested 

thousands of men and millions of dollars in the fight to build a 

secure and stable South Vietnam. That commitment expanded 

rapidly until by 1969 the United States had over 365,000 soldiers 

in every military region of South Vietnam with thousands of other 
6 

servicemen and women throughout the Pacific area in direct 

support of operations. The war saw many technological innovations including the massive use of helicopters, wide-scale use of 

computers, sophisticated psychological operations, new concepts 

of counterinsurgency, and major advances in military medicine. 

Yet, as in most wars, much of the burden of battle was still borne 

by the foot soldiers on the ground who slogged over the hills and 

through the rice paddies in search of an often elusive foe. The 

enormous military and political effort by the United States was, 

however, continuously matched by the determination of North 

Vietnamese leaders to unify their country under communism at 

whatever cost. That determination, in the end, proved decisive. 

Negotiations accompanied by the gradual withdrawal of American 

forces led to the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973, effectively 

ending the U.S. military role. The continued existence of an independent South Vietnam, however, was of short duration. Two 

years after the American exit the North Vietnamese Army overran 

South Vietnam and sealed its victory in April 1975.

The vast majority of American men and women who served 

in Vietnam did so in the uniform of the United States Army. They 

served their country when called, many at great personal cost, 

against a backdrop of growing uncertainty and unrest at home. 

These commemorative pamphlets are dedicated to them.

 RICHARD W. STEWART

 Chief Historian
7

The U.S. Army Before Vietnam, 

1953–1965

The twelve years between the end of the Korean War in the 

spring of 1953 and the deployment of ground combat troops 

to Vietnam in the spring of 1965 were stressful ones for the 

U.S. Army. It had to adjust to the budget and manpower cuts 

that typify the end of a major war while at the same time maintaining an unprecedented level of preparedness due to ongoing 

tensions between the United States and the two leaders of the 

Communist bloc—the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic 

of China. Moreover, the proliferation of atomic weapons, 

first developed in 1945, raised existential questions about the 

nature of future wars and the role ground forces would play 

in them. The Army would spend the remaining years of the 

1950s struggling with an identity crisis, trying to prove to itself 

and to others that it remained relevant in the nuclear age. By 

the end of the decade, the Army had indeed developed organizations, weapons, and doctrine to address the challenges of 

nuclear war. No sooner had it done so than the rules of the 

game changed, as the Communist powers adopted a strategy 

of fostering revolutions in weak and underdeveloped countries 

as a means of spreading their political doctrine without risking 

a direct confrontation with the United States that might spark 

a thermonuclear exchange. Once again, the Army rose to the 

occasion with new organizations, equipment, and doctrine. All 

of these challenges made the period one of the most tumultuous 

in the history of the peacetime Army—an Army that stood on 

the brink of one of its most tumultuous wars.
8 

Strategic Setting

Almost as soon as the documents marking the surrender 

of Germany in World War II were signed in May 1945, the ties 

that bound the two major wartime allies—the Soviet Union and 

the United States—began to disintegrate. Contrasting political 

philosophies, differences over how to treat occupied Germany, 

and the Soviet Union’s imposition of communism over Eastern 

Europe created an atmosphere of mutual distrust. In March 

1947, President Harry S. Truman announced a program of 

military and economic support for nations battling Communist 

expansionism. In a speech delivered the following month, financier Bernard M. Baruch characterized the emerging confrontation between the Soviet Union and the West as a “Cold War.” 

It would prove to be a multifaceted diplomatic, economic, and 

military struggle that would dominate much of the remainder 

of the twentieth century.

In April 1949, the United States and thirteen other nations 

formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO. 

Member nations pledged to come to each other’s aid against 

Soviet aggression and to contribute military forces toward a 

common defense. An attack by Communist North Korea against 

South Korea in June 1950 seemed to confirm Western fears of 

Communist aggression. Many Western leaders believed the 

invasion to be the prelude to a wider offensive by the Soviets 

against Western Europe. With that threat in mind, President 

Truman announced the reactivation of the U.S. Seventh Army 

in Europe in November 1950. He then directed the deployment 

of four U.S. Army divisions to West Germany to reinforce the 

division and three armored cavalry regiments already there on 

occupation duty. 

The Korean War found the U.S. Army unprepared for combat. 

President Truman’s draconian budget and his refusal to allow the 

Army to achieve its authorized strength had reduced most units to 

hollow shells. Consequently, the Army committed understrength 

and inadequately trained divisions that suffered stinging defeats in 

the summer of 1950 attempting to stem the North Korean advance. 

By the fall, the six Army divisions in Korea had been brought up to 

strength by stripping personnel from the rest of the Regular Army, 

by recalling large numbers of men from the Organized Reserve 

Corps, and by assigning Korean soldiers, often untrained and not 

able to speak any English, to U.S. units. 
9

The Army fought the Korean War very much as it had World 

War II. Little had changed over the short interval between the two 

conflicts. Nor did the conflict generate many new lessons. When 

the fighting ended in 1953, the service emerged using largely the 

same organization, doctrine, and equipment that it had at the start 

of the war. 

The Korean War had a more profound effect on U.S. strategic 

policy. Unwilling to risk open conflict with the Soviet Union or 

Communist China, the United States had limited the options and 

resources available to its military commanders. Fearing escalation 

to a wider conflagration, President Truman had forbidden the 

United Nations commander in chief, U.S. General of the Army 

Douglas MacArthur, to bomb bridges leading into Communist 

China. He likewise turned down MacArthur’s request to use 

Nationalist Chinese forces, and refrained from employing nuclear 

weapons once Communist China joined the conflict. These selfimposed restraints resulted in a stalemate, and the war ended with 

an armistice that left the two sides largely where they had been 

when the conflict had begun. The absence of a clear victory led 

military and political leaders to question whether the conflict had 

been worth the financial and human cost. It also left the public 

averse to entering into another land war unless the stakes for the 

United States were immense. Nonetheless, the Army had gained 

much combat experience. For the next ten years, almost all of the 

service’s senior leaders developed and implemented plans, policies, 

and doctrine based on their shared experiences of World War II 

and the Korean War.

Korea had one additional strategic impact—it led to the 

establishment of large garrisons on foreign soil in peacetime. The 

end of the “hot” war in Korea in 1953 did not relieve the tensions 

between East and West. Not only did the Army emerge with 

the obligation of maintaining a garrison in Korea to uphold the 

armistice, but the war between the two Koreas—one free and one 

Communist—and their Cold War patrons had made the threat 

of a similar conflict in bifurcated Germany seem even more 

real. The Seventh Army thus became a seemingly permanent, 

forward-deployed bulwark against Communist expansion in 

Europe—a new and demanding role in the history of the U.S. 

Army. Just as service on the Western frontier had defined the 

Army in the nineteenth century, the new mission would define 

the Army for decades to come. 
10 

The Army Emerges from the Korean War

Whether the Army could meet its new and enlarged burdens 

had a lot to do with the resources it received, and these, it turned 

out, were in short supply. Because of the continuing Cold War, 

the Army did not demobilize as thoroughly or as rapidly as it had 

after previous major wars, but a drawdown was inevitable and, 

given the Army’s expanded mission, difficult to accommodate. At 

the end of 1953, the U.S. Army maintained nineteen active-duty 

divisions and eight National Guard divisions assigned to federal 

service. Of these, eight remained in the Far East in the immediate 

aftermath of the Korean War. Five served in Germany as part of the 

new American commitment to help defend Western Europe. The 

remaining fourteen were assigned to the continental United States, 

but they were not in good shape. Manpower demands during the 

war had gutted stateside units. Indeed, twelve of the fourteen divisions in the United States were training or replacement divisions 

and were not deployable. Only the 1st Armored Division at Fort 

Hood, Texas, and the 82d Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North 

Carolina, could be considered battle-ready formations. By 1960, 

all of the National Guard divisions had returned to state control 

and the Army had inactivated the training divisions. The force 

maintained fifteen divisions on active duty: nine infantry, three 

armor, two airborne, and one cavalry. Of these, two remained in 

Korea, five in Germany, and eight in the United States. For the first 

time in its history, nearly half the peacetime Army was deployed 

overseas. (See Maps 1, 2, and 3.)

Total personnel strength for the Army likewise dropped 

from around 1.6 million in 1952 to slightly more than 860,000 in 

1959. The mismatch of requirements versus needs was reflected 

in Korea, where manpower shortfalls compelled the U.S. Eighth 

Army to continue the wartime expediency of the KATUSA 

(Korean Augmentation to the United States Army) program, in 

which thousands of Korean nationals served their military obligation attached to U.S. Army units. The KATUSA program was 

highly successful, but other impacts of the manpower shortfall 

were negative. Administrative burdens unrelated to one’s military 

specialty, such as KP (kitchen police) and grounds keeping were 

bothersome, while Congress’ refusal to authorize a Regular Army 

officer corps large enough to lead the force meant that the Army 

had to rely on a vast number of non-regulars to fill officer slots. 

Throughout the decade over two-thirds of the Army’s officers 
11

were non-regulars. Some of these men were not of the highest 

quality, while many others felt slighted by a career system that 

favored regulars.

As troop numbers declined, so did material resources. Net 

expenditures for military functions—essentially the amount of 

money available to spend on personnel, equipment, research and 

development, and any other organizational expenses—fell from 

$15.7 billion in 1952 to $8.7 billion in 1956. Overall, the Army’s 

share of the defense budget declined steadily, with the most 

precipitous drop coming in fiscal year (FY) 1955 when it fell from 

32.1 to 25 percent. By 1958, the Army received only 22 percent of 

all defense dollars. 

The immediate post-Korea Army was comprised largely of 

draftees. Almost 60 percent of its enlisted personnel had come 

through the draft. That percentage steadily declined through the 

rest of the decade, however, due to the dramatic reduction in the 

size of the force and the reduced requirement for replacements. 

