Front Cover: The Tay Ninh Provincial Reconnaissance Unit near Nui Ba Den Mountain in 1969.

Then-Captain Andrew R. Finlayson, the author of

this book, is on the bottom left.
MARINE ADVISORS

WITH THE VIETNAMESE PROVINCIAL

RECONNAISSANCE UNITS, 1966-1970

by

Colonel Andrew R. Finlayson

U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)

Occasional Paper

HISTORY DIVISION

UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS

QUANTICO,VIRGINIA

2009

Third Printing
ii

Other Publications in the Occasional Papers Series

Vietnam Histories Workshop: Plenary Session. Jack Shulimson, editor. 9 May1983. 31 pp.

Vietnam Revisited; Conversation with William D. Broyles, Jr. Colonel John G. Miller, USMC, editor. 11

December 1984. 48 pp.

Bibliography on Khe Sanh USMC Participation. Commander Ray W. Strubbe, CHC, USNR (Ret), compiler. April 1985. 54 pp.

Alligators, Buffaloes, and Bushmasters: The History of the Development of the LVT Through World War

II. Major Alfred Dunlop Bailey, USMC (Ret). 1986. 272 pp.

Leadership Lessons and Remembrances from Vietnam. Lieutenant General Herman Nickerson, Jr.,

USMC (Ret). 1988. 93 pp.

The Problems of U.S. Marine Corps Prisoners of War in Korea. James Angus MacDonald, Jr. 1988.

295 pp.

John Archer Lejeune, 1869-1942, Register of His Personal Papers. Lieutenant Colonel Merrill L. Bartlett,

USMC (Ret). 1988. 123 pp.

To Wake Island and Beyond: Reminiscences. Brigadier General Woodrow M. Kessler, USMC (Ret).

1988. 145 pp.

Thomas Holcomb, 1879-1965, Register of His Personal Papers. Gibson B. Smith. 1988. 229 pp.

Curriculum Evolution, Marine Corps Command and Staff College, 1920-1988. Lieutenant Colonel

Donald F. Bittner, USMCR. 1988. 112 pp.

Herringbone Cloak-GI Dagger, Marines of the OSS. Major Robert E. Mattingly, USMC. 1989. 315 pp.

The Journals of Marine Second Lieutenant Henry Bulls Watson, 1845-1848. Charles R. Smith, editor.

1990. 420 pp.

When the Russians Blinked: The U.S. Maritime Response to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Major John M.

Young, USMCR. 1990. 246 pp.

Marines in the Mexican War. Gabrielle M. Neufeld Santelli. Edited by Charles R. Smith. 1991. 63 pp.

The Development of Amphibious Tactics in the U.S. Navy. General Holland M. Smith, USMC (Ret).

1992. 89 pp.

James Guthrie Harbord, 1866-1947, Register of His Personal Papers. Lieutenant Colonel Merrill L.

Bartlett, USMC. 1995. 47 pp.

The Impact of Project 100,000 on the Marine Corps. Captain David A. Dawson, USMC. 1995. 247 pp.

Marine Corps Aircraft: 1913-2000. Major John M. Elliot, USMC (Ret). 2002. 126 pp.

Thomas Holcomb and the Advent of the Marine Corps Defense Battalion, 1936-1941. David J. Ulbrich.

2004. 78 pp.

Marine History Operations in Iraq, Operation Iraq Freedom I, A Catalog of Interviews and Recordings.

LtCol Nathan S. Lowrey, USMCR. 2005. 254 pp.

With the 1st Marine Division in Iraq, 2003. No Greater Friend, No Worse Enemy.

LtCol Michael S. Groen, USMC, 2006. 413 pp.

Occasional Papers

The History Division has undertaken the publication for limited distribution of various studies, theses,

compilations, bibliographies, monographs, and memoirs, as well as proceedings at selected workshops,

seminars, symposia, and similar colloquia, which it considers to be of significant value for audiences interested in Marine Corps history. These “Occasional Papers,” which are chosen for their intrinsic worth,

must reflect structured research, present a contribution to historical knowledge not readily available in published sources, and reflect original content on the part of the author, compiler, or editor. It is the intent of

the Division that these occasional papers be distributed to selected institutions, such as service schools,

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the information contained therein will be available for study and exploitation.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface .............................................................................................................................v

Acknowledgments .........................................................................................................vii

Introduction.....................................................................................................................1

The Beginning..................................................................................................................3

PRU Organization, Recruitment, Equipment, and Command and Control ......................8

Sergeant Paul C.Whitlock: One of the First and Best, 1966-67 .....................................14

Sergeant Ronald J. Lauzon: Hue City, 1967 ....................................................................16

Staff Sergeant Wayne W. Thompson: Leadership Challenges and Spies, 1967-68..........20

First Lieutenant Joel R. Gardner: A Marine in II Corps, 1967-68....................................22

Lieutenant Colonel Terence M.Allen: The Perspective from Saigon, 1968-70 ...............27

Death at the Embassy House: Tet, 1968.........................................................................29

Sergeant Rodney H. Pupuhi: I Corps, Post-Tet 1968......................................................40

First Lieutenant Douglas P. Ryan: I Corps, 1968-69........................................................43

Capt Frederick J.Vogel: I Corps, 1969 ...........................................................................45

A Typical Operational Scenario: Tay Ninh, 1970............................................................47

Conclusions ...................................................................................................................52

Lessons Learned.............................................................................................................55

Sources...........................................................................................................................61

Bibliography...................................................................................................................63

Appendix: U.S. Marine Provincial Reconnaissance Unit Advisors.................................65

Endnotes ........................................................................................................................69

iii
iv
Preface

U.S.Marines as advisors have a long history,from Presley O’Bannon atTripoli through Iraq and

Afghanistan via Haiti, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, China, South Korea,Taiwan, Philippines,

and Vietnam. While most Marines think of the Vietnamese Marine Corps as the primary advisory

experience during that conflict, others served with various other advisory programs with the

U.S.Army,U.S.Navy,U.S.Joint Special Operations,and U.S.Civil Operations and Rural Development

Support. One of these is the subject of this study: Marine advisors with the Vietnamese Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs). This narrative is a combination of experience, research, and

reflection. While other journalistic or academic accounts have been published,this is a narrative

of participants.

Many historians consider the two most effective counterinsurgency organizations employed

during the Vietnam War to have been the PRU and USMC Combined Action Platoons (CAP). In

both cases, U.S. Marines played a significant role in the success of these innovative programs. It

should be pointed out,however,that the number of U.S.Marines assigned to these programs was

small and the bulk of the forces were locally recruited fighters. Both programs used a small cadre

of Marines providing leadership, training, and combat support for large numbers of indigenous

troops, and in so doing, capitalized on the inherent strengths of each.

The author believes that both of these programs have applicability in any counterinsurgency

where U.S. forces are called upon to assist a host government. Obviously, adjustments to these

programs would have to be made to take into account local conditions, but the core concept of

providing U.S.Marines to command or advise local militia and special police units is one that has

great promise for success. With a clear understanding of why the PRUs and CAPs worked, and

with the necessary adjustments to take into account local conditions,similar units can be created

to defeat future insurgencies. With this in mind,the author hopes that this work will provide U.S.

military planners with insights into creating and managing units capable of defeating a well-organized and highly motivated insurgent political infrastructure.

v
vi
Acknowledgments

I would like to thank several people who were instrumental in the creation of this work and

whose assistance allowed me to overcome many obstacles to acquiring firsthand accounts of

U.S. Marines who served as advisors with the Provincial Reconnaissance Unit (PRU) program.

First,I would like to thank General James N.Mattis for suggesting that I write this work. General

Mattis felt that this book would serve as a means of capturing important counterinsurgency

“lessons learned”during the Vietnam War, and in so doing, provide valuable insights for presentday Marines as they fight other insurgencies in other lands.

Second, I wish to express my deep gratitude to Dr. Mark Moyar, the author of the most objective and accurate book concerning the Phoenix program, Phoenix and the Birds of Prey. Dr.

Moyar was the first historian of note to do the kind of thorough research into the Phoenix program needed to strip away the misunderstandings surrounding this counterinsurgency program.

I am indebted to him for his support and insights during the creation of this work.

One individual, Lieutenant Colonel (Ret) George W.T.“Digger” O’Dell, provided invaluable assistance to me by putting me in touch with former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers

who had been involved with the PRU and could provide information on how the CIA viewed the

contribution of the military assignees to the program.Lieutenant Colonel O’Dell served in the Marine Corps from 1965 to 1968, and then left the Marine Corps to join the CIA as a paramilitary

officer in Laos and the Middle East from 1969 to 1975, before returning to the Marine Corps to

finish his career in 1992 as one of the Corps’ few experts in the area of special warfare. He was

tireless in his efforts to introduce me to his many friends in the CIA who had knowledge of the

PRU Program.

I was ably assisted with the editing and formatting of this work by two longtime friends and

colleagues, Hildegard Bachman and Mary Davisson. They provided many professional and valuable suggestions on how to improve the content and appearance.

I would like to thank several former CIA officers who provided valuable background material

on the Phoenix program, the PRUs, and contact information on the Marines who served as advisors. They are Rudy Enders,Ray Lau,Hank Ryan,Warren H.Milberg,William Cervenak,and Charles

O. Stainback. These patriots served their country in silence, often in extremely dangerous assignments, and I am both indebted to them for their assistance with this paper and for their unsung service to our nation.

At the History Division,Chief Historian Charles D.Melson provided project guidance,with editing by Kenneth H.Williams and layout and design by W. Stephen Hill.

I also thank Studies in Intelligence for permission to reprint the map of Tay Ninh from my

2007 article.

vii
viii
Introduction

During the latter stages of the Vietnam War, small teams of dedicated and courageous Vietnamese special police,led byAmerican military and Central IntelligenceAgency (CIA) personnel,

fought a largely unsung war against the political leadership of the Communist insurgency. These

special police units were called Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs), and they conducted

some of the most dangerous and difficult operations of the Vietnam War. Because these units

were created, trained, equipped, and managed by the CIA, they worked in secret, a status that

often led to myths and falsehoods about their activities. So pervasive are these myths and falsehoods that many historians often take them at face value without subjecting them to the same

scrutiny as other historical aspects of theVietnamWar. This lack of understanding is further complicated because of the political divisiveness within the United States surrounding the Vietnam

War, which led some opponents of U.S. involvement in that war to accept the most pernicious

and false claims made against the entire pacification effort conducted by theAmerican and South

Vietnamese governments.

The passage of time and the work of some historians have helped to lift the shroud of secrecy

around the PRU and their battle against the Viet Cong.1 This book relates the story of how a

small group of U.S. Marines assigned to this program contributed to the program’s success and

to identify, using official records, personal interviews, and other unclassified sources the factors

that contributed to that success.2 In so doing, I hope to inform the reader about why the PRU

Program was so successful in destroying the Viet Cong Infrastructure (VCI) despite many obstacles placed in its way by both the South Vietnamese and United States governments.

1
2
The Beginning

The Vietnam War was really two wars. One

was the purely military war pursued by the

North Vietnamese Army (NVA) against the military forces of the government of SouthVietnam

(GVN) and the United States of America. The

other war was the insurgency waged by theViet

Cong political apparatus, an extension of the

Lao Dong Party in SouthVietnam,using local political cadre and guerrillas. These two wars

were part of an overall strategy of the North

Vietnamese Lao Dong Party to overthrow the

GVN and unite all of Indochina,including Laos

and Cambodia, under their control. This dualtrack strategy by the North Vietnamese Communists modulated between an emphasis on

classic Maoist revolutionary war from 1956 to

1968 to a predominantly conventional war strategy from 1968 until the fall of Saigon in 1975.

The scope of this work does not allow for an

analysis of the dual-track strategic approach by

the North Vietnamese,but an understanding of

it is necessary for the reader to comprehend

how both sides fought the war. I leave it to the

reader to refer to several excellent books on this

subject, such as Mark Moyar’s Triumph Forsaken, Lewis Sorley’s A Better War, and Harry

Summers’s On Strategy, for analyses of how this

strategy was applied during the war. The author’s 1988 Marine Corps Gazette article may

also prove helpful.3

This work examines one aspect of the counterinsurgency war waged in South Vietnam

against the Communist political leadership

(hereafter referred to as the Viet Cong Infrastructure, or VCI) of that insurgency. It deals

with the primary instrument used by the U.S.

Central IntelligenceAgency (CIA) to attack and

defeat theVCI—the Provincial Reconnaissance

Unit (PRU) Program.

Rudy Enders, the legendary chief of operations for the CIA and one of the CIA’s most original and effective organizers of paramilitary

operations, explains below the origins of the

Phoenix program in SouthVietnam and the role

the PRUs played in the early years of its existence. We pick up his story, in his own words,

in 1966:

As Agency-supported programs matured,

the volume of intelligence at province level

became overwhelming. Some of it was tactical, but most pertained to the VCI. As one

would expect, the collector seldom shared exploitable intelligence with anyone. With spies

everywhere, who could be trusted? Why

should you pass hot information and let others take credit for the operation? This could

be said of the National Police, Special

Branch, Rural Development Cadre, PRU, Military Security Service, and Sector and Subsector G-2s. In late 1966, they were all

running operations against theVCI, but there

was little coordination or cooperation. Besides, delays in reaching province often rendered information totally useless. Obviously,

something had to be done. The answer was

to design a mechanism to ensure cooperation amongst all existing South Vietnamese

organizations operating against theVCI, and

that this be done at the district as well as the

province levels.

The CIA’s Region One ROIC [Regional Officer in Charge] and his deputy grabbed the

bull by the horns. They decided to run a pilot

program in Quang Nam Province’s five districts, starting with Dien Ban District. Visits

to these districts revealed few had 1:50,000

scale maps of their area, a war room, or any

files onVCI cadre. It was shocking. Most district compounds had barely enough room for

the subsector staff and advisors. Accordingly,

the ROIC asked General [Lewis W.] Walt, the

commander of the Marines in I Corps, for

supplies to build five A-frame-type wooden

District Intelligence and Operation Coordinating Centers (DIOCC). The centers would

be staffed by representatives from the CIA’s

Census Grievance, PRU, Rural Development,

and Police Special Branch, along with the

South Vietnamese National Police and Military Security Service. They would be run by

the district chief’s S-2 and advised by an

American officer. The ROIC explained his initiative to John Hart, the CIA’s Saigon station

chief at the time, and he used the term Intelligence Coordination and Exploitation

(ICEX) as a way to describe the concept.

3
CIA felt ICEX was too much of a mouthful

and began looking for a symbolic alternative

by holding a region-wide contest to find a

new name for the program. The word was

passed to all I Corps POICs, and the RDC/P

(Rural Development Cadre/Programs) officer in Quang Ngai suggested Phuong Hoang,

Vietnamese for Phoenix, the mythical bird

that emerges from ashes. He won the contest,

and that is how the Phoenix program got its

name.

Phoenix was nothing more than a coordination and exploitation program directed

against terrorists and those supporting terrorists. Organizations which came under the

Phoenix umbrella were already working

against theVCI. The only difference involved

sitting down at the table to coordinate and

exploit relevant, usable intelligence. It was

not some devious, nefarious CIA plot to assassinate unarmed civilians. Those who

risked their lives going after armed terrorists

were not murderers. They were legitimate

military, paramilitary, and lawful police

forces facing terrorists, spies, and nonuniformed armed insurgents. Blaming Phoenix

for VCI deaths is like calling the FBI murderers because armed terrorists preferred to

fight rather than surrender to lawful authority. ...

After we established the DIOCCs in I Corps,

the Phoenix program began to take on a life

of its own. The clandestine VCI became our

top priority. As long as it existed, pacification

was impossible. VC terror tactics were far

more effective in winning over the population than any “hearts and minds” program.

ICEX/Phoenix soon came under the microscope of the Saigon Station staff and was

eventually scrutinized by the ambassador

and Robert“Blowtorch”Komer. It didn’t take

long for Komer to seize upon Phoenix as a

way to make his mark in Vietnam. He had

President [Lyndon B.] Johnson’s ear and this

made him politically powerful. Anyone

standing in his way would be run over with

a bulldozer.

If anyone could move the program forward, it was this overbearing, arrogant, mission-driven former CIA analyst. He acted as

a ramrod to implement a “rifle shot” rather

than a“shotgun”approach to the VCI. As the

number-three man in Saigon, he vetoed various “concept” papers until a “missions and

functions”paper finally appeared before him,

which he accepted.“Anything else,” he said,

“would not be understood by the military.”

Although Komer would be the Phoenix

“Czar,” he needed someone to actually run

the program. Here he fingered CIA’s Evan

Parker Jr. of the Parker Pen Company. He

couldn’t have made a better choice. Evan

Parker was a first-generation paramilitary

officer, having served with OSS Detachment

101 during World War II as a liaison officer

with Merrill’s Marauders and the British. He

was a GS-16 at the time, considered highly

4

Photo courtesy of CWO-4 Ronald J. Lauzon

Provincial Reconnaissance Unit operators in Thua

Thien Province in 1967. In areas contested or controlled by the Vietnamese Communists, they would

go on operations dressed to blend in with the Viet

Cong (VC) or North Vietnamese Army (NVA). The

weapon is a Communist bloc AK-47.
intelligent, soft-spoken, well organized, enormously respected, and extremely capable. He

also came from my parent Special Operations Division at CIA headquarters and later

became its chief, an organization I would

later head.

Essentially, those in Saigon institutionalized what we were already doing in I Corps.

By the summer of 1967, MACV agreed to assign military intelligence officers to the

DIOCCs and PIOCCs throughout the country.

The name change to Phoenix (except in I

Corps) was in transition; thus, all the early

program guidance written by Parker’s staff

was circulated as ICEX memoranda. All of

this meant nothing to us in I Corps except

added focus and high-level attention to what

we were doing. Indeed, many of the papers

circulated were simply upgraded versions of

what we already had drafted to explain ICEX

to Saigon.4

As Enders stated,the Phoenix program was

an effort to unify the disparate counterinsurgency programs of both the United States and

the GVN so a more effective approach could

be developed. This widely misunderstood program was a bureaucratic consolidation of the

various ongoing intelligence-gathering efforts

being employed in South Vietnam to fight the

Communist political infrastructure. Because

the Phoenix program included several CIAsponsored activities, such as the PRUs, it was

given an aura of secrecy that only served to

arouse suspicion among many observers and

later among some scholars that the program

somehow involved“illegal”or“criminal”activities.5 In reality, the Phoenix program sought

to organize the fight against the VCI in a more

systematic and effective manner by requiring

the various GVN andAmerican agencies to cooperate and coordinate on a countrywide

level.

The efficacy of this approach was not lost

on the Communists, who recognized and acknowledged the serious threat Phoenix posed

to their plans to subvert the GVN. In fact,there

is no more cogent proof of the fear that

Phoenix instilled in the Communists than the

comments of several North Vietnamese Communists who verified the program’s effectiveness after winning the war. Perhaps the most

telling of these are credited to Mai Chi Tho,

who controlled the most famousViet Cong spy

of the war, Pham Xuan An, a strategically

placed journalist in the Time magazine office

in Saigon. He identified An’s “most valuable

contribution” over nearly 25 years of spying

for the NorthVietnamese as“everything on the

pacification program . . . so we could develop

an ‘anti’ plan to defeat them. . . . I consider this

to be the most important because of its strategic scale.”6

Despite having the complete American and

SouthVietnamese pacification plans,the Communists never were able to defeat the GVN

pacification program and, indeed, by early

1969, the Communists realized that their plan

for a “general uprising” using local Viet Cong

units in South Vietnam was doomed to failure

and that a purely military solution involving

Communist forces from North Vietnam invading South Vietnam was the proper strategy to

pursue. Internal Communist documents and

information provided by CIA spies within the

VCI confirmed that the VCI and their VC guerrilla forces were largely defeated by early 1970

leaving little option for the northern Communists but to pursue a conventional military

strategy. For an insight into this changed strategy from the enemy’s side, see Truong Nhu

Tang’s Viet Cong Memoir, which details the

enemy’s analysis of the military and political

situation in South Vietnam during the crucial

year of 1970.