Draft calls fell from a high of 472,000 in 1953 to 87,000 in 1960. By 

that time, the percentage of draftees that made up the Army had 

fallen to 20 percent. That trend would continue through the early 

1960s, with a brief uptick in 1962, reflecting an increased draft call 

in the wake of Soviet threats over Berlin and the construction of 

the Berlin Wall. Perhaps the most famous of the draftees of the era 

was the singer Elvis A. Presley. Drafted in 1958, Presley proved 

Sergeant Presley scans the horizon for enemy soldiers during Exercise Wintershield in 1960. National Archives
4TH INFANTRY DIVISION FORT LEWIS

9TH INFANTRY DIVISION FORT CARSON

25TH

INFANTRY DIVISION SCHOFIELD BARRACKS

2D ARMORED DIVISIO

FORT HOOD

1ST INFANT

FORT 

MEXIC O

CAN

C A N A

D A

UNION OF SOVIE T

SOCIALIST REPUBLICS

ALASKA

1:45,300,000

HAWAII

1:20,000,000

 Map 1

4TH INFANTRY DIVISION FORT LEWIS

9TH INFANTRY DIVISION FORT CARSON

25TH

INFANTRY DIVISION SCHOFIELD BARRACKS

2D ARMORED DIVISIO

FORT HOOD

1ST INFANT

FORT 

MEXIC O

CAN

C A N A

D A

UNION OF SOVIE T

SOCIALIST REPUBLICS

ALASKA

1:45,300,000

HAWAII

1:20,000,000
ON 

TRY DIVISION 

T RILEY 101ST AIRBORNE DIVISION

FORT CAMPBELL 82D AIRBORNE DIVISION FORT BRAGG

2D INFANTRY DIVISION FORT BENNING

A D A

1960

U. S. ARMY DIVISIONS IN THE UNITED STATES

0 100 200 300 400 500

Miles

Unit Location
 Map 2

LUXEMBOURG BEL GIUM

CZECHOSL O V AKIA

SWITZERLAN D A USTRIA

FRANCE

N E T H E R L A N D S

DENMARK

EAST GERMANY

LIECHTENSTEIN

BERLIN

NORTH

SEA

8TH INFANTRY DIVISION BAD KREUZNACH

4TH ARMORED DIVISION GÖPPINGEN

24TH INFANTRY DIVISION AUGSBURG

3D INFANTRY DIVISION WÜRZBURG

3D ARMORED DIVISION FRANKFURT

1960

U. S. ARMY DIVISIONS IN WEST GERMANY

0 50

0 50 100 Miles

100 Kilometers

Unit Location
15

a good soldier and rose to the rank of sergeant while serving in 

Germany with the 3d Armored Division before being honorably 

discharged in 1960.

The retention of the draft even as the Army shrunk dramatically in size reflected an unpleasant reality—America’s youth did 

not find the service an attractive career choice. Recruiting during 

periods of economic prosperity is always challenging, and the boom 

years of the 1950s were no exception. For the bright and ambitious, 

 Map 3

Cheju-do

Koje-do

DEMILITA RIZED Z O N E

SEA OF JA P A N

KOREA BAY

YELL OW SE A

K O R E A

S T R A I T

SEOUL

1ST CAVALRY DIVISION MUNSAN

7TH INFANTRY DIVISION TONGDUCHON

JAP A N

CHINA

NORTH K O REA

1960

U. S. ARMY DIVISIONS IN SOUTH KOREA

0

0 120 Miles

120 Kilometers

Unit Location
16 

the civilian sector offered a degree of opportunity with which the 

Army could not compete. Moreover, for those who chose to serve, 

the Navy and the Air Force seemed preferable. Not only did service 

with the Navy and Air Force avoid the prospect of having to slog 

through mud as an infantryman under a hail of bullets, bombs, and 

perhaps atomic munitions, but it appeared more relevant in the 

nuclear age, for it was these branches of the military that provided 

the bulk of America’s strategic nuclear arsenal.

Military service, of course, offered many positive features 

beyond a chance to make a sacrifice for one’s country. Thanks 

to the passage of the G.I. Bill of Rights in 1944 and the Veterans 

Adjustment Act of 1952, millions of World War II and Korean 

War veterans received generous post-service education, training, 

and other benefits. One could retire after twenty years, and 

during their service soldiers received free family medical care, 

generous post exchange and commissary privileges, and, for 

some, training that might be useful in civilian life. Unfortunately, 

in the bubbling economy of the 1950s, military pay did not 

keep pace with salaries in the civilian sector. Congress helped 

rectify the situation in 1958 when it authorized proficiency pay 

and increased salaries and retirement benefits, but recruiting 

remained an uphill battle.

The Army especially had trouble recruiting and retaining the 

most desirable individuals. In the enlisted ranks, these were the 

men who scored in the top two categories of the Armed Forces 

Qualification Test. Because of the shortfall, the Army tended to 

assign the best and brightest recruits to elite formations such as the 

airborne or to technical and staff assignments, leaving the rest of 

the force starved for talent. 

A similar practice occurred within the noncommissioned 

and commissioned officer corps. Shortages of quality noncommissioned and junior officers led to the pernicious practice of 

assigning some of the weakest leaders to basic training companies, 

a practice that made a bad first impression on new recruits and 

thus further sullied the institution’s public image. The negative 

impression recruits had of their trainers did not improve much 

after they left the training centers. A 1959 survey of men recently 

discharged from the Army found that many considered Regular 

Army noncommissioned officers to be “low level men who 

couldn’t meet the competition outside the Army and who were 

merely marking time until their retirement.”
17

One might have expected that the reduction of the officer 

corps that accompanied the downsizing of the Army—the corps 

was 32 percent smaller in 1960 than it had been in 1953—might 

have provided the Army with a vehicle for ensuring that only 

the best retained their positions. Shortcomings within the Army 

as an institution, however, diluted the officer pool. One pernicious element that arose during these years was a tendency of 

commanders to overcentralize authority and control, denying 

junior officers the opportunity to exercise independent command 

and judgment. This tendency not only stifled personal and professional growth but bred a high level of dissatisfaction among 

junior officers. In a 1954 study of company-grade regular officers, 

60 percent of the respondents believed their superior officer did 

not sufficiently delegate authority. Three years later, 81 percent of 

students at the Command and General Staff College registered 

similar feelings. 

Making matters worse was the fact that many junior officers 

believed that their superiors were mediocre at best when it came to 

demonstrating leadership. In 1963, the commander of the Eighth 

Army complained that the ranks of field-grade officers contained 

too many men who had been passed over for promotion and that 

this was contributing to the Army’s difficulty in retaining good 

junior officers, for no one “wants to work for a lazy, ne’er do well, 

or a pompous incompetent.” Careerism, rather than dynamism, 

seemed to be the watchword of the peacetime Army. 

Several factors contributed to the situation. The career 

management system of the 1950s encouraged statistical measurements and ticket punching, as the Army made diversity of assignments key to advancement. The service considered command 

assignments, particularly of combat units, to be vital for promotion, with the result that officers shunned other important work—

such as recruit training—while being rotated in and out of posts 

with little time to build expertise. In such a system, many officers 

seemed more interested in how an assignment could further 

their career than they were in learning the job and doing it well. 

Coupled with this phenomenon was a growing emphasis on 

officers as managers. This was somewhat unavoidable, given the 

complexity of managing an immense organization during a period 

of resource constraints, but the effects further eroded the respect 

junior officers had for their superiors. “Men cannot be ‘managed’ 

in the face of enemy troops. They must be ‘commanded,’” warned 
18 

one officer in 1961, but the Army had difficulty differentiating 

between leadership and management, with the result that the 

former tended to suffer.

In 1958, the commandant of the Command and General 

Staff College called for a major effort to revitalize the officer corps. 

He criticized the career management system for its tendency “to 

reward caution and conformity and to penalize progressive initiative,” and blamed “the failure of officers to consistently display 

moral courage and intellectual honesty” as a symptom of oversupervision. Whether because the Army’s senior leaders were 

preoccupied with the survival of the service or because they had 

grown complacent, the institution took few measures to address 

the situation effectively. The resulting disillusionment of junior 

officers contributed to the Army’s pressing shortage of junior 

officers during the period, particularly with regard to captains, as 

men reaching their eligibility for discharge chose not to remain on 

active duty. 

Given its difficulty in attracting sufficient talent, the draft—

even the relatively light one of the late 1950s and early 1960s—

played an important role. Not only did it offer a chance for tapping 

into a more promising talent pool than was generally willing to 

enlist, but its existence spurred some desirable individuals to enlist 

outright in the hopes of being able to influence the choice of their 

assignment, something draftees did not have an opportunity to 

do. The draft had the further benefit of encouraging some quality 

individuals to join the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), 

which sheltered members from the possibility of being drafted 

upon graduation and from which they would have an opportunity 

to pick a noncombat arms assignment. Consequently, the Army 

rejected any suggestion that the draft be eliminated.

One way the Army sought to attract candidates was to 

burnish its image as best it could among the American public. The 

military had learned about the power of film during World War 

II, and in the postwar years, it attempted to exploit this media to 

get out its message to the nation at large. It provided Hollywood 

with support in the making of such films as To Hell and Back, the 

1955 movie that told the story of Audie L. Murphy, one of the most 

highly decorated soldiers of World War II. It also took its case 

directly to the people with weekly radio broadcasts of The Army 

Hour and a television series called The Big Picture that showed the 

contemporary Army in a favorable light. The Army fully exploited 
19

its overseas mission too, with recruiting materials promising that 

recruits would get to “see all the fabulous sights of Europe.” When 

this was not enough, the service resorted to more traditional 

methods of appealing to young men. During the 1950s and early 

1960s, attractive actresses leant their charms to Army recruiting 

drives, including, ironically, Jane Fonda, who was “Miss Army 

Recruiting” for 1962. 

Perhaps the most progressive aspect of Army life in the 

1950s was the implementation of racial integration in the 

armed forces. President Truman had directed integration in 

1948. Although some senior military leaders shared the view 

that segregation policies had been inefficient, serious opposition existed throughout the service, and racially segregated 

units still existed at the outbreak of the Korean War. Heavy 

combat losses, however, had forced commanders to begin 

assigning black replacements into most of their front-line 

units. The overall success of those individuals on the battlefield 

had helped to overcome many concerns. An investigation team 

sent to Korea in April 1951 reported that combat commanders 

almost unanimously favored integration. By May 1951, some 

61 percent of the Army’s infantry companies in Korea were 

integrated. By the end of the war, not only were units in Korea 

almost completely integrated, but the process was also well 

advanced in Army units in the United States and Europe. The 

process was completed in the mid-1950s. Although the situation in the military was by no means idyllic, it became one 

of the lead institutions in the United States in taking concrete 

steps toward ending the injustice of racial discrimination. By 

1962, blacks made up 12.2 percent of the Army’s total enlisted 

strength and 3.2 percent of its officers.