To understand the PRU Program and how it

was used to attack the VCI, it is helpful to understand how it fit into the overall Phoenix

program, in theory and practice. Before 1967,

the PRU teams were under the control of CIA

officers in many ofVietnam’s 44 provinces,but

they had no real national-level coordination

mechanism. It was in 1967 that the PRU finally

became a national program under CIA officer

Evan Parker and was given its national-level

mission of defeating the political infrastructure

of the Viet Cong.7 The ICEX Program evolved

into the Phoenix program, but the PRU mis5
sion remained the same despite this organizational change.

The Phoenix program as it emerged at the

end of 1967 had organizational structures at

every level of administration in SouthVietnam.

At the national level, the Phoenix Committee

was chaired by the minister of interior, with

the director general of the National Police as

the vice chairman. Other members of the national-level Phoenix Committee were the minister of defense, the J-2 and J-3 of the Joint

General Staff,and representatives from the National Police Field Force (NPFF), the Police

Special Branch (PSB), the Revolutionary Development (RD) Ministry, and the Chieu Hoi

Ministry.

At the national level, one of the key CIA assistants to the CIA’s chief of station on the PRU

Program was the legendary Tucker Gouglemann, a former Marine who was severely

wounded during the battle for Guadalcanal.

He was medically discharged from the Marine

Corps after World War II and joined the CIA.

The author had several conversations with Mr.

Gouglemann in the Duc Hotel in Saigon in

1969 and found him to be a highly intelligent

and engaging man who could best be described as a brilliant and profane curmudgeon

who possessed an intense love for his job and

the Vietnamese. He also had an almost pathological hatred of bureaucracy and bureaucrats,

whom he felt had little understanding of Vietnam or how the war should be fought. Sadly,

Gouglemann was captured in Saigon after the

Communist victory in 1975 and died undergoing interrogation by the North Vietnamese.

His body was released to the American government two years after his capture and

showed clear signs of torture.8

The senior U.S. Marine officer assigned to

the PRU was then-Lieutenant ColonelTerence

M.Allen, a combat veteran of the Korean and

Vietnam wars who spent nearly three years in

Vietnam running the Department of Defense

(DoD) side of the PRU program. He was tireless in his efforts to mold the PRU into an effective counter-VCI organization, a task that

was often complicated and frustrated by what

he described as “the obstruction of the U.S.

State Department and the naïve and false reporting of U.S.journalists who had no valid understanding of the PRU.”9 Major,later Colonel,

Nguyen Van Lang was the senior Vietnamese

assigned to the PRU headquarters in Saigon.

Later, Major Lang became the director of the

PRU when control of the PRU passed from the

CIA to the South Vietnamese National Police.

From 1968 until 1970, Colonel Allen’s job involved providing advice and assistance to

Major Lang on the national administration of

the program.

At the regional level, the Phoenix Committee was chaired by the region’s military commander, and the deputy chair was the region’s

National Police commander. The remainder of

the committee was made up of representatives

from the same ministries found on the national

committee.

The provincial Phoenix Committee differed

from the national and regional Phoenix committees in one very significant way. The national and regional Phoenix committees were

largely administrative entities that provided

guidance and advice to the senior Vietnamese

political leaders and set counterinsurgency

policy. The provincial Phoenix committees

were actively engaged in the collection of intelligence on,and the targeting of,theVCI. The

provincial Phoenix committees were chaired

by the province chief, normally an ARVN

colonel or lieutenant colonel,with the provincial police chief as the deputy-chairman, although in some provinces the cochair was the

provincial intelligence officer. Representatives

of the G-2, the G-3, the Rural Development

(RD) program,the Police Special Branch (PSB),

Census Grievance (CG), the National Police

Field Force (NPFF),and the Chieu Hoi program

made up the rest of the committee,along with

intelligence officers from the military units in

the province. The provincial Phoenix committees were required to meet at least once a

week, but they often met far more frequently,

sometimes daily. They operated 24 hours a

day, every day, collecting and discussing intelligence on the VCI, maintaining extensive

records on the progress of the anti-VCI effort

6
in their province,and issuing arrest orders for

VCI suspects.

Below the provincial Phoenix committees

were the DIOCCs. These were the districtlevel Phoenix Committees,and they served as

the front-line units in the war on the VCI. The

DIOCC was organized along the same lines as

the Provincial Phoenix Committee, and like

the Provincial Phoenix Committee,it operated

24 hours a day,seven days a week. In addition

to its intelligence-gathering and VCI-targeting

duties, it also provided intelligence for the

American and Vietnamese military units stationed in the district. Each DIOCC had four

sections: administrative, military intelligence,

police intelligence, and operations. In many

DIOCCs, the PRU was represented, but normally they had no representation on the

DIOCC. Instead, the PRU provided its intelligence input to the police intelligence representative in the DIOCC and received missions

directly from the district chief.10

The DIOCCs created dossiers on VCI personnel and coordinated the efforts to arrest

VCI and bring them to justice. They also maintained a list of all VCI positions in the district

and attempted to identify the individuals in

these positions. While many organizations

were given the mission of defeating the VCI,

such as the National Police,the National Police

Special Branch, and the armed forces of the

United States and GVN, the principal action

arm of the Phoenix committees was the CIAorganized, -funded, and -controlled PRU.

In theory, the DIOCC system provided the

infrastructure needed to collect intelligence

on the VCI and to coordinate operations

against it. In practice, the DIOCC system did

not always work as it was intended. According to the U.S. Marine PRU advisors interviewed by the author, the DIOCC system

worked very well in the provinces where the

representatives of the Vietnamese and American agencies on the various regional, provincial, and district Phoenix committees worked

well together and cooperated in the generation of operational leads.

However, several of the Marine PRU advi7

Chart re-created from Andradé, Ashes to Ashes, p.291
sors interviewed for this paper stated that the

system in their province did not meet the standards necessary to fully exploit the DIOCC system. They attributed this situation to several

factors, but the primary one was bureaucratic

jealousy on the part of the agencies represented on the provincial and district-level

Phoenix committees. They also identified a reluctance to share operational leads since the

agencies involved were afraid they would not

receive the credit (and the budget allocations)

they deserved if another agency acted on the

intelligence they gathered. Petty personality

conflicts also militated against the smooth

functioning of many DIOCCs. They stressed

that where the provincial and district chiefs

had strong leadership skills and where American advisors to the representatives on the

DIOCCs enjoyed the confidence and respect

of their Vietnamese counterparts,the DIOCCs

functioned effectively.

Once the Phoenix program became a nationwide program with an organizational

structure that ran from Saigon to each district

in the country,the CIA soon realized it did not

possess the personnel needed to provide the

required advisors for the PRU Program. Indeed, it was having great difficulty finding adequate numbers of CIA case officers for other

tasks in SouthVietnam,especially case officers

with any experience in paramilitary activities

such as were required to advise the PRU. Since

every province in South Vietnam needed a

PRU advisor and in some cases two, the CIA

needed at least 44American provincial PRU advisors and 30 regional and Saigon-based headquarters staff. With a very limited number of

CIA paramilitary officers available worldwide,

it was readily apparent that the CIA would not

be able to provide these PRU advisors using

their own personnel.

This serious shortcoming needed to be

solved if effective control of the PRU was to

be established and maintained by the CIA. The

solution to this problem came in the form of

assigning U.S. military personnel to the PRU

Program using cover orders assigning them to

the Combined Studies Division (CSD) of the

Military Assistance Command, Vietnam

(MACV). Ideally, these DoD assignees were to

be skilled in the special warfare tasks needed

by a PRU advisor. With this in mind, the bulk

of the PRU advisors came from the U.S.Army’s

Special Forces, the Navy’s Seals, and the U.S.

Marine Corps’ Force Reconnaissance Companies.

Since it was envisioned that the PRU would

have to coordinate closely with and support

U.S. forces, it was decided to assign PRU advisors to the four military regions based upon

service affiliation. For instance,since the bulk

of U.S.forces in I Corps were U.S.Marines,the

CIA tried to assign Marine PRU advisors to that

military region. The U.S.Army was heavily represented in II Corps and III Corps, so the CIA

assigned U.S. Army Special Forces and U.S.

Army Military Intelligence PRU advisors to

those two military regions. U.S. Navy Seals

were assigned as PRU advisors to the southernmost military region, IV Corps. The first

large contingent of U.S. military advisors was

assigned to the PRU in 1967. However, some

U.S. military personnel had been assigned to

the PRU in very small numbers before 1967

when the PRU Program was not organized

countrywide. Most of these early U.S.military

PRU advisors were assigned to I Corps.11

PRU Organization, Recruitment,

Equipment, and Command and

Control

Before 1967,the PRUs existed at the provincial level,and less than half of the provinces in

South Vietnam had such units. They ranged in

size from 30 to 300 men, depending on the

size of the province and the need for their

services by the provincial chiefs and the CIA.

Many of the early PRU units were organized

along strictly military lines since they were

often employed in military operations against

main force VC units. In 1967, when Civil Operations and Rural Development Support

(CORDS) took over operation of the PRU Program, the CIA decided to give the PRU a countrywide presence and a standard table of

organization for a PRU team. For reasons that

are not known, it was decided that each PRU

team would consist of 18 men broken down

8
into three six-man squads. The senior squad

leader in each team became the team leader.

The idea was to assign an 18-man PRU team to

each district so the team could react quickly

to any targets identified by the DIOCC in that

district. In theory, each province would be

given enough PRU teams for one to be assigned to each DIOCC. This new organization

went into effect in late 1967 and was maintained until the PRUs were integrated into the

GVN National Police in 1973. This new national-level PRU organization resulted in most

districts receiving an 18-man PRU team,which

meant that small provinces with only a few districts or no districts had fewer than 50 PRU

members assigned while larger, more populous provinces with many districts had as

many as 300 PRU members assigned. In total,

4,000 to 6,000 Vietnamese PRU personnel

were assigned countrywide to the program

during the years 1967 to 1975.12

A typical post-1967 provincial PRU organization was the one found inTay Ninh Province

in South Vietnam’s III Corps. In this organization, each of the four districts in Tay Ninh

Province was assigned an 18-man PRU team

and an additional 18-man team was assigned

to the capital of the province as a “city team”

that could mount operations in the densely

populated Tay Ninh City or be used to reinforce one or more of the district teams. A very

small headquarters cell consisting of the South

Vietnamese PRU commander;his deputy,who

was also the leader of the Tay Ninh City PRU

team; and an operations/intelligence officer

provided the staff planning and interagency

coordination for the province. According to

the Marines assigned to the PRU, this form of

organizational structure worked well despite

the paucity of personnel assigned to staff duties.

The recruitment of PRU personnel varied

from province to province. Many PRU members were former VC or former ARVN soldiers.

Some were former South Vietnamese Special

Forces soldiers or former members of a Citizen Irregular Defense Group (CIDG), while a

few were simply local youths who did not

want to join the regular ARVN forces and preferred to serve their country in their own

home province. In a few provinces, some

paroled criminals were allowed to join the

PRU, but the number of such people was few

and greatly reduced after 1968. Some had

strong religious and community affiliations

that made them natural enemies of the Communists, such as Catholics, Cao Dai, Hoa Hao,

and Montagnard tribesmen. Most PRU mem9
bers were strongly motivated by their hatred

of theVCI.13 Since there were many people in

every province who had a grudge against the

VCI, there were many South Vietnamese who

were eager to join the PRU. The fact that most

PRU hated the VCI made them a very formidable force and one that made it very difficult for

the Communists to infiltrate or proselytize.14

According to ColonelTerence M.Allen,the senior military advisor to the PRU Program in

Saigon from 1968 to 1970, the most effective

PRU teams were those who were recruited

among the Cao Dai and Catholic religious communities and the Montagnard tribes since

these groups had a visceral hatred of the Viet

Cong and a vested interest in protecting their

communities from the ravages inflicted on

them by the VCI terrorist cells.

The Marine PRU advisors interviewed by

the author expressed confidence in the recruiting methods used to obtain PRU members

and felt the men assigned to their units were,

on balance, extremely competent and experienced. However,there were some notable exceptions. This was especially true in the early

phases of the PRU program when MACV first

began to assign its personnel in I Corps. The

senior CIA officer in Quang Tri Province in

1967, Warren H. Milberg, explained one

province’s recruiting problem this way:

Quang Tri was a relatively sparsely populated province. By mid-1967, the war was

heating up at all levels. Young men of military age and qualification were either in the

ARVN, the CIDG, or were engaged in farming

in the districts. PRU recruitment became a

problem of demographics: there was just not

a large pool of physically and mentally qualified young men to choose from. It was pretty

well known in the province what the PRU did

and what their mission was so that even

those who may have otherwise qualified

were too risk-averse to want to join. The people we did manage to recruit all came with

their own set of “issues.” For the most part,

this was not a problem, although we did

have some exceptions here and there. In the

end, they became a great group of brave

fighters, but they were not unlike a pack of

pit bulls: training, discipline, leadership and

focus were needed all the time.15

The experience of PRU advisor Sergeant

Rodney H. Pupuhi in 1968 illustrates the recruiting challenges faced by the PRU in I

Corps. When he reported to his PRU unit in

Hoi An, Quang Nam Province, in March 1968

shortly after the Tet Offensive, he was not encouraged by what he found. The Quang Nam

PRU was in the midst of being disbanded, and

only seven PRU members remained out of the

original pre-Tet force of more than 100 men.

Like any good Marine noncommissioned officer, Sergeant Pupuhi immediately took charge

of the situation, held a formation of his remaining seven-man PRU force, made them

squad leaders,and sent them to their home villages to recruit replacements for each squad.

As he put it,“I gave these men strict guidelines

on recruiting and a deadline of two weeks to

return with enough recruits to fill the seven

squads. Slowly, these men came back with

‘family within family’ recruits—that is, brothers recruited other brothers and nephews recruited cousins until we had the necessary

numbers to fill the squads.”

Pupuhi arranged with the CIA to give the

recruits’ families advance pay and to have Air

America fly the recruits to Hoi An. In short

order,Pupuhi had resurrected the Hoi An PRU

with reliable men and had embarked on a rigorous training program to prepare his new recruits for their demanding and dangerous

missions. Within six weeks of his arrival in Hoi

An,he had recruited,trained,and equipped his

new unit and began conducting counter-VCI

operations.16

PRU teams were equipped with an assortment of uniforms, weapons, and equipment.

Most PRU members dressed in the black pajamas worn by Vietnam’s peasants or tigerstriped camouflage uniforms when they went

to the field, but some units actually used

VC/NVA grey or light green uniforms when

such uniforms gave them a tactical advantage.

In garrison, most PRU members wore either

civilian clothes or the standard PRU tigerstriped camouflage uniform. This wide variety

10
of uniforms made it difficult for both the

enemy and friendly units to identify them.

Therefore,it was essential that the U.S.PRU advisors coordinate closely with friendly units if

the PRU were to operate in areas where U.S.

andARVN units were located. The Marine PRU

advisors normally wore black pajamas or tigerstriped camouflage uniforms in the field and

civilian clothes while in garrison. Some advisors even wore civilian clothes on PRU operations but this was rare.

Weapons consisted primarily of M-16 rifles,

45-caliber pistols,M-79 grenade launchers,and

M-60 machine guns. However,many PRU units

maintained extensive armories of captured

weapons, and they often used these in operations against the VCI. The PRUs found it convenient to equip some of their men with

Communist-made AK-47 rifles and RPG

grenade launchers, so any VCI encountered

during an operation in enemy territory would

initially think they were fellow VC. This gave

the PRUs a distinct tactical advantage in any

engagement.17

This ploy of using enemy weapons became

dangerous after late 1967 when the CIA began

planting doctoredAK-47 and other enemy ammunition in enemy stockpiles. These doctored

rounds would explode when fired,causing serious, often fatal, wounds to those firing

11

Photo courtesy of GySgt Rodney H. Pupuhi

A more typical Provincial Reconnaissance Unit operation showing uniforms and equipment as worn by

the Vietnamese and Americans. This was more characteristic than the VC or NVA uniforms shown before.
them.18 Still, despite this serious risk, many

PRUs continued to use enemy weapons and

ammunition after 1967 when they thought the

risk was worth it. Other weapons that were

employed by PRU members and their advisors

were Browning 9-mm automatic pistols,38-caliber Colt Cobra revolvers,Browning automatic

rifles (BAR), M-2 carbines, Swedish K submachine guns, and British Bren guns. This wide

assortment of weapons posed a logistical challenge to some PRU teams, but in most cases

there were never any serious shortages of ammunition. Captured enemy ammunition was

readily available, and the CIA supply system

worked wonders in obtaining just about any

ammunition required for operational use. Ammunition for the PRU was often stored in

ConEx boxes within the CIA“embassy house”

compounds or in the various PRU armories

throughout the provinces so it could be rapidly issued.

For communications, the PRUs were

equipped with the PRC-25 FM radio and its ancillary equipment. A few PRU units maintained

some high frequency radios for long-range

communications, but such radios were not

standard issue, and most PRUs needed to establish temporary radio relay sites on mountaintops to support their long-range missions.

This was especially true in the mountainous

areas of I Corps.The PRUs were given their

own frequencies for tactical communications.

They were wary of the enemy intercepting

their radio communications, so they seldom

used their radios for the transmission of operational details while they were in garrison,

choosing instead to use their radios sparingly

and primarily during field operations. The

PRUs had neither encrypted communications

equipment nor code pads,so communications

security was often nonexistent,ad hoc,or rudimentary. One of many valuable assets an

American PRU advisor brought with him

whenever he accompanied a PRU team to the

field was the ability to encode communications; however, the use of encoding materials

was not frequently employed during most PRU

operations,even those that were accompanied

by U.S. PRU advisors. Some PRUs did not use

radios on their operations,preferring to maintain complete silence until the mission was

completed.

PRU forces were equipped with ground

transport in the form of commercial light

trucks and motorcycles, which were purchased by the CIA. These trucks and motorcycles were typical of the trucks and

motorcycles used by Vietnamese civilians, so

their use did not arouse suspicion or draw unwanted attention to them when they were employed by the PRU. It also made repair of these

transport assets easy since parts, automotive

supplies,and repairs could be readily obtained

locally. When major repairs were needed,PRU

vehicles were taken to the CIA’s automotive

repair facility in Saigon.

Unfortunately, the trucks and motorcycles

were never provided in the numbers needed

by the PRU. Often, only two to three trucks

were given to each province,thus they had to

be shared by each district team or kept at

province level for use as needed. Most PRU

teams suffered because of the lack of organic

transport. As a result, the PRUs also used public transportation,such as cyclos and buses,or

privately owned motorcycles or bicycles to insert themselves into operational areas.

Dressed in civilian clothes and posing as civilian travelers, they were able to blend in with

the locals using these modes of transportation

until they were near their operational area and

ready to engage their targets.19

Although most PRU operations did not require U.S. military or ARVN transportation assets, the PRUs did avail themselves of such

transport when it was provided to them, usually through the good offices of the Vietnamese province chief, a district U.S. military

advisor,or the U.S.PRU advisor. For operations

over long distances and in mountainous terrain, the PRUs would rely primarily on U.S.helicopters for insertion and extraction. Most U.S.

PRU advisors felt the PRUs would have been

even more effective had they possessed additional organic transportation assets, such as

three-quarter-ton trucks and motorcycles, and

a dedicated helicopter package in each mili12
tary region. The U.S. PRU advisors stated that

they often lost valuable time trying to obtain

nonorganic transportation for deep or difficult

PRU operations,and these delays often had an

adverse impact on the success rate of such operations. Since most PRU targets were fleeting in nature, a timely response, often within

24 hours,was needed to achieve success. The

lack of organic or rapidly available transportation assets often meant that the target was

gone by the time the transportation had been

arranged.