The Army and the “New Look”

As challenging as they were in isolation, the Army’s resource 

and manpower problems were in large part symptoms of a much 

larger problem—the denigration of land power in American strategic thought. Surprisingly, this occurred at the hands of one of 

the nation’s most famous soldiers—retired General of the Army 

Dwight D. Eisenhower—who became president of the United 

States in January 1953. 

Eisenhower’s experience in World War II, where he had 

served as the supreme commander of allied forces in Europe, 
20 

and his analysis of the stalemated fighting in Korea, led him 

to the conclusion that conventional ground forces were largely 

obsolete in the atomic age. Not only could ground forces be 

vaporized in an atomic flash, but the prospect of trying to 

match the seemingly limitless manpower that China and the 

Soviet Union could put into the field was daunting. Technology 

was America’s edge, and it could be developed and applied far 

more cheaply than attempting to raise and maintain vast ground 

forces for what seemed to be an interminable conflict. This was 

particularly relevant because the president thought that a strong 

economy, and not numbers of men under arms, was the true 

source of national security. He therefore encouraged military 

leaders to develop a long-term national defense policy built 

on a force structure that could be maintained indefinitely—for 

the “long haul” as Eisenhower put it—without endangering the 

nation’s economic stability. “Security with solvency,” was the 

slogan, with a balanced budget being the wellspring of a sound 

security policy.

The president described his approach to national security 

as a “New Look.” Rather than allow the Communists to sap 

U.S. resources through crises and conflicts around the globe, 

Eisenhower declared that the United States would respond to 

Soldiers of Battery B, 26th Field Artillery, 9th Infantry Division, prepare to fire a 105-mm. 

howitzer during Exercise Cordon Bleu in October 1955.

National Archives
21

any conventional provocation by the Soviet Union with a nuclear 

“massive retaliation.” His premise was that the threat of nuclear 

annihilation would deter the Soviets and allow the United States 

to maintain security at a sustainable cost. The policy emphasized 

the use of aircraft to deliver the atomic punch—a policy that naturally favored the two services that operated strike aircraft, the Air 

Force and Navy. Almost immediately after the Korean armistice, 

Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson predicted that the president’s approach would allow the administration to trim military 

spending by as much as $1 billion. Tired of war and its sacrifices, the public supported 

the New Look as well as 

the postwar demobilization 

and associated defense cuts 

that fell disproportionately 

on the Army. Army Chief 

of Staff General Matthew 

B. Ridgway (1953–1955) 

fought a rearguard action 

to maintain the resource 

levels that he believed his 

service required to perform 

its mission. His poor relationship with Secretary 

Wilson, however, coupled 

with the latter’s enthusiastic 

deference to the president’s 

military experience, usually 

placed the Army in an 

indefensible position. As a 

result, the service experienced a steady decline in both resources and influence during 

the Eisenhower years (1953–1960). Ridgway would serve only 

two years as chief of staff due to his vehement opposition to the 

New Look.

One Army mission that flourished as a result of the new 

paradigm was that of protecting America’s cities from high-flying, 

long-range Soviet aircraft carrying atomic bombs. The service soon 

supplemented its antiaircraft gun batteries with the world’s first 

operational antiaircraft missile, the Nike Ajax. By mid-1956, the 

Army had deployed these missiles around twenty-two key areas 

General Ridgway

U.S. Army
22 

in the United States. Two years later, the service began to replace 

some of the Nike Ajax systems with Nike Hercules missiles. The 

Hercules carried an atomic warhead capable of destroying entire 

squadrons of Soviet bombers with a single shot. As the Soviets 

began to deploy nuclear armed intercontinental ballistic missiles, 

the Army responded by starting work on a Nike Zeus antiballistic missile system. Providing the continental United States with 

ground-based antiaircraft defenses would remain an important 

secondary mission for the Army into the 1960s.

Another new mission that arose from retrenchment of the 

New Look was that of training and equipping America’s allies 

around the world. After undertaking some limited measures in 

Greece and Turkey, in 1949 President Truman had signed into law 

the Mutual Defense Assistance Act, which authorized the Defense 

Department to provide weapons, equipment, and training to 

America’s allies on a grand scale. The Mutual Defense Assistance 

Act was modified by the Mutual Security Act of 1951. President 

Eisenhower fully supported the effort as a cost-effective means 

of strengthening free world defenses without expanding the U.S. 

Army. By 1957, the Army was providing training and materiel 

assistance to the equivalent of 200 divisions in 35 nations.

Notwithstanding the president’s conviction that most conventional ground forces were an expensive luxury with little utility in 

an atomic war, he still insisted on upholding America’s conventional ground commitment to defend Western Europe. As a show 

of support to NATO, Truman had authorized the deployment 

of substantial military forces there. The five divisions and three 

armored cavalry regiments of the U.S. Seventh Army had become 

an important symbol of the American resolve to help defend 

Western Europe against potential Soviet invasion. Indeed, United 

States Army, Europe (USAREUR), and the soldiers of the Seventh 

Army came to represent the very essence of the Army during the 

1950s. They were the men on the front line, ready to meet aggression 

at any moment. Just as the “Doughboy” and “G.I. Joe” had come to 

symbolize the American soldier in the first and second world wars, 

respectively, the men guarding the inter-German border dominated 

the public image of the modern American soldier.

The large troop commitment to Europe required the Army 

to experiment with various methods to maintain the strength of 

its units there. One of the more innovative initiatives began in 

1955 with the first of the Operation Gyroscope rotations. Under 
23

this program, the Army exchanged entire units between the 

United States and Europe instead of relying on individual replacement rotations. By doing this, the service hoped to capitalize on 

the higher morale and increased combat effectiveness achieved 

through maintaining unit integrity while also saving money by 

consolidating all of the movement costs into one rotation. After 

experimenting with a few smaller unit exchanges, the first fulldivision rotation sent the 10th Infantry Division from Fort Riley, 

Kansas, to Germany in exchange for the 1st Infantry Division. 

Later swaps included the replacement of the 4th Infantry Division 

in Germany with the 3d Armored Division and the movement of 

the 11th Airborne Division to replace the 5th Infantry Division. 

Unfortunately, the three-year unit deployment did not coincide 

with the two-year service stint for draftees, which meant that 

units in the United States had to constantly train replacement 

packets for the forces in Europe, to the detriment of readiness. 

Ultimately, the Army found that the personnel turmoil involved in 

maintaining all participating units at full strength throughout the 

process surpassed any benefits in unit morale or combat effectiveness and precluded any major cost savings. The service terminated 

the program in 1958.

As U.S. military policy became more atomic-centered, 

the Army sought to maintain its relevance by acquiring its own 

A trooper of the 2d Cavalry Regiment looks across a bridge at an East German guard tower 

near Hof, Germany, in January 1959.

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24 

nuclear capability. Its first success was the development of the M65 

280-mm. atomic cannon. The service developed the artillery pieces 

in 1952 and tested them in the Nevada desert on 25 May 1953 

with the successful firing and detonation of an atomic projectile. 

Weighing eighty-eight tons, each enormous weapon required two 

heavy tractor trucks to move it, one to its front and the other to 

its rear. The section had a top speed on the highway of thirty-five 

miles per hour. Although relatively slow and ungainly, the pieces 

could be emplaced and put into action in about the same amount 

of time that conventional heavy artillery required. The guns lacked 

the range and flexibility of aircraft delivered munitions, but they 

provided a far greater measure of accuracy and reliability. Most 

important, unlike the Air Force, they could provide atomic fire 

support to ground units at night and in any kind of weather.

Over the next few years, the Army unveiled other atomiccapable systems. The M31 Honest John, fielded in 1954, was a 

truck-mounted, surface-to-surface artillery rocket. It was unguided 

and had a maximum range of about fifteen miles. The rocket was 

considerably more mobile and could be prepared to fire in less 

time than the 280-mm. cannon. Corporal guided missile battalions 

followed shortly thereafter in February 1955. The Corporals were 

liquid-fueled, surface-to-surface guided missiles with an approximate range of seventy-five miles. Although these weapons were 

capable of firing both conventional and atomic warheads, their 

inaccuracy when compared with conventional heavy artillery made 

them poorly suited for nonnuclear use. They did, however, provide 

the Army with new options for atomic fire support. 

Later developments pushed the Army’s search for nuclear firepower to more questionable limits. The Redstone ballistic missile 

gave the Army a range out to more than 200 miles. This put the 

service into conflict with the Air Force, which claimed jurisdiction 

of the battlefield beyond the immediate ground combat area. The 

Redstone also proved too slow and cumbersome to prepare for 

launch and was eventually replaced by the more mobile and efficient Pershing missile beginning in 1964. The Redstone did prove 

its worth in other areas, however, as a modified version of the 

missile carried astronaut Alan B. Shepard on his first sub-orbital 

flight in 1961. 

At the opposite end of the spectrum was the Davy Crockett. 

Either mounted on small trucks, armored personnel carriers, or 

set up on ground tripods, the weapon looked like a short recoilless 
25

rifle with a large bulb attached at the end. The “bulb” was a lowyield atomic warhead that the operator could launch from either 

of two tubes: the 4-inch (120-mm.) with a range of a little over one 

mile, or the 6.1-inch (155-mm.) with a range of slightly less than 

three miles. First deployed to the active force in 1961, the Davy 

Crockett embraced the concept of tactical atomic war, placing 

atomic firepower in the hands of infantry battalion commanders. 

The weapons showed poor accuracy during testing, a particularly 

worrisome feature given their very short range that left crews 

exposed to both blast and radiation effects. Moreover, the idea of 

small units, led by lieutenants and sergeants, running around the 

battlefield with portable atomic weapons troubled some politicians and soldiers. Like all atomic weapons in its inventory, the 

Army could use Davy Crocketts only on direct authorization from 

the president. Because of these reservations, deployment of this 

weapon was limited and the service eventually replaced it by developing atomic ammunition for 8-inch and 155-mm. howitzers. 

While the new weapons were still in their early stages of 

development, the Army had also begun to redesign its force 

structure to demonstrate its atomic mindedness. Under pressure 

from the Department of Defense to reduce the size of the Army’s 

units and therefore its overall manpower needs, in 1954 General 

Ridgway directed Army Field Forces to study the problem with 

The men of the 1st Gun Section, Battery B, 59th Field Artillery Battalion, prepare to fire a 

280-mm. gun in May 1956.

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26 

several objectives in mind. These included increasing the ratio 

between combat and support units, achieving greater flexibility 

and mobility in combat units, maximizing the effects of technological advancements, and improving the force’s capability to 

sustain itself for extended periods in combat. By the fall, Army 

Field Forces had produced the outline for a new division structure 

that it labeled the Atomic Field Army (ATFA).

The ATFA studies produced mixed results. The experimental 

organization consolidated many of the division’s service and support 

elements, reduced the size of the division artillery, and cut the number 

of infantry battalions in the infantry division from nine to seven. 

Instead of the previous organization built around three regiments, the 

divisions were to create situation-driven task forces under the direction of smaller combat command headquarters. The reorganization 

cut nearly 4,000 personnel positions from the infantry division and 

almost 2,700 from the armored division. Tests in 1955 indicated that 

although the concepts held some promise, they required a great deal 

of new equipment, especially radios and personnel carriers, before the 

Army could implement a complete reorganization. Just as important, 

many officers throughout the service were reluctant to discard traditional organizations and familiar doctrines.

A three-man crew prepares to fire the Davy Crockett at Aberdeen Proving Ground in 

December 1959.

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27

Nonetheless, the ATFA 

studies served as a point of 

departure for further efforts 

to streamline the Army for 

atomic warfare. In addition 

to making the Army more 

atomic capable, the next chief 

of staff, General Maxwell 

D. Taylor (1955–1959), also 

looked for ways to maintain 

the service’s combat strength 

in the face of the budget 

and personnel reductions 

imposed by the Eisenhower 

administration. His experience during the Korean War 

had already caused him to 

consider potential changes in 

the Army’s combat structure. He initiated another round of studies 

to produce a new divisional organization that would significantly 

reduce manpower requirements while taking advantage of new 

technologies and weapons.

The result of this effort was the “pentomic” division. Instead 

of the three-regiment “triangular” division used since World War 

II, General Taylor envisioned a division composed of five selfcontained formations called battle groups. Smaller than a regiment 

but larger than a battalion, each of these groups would consist of 

four rifle companies, a 4.2-inch (107-mm.) mortar battery, and a 

company containing headquarters and service support elements. 

The new pentomic division would consolidate the division artillery into two battalions. One would be a 105-mm. howitzer 

battalion with five batteries, the other a mixed battalion fielding 

two 155-mm. howitzer batteries, an 8-inch howitzer battery, 

and an Honest John rocket battery. The latter two were nuclear 

systems that would give the division its primary offensive punch. 

The restructuring significantly reduced the size of the division by 

eliminating all nonessential combat elements and by removing 

much of the support base, including transportation, supply, and 

aviation, to corps and higher echelons. The new organization 

would shrink the infantry division from 18,804 to 13,748 men and 

the airborne division from 17,490 to 11,486. Because Army leaders 

General Taylor

U.S. Army
28 

believed that the capabilities of the armored divisions already met 

the requirements of the atomic battlefield, the strength and organization of those units would change little.

Taylor saw the pentomic organization as ideally suited for 

fighting an atomic war. The five subordinate battle groups in 

each of its divisions enabled the force to disperse in greater width 

and depth than was possible with a three-regiment organization. 

Companies within the battle groups could also spread out, so that 

no single element presented a lucrative target for an atomic attack. 

Taylor believed that improved communications equipment would 

allow division commanders to exert more direct control over 

their separated units than in the past. He also contended that new 

armored personnel carriers that would soon join the force would 

afford the mobility to enable the formations to converge rapidly 

and to exploit opportunities provided by atomic fire support.

Although some senior officers in the Army questioned 

whether the new equipment could deliver what Taylor expected, 

the general pushed on with his plans. The first division to undergo 

reorganization under the pentomic concept, the newly reactivated 101st Airborne Division, began its training in the fall of 

1956 at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. After a series of tests and exercises in the United States, Taylor announced in May 1957 that all 

infantry and airborne divisions would complete a conversion to 

the pentomic model by the middle of 1958. Once again, many 

officers were reluctant to embrace the new organization and 

the changes in doctrine it entailed. Taylor and his staff actively 

engaged in a campaign to convince them, arguing that the new 

divisions could meet the challenges of both general nuclear and 

smaller, nonnuclear conflicts. Just as important, Taylor believed 

the new organization would demonstrate that the Army was a 

modern, forward-thinking force, worthy of a meaningful place 

in New Look defense policy. 

General Taylor’s enthusiasm for the pentomic reorganization 

notwithstanding, early evaluations revealed flaws in the concept 

even before the divisions began to convert. One controversial 

aspect of the pentomic concept was the elimination of traditional 

regimental affiliations. Soldiers of all ranks were uncomfortable 

giving up unit identities that had contributed to morale, discipline, 

and cohesion throughout the Army’s history. Even more damaging 

was the fact that the service had not yet issued many of the new 

technologies necessary for the division to operate as intended. Of 
29

particular concern were shortages in improved armored personnel 

carriers and radios with increased range, absolute requirements 

for a doctrine that relied on dispersion and mobility for its battlefield survival. Platoon leaders and company commanders were 

left to ask if they were expected to defend their positions based 

solely on the promise of new weapons and equipment. Small-unit 

leaders likewise expressed concerns over the extended frontage 

that pentomic doctrine expected them to defend. Should atomic 

fire support not be available, ground units appeared to be seriously 

undergunned. Some senior leaders also questioned the ability of 

higher headquarters to logistically sustain the new divisions. The 

pentomic reorganization had stripped much of those capabilities 

from the division without a corresponding increase in the capabilities of corps-level support units. All in all, many in the Army 

suspected that the new organization had marginally improved the 

division’s ability to operate on an atomic battlefield, but had seriously degraded its conventional capabilities.

Although the pentomic reorganizations were to be implemented service-wide, no command in the Army was in a better 

position to test the new concept than U.S. Army, Europe. Its five 

combat divisions, three armored cavalry regiments, and heavy 

support structure made it the largest assemblage of fighting power 

in the service. Moreover, the pentomic structure and its accompanying atomic doctrine were specifically designed to counter 

the Soviet Army. Once the reorganizations were complete, U.S. 

Army, Europe, instructed the Seventh Army to evaluate the new 

pentomic infantry division. 

Seventh Army put the new divisional structure to the 

test beginning on 10 February 1958. Exercise Sabre Hawk 

fielded more than 125,000 soldiers for the largest maneuver yet 

conducted in the history of U.S. Army, Europe. The maneuver 

included a series of attack, defend, delay, and withdraw scenarios, 

while controllers accompanying each unit evaluated training and 

assisted commanders in keeping up with movements and actions 

scheduled in the event’s master plan. The maneuvers tested atomic 

weapons employment, target acquisition, resupply, and aerial 

troop movement while emphasizing individual and small-unit 

training under cold-weather conditions. As the initial defending 

force, the V Corps also experimented with stay-behind patrols, 

trained for long-range reconnaissance and equipped to identify 

potential targets for the corps’ long-range atomic weapons. 
30 

The Seventh Army’s operations and planning staff identified several deficiencies in the new organization. Divisional 

transportation and support units, for example, lacked sufficient 

personnel, vehicles, and equipment to ensure timely delivery of 

atomic weapons to forward artillery units. The Seventh Army 

found that it had to divert troops from combat units to provide 

emergency reinforcements to defend atomic weapons support and 

delivery installations against guerrilla or direct attack. Exercise 

controllers also admitted that they were unable to comply with 

guidance that each corps should plan to evacuate 2,000 casualties 

per day. Incorporating that level of loss into the exercise scenario, 

they contended, would have forced commanders to devote major 

resources to mass casualty evacuation and treatment to the detriment of tactical training objectives. 

Seventh Army commander Lt. Gen. Bruce C. Clarke voiced 

his own concerns. He believed that the exercise showed that the 

division artillery was not strong enough to provide adequate 

conventional or atomic firepower. Nor did the 4.2-inch mortar 

provide sufficient firepower as a direct-support weapon for the 

battle group. Most important, the new organization lacked any 

centralized command and control over the artillery at the division 

level. He believed that it was important for the division to be able 

to mass the fires of all its assigned artillery, a concept that ran 

counter to the pentomic philosophy of dispersed, semi-independent operation of battle groups.

In March 1958, Seventh Army units down to division level 

participated in Command Post Exercise Lion Bleu, which tested 

atomic response capabilities throughout NATO. The exercise 

identified conflicting priorities between the Army and the Air 

Force. Air commanders favored the early employment of most of 

their atomic weapons, leaving very little for subsequent support 

of ground units. The services also differed on what approach to 

targeting best supported ground offensives. Air Force leaders 

favored an interdiction campaign that would impede the enemy’s 

movement by hitting rail lines, bridges, and other related targets. 

Ground commanders preferred to destroy enemy troop and 

vehicle formations first. They believed that the destruction of the 

transportation network would only impede their own movement 

when they moved to counterattack. Lion Bleu also demonstrated 

that ground units needed to spread out to a far greater degree 

than originally planned to avoid presenting tempting targets for 
31

the enemy’s atomic weapons. At the same time, units had to retain 

sufficient mobility to concentrate for quick counterattacks when 

presented the opportunity. 

With the experience of the two major exercises still fresh, 

Seventh Army headquarters requested that its subordinate 

commanders comment on the new force structure and doctrine. 

Initial comments reflected uncertainty about tactics and techniques that were best suited to the new formations. The most 

urgent need, officers noted, was for more specific guidance 

on the degree of control that lower-level commanders would 

have over the division’s “on-call” atomic firepower. Combat 

unit commanders in particular expressed concern that much of 

their equipment did not adequately support the new concept. 