As stated earlier, the PRUs were under the

operational control of the CIA. However,

under an agreement between the GVN and the

CIA, the Vietnamese province chiefs were

given some control over how and when the

PRUs could be used. In some instances, this

dual-command relationship caused friction between the local CIA leadership in the province

and the province chiefs. The relationship was

certainly a violation of the unity of command

principle. Theoretically, all PRU operations in

a province required both the approval of the

provincial officer in charge (POIC), who was

the senior CIA officer in the province,and the

province chief. In many provinces, the PRUs

followed this arrangement, but in some

provinces, the CIA disregarded it.

In the case of the author, he followed the

dual command relationship procedures and

encountered little problem with it in his

province. He had few problems obtaining dual

authorization for a mission, usually obtaining

the approval of both his POIC and province

chief in a matter of a few hours. He did this by

having his Vietnamese PRU operations officer

use a standard-form arrest order for each VCI

suspect identified, then he would hand carry

the arrest order to the province chief after the

POIC had initialed his concurrence. In some

cases, the author was also required to obtain

the signature of the provincial judicial representative on the Provincial Intelligence Operations Coordination Committee to ensure that

the arrest order was issued properly and with

the necessary legal safeguards.20

Some PRU advisors simply obtained the permission of the POIC and assumed the POIC

would get the province chief’s approval. As

the program matured,the necessity to fully coordinate PRU arrest orders and operations

with the province chiefs became institutionalized. One positive aspect of this dual approval

system was the increased cooperation it generated between the Vietnamese and American

agencies assigned counter-VCI duties. It also

helped to break down suspicion among the

Vietnamese Phoenix agencies that the CIA was

acting alone and without consideration of the

sovereignty of the Vietnamese government.

The PRU command and control authority

on the Vietnamese side came down from the

president through the minister of interior to

the province chiefs and finally down to the district chiefs, but this was more administrative

than operational since day-to-day operations of

the PRUs were planned and executed under

the direct supervision of the CIA. In a practical sense, the CIA POICs controlled the PRUs

and used theAmerican PRU advisors to ensure

the PRU teams were properly employed on

counter-VCI operations.

A great deal of authority and independence

of action was given to the PRU advisors,often

amounting to outright autonomy. Since many

POICs were busy with their primary duties,

not the least of which was the collection of

political and strategic intelligence on the

enemy’s Central Office South Vietnam

(COSVN) and the North Vietnamese government, they simply did not have the time to micromanage the PRU advisor. Also,many POICs

lacked military experience or their military experience was dated. This meant that they did

not feel they had the technical expertise to

plan and control the types of operations the

PRUs were conducting and preferred to leave

the operational details to the initiative of the

American PRU advisors.

Because the PRU advisors had a great deal of

control over how and when their PRU teams

were employed,the job required a level of maturity and sophistication not commonly found

among the normal special operations soldier,

sailor, or Marine. The American PRU advisors

13
were unanimous in their recommendation that

the best men for assignment to this form of

duty should be in the age range of 25 to 30

years old and should have obtained at least

the equivalent rank of sergeant (E-5) for enlisted and first lieutenant (O-2) for officers.

Ideally, they felt the enlisted advisors should

be the equivalent of gunnery sergeants (E-7)

and the officers should be captains (0-3). Command and control of PRU-type units required

objectivity, maturity, and sound judgment—all

traits that can only be developed with time

and experience. The American PRU advisors

were unanimous in their belief that immaturity and emotionalism were two of the most

destructive and corrosive characteristics a PRU

advisor could possess and,along with a lack of

cultural sensitivity, the root causes of most serious problems.

The number of U.S. military PRU advisors

was small;perhaps no more than 400 were assigned to the program from 1967 to 1971. Of

that number,the author has been able to identify 51 Marines who served with PRUs as advisors. See the Appendix for a list of these

Marine PRU advisors.

The experiences of the PRU advisors varied

with their respective units and the provinces

in which they served. As the Phoenix program

matured and the PRU developed into a truly

nationwide organization, the Marine PRU advisors helped mold and shape this development. The following firsthand accounts will

give the reader an idea of how the advisory effort progressed from its inception until the last

U.S. military advisors were removed.

Sergeant Paul C. Whitlock: One

of the First and Best, 1966-1967

Sergeant Whitlock’s outstanding performance in Quang Tri led the CIA to

ask for more such fine men to assist the

CIA’s PRU advisory effort. His input is

extremely valuable in explaining how

he easily fit in and contributed positively to Agency paramilitary field programs.

Rudy Enders 21

Paul C.Whitlock was a young staff sergeant

serving as a reconnaissance team leader in the

3d Force Reconnaissance Company in October 1966 when he was called into the office

of his commanding officer, Captain Kenneth

Jordan, and told he was to report to work in

QuangTri City and“form a reconnaissance unit

there” for special police operations. Staff Sergeant Whitlock asked Captain Jordan why he

had been selected for this assignment,and Jordan simply replied,“because you are a Marine.”

Whitlock knew better than to ask any more

questions, and besides, he trusted Jordan and

knew there must be a good reason why he

wanted him to go to Quang Tri City. Whitlock

was one of the first Marines assigned to the

PRU Program and he remained with the

Quang Tri PRU from October 1966 until May

1967. The CIA officers who knew Whitlock

spoke highly of him and stated that as one of

the first Marines assigned to the PRU in I

Corps, he set the standard for every Marine

who followed.

When Whitlock reported to his CIA boss in

Quang Tri, he found a recently organized PRU,

one that had been staffed with former members of the Counter Terrorist Team (CTT) for

Quang Tri. His unit consisted of 200 men, led

by a very capable PRU chief and already conducting operations against the VCI. He immediately struck up a strong professional

relationship with the PRU chief, and this relationship remained healthy throughout the

eight months that Whitlock was the QuangTri

PRU advisor. Whitlock considered the PRU

chief to be a strong leader who enjoyed the respect of his men and the Americans who

worked with him.

Whitlock also had an excellent relationship

with the province chief. He stated that he and

the province chief“worked well together,”noting that “he helped out when and where he

could.” It was evident from Whitlock’s comments to the author that having both a capable

and strong PRU chief and a reliable and cooperative province chief made his job easier and

his work more effective than it would have

been without these two key men assisting him.

Whitlock also had high praise for his boss,the

14
POIC, Thomas D. Harlan. Harlan worked in

what was labeled the Office of Civil Operations for Quang Tri Province. According to

Whitlock, Harlan helped him whenever he

needed help, provided him with many excellent operational leads,and backed him up“100

percent.”

The QuangTri PRU had two types of operations. They were based upon the geography

of the province. “Deep” missions were those

that were conducted in the western mountains of the province in such areas as the Bei

LonValley,Khe Sanh,and the QuangTri and Bei

Lon rivers. These missions were assigned by

the 3d Marine Amphibious Force (III MAF)

headquarters and could best be described as

long-range reconnaissance missions since their

main purpose was to determine what the NVA

units in those areas were doing. As such, they

were not the classic counter-VCI mission normally assigned to a PRU. These operations

were coordinated with III MAF by the POIC,

Tom Harlan, and employed “handpicked

teams”of PRU members. The teams were normally inserted and extracted by Marine helicopters. Prior to insertion on these “deep”

missions, the PRU team, which normally consisted of five to seven men, was isolated and

only briefed on the location of the mission just

prior to departure. This was done to ensure

operational security. Some of these“deep”missions requiredWhitlock to establish radio relay

stations on prominent terrain features so the

teams would have continuous FM radio contact with PRU headquarters.

The second type of mission the Quang Tri

PRU conducted was the“coastal”mission. This

entailed operating in the eastern section of the

province in the populated coastal plain. These

operations involved teams of 10 to 15 men.

The means of insertion and extraction varied

from Marine helicopters to commercial boats

and other forms of transportation readily available. The focus of the “coastal” missions was

the capture of VCI, not reconnaissance. As

such,they were equipped,dressed,and armed

for raid operations against known or suspected VCI targets.

The Quang Tri PRU dressed in tiger-striped

camouflage uniforms,black pajamas,and NVA

light green uniforms,depending on the conditions and the mission. The only civilian clothes

they wore were the ubiquitous black pajamas

worn by peasants in the countryside. The unit

employed PRC-25 radios for communications,

and they carried an assortment of weapons,

which were issued depending on the mission.

For instance,“deep” mission teams normally

were armed with M-16 rifles, while “coastal”

missions used M-1 and M-14 rifles and M-2 carbines.

Whitlock described his PRU as “very well

trained.” This was so becauseWhitlock made it

so. Like most PRU advisors, he spent a lot of

time in garrison training his troops. Most of

his training “involved land navigation, radio

procedures, reconnaissance techniques,

weapons training and small unit tactics.” He

possessed well-developed organizational skills

and was able to increase the strength of his

unit from 200 to 300 men, all while maintaining a professional force, well trained and well

equipped for their mission.

Whitlock identified the main strength of his

PRU as “the ability to move around when and

where others could not....They knew the terrain and the people.” The one serious problem

he had with his unit was the lack of reliability

of some of the PRU members to carry out their

mission properly. Specifically, he often could

not be sure they went where they were instructed to go or carried out their mission as

he wanted them to unless he went along on

the mission. Later on, he developed a means

for checking on their veracity when he did not

accompany them on an operation. He did this

by assigning a different insert and extraction

location for each mission. By doing this, the

PRU team had to travel from its insertion location through the area Whitlock wanted covered in order to reach its extraction location.

The best source of intelligence on the VCI

in QuangTri Province was the intelligence generated by the PRU using local people. The

Quang Tri PRU members “had their own system for gathering intelligence,” according to

15
Whitlock, and it proved to be accurate where

most other sources were not. Whitlock would

send his PRU members and their families out

into their home villages to develop operational

leads. “They were to pay attention to their surroundings and report back. . . . Once the PRU

and their family members developed enough

information on the local VCI, the PRU would

launch an operation.” Whitlock also identified

prisoner interrogation by the PRU as a valuable

source of exploitable intelligence.