For example, the maximum range of the 4.2-inch mortar, the 

only indirect-fire weapon assigned specifically to the battle 

group, was only about 4,000 meters, too short to support units 

as widely dispersed as planners envisioned. Divisions lacked 

any credible means of defending themselves against air attack, 

while at the battle group level, communications equipment 

was unreliable, heavy, and lacked sufficient range to connect 

headquarters with their scattered subordinate companies and 

platoons. Finally, unit leaders pointed out that battle groups 

lacked any self-contained capability for rapid, cross-country 

movement. While the division headquarters had armored 

personnel carriers consolidated in its transportation battalion, 

it had only enough to move one battle group at a time. Such 

shortfalls were particularly troubling for an organization whose 

battlefield survival depended on the ability to disperse widely 

when on the defense and rapidly concentrate to attack.

The surrealism of atomic warfare was sinking in throughout 

the Army. The final big command post exercise in Europe in 1958, 

Bounce Back, depicted an initial aggressor strike employing 

forty-nine atomic warheads with yields ranging from 5 to 100 

kilotons against NATO military installations. Observers noted 

that after the strike it was difficult to generate a sense of realism 

for the exercise’s participants. What had started in the early 1950s 

as an honest attempt to understand the realities of atomic warfare 

had, by 1958, come to resemble the plot of a Hollywood science 

fiction thriller. As the exercise demonstrated, the idea of a doctrine 

based on atomic weapons had grown increasingly abstract because 

much of the effort seemed to involve mathematical calculations 
32 

of how much of the force would remain after the initial strikes. 

Evaluators noted in their reports that personnel no longer seemed 

to take the training seriously. The Army appeared trapped in an 

unwinnable paradigm.

The Army and Flexible Response

The Army’s struggles to adjust to the challenges of nuclear 

warfare on a limited budget made little impression on President 

Eisenhower. He remained true to his conviction that a strong 

economy was the nation’s most potent form of defense. He likewise 

held firm to the notion that any conflict between the United States 

and the Soviet Union would be a total war decided by an exchange 

of atomic firepower. He had little use for arguments that called for 

increasing expenditures on conventional forces capable of fighting 

small, limited wars. In 1957, his new secretary of defense, Neil H. 

McElroy, echoed the president’s sentiments when he said that if 

the two major opponents were involved in a conflict, they could 

hardly avoid an all-out military struggle.

Even President Eisenhower, however, occasionally found 

reason to call on the Army’s conventional forces. In September 

1957, in response to rioting in Little Rock, Arkansas, over the 

admission of nine African American students to the city’s Central 

High School, Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard 

and dispatched a battle group of the 101st Airborne Division to 

restore order. The troops dispersed a mob that had gathered at the 

school and remained in place until the situation had stabilized. It 

was one of the few times in American history that a chief executive 

had used the Regular Army or National Guard forces despite the 

opposition of the state’s governor.

In July 1958, events in Lebanon prompted the president to 

launch a military intervention. Resentment over Western intervention in Egypt during the 1956 Suez crisis and discontent with 

Lebanon’s pro-Western president, Camille Nimr Chamoun, had 

created a volatile brew in that religiously mixed nation. Lebanese 

Muslims pushed the government to join the newly created, antiWestern United Arab Republic (UAR) of Egypt and Syria. Chamoun, 

a Christian, accused the UAR of supporting rebels looking to overthrow him. United Nations inspectors failed to find evidence of 

significant intervention from the UAR, but after rebels overthrew 

a pro-Western government in Iraq in July, Chamoun called for U.S. 

assistance. Eisenhower responded by sending about 10,000 U.S. 
33

soldiers and marines to Lebanon to maintain order and stability 

until free elections could determine Chamoun’s fate. The Army 

contingent consisted of an airborne battle group from Europe, with 

Maj. Gen. Paul D. Adams commanding the entire force. The troops 

secured the Beirut International Airport, the city’s port facilities, 

and approaches leading to the city. Although they rehearsed for 

action against the rebels, they ultimately left the task of dealing with 

the insurgents to the Lebanese Army. The force maintained stability 

around the capital city, facilitating a peaceful election and the establishment of a neutralist government not aligned to the UAR. The last 

American troops departed Lebanon in October.

Limited operations like the one in Lebanon reinforced the 

Army’s claim that conventional forces remained relevant and 

boosted its call for increased funding. In tones more measured 

and less provocative than those of his predecessor, Taylor pressed 

many of the same points Ridgway had made in challenging the 

president’s military views. Repeated cutbacks in manpower, he 

said, had sapped the Army’s ability to meet the requirements of all 

of its assigned missions. He also complained about the insufficient 

number of transport aircraft to deliver combat units to overseas 

trouble spots. Failing to achieve his goals, he continued his crusade 

against Eisenhower’s defense policies after he retired by publishing 

The Uncertain Trumpet in 1960.

Members of the 1st Airborne Battle Group, 187th Infantry, patrol through Chiah, a suburb of 

Beirut, in 1958.

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34 

Taylor was preceded into retirement by the Army’s chief of 

research and development, Lt. Gen. James M. Gavin. In 1958, 

Gavin abruptly announced that he was leaving the service because 

under the New Look the U.S. Army was deteriorating while that of 

the Soviet Union was growing. Under those conditions, he felt he 

could not go to Capitol Hill and defend a budget in which he did 

not believe. He told reporters that he believed he could contribute 

more to national defense from outside the government than from 

within. Soon after retiring, he too published a book critical of the 

president’s strategy. 

The most basic of Eisenhower’s assumptions—U.S. nuclear 

superiority—had already taken a serious blow in October and 

November 1957 when the Soviet Union successfully placed two 

Sputnik satellites into Earth orbit. The same ballistic missiles that 

had launched the satellites could be fitted with nuclear warheads 

targeted on the United States. Americans who had counted themselves as safe from a technologically inferior Soviet bomber force 

now faced the threat of seemingly unstoppable intercontinental 

ballistic missiles with atomic warheads.

Although the president continued to express his doubts that 

mutual nuclear deterrence would create conditions under which 

a conventional conflict might be waged in Europe without escalating to general atomic war, he acknowledged that the matter 

required further study. In late 1957, the Security Resources Panel 

of the president’s Science Advisory Committee delivered a report 

suggesting that U.S. and allied forces required greater strength 

and mobility for conducting limited operations. The Gaither 

Report, named for the panel chairman, Horace Rowan Gaither, 

a cofounder of the Rand Corporation, concluded that America’s 

armed forces needed the ability to deter or suppress small wars 

before they became big ones. Eisenhower responded to the advice, 

as well as the precedent recently set in Lebanon, by authorizing the 

Army to form a Strategic Army Corps of four divisions based in 

the United States—the 82d and 101st Airborne Divisions and the 

1st and 4th Infantry Divisions. These units were to be maintained 

at a higher level of readiness than the rest of the divisions in the 

continental United States, and were trained for a variety of contingency missions short of nuclear war.

Formation of the Strategic Army Corps did not quiet criticism of the New Look. To begin with, the corps seemed less potent 

than it appeared. Indeed, rather than expand its overburdened 
35

training establishment, Army leaders soon weakened the Strategic 

Army Corps by removing the 1st Infantry Division and giving 

it the mission of conducting initial recruit training. Moreover, a 

growing number of politicians and policymakers were coming 

to believe that Eisenhower’s policies were no longer valid given 

the Soviet Union’s increasing ability to nullify America’s nuclear 

arsenal with its own. In August 1959, Senator John J. Sparkman of 

Alabama accused the administration of putting the United States 

in a box, where it would have no option other than a massive 

nuclear attack to respond to limited Soviet aggression. Scholars 

and analysts joined congressional Democrats in questioning the 

New Look. Two seminal works on the subject appeared in 1957 

to add depth to the discussion. Robert E. Osgood’s Limited War: 

The Challenge to American Strategy and Henry Kissinger’s Nuclear 

Weapons and Foreign Policy both challenged assumptions made by 

the Eisenhower administration and argued for a greater flexibility 

in U.S. military options. Finally, in the 1960 presidential election, 

Democratic candidate Senator John F. Kennedy made questions 

over America’s ability to deter or to defeat Soviet aggression one of 

the themes of his election campaign. Once elected, he immediately 

addressed those concerns. 

On 30 January 1961, ten days after his inauguration, Kennedy 

announced that he would undertake a reappraisal of the country’s 

entire defense strategy, including the modernization of its limited 

war and nonnuclear capabilities. Two months later, in a Special 

Message to Congress on the Defense Budget, Kennedy outlined 

his defense policies. He argued that America’s military posture 

needed to be sufficiently flexible to respond to challenges across a 

wide spectrum of threats. Although he expressed support for the 

continued development of the country’s nuclear arsenal, he noted 

that since 1945, nonnuclear and guerrilla wars had constituted the 

most active threat to free world security. With that in mind, he 

asked Congress to strengthen the military’s capacity to engage in 

such conflicts and to expand research and funding for nonnuclear 

weapons.

Just as had occurred during the Eisenhower administration, 

events once again demonstrated the need for conventional forces 

for tasks unrelated to nuclear warfare, both abroad and at home. 

In Europe, the Soviets tested the new president’s resolve when, in 

August 1961, they began construction of a high wall surrounding 

the Western sectors of Berlin to block the defection of East German 
36 

refugees to the West. In response, Kennedy ordered increases in 

the U.S. armed forces and called a number of reservists and reserve 

units to active duty. He deployed additional units to Germany and 

directed the reinforcement of U.S. Army units serving in West 

Berlin. By October, the Army’s regular troop strength had grown 

by more than 80,000 and almost 120,000 troops, including two 

National Guard divisions had returned to active duty.

The following year, the Soviets provoked the United States again 

by deploying bombers and missiles to Communist Cuba, where they 

directly threatened the United States. Kennedy moved 30,000 troops 

to Florida with orders to prepare to invade Cuba. Fortunately, a 

negotiated settlement resulted in the removal of the Soviet weapons, 

and the administration canceled plans for an invasion.

Meanwhile, back home continued unrest related to the civil 

rights movement and the progressive integration of blacks into 

the nation’s political and social fabric meant that the government 

sometimes needed the military’s assistance in enforcing the law 

and maintaining domestic peace. In 1962, President Kennedy sent 

20,000 regulars and 10,000 federalized national guardsmen to 

Mississippi to uphold an African American’s right to enroll in the 

state university. In 1963, anti-black violence and resistance to the 

public school desegregation in Alabama led him to federalize that 

Checkpoint Charlie, located on Friedrichstrasse, was the Allied entry point to East Berlin, 

October 1961.