Whitlock offered this advice for future

Marines involved in a counterinsurgency like

the one he fought in during the Vietnam War:

“Find an in-country leader who you can trust

and communicate with effectively. Also,if you

can’t speak the local language, find a good interpreter who will follow your instructions

completely and will translate exactly what you

have said without embellishment.” 22

CIA officer Rudy Enders,who was the chief

of operations in I Corps when Whitlock was

first assigned to the PRU, thought Whitlock

possessed in abundance the qualities needed

for a PRU advisor. He wrote:

There are many qualifications associated

with being an effective PRU advisor. Let’s

take Whitlock as an example. First of all, he

was an experienced, brave combat leader

who could assess the capabilities and shortcomings of the men he advised. If necessary,

he could train them in every aspect of small

unit tactics starting with basic shooting, fire

and maneuver, scouting and patrolling, map

and compass, etc....I understand he did this.

Furthermore, he singled out his PRU commander, Do Bach, as a heroic, competent

warrior. To gain PRU confidence, he accompanied Bach on dangerous missions proving

he was willing to lay his life on the line while

fighting alongside his men. This is what leadership is all about.

Secondly, Whitlock was mature. He was

not some wide-eyed kid looking for adventure. Instead, he understood the seriousness

of his position and behaved accordingly. I

can’t overstate the importance of this attribute. PRU advisors performed their jobs with

very little oversight and supervision. This requires a high degree of self-discipline and

commitment common to most Marines.

Finally,Whitlock was aggressive. He sifted

through mountains of intelligence reports to

find the most promising. His PRUs didn’t sit

around in camp waiting for things to happen, they made things happen. They sought

out the enemy, enough so that the NorthVietnamese sent a special sapper unit to destroy

the PRU camp. The point is, a single Marine,

Whitlock, with CIA help, produced an effective and aggressive South Vietnamese counterinsurgency force of over 300 men. 23

Staff Sergeant Whitlock was one of the first

and best U.S. military PRU advisors and, as

such,he became a model for the advisors that

followed. His POIC,Thomas Harlan, summed

up the contributions ofWhitlock in a letter he

wrote to the commanding general, 3d Marine

Division,on 3 April 1967 thanking the general

for sending such a highly trained and capable

NCO to the PRU Program. Harlan wrote that

Whitlock“displayed unique dedication, imagination, and knowledge of his job. . . . [T]he

PRUs under his guidance have distinguished

themselves in long range reconnaissance patrols and unconventional warfare operations. .

..[H]is methods are being adapted throughout

I Corps with all Provincial Reconnaissance

Units being patterned after the one in Quang

Tri Province.”

Whitlock retired from the Marine Corps as

a gunnery sergeant in 1974 and then worked

four years with a high school Junior ROTC program before embarking on a 20-year career as

a project manager for a major commercial contracting firm.

Sergeant Ronald J. Lauzon:

Hue City, 1967

Sergeant Ronald J. (Ron) Lauzon had 12

years of military experience—six with the Air

Force and six with the Marines—when he was

assigned to the PRU on 8 March 1967. His assignment took him to Hue City in Thua Thien

Province, and he remained with the PRU in

Hue City until he was reassigned to the Marine

16
Corps on 8 October 1967. He described the

time he spent as a PRU advisor as “a great experience for an E-5/E-6 during the peak of the

program,”and one he considered the most rewarding of his Marine Corps career. He retired

from the Marine Corps as a chief warrant officer (CWO-4). Lauzon provided the following

selected comments in a paper he submitted to

the author:

I relieved Sergeant Robert B. Bright III as

the PRU advisor for Thua Thien Province. He

had done an outstanding job of organizing,

training, equipping, and establishing coordination for the unit. I inherited a PRU unit

of 137 soldiers, but I paired it down to 117,

and I lost seven killed in combat during the

seven months I was their advisor.

I did not have much bush time with the

unit; most of the100 or so operations I sponsored were small-unit actions aimed at gaining or supporting intelligence requested by

the Regional Officer in Charge (ROIC) and,

as such, participation on them was restricted

to indigenous personnel. On most of our operations, a Caucasian would not have fit in,

and the CIA was paranoid about having

someone captured by the enemy who possessed internal knowledge of how the CIA operated.

I did go on major military operations

which were requested by MACV, USMC, or

ARVN units, but these operations were all ultimate disasters for the PRU since they were

employed as regular ground forces, and they

were not trained or equipped for such employment. Many times these large-scale missions were misrepresented to CORDS as

missions appropriate for the PRU, but in

every case they turned into standard military type operations against main force VC

or NVA units.

I principally served out of Hue City and

17

Photo courtesy of CWO-4 Ronald J. Lauzon

Sergeant Ronald J. Lauzon on operations with the Thua Thein Provincial Reconnaissance Unit in 1967.

Marine advisors wore utility, tiger-stripe, or even black “pajama” uniforms while in the field. Note the

lack of distinguishing rank or other insignia.
stayed in the PRU compound, which was

Madame Nhu’s summer home.* This compound sat on the northwest corner of the

Hue perimeter overlooking the Royal Tombs.

My area of operations was the entire

province with the exception of Hue City. The

city was solely reserved for the CORDS intelligence section, which had a number of

USMC counterintelligence personnel assigned to it. They worked out of the National

Police Intelligence Center, and they relied

heavily on the province’s Police Special

Branch (PSB), which gathered most of its intelligence from the province’s interrogation

center (PIC).

I did not live in an “embassy house,” like

many other PRU advisors. Instead, I lived in

a leased house in southern Hue across from

a large Roman Catholic cathedral close to the

Phu Can Canal along Nguyen Hue Street.

This house was where my replacement was

killed and where Ray Lau spent a couple of

days in a pigsty hiding from the VC during

the Tet Offensive when the enemy controlled

the city. I rotated where I slept almost nightly

during my PRU tour, spending some nights

at my house, some at the PRU barracks, some

at Ray Lau’s, some at the POIC’s house, and

some at other trusted locations. We were

often on alert for an attack, and we kept

arms and ammunition stored in our house

in case we came under attack.

PRU operations varied from province to

province based upon the enemy situation in

each province and the priorities of the CIA

and the province chiefs. In our case, the POIC

and his assistant strictly wanted the PRU to

generate intelligence and not lose any assets.

There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that

assassinations were strictly forbidden. This

was stressed by both Colonel Redel,24 who

briefed me in Saigon during my indoctrination, and by my training instructors at the

CIA PRU training base at Vung Tau in III

Corps. My PRU teams were strictly focused

on obtaining intelligence about the VCI in

my province and ensuring this intelligence

was put to good use by the various Vietnamese and American units in the province.

Since I had access to all the intelligence

resources in I Corps, I could pick up the latest reports from the MACV compound, the

Special Forces SOG Headquarters, the 3d Marine Division G-2, the 8th Radio Relay Unit

(RRU), the Army Side Looking Radar and Infrared Assessments, and the PIC. I would

read through these reports each night looking for any information about the latest

movements of the National Liberation Front

(NLF) committee members. This included

theVC paymasters, recruiters, party organizers, armed propaganda teams, and assassination squads. Once I picked a couple of

targets, I would go to the PRU compound

early in the morning and brief the PRU Commander, Mr.Mau. We would agree on one or

two missions and assign the missions to the

platoon leader on duty, who would select the

men, uniforms, and equipment for the missions. We had two 30-man rifle platoons; a

30-man weapons platoon equipped with

60mm mortars, RPGs, and crew-served machine guns; and a headquarters section,

which included intelligence, logistics, armory,

and first-aid personnel.

Once the teams were identified for the mission, they were put into isolation. The PRU

intelligence section would brief them on the

mission and any pertinent information they

had on the target(s), the supply section

would issue them their special equipment

(cameras, binoculars, sensors, radios, etc.),

and the armory would issue them their ammunition and special weapons (sniper rifles,

claymore mines, satchel charges, pistols, etc.).

The majority of the 117 PRU I ultimately

ended up with were holdovers from the previous Counter Terrorist Team (CTT) program

in the province. We also had 13 active PRU

intelligence agents in the field. We had very

little turnover, and we were very selective in

whom we chose to join our ranks. A few of

our men were formerVC, and some were for18

*Madame Nhu was the flamboyant wife of Ngo Dinh Nhu, the

younger brother and chief advisor of Ngo Dinh Diem,who was

president of South Vietnam until he and his brother were assassinated in 1963.
mer ARVN Rangers and Marines who had

completed their military service but wanted

to join the PRU in their home province. All of

my PRU were local people, and they came

from all eight districts, which meant they

had firsthand knowledge of the terrain and

people where they were operating. Most had

served in the military, eitherVC or ARVN, and

they had been trained at the PRU training

center in Vung Tau and at the Reconnaissance Indoctrination Program (RIP) school

at the 1st Marine Division at Da Nang. They

were, in my opinion, well trained and highly

experienced soldiers. I liked the PRU I

worked with and had complete confidence in

the team leaders and the PRU Commander,

Mr.Mau.

All operations in the province were centrally planned and controlled out of the PRU

compound in Hue City. To my knowledge, we

did not have active DIOCCs in the eight districts in our province and, if we did, I had no

contact with them. To be honest, I only

trusted our own intelligence system, which

was operated by the RD/PRU/CG/CI intelligence center in Hue City.

The operational PRU teams were usually

small, four or five men, with one of the men

familiar with the area of operations and the

people living there. They would dress either

in civilian clothes or VC uniforms and be

equipped with AK-47 rifles, French pistols, M1 carbines, and hand grenades. They would

be inserted late in the day but before curfew

at a neutral point as close to the target area

as possible, either by public transportation

or taxicab. Sometimes they went by bicycle

or used U.S. Navy swift boats for insertion.

We often used U.S. Marine Combined Action

Platoon (CAP) compounds in the countryside to launch operations, and we considered

these CAP areas ideal for the insertion of our

teams since they could provide coordination

with higher headquarters in the 3d Marine

Division and a safe haven once an operation

was completed.

After a team was inserted, I went to the

MACV compound and reported the operational plan. I reported the operation after insertion because I did not want any enemy

agents in the MACV compound to reveal the

operation to the NLF.

While I was a PRU advisor, I read literally

hundreds of intelligence reports from the U.S.

and South Vietnamese military, and not a

single one was either timely or totally accurate. The military intelligence reports were

written with specific times and dates with

specific map coordinates and numbers, but I

found out from dozens of interrogations that

the VCI did not read or use map coordinates—they just used place names such as

Cam Lo Bridge or Phouc LyVillage—and they

measured time by “after a specific event,

soon, pretty soon, or now.” The unit descriptions used in the military reports meant

nothing to me since a“VC squad”could number between 1 and 50 men and a “VC company” could number between a dozen and

several hundred men.

We mounted over 100 operations during

my tour with the PRU, and 11 of these were

19

Sergeant Lauzon in garrison with a member of the

Thua Thein Provincial Reconnaissance Unit in

1967. In these circumstances, civilian clothes were

usally worn.

Photo courtesy of CWO-4 Ronald J. Lauzon
successful in capturing or killing VCI. There

were only two sources for these 11 successful

missions: the PRU’s organic intelligence system and Ray Lau’s RD Census Grievance element, which gathered information from the

RD team’s travels in the province. We never

got any operational leads that resulted in a

successful operation from any other source,

including the PIC and the PSB.

These successful missions were either an

ambush or a raid on a specific house or area

that we knew had VCI in it. When a mission

was completed, which normally lasted only

24 hours, the PRU team would call in by telephone, and they would be picked up by a

PRU vehicle or an RD vehicle at the nearest

highway. Captured prisoners were brought

back to the PRU compound and interrogated

by Mr. Mau and his PRU intelligence team.

After we had them for 24 hours, we were supposed to turn them over to the PIC and the

military interrogation center with the USMC

CI representative, but after a visit to these facilities, I never turned any more prisoners

over to them. If the prisoners were high value

(Category A or B), we shipped them to Da

Nang City for interrogation by the CIA, but if

they were low-level cadre, such as a nurse or

paymaster, we often simply interrogated

them and sent them home, or in the case of

two individuals, we allowed them to join the

PRU.

The only serious trouble we had was the

result of conflicts between U.S. and Vietnamese officials concerning who controlled

the PRU. CORDS paid the bills and ran the

operation, but the province chief believed the

PRU was his to use as he saw fit. This conflict

often resulted in the misuse of the PRU and

placed me in the middle of these bureaucratic and political battles. Cooperation and

coordination were sometimes a problem in

my province because of this ambiguous command relationship.

My boss was the CIA’s POIC. I had two

bosses during my tour, one of whom left

shortly after I was assigned. The second POIC

was a “CIA paramilitary type” who prohibited me from participating in any PRU operations. He preferred to have onlyVietnamese

participate in PRU operations. His rationale

for this was his conviction that “native ingenuity” would find innovative ways for the

PRU to accomplish their missions, and“since

it was going to be a long war, they needed assets with experience operating on their own.”

My POIC was supportive and gave me a

great deal of latitude in how I should do my

job. I left the PRU just before the 1968 Tet Offensive, and my POIC was in Da Nang City

when the VC/NVA struck. He was in the

process of turning his job over to his replacement, who had just settled into his

quarters in Hue City. The new POIC was captured by the NVA when they invaded Hue

City. He spent the rest of the war as a POW.

My replacement as PRU advisor, Sergeant

Howard Vaughn, reported for duty a few

weeks after I left and was killed defending

the embassy house during the 1968 Tet Offensive.25

Staff Sergeant Wayne W.

Thompson: Leadership

Challenges and Spies, 1967–68

Staff Sergeant Wayne Thompson was a reconnaissance team leader with the 1st Force

Reconnaissance Company in July 1967 when

he was told by his commanding officer, Captain King Dixon, that he was to be reassigned

to “a classified special project” that needed

someone with his skills. A few days later, he

was driven to a large villa in Da Nang and introduced to a civilian who told him he was

going to work with a program run by the CIA

in QuangTin Province. He was briefed on the

PRU Program and its mission, but he received

no training for his new job. After in-processing, he reported to his new job in Quang Tin.

He lived in the embassy house in Tam Ky, the

provincial capital,with three other Americans

who were also assigned to the CIA, men he

knew as “Richard,” an Army sergeant major;

“Harry”; and “Jim.” Together, the four men ran

the CIA operations for Quang Tin Province.

Thompson was a gifted and highly experienced

20
Marine staff noncommissioned officer. He had extensive experience with reconnaissance operations having served in both the 2d and 1st Force

Reconnaissance Companies, including several

long-range reconnaissance patrols in combat in

Vietnam. He possessed the maturity and the skills

needed to succeed in his new demanding job. As

it would turn out,he would need those skills and

then some.

Thompson’s first major problem was a very

serious one. His PRU Chief, a Nung and not a

nativeVietnamese,was“incompetent and lazy”

and considered “a thief” by everyone, according to Thompson. His PRU of approximately

50 men did not venture outside of the compound, which was located on the perimeter

of the provincial compound. His PRU chief

contended that he was not allowed to leave

the compound because the province chief,an

ARVN lieutenant colonel, did not want to

weaken the provincial compound’s security.

Thompson knew that he would never be

able to accomplish his mission of defeating

the VCI if this situation persisted. He fired the

PRU chief 10 days after his arrival in Quang

Tin, then he went to the province chief to

work out the security arrangement that was

preventing his PRU teams from conducting

their proper mission. The province chief told

him that the PRUs were the only fighters he

could really rely on to protect the provincial

compound and that he could not allow them

to relinquish this essential security mission.

Thompson worked out a deal with the

province chief. In return for using 50 men to

guard the provincial compound’s perimeter,

he promised to increase the size of the PRU

until he had enough additional men to conduct counter-VCI missions. With the CIA’s permission, he began recruiting the additional

men until he had 145 to 155 men on the PRU

roles. Some of his best new recruits were VC

prisoners held in the provincial prison who

were carefully vetted before they were allowed to join the ranks of the PRU.

Next,Thompson addressed the issue of who

would be the replacement for the PRU chief

he had just fired. The province chief recommended an elderly gentleman who was a political ally of the province chief but clearly a

man who lacked the military or leadership

skills needed to command a PRU. Thompson

got around this sensitive problem by convincing the province chief that he would put the

elderly gentleman recommended by the

province chief in charge of the PRU security

force of 50 men guarding the provincial compound and put a more competent and aggressive young former ARVN soldier in charge of

the counter-VCI mission, appointing him as

the “Deputy PRU Chief for Operations.” The

province chief found this solution perfectly

suitable since he did not lose face by having

his choice for PRU chief rejected, he would

have someone he trusted in charge of local security around the provincial compound, and

Thompson would have the combat leader he

needed to root out the VCI. Using tact, good

judgment,and an innovative approach,Thompson was able to overcome daunting problems

early in his assignment with the Quang Tin

PRU and to win the respect, cooperation, and

support of the province chief at the same

time.

During his eight months with the QuangTin

PRU,Thompson’s PRU racked up a commendable record by killing or capturing more than

300 VC, NVA, and VCI while losing only nine

PRU killed in action. Much of this success was

due to the intelligence system thatThompson

helped to develop for the PRU. He knew that

he could not rely on external sources for intelligence on the VCI, although he did occasionally receive actionable intelligence from

the Census Grievance and Special Branch advisors who lived with him in the embassy

house. He decided that he had to form his

own intelligence organization for Quang Tin

Province if he wanted his PRU to be truly effective. He did this by recruiting six to ten

agents distributed geographically throughout

the areas either controlled or contested by the

enemy. His agents were nominally paid for

their information but only received payments

for information that was proven to be true or

resulted in the capture of VCI.

Late in his tour with the PRU,Thompson’s

21
intelligence system generated accurate intelligence concerning a high-ranking VCI living in

a house in a contested area west of Tam Ky.

This information resulted in a combined force

of 50 PRU soldiers and a battalion of the U.S.

1st Cavalry Division making a mechanized assault into the village where the VCI cadre was

hiding. This operation not only bagged theVCI

target but also resulted in the defeat of an NVA

battalion defending the village.

Thompson left the QuangTin PRU in March

1968,but he returned toVietnam in 1969,serving again with the 1st Force Reconnaissance

Company in Quang Nam Province. He was seriously injured during an emergency helicopter extraction using a STABO (Short Tactical

Airborne Operation) rig,which resulted in his

hospitalization for a year and eventual medical

discharge from the Marine Corps in 1970. He

left the Corps with the rank of gunnery sergeant.26

First Lieutenant Joel R. Gardner:

A Marine in II Corps, 1967-68

First Lieutenant Joel R. Gardner was bored

with his job of teaching French to officers enrolled in the Marine Corps’Command and Staff

College at Quantico,Virginia. So one morning

in February 1967 when he saw a message

posted on the school’s bulletin board that

sought volunteers for a special assignment,he

saw a chance to escape from that billet. The

message was rather cryptic. It simply solicited

“volunteers with Vietnam experience for detached duty.” Although the message contained

no additional details, Lieutenant Gardner suspected this duty had something to do with the

Central Intelligence Agency,and this appealed

to his sense of adventure and his desire to return to where the action was—in Vietnam.

Gardner came from a distinguished military

family. He was the son of a retired U.S. Navy

admiral, and he had followed in his father’s

footsteps by graduating from the U.S. Naval

Academy in the class of 1963. After the Basic

School,he had served as a platoon commander

in A/1/4 before volunteering for duty as a platoon commander with Company B, 3d Reconnaissance Battalion. While with 3d Recon Battalion, he had made the initial landings at Chu

Lai and had distinguished himself in combat,

earning three Bronze Stars and two Purple

Hearts before his tour ended in March 1966.