National Archives
37

state’s National Guard. Kennedy’s successor as president, Lyndon 

B. Johnson, likewise called on regulars and guardsmen in 1965 to 

protect Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights advocates as 

they marched from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. 

The Army dutifully performed all its domestic duties to good 

effect, but what really excited Army leaders was the president’s 

shift in focus away from the New Look toward a more balanced 

national security policy—one in which the Army would play a 

greater role. They particularly noted the similarity between the 

president’s ideas and proposals previously presented by General 

Taylor as part of his concept of “flexible response.” As if to reinforce this connection, the president appointed Taylor to a position 

as Special Assistant to the President for Military Affairs in 1961. 

In October 1962, Kennedy made Taylor the chairman of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff, a position from which the former critic could have 

a significant impact on defense policy. 

With a new administration clearly more sympathetic to 

Taylor’s point of view, the Army was poised to come in from the 

cold. But more was needed than simply more money and a new 

strategy. Many believed that the Army also needed a blueprint 

on which to reorganize its forces. As it turned out, the groundwork had already been done. Well aware of the pentomic division’s shortcomings, Army Vice Chief of Staff General Clyde D. 

Eddleman had directed the commander of Continental Army 

Command, General Herbert B. Powell, to propose a new divisional organization in 1960. In less than three months, Powell 

and his staff submitted a study entitled Reorganization Objective 

Army Divisions (ROAD) 1961–1965, to the new Army chief of 

staff, General George H. Decker. The study offered reinterpretations of three standard divisions—infantry, armored, and mechanized infantry. It called for all three to have a common base to 

which commanders could assign a varying number of combat 

battalions. Whichever type of battalion—infantry, mechanized 

infantry, or tank—made up the bulk of the division determined 

its designation. The common base for every division consisted of 

a headquarters element; three brigade headquarters; a military 

police company; a reconnaissance squadron with an air troop 

and three ground troops; division artillery; a support command; 

and aviation, engineer, and signal battalions. The division artillery included three 105-mm. howitzer battalions, an Honest 

John battalion, and a composite battalion containing one 8-inch 
38 

and three 155-mm. howitzer batteries. The support command 

consisted of a headquarters and headquarters company; an 

administration company; a band; and medical, maintenance, and 

supply and transport battalions.

Although the exact makeup of the division depended on the 

types of maneuver battalions added, an infantry division usually 

consisted of eight infantry and two tank battalions. A mechanized division normally had seven mechanized infantry and 

three tank battalions, and an armored division had six tank and 

six mechanized infantry battalions. The new division structures 

also included three brigade headquarters, each capable of controlling from two to five combat battalions. Brigade commanders 

could create combined-arms task forces by exchanging tank and 

infantry companies between different battalions. With the ability 

to tailor the organization of a division, brigade, or battalion, the 

Army would possess the most flexible organizational structure 

in its history. With its roots in the triangular divisions of World 

War II, most observers agreed that the concept was returning to a 

structure that had stood the test of combat.

The proposed division structure was not without its detractors. General Adams complained that the proposed division 

contained far too much extraneous equipment. He simply could 

not be convinced, he said, that it took 3,318 radios—an average 

of one per 4.77 persons—to run a division. General Taylor—who 

at the time was retired and without official standing within the 

Army—did not think it was appropriate to introduce a new organization so soon after the pentomic conversion. He believed the 

Army could alleviate the pentomic division’s shortcomings by 

reinforcing it rather than by throwing out the entire concept. Most 

senior Army leaders, however, probably shared the sentiments of 

General Paul L. Freeman who told an interviewer that the only 

thing he could say about the pentomic division was “Thank God 

we never had to go to war with it.”

Ultimately, the supporters of the new organization triumphed. 

On 4 April 1961, Continental Army Command staff briefed Army 

Chief of Staff Decker on the plan for the ROAD divisions. Decker 

formally approved the reorganization a week later, and, on 25 May 

1961, President Kennedy announced his approval in a special 

message to Congress. In recognition of his desire for a strategy 

that provided a wider range of military options—dubbed “flexible 

response”—the president announced that he had directed the 
39

secretary of defense to undertake the reorganization and modernization of the Army’s divisional structure. Such a change was 

necessary, he said, to increase the force’s nonnuclear firepower, 

to improve its tactical mobility in any environment, to ensure its 

flexibility to meet any direct or indirect threat, and to facilitate its 

coordination with the nation’s major allies.

The Army initially planned to begin its transition to the 

ROAD model early in 1962 and to finish the conversion by the 

end of 1963. As it happened, the Army delayed completion of the 

effort for a number of reasons. After two units, the 5th Infantry 

Division at Fort Carson, Colorado, and the 1st Armored Division 

at Fort Hood, Texas, completed their changeovers in the spring 

of 1962, planners decided to postpone further reorganizations 

until they could test the concept in the field. In addition, much 

of the equipment necessary to outfit the new divisions was not 

available in the quantities required. Conversion to ROAD was 

completed in May 1964. Unfortunately, the Defense Department 

refused to authorize the additional manpower to fully man the 

new division structure, and the Army could only bring divisions 

in Europe up to full strength.

The Army had intended the divisions in Germany to be among 

the last to reorganize, but those units got a head start in August 1961 

when increasing tensions in Europe led Secretary of Defense Robert 

S. McNamara to approve the transfer of 3,000 soldiers and almost 

1,500 new M113 armored personnel carriers to the Seventh Army 

to complete the mechanization of its three infantry divisions. The 

Army had begun development of the M113 in 1956 to help meet 

the demands of the nuclear battlefield. It had the ability to keep pace 

with the tank during cross-country movement and could carry a 

squad of ten soldiers into combat with some protection from smallarms fire and artillery fragments. Only half the weight of the older 

M59 that it replaced, the M113 was both air transportable and 

amphibious. Ironically, the new carriers gave the divisions the kind 

of mobility the pentomic concept had envisioned, but not in time to 

prevent the pending reorganization. 

Troops in Europe may have been some of the first to receive 

the M113, but the vehicle first saw combat in South Vietnam in 

1962 as part of America’s effort to replace that nation’s older, World 

War II–era equipment. It immediately proved invaluable to Army of 

the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) troops navigating Vietnam’s rice 

paddies and canals and soon was conducting missions normally 
40 

performed by tanks against the lightly armed guerrillas. The U.S. 

Army, however, had envisioned the carrier as primarily a transport 

rather than a fighting platform, and the vehicle’s machine gun could 

be fired only if the carrier’s commander exposed his torso. The 

defects of this arrangement quickly became evident at the Battle of 

Ap Bac in January 1963 when Communist guerrillas neutralized a 

South Vietnamese M113 troop by killing the unprotected gunners. 

The Vietnamese government quickly improvised by fabricating 

gun shields for the M113, and soon the United States followed suit, 

adding gun shields and at times an armored cupola. Meanwhile, 

another new armored personnel carrier, the M114 command and 

reconnaissance vehicle, also received its first trial by combat in 

Vietnam. It was much less successful and was soon withdrawn from 

South Vietnamese service and replaced by more M113s.

Flexible Response Prompts Conventional Rearmament

The two new armored carriers were just some of the weapons 

systems that would flourish under the new administration. In one 

of his first moves after taking office, President Kennedy added 

almost 12 percent to Eisenhower’s proposed $41.8 billion defense 

budget for 1962. Although the Air Force’s Minuteman and the 

Navy’s Polaris missile programs continued to receive their share 

of funds, the budget included sizable increases for modernization of the Army’s conventional forces. As a result, the service was 

able to begin procuring large numbers of weapons, vehicles, and 

equipment that it had been forced to defer under the previous 

administration.

Soldiers had already begun receiving the initial issue of a new 

family of small arms in 1960. One of the first of those was the M14 

rifle. The new weapon fired 7.62-mm. ammunition, which the 

NATO alliance had adopted as its standard small-arms ammunition in 1954. The M14 replaced four weapons that fired different 

types of ammunition—the .30-caliber M1 rifle, the .30-caliber M2 

carbine, the .45-caliber M3 submachine gun, and the .30-caliber 

Browning automatic rifle. The Army began issuing the new weapon 

in 1960, but production was slow and troubled.

A new medium machine gun, the M60, also began replacing 

older models. It too fired NATO’s 7.62-mm. round and replaced 

three models of Browning .30-caliber machine guns. The substitution of two new weapons—the M14 and the M60—firing common 

ammunition for seven weapons each with its own special require-
41

ments, eased maintenance, supply, and ammunition problems. It 

also supported one of the NATO alliance’s earliest efforts to bring 

some order to the diversity of its member armed forces. 

Not all of the new firearms used the 7.62-mm. round. Indeed, 

no sooner had the Army adopted the M14 than it developed 

another rifle, the M16, which was lighter than the M14 and fired 

a 5.56-mm. round. In 1963, the Defense Department adopted the 

M16 as its standard weapon for jungle warfare, where volume of 

fire rather than range would determine success. Like the M14, 

production was slow. When U.S. infantry units began deploying 

to Vietnam two years later, many still carried the M14. By 1967, 

nearly all soldiers in Vietnam used the M16, which finally became 

the standard U.S. infantry weapon worldwide in 1970.

Meanwhile, in the late summer of 1962, the Army began to 

receive shipments of an additional weapon for its rifle squads, 

the new M79 grenade launcher. The aluminum-barreled 40-mm. 

weapon resembled a large-bore, break-action, sawed-off shotgun. 

With a maximum range of 400 meters, it filled a gap in range 

between hand grenades and mortars. Special rounds that left the 

muzzle as buckshot made the weapon particularly useful for the 

kind of close-quarters fighting typically found in jungle and guerrilla warfare.

The Kennedy administration’s focus on conventional forces 

increased the pace of modernization for larger weapons and 

vehicles too. In 1960, the Army began production of a new main 

battle tank, the M60. The M60 was not a completely new design, 

but rather an improvement on the older M48 Patton. The new tank 

fired a high-velocity 105-mm. main gun, while the M48 mounted 

a 90-mm. gun. To further enhance the capabilities of its armored 

force, in the fall of 1961, Army units also began receiving the new 

M88 Armored Recovery Vehicle, which could retrieve disabled 

tanks on the battlefield or winch them back to stable ground when 

they became hopelessly stuck in heavy mud. The Army further 

enhanced its mobility by developing new, self-propelled carriages 

for its 105-mm., 155-mm., 175-mm., and 8-inch artillery pieces.

The 1960s also saw rapid expansion of the Army’s use of rotarywing aircraft, or helicopters, in a wide range of roles. Funding 

constraints and clashes with the Air Force, which resented virtually any encroachment into the aviation mission, meant that the 

Army entered the Kennedy administration still flying aging Korean 

War–era CH–21 Shawnee helicopters as well as slightly newer 
42 

CH–34 Choctaws. In December 1961 the U.S. Army deployed 

two companies equipped with CH–21s to Vietnam, where they 

did yeoman service under trying conditions transporting South 

Vietnamese troops into battle against Communist guerrillas. 

The following year, the Army began sending its newest and more 

versatile helicopter to Vietnam, the Bell UH–1 Iroquois, which 

soldiers affectionately dubbed the “Huey.” As the Army deployed 

an ever-growing number of aviation units to support the South 

Vietnamese war effort, that conflict became an invaluable test bed 

for U.S. Army helicopter equipment, tactics, and doctrine. The 

threat that enemy fire posed to both the transport helicopters and 

friendly troops once they had debarked quickly led to another turf 

war when the Army began arming Hueys as aerial gunships and 

air-to-ground rocket platforms. The Air Force claimed the Army 

was encroaching into its air escort and ground support missions, 

but the Defense Department backed the Army and allowed these 

developments to occur. 

Meanwhile, in 1962 Secretary of Defense McNamara 

convened a special board chaired by Lt. Gen. Hamilton H. Howze, 

to study Army aviation requirements. After its deliberations, the 

board recommended that the number of helicopters assigned 

to existing units be increased. It also identified a need for new 

aviation-specific units to be created, including medical evacuation battalions and airmobile or air assault divisions. Based on 

the board’s recommendations, the Army reactivated the 11th 

Airborne Division in February 1963 and redesignated it as the 

11th Air Assault Division (Test). For the next two years, the 

division developed and refined airmobile and air assault tactics 

and the equipment required to operate in that role. Elements of 

the division tested helicoptors during various exercises, ranging 

from command and control maneuvers to scouting, screening, 

and aerial resupply. At the conclusion of the testing, the Army 

inactivated the division in 1965 and merged its personnel and 

equipment with those of the 2d Infantry Division to form the 1st 

Cavalry Division (Airmobile). Convinced that helicopters offered 

a unique and effective way to fight elusive guerrillas operating in 

difficult terrain, the Army chose the 1st Cavalry to be the first full 

combat division deployed to Vietnam.

The renewed emphasis on conventional forces and equipment 

notwithstanding, the Army also received a series of new rockets and 

missiles to replace weapons systems it had employed since the early 
43

1950s. In September 1960, the Army announced that the Sergeant 

medium-range guided missile would replace the older, less mobile 

Corporal system. A prototype of another solid-fuel ballistic missile, 

the Pershing, began testing at almost the same time. The Army 

featured the Pershing in demonstrations with the intent of replacing 

older liquid-fueled Redstone missiles in the near future. To improve 

protection of key installations and airfields from Soviet air attack, 

Army forces in Europe received six battalions of the new HAWK 

(for Homing All the Way Killer) antiaircraft missile designed to 

counter low-flying aircraft. A guided surface-to-surface missile, 

the Shillelagh, held great promise as a weapon for use against 

Soviet tanks. The Redeye, a shoulder-fired, ground-to-air missile 

would offer infantry units their own defense against low-flying jet 

and conventional aircraft. Finally, the Army developed a 6-inch 

atomic shell for the existing 155-mm. howitzer, thereby making the 

ponderous 280-mm. cannon and the Davy Crockett obsolete.

In another development that assisted the Army, the Kennedy 

administration greatly expanded the Air Force’s fleet of transport 

aircraft, thereby enhancing the Army’s strategic mobility. It also 

created U.S. Strike Command, a unified combatant command that 

linked the Army’s Strategic Army Corps with Air Force assets to 

rapidly project power overseas in emergency situations. The fruits 

Soldiers of the 504th Assault Group, 11th Airborne Division, board an H–34 helicopter 

during Exercise SabreHawk in February 1

National Archives
44 

of the new emphasis on strategic mobility were on display in 

October 1963 in Exercise Big Lift when the two services tested 

emergency plans by flying the entire 2d Armored Division to 

Europe, where it linked up with pre-positioned equipment. The 

exercise exposed some flaws, but confirmed the nation’s ability to 

deploy troops overseas quickly. 

The infusion of hardware and the reestablishment of conventional land combat as a legitimate element of America’s national 

strategy did much to pull the Army out of the doldrums of the 

Eisenhower years, but that was not the limit to the renaissance the 

Army experienced in the early 1960s. The president expanded the 

active Army from 858,000, its lowest strength since 1950, to over 

970,000, adding two new divisions in the process. By July 1965, 

the Army claimed 45 divisions (16 Regular Army, 23 National 

Guard, and 6 Reserve) and 17 separate brigades (6 Regular Army, 

7 National Guard, and 4 Reserve). Determined to ensure that the 

nation got its money’s worth, Secretary of Defense McNamara 

imposed modern business and budgetary practices on the armed 

forces. A major reorganization occurred in 1962, and although 

senior officers often resented the secretary’s forceful tactics, the 

quality of staff work improved. McNamara also streamlined and 

rationalized the nation’s somewhat chaotic and archaic reserve 

system, albeit not without controversy and pushback from localities that wanted to preserve access to the federal dollars that Guard 

units generated. The Army began improving its Reserve Officers’ 

Training Corps program, and last but not least, took some significant steps toward improving troop training as well. When an 

audit revealed serious discrepancies between reported and actual 

readiness levels, the service in 1963 created a new unit status 

reporting system. Thanks to an initiative begun by Secretary of 

the Army Cyrus R. Vance (1962–1964) and his under secretary 

and successor, Stephen Ailes (1964–1965), the Army began to 

redress some of the flaws in its recruit training system. It removed 

inexperienced and unsuitable individuals from recruiting centers 

and created the drill sergeant program, in which talented NCOs 

received special training to become the new bedrock of the recruit 

training process.

The Army Embraces Counterinsurgency

In addition to new weapons, equipment, and management 

practices, the strategic concept of flexible response also demanded 
45

adjustments to the Army’s operational doctrine and the manner 

in which it trained its soldiers. Perhaps the most significant shift 

involved a growing awareness of the threat posed by Communistinspired guerrilla warfare, and particularly the conflict in South 

Vietnam, where the U.S. Army had been providing trainers, 

advisers, and equipment since 1955. 

If the demands of conventional and nuclear warfare had 

necessarily taken center stage in Army thinking after 1941, Army 

planners knew that the Soviet Union had employed partisans 

against Nazi Germany in World War II, and that they might do 

so again in any future war with the West. Consequently, in 1951 

the Army published Field Manual (FM) 31–20, Operations Against 

Guerrilla Forces. One year later, the service began incorporating 

issues related to counterguerrilla warfare into its primary operations manual, FM 100–5, Field Service Regulations, Operations, 

thus ensuring that doctrine related to the subject would receive 

the widest possible dissemination.

Most soldiers had little reason to study this doctrine during 

the 1950s, but they were certainly aware of the many revolutions 

taking place in the wake of World War II, as former colonies, 

occupied states, or otherwise weak and underdeveloped nations 

around the world sought to gain their independence from 

weakened European regimes and to create new sociopolitical 

orders. They could hardly miss the Chinese Revolution, in which 

Mao Zedong succeeded in imposing communism over nearly 

40 percent of the world’s population. But only a relative handful 

of U.S. soldiers were immersed in the issue, most notably those 

detailed to advise foreign governments in waging successful counterinsurgencies against Communist movements in Korea, Greece, 

and the Philippines. 

The stakes suddenly became higher in January 1961, when 

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev declared his nation’s support 

of “wars of national liberation.” His words indicated a deliberate 

strategy to undermine Western institutions where they were 

weakest, in the emerging nations of the third world, gradually 

isolating the United States and Europe from most of the world’s 

resources and population. In direct response, President Kennedy 

announced in his 20 January inaugural address that the United 

States would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, 

support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and 

success of liberty.”
46 

Kennedy believed that Khrushchev’s wars of liberation and the 

kind of revolutionary warfare espoused by Mao required a holistic 

response. He based his approach in part on a book published by 

academic Walt W. Rostow in 1960 titled The Stages of Economic 

Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto. Rostow hypothesized that 

all human societies evolved through certain identifiable stages 

of economic development. Of these, the transition to modernity 

was the most turbulent, as the peoples of the third world eagerly 

thirsted for the bounty enjoyed by the industrialized world. If this 

“revolution of rising expectations” was not met, Rostow warned, 

the peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America would turn to 

communism via revolution and insurgency. U.S. military aid could 

help beleaguered third world governments beat back Communist 

guerrillas, but the true solution was financial, economic, and technical assistance to inoculate the transitional societies from the 

siren song of communism while building new nations along the 

lines of Western democratic and capitalistic principles. America’s 

political and intellectual elite readily absorbed Rostow’s theories, 

and Kennedy gave him a high post in his administration as he 

sought to mobilize the government for yet another permutation 

of the Cold War. Given the danger third world insurgencies posed 

to the West and their peculiarly sociopolitical nature, Kennedy 

believed it was imperative that the Army quickly transform itself 

into a politically astute, socially conscious force—one that could 

not only fight guerrillas, but that could also participate in the 

broader social engineering and nation-building effort that lay at 

the heart of America’s response. 

With some misgivings, Army leaders responded positively 

to Kennedy’s challenge. They readily accepted Rostow’s theory 

and the new counterinsurgency doctrines meant to implement it. 

They also supported many of the president’s aims in developing 

counterguerrilla capabilities. Indeed, the challenge fit nicely into 

the Army’s own creed that it needed to be able to respond to 

threats across the entire spectrum of conflict. Yet, many also felt 

that the president was pressing his point a bit too far. Army Chief 

of Staff George H. Decker questioned the wisdom in overhauling 

the Army’s entire structure in light of its heavy responsibilities in 

Europe. He also challenged the president’s assertion that conventional soldiers were incapable of defeating irregulars. Finally, many 

soldiers as well as civilians believed that the political and social 

engineering aspects of counterinsurgency lay more properly with 
47

the nation’s diplomats and civilian technicians than with soldiers. 

Nonetheless, Decker addressed the issue in a forthright manner. 

The Army published its first response to the counterinsurgency threat—FM 31–15, Operations Against Irregular Forces—

just four months after Kennedy assumed office. The new manual 

identified four primary tasks that commanders had to achieve to 

defeat guerrillas and to prevent their resurgence. First came an 

effective intelligence system to identify both the overt guerrillas 

and the covert network of political operatives that sustained them 

by harnessing the local population in support of the insurgency. 

The next step was to separate the irregulars from the civilian population, both physically and psychologically, through a combination 

of military, police, population security, resources control, and 

political measures. Third, the Army had to destroy the guerrillas 

as a military force. Finally, the government would have to reeducate the dissidents, rebuild damaged institutions, and redress the 

political, social, and economic causes of discontent. All of this was 

to be done as part of a broad, coordinated politico-military effort 

in which political, rather than the military, action was considered 

the decisive element.

Additional manuals followed, as did an increasing amount of 

classroom instruction and training exercises in counterguerrilla 

warfare. Soon soldiers were practicing counterambush drills and 

house-to-house search techniques in mock Vietnamese villages. 

West Point cadets were reading Mao Zedong’s “little red book,” 

while senior officers studied nation-building theory in a five-week 

course integrated into the curriculum at the Army War College. 

Throughout, the Army preached the idea of civic action, in which 

soldiers undertook humanitarian actions to alleviate suffering 

and win the favor of a population torn by civil strife. All of these 

endeavors paid off. By 1965, a special panel created by President 

Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, concluded that the 

U.S. Army was the only government agency that had developed 

a cogent, written doctrine for counterinsurgency, and that only 

it and the Marine Corps had developed comprehensive training 

programs to disseminate that doctrine to all ranks. 

Insurgencies in Southeast Asia and Latin America during the 

early 1960s gave the United States a chance to move beyond instruction and to put its theories to the test. U.S. soldiers trained local 

troops in counterguerrilla tactics, recommended counterinsurgency strategies to foreign officers, and helped attack those social 
48 

conditions that supposedly contributed to instability by building 

schools, digging wells, and providing medical aid. Nowhere was 

this truer than in South Vietnam, where presidents Kennedy and 

Johnson sent a steadily increasing number of military advisers, 

technicians, and combat support units. By January 1965, over 

23,000 U.S. military personnel were serving in Vietnam, nearly 

15,000 of whom were U.S. Army. As they became more plentiful 

with the passage of time, the Army brought back veterans from 

South Vietnam to its classrooms to balance theory with the lessons 

of experience. 

Perhaps the element of the Army that flourished the most as 

part of the turn toward counterinsurgency was Special Forces. The 

Army had first created Special Forces units in 1952. The mission 

of this elite force was to infiltrate behind enemy lines and organize 

partisans to conduct guerrilla actions. Special Forces’ initial focus 

was Europe, where plans called for it to raise partisans in Eastern 

Europe during a war with the Soviet Union. The service naturally turned to these experts in guerrilla warfare to play a major 

role in formulating plans, doctrine, and capability to counter 

guerrillas. Aware of the growing danger posed by insurgencies, 

President Eisenhower began adding Special Forces personnel to 

the many military assistance advisory groups the United States 

maintained around the world 

to help friendly nations raise, 

train, and equip armies, 

with the first Special Forces 

soldiers deploying to South 

Vietnam in 1957. President 

Kennedy was enamored with 

Special Forces, remarking 

that the green beret worn 

by its soldiers was “a symbol 

of excellence, a badge of 

courage, a mark of distinction in the fight for freedom.” 

In 1961, he deployed Special 

Forces soldiers to Laos to help 

organize resistance against 

Communist forces in that 

nation, in Operation White 

Star, and he set in motion a 

Col. Aaron Bank was the first commander of 

the Army’s first Special Forces unit, the 10th 

Special Forces Group.

U.S. Army
49

major expansion of Special Forces in which its numbers grew from 

2,000 men in 1961 to 8,000 by 1963. 

Although Special Forces specialized in guerrilla and counterguerrilla warfare, everyone in the Army received some exposure to 

counterguerrilla tactics and counterinsurgency theory during the 

early 1960s. Such training received greater urgency after 1963 due 

to the deteriorating situation in South Vietnam. But the institution 

had not transformed itself into an exclusively insurgency-oriented 

force. It could not do so given the high-priority mission the nation 

assigned to it to protect Western Europe from Soviet attack, the 

heavy demands of organizing and training for conventional and 

nuclear warfare, and its preoccupation with the ongoing reorganization of its division structure. Nevertheless, everything the 

Army had done in the realm of counterinsurgency education and 

training helped prepare it for the war that was to come.

Analy

By 1965, the Army had come full circle from the force that 

had fought the Korean War. The strategic policy of massive retaliation and the Army’s flirtation with tactical nuclear war had yielded 

to the more pragmatic doctrine of flexible response and a recognition that counterinsurgency was an important concern. After 

the service had experimented with the pentomic division in the 

1950s, it returned by the early 1960s to a more traditional structure. The ROAD division offered the Army the flexibility to deal 

with a wider spectrum of conflict and placed less reliance on the 

firepower of tactical nuclear weapons. Both the ROAD structure 

and the cutting-edge airmobile division would soon be tested in 

combat in Vietnam. So too would the host of new weapons issued 

after 1960.

At the beginning of the buildup in Vietnam in 1965, the U.S. 

Army possessed a force of improving caliber. The constant challenges of the Cold War had given training an immediacy and sense 

of urgency that helped to keep the force focused on training. The 

Army’s struggle to fit into the strategic policies of the Eisenhower 

and Kennedy administrations had also prompted serious reflection and innovation on the part of its leaders. Books by Matthew 

Ridgway, James Gavin, and Maxwell Taylor reflected the thoughtfulness and intellect of a force attempting to deal with the changing 

nature of military preparedness and warfare in the modern world. 
50 

This is not to say that everything was rosy. Reform of 

management at the Headquarters of the Department of the Army 

remained a work in progress, as did the reformation of the recruit 

training program, which had only just begun. Manpower shortages continued even after President Kennedy had increased the 

size of the force, leaving certain military occupational specialties 

in especially tight supply. Particularly important was the shortage 

of captains created by the lure of a robust economy and disillusionment born of inadequate benefits, oversupervision, and uninspiring leadership by their superiors. The shortage of captains and 

the tendency to centralize the existing talent at higher staffs left 

many companies in the hands of relatively inexperienced lieutenants, as the cadre of battle-tested veterans in the noncommissioned 

officer corps naturally receded due to the passage of time. Of course 

the Army could do nothing about the retirement of aging veterans, 

but it had not taken effective measures to control those aspects of 

the problem that were within its grasp. The unhealthy culture that 

fostered careerism, ticket punching, and managerial over battle 

leadership skills during the 1950s continued unchecked, leading 

the recently retired Lt. Gen. Garrison H. Davidson to lament in 

1964 that the service had not expended the “same intense care and 

attention” on developing the next generation of officers as it had 

on the next generation of weapons. 

All of these shortcomings in the peacetime Army would have 

ramifications as the service entered the stress of war. Nevertheless, 

the Army that deployed to Vietnam was certainly better trained 

and equipped than the one the nation had sent into harm’s way 

fifteen years earlier in Korea. As Army leaders prepared to deploy 

the service to Asia once again for a very different kind of war, they 

expressed confidence that their soldiers were prepared for the task.
51

The Author

Donald A. Carter graduated from the United States Military 

Academy in 1977 and served as a field artillery officer until 1992. 

During that time, he received a Ph.D. in history from the Ohio 

State University in 1985 and served as a military instructor, both 

at West Point and at the U.S. Army Field Artillery School at Fort 

Sill, Oklahoma. After leaving the Army, he joined the U.S. Army 

Center of Military History (CMH) as an archivist. In 1995, he left 

CMH to serve with the Gulf War Declassification Project and the 

U.S. Army Declassification Activity. He returned to CMH in 2003 

as a historian. His publications include “Eisenhower Versus the 

Generals,” in Journal of Military History (October 2007); “The U.S. 

Military Response to the 1960–1962 Berlin Crisis,” for a National 

Archives pamphlet commemorating the release of Cold War 

records; and “Wargames in Europe: The U.S. Army Experiments 

with Atomic Doctrine,” in Blueprints for Battle (University Press 

of Kentucky, 2012). He is the author of Forging the Shield: The U.S. 

Army in Europe, 1951–1962 (2015).

Further Reading

Bacevich, Andrew J. The Pentomic Era: The U.S. Army 

Between Korea and Vietnam. Washington, D.C.: National Defense 

University Press, 1986.

Birtle, Andrew J. U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and 

Contingency Operations Doctrine, 1942–1976. Washington, D.C.: 

U.S. Army Center of Military History, 2006.

Converse, Elliott V. III. History of Acquisition in the 

Department of Defense, vol. 1, Rearming for the Cold War, 1945–

1960. Washington, D.C.: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2011.

MacGregor, Morris J. Jr. Integration of the Armed Forces, 

1940–1965. Defense Studies Series. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army 

Center of Military History, 1981.

Spiller, Roger J. “Not War But Like War”: The American 

Intervention in Lebanon. Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: Combat Studies 

Institute, 1981.

Trauschweizer, Ingo W. The Cold War U.S. Army: Building 

Deterrence for Limited War. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 

2008.

Weigley, Russell F. History of the United States Army. 

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984.

Wilson, John B. Maneuver and Firepower: The Evolution of 

Divisions and Separate Brigades. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army 

Center of Military History, 1998.

For more information on the U.S. Army in the Vietnam War, 

please read our other titles in the U.S. Army Campaigns of the 

Vietnam War series published by the U.S. Army Center of Military 

History (www.history.army.mil).


nam War

The

Viet

50th Anniversary

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