With his Vietnam experience and his desire

to return to the fight,Gardner willingly volunteered for the“detached duty”without having

any more knowledge of what was expected of

him. He only knew that if he was accepted for

this new and potentially exciting work, he

would no longer have to teach French. He felt

confident that any new assignment would be

more exciting than his present one. He was

not disappointed.

Lieutenant Gardner drove to Headquarters

Marine Corps in the Navy Annex in Arlington,

Virginia,to formally apply for the new job. He

was interviewed Colonel Noble Beck in the

personnel department and, evidently, the interview went well because one week later,

Gardner received orders “to such place in

Washington, D.C., as would be designated in

separate correspondence.” Thus began a twoyear sojourn with the Central Intelligence

Agency on independent orders.

What follows is the tale of Lieutenant Gardner’s experience in his own words as one of

only a very few Marines assigned to duty as a

PRU advisor in the II Corps of Vietnam:

We started our training/orientation in

Washington, D.C., with a group of over 50

military officers, mostly U.S. Army officers

and only seven Marine officers. The CIA was

in a hurry for us to get to Vietnam since

many of their career case officers were up for

reassignment fromVietnam to jobs for which

they were more appropriately trained;that is,

working against the Soviet Union and its

satellites. These CIA career officers were

needed for operations against the main

enemy, not for operations in some“side show”

likeVietnam. This meant we would receive a

shortened case-officer training program so

we could rapidly replace them.

After an initial briefing and psychological

and “lifestyle” testing, we began our formal

22
training program.Part of the training was at

a“remote or southern training facility”where

we were introduced to the arcane tradecraft

of intelligence. I would return later in my

Marine Corps career in 1980 to this CIA

training facility for additional training prior

to my assignment as a naval attaché in Paris.

We also went through a comprehensive area

and language training course at the State Department’s Foreign Service InstituteVietnam

Training Center in Rosslyn, Virginia, where

we achieved a 3/3 language proficiency rating upon graduation. At the completion of

our training, which took approximately five

months, we were given our official passports

and other credentials identifying us as

“USAID Rural Development Officers.” I later

told people that I was actually an agricultural expert on grasshoppers, but they

seemed incredulous since I carried a Swedish

K submachine gun all the time! I assured

them that the Swedish K was needed because

there were a lot of grasshoppers that needed

to be exterminated, and we classified these

grasshoppers as “Vermin, Communist Infestators,” or VCI.

After relocating my wife and two children

in Bangkok, Thailand, where they would stay

until my 18-month tour of duty in Vietnam

with the CIA ended, I flew to Saigon, arriving there in August 1967. After checking into

the Duc Hotel, I went to the U.S.Embassy for

a briefing on the situation in Vietnam and

what my future duties might entail. I also

checked in with USAID since they provided

my cover and they handled my pay. My military records were maintained by the

CSD/MACV unit at Tan Son Nhut Airport.

This dual administrative arrangement resulted in receiving active-duty time for my

military career while receiving civilian pay.

It was all very confusing, but with three

“masters” in charge of me (CIA, USAID, and

DoD), I thought I would be able to fool all of

them most of the time. Like most CIA personnel, my home while in Saigon was the

Duc Hotel. It was my temporary abode during my initial orientation in Saigon and during subsequent visits to the capital city.

At the U.S.Embassy, I met Marine Colonel

William Redel, who handled all PRU matters.

He informed me that despite the Commandant’s request to have all Marines assigned

to I Corps, he was going to assign me to the

coastal city of Nha Trang in Khanh Hoa

province in II Corps. His rationale for this assignment was my recent combat experience

with 3d Recon Battalion, which he felt would

best benefit the program if applied in Khanh

Hoa province working with the PRU there.

Nha Trang is the largest city in II Corps. I

flew up to my new assignment aboard an

Air America plane and reported to my new

boss, Ernie Sparks, who was the ROIC for II

Corps. Ernie’s initial briefing to me was

short and sweet since he was a man of few

words, but his guidance was specific, and he

made me feel welcome and appreciated at

our first session together.

Being close to the ROIC HQ was both a

problem and a blessing. The ROIC staff officers were always looking over my shoulder.

However, having the regional supply facility

and access to Air America helicopters and

daily Volpar flights more than compensated

for this inconvenient meddling. There was

also the problem of visitors who came to the

ROIC HQ for briefings, like Daniel Ellsberg,

who managed to stay with us for three days!

I showed him our “A” hamlets where we had

RD cadre teams but kept him well away from

the PRU and their operations. These visitors

and the time it took to brief them often took

me away from my“real work.”

My time in Nha Trang started out with my

being placed in charge of the province’s 110-

man PRU. The unit seemed well equipped

and, supposedly, fully trained at theVung Tau

training facility operated by the CIA. However, I quickly found out that my PRU chief

considered me a useless adjunct to his life.

He would do the traditional Vietnamese

thing of listening to my questions and giving

me the answers he thought I wanted to hear,

not what I needed to hear. He was distant,

hard to find at times, and not prone to keep

me informed. He was resentful when I said

23
I would be present at payday and I wanted

to see everyone on the roles who was receiving pay. Needless to say, we did not get off to

a good start.

When I arrived in Nha Trang, two other

military officers arrived with me. They were

both U.S. Army officers. We were to replace

two CIA officers who were extremely anxious

to leave, so our turnover briefing with them

was rather short, and they were gone before

we knew it. During this turnover, we were

acutely aware of the difference between the

CIA officers and us. It was pretty obvious

that they did not think we were in the same

league as they were.

One of these departing CIA officers had

been in charge of the PRU, the CG, and the

RD cadre programs. The other was responsible for the Police Special Branch and the PIC.

We found that there were 25 59-man RD

teams in the province and about 30 CG personnel conducting census surveys. One of us,

an Army captain, took over the RD Program,

and my other colleague, an Army major, took

over the PSB and the PIC. I was given the

PRU and Census Grievance Programs. Unfortunately, around Thanksgiving 1967, they

were seriously wounded by a claymore mine

and had to be evacuated from the country.

For a time, I was the only man at the gate

until an additional CIA officer, a KoreanAmerican named Han Lee, came in and took

the PSB and PIC off my hands. Still, trying to

manage the PRU and RD Programs at the

same time was a very heavy burden to bear,

and I found it difficult to manage both large

programs effectively. Fortunately, an Army

Special Forces NCO, Staff Sergeant Joe Garza,

joined us later, and he was placed in charge

of the PRU under my immediate supervision.

After taking over the PRU, I tried to determine how they obtained intelligence for PRU

operations. I was told that some operations

were the result of information obtained from

the RD cadre who reported on various people

in certain families that were suspected of

Communist sympathies. When they reported

that these people were “out of town” for unknown reasons, it often meant they were

probably with the VC.

We also got information from the RD

cadre on VCI tax collectors and armed propaganda teams, but I also knew the results of

most of our PRU operations were pitiful.

Staff Sergeant Garza and I at first thought

we might have a “mole” in the unit giving

away our operational plans to the enemy. We

decided that we needed to find this mole as

quickly as possible, so we devised a plan to

give the entire PRU a polygraph examination

in less than 24 hours. One night we secured

the PRU armory and transferred all the

weapons to the region’s storage hanger at the

Nha Trang airfield, and then the next day we

had a polygraph team fly in from Saigon to

administer the tests. The PRU members were

apprehensive about taking a polygraph until

we explained that they would not be hurt—

unless they lied, and then they would be electrocuted!

The polygraph tests told us that we had

not been infiltrated by a “mole,” but the PRU

chief and about half the PRU members were

in collusion to fake operations. This entailed

simply taking a team out on an “operation”

to the edge of town, hiding for a few days,

and then returning to base empty-handed.

Needless to say, I fired the PRU chief and half

the PRU immediately and began the process

of finding honest replacements.

I found a new PRU chief who was highly

recommended by the province chief and the

province intelligence chief, which gave him

both access to, and support from, these two

important political leaders in the province.

Staff Sergeant Garza and I got along very

well with the new PRU chief, and with his

help, we began recruiting local men for the

PRU and sending them to the PRU training

facility at Vung Tau. By Christmas 1967, we

were back to full strength and conducting

“real”operations against the VCI.

We concentrated our efforts against the

VCI tax collectors since we knew that if we

cut off the source of funds for the VC, we

would seriously hurt the VC’s ability to fi24
nance both their combat operations and political activities. Armed propaganda teams

were also high on our list of targets, but as

the term “armed’ indicates, we often had

more serious engagements with these VCI

than with tax collectors. These two groups,

the tax collectors and the armed propaganda

teams, were the most visible to the local villagers, and their neutralization had the

greatest impact on the villagers’ perception

of the efficiency of the PRU.

When I served in I Corps with a reconnaissance battalion, I had seen how special

troops, like recon Marines, were inappropriately employed in operations they were neither trained nor equipped for, such as flank

security for infantry sweeps, command post

security, and assaults against fortified hamlets and villages. Using lightly armed, specially trained troops for missions they are not

trained or equipped for is a foolish waste of

valuable assets. The PRU teams were never

meant to be used as infantry, but many U.S.

and Vietnamese commanders did not understand the mission or capabilities of the

PRU and, as a result, they often tried to use

them on missions they were not suited for,

often with disastrous results.

My PRU had an incredible inventory of

weapons and equipment in its armory. The

basic weapon for a PRU soldier was the

Swedish K submachine gun, a heavy, rugged,

and very reliable individual weapon. We also

had sniper rifles (M-1s and Springfield 03s),

carbines, LAWs, M-60 machine guns, silenced

22 caliber rifles, some British weapons, and

enemy AK-47s for“black”operations.

The PRU was a direct support asset controlled completely at the provincial level. We

did not have functioning DIOCCs in our

province while I was there; that came much

later on in the war. Since most of our

province was covered in mountainous jungle and sparsely populated outside of a few

areas, it made much more sense to use the

PRU as a provincial level asset than to have

it dispersed throughout the province. Nha

Trang City and Ninh Hoa District north of

the city, along the lines of communication

connecting the coastal plain with the highland cities of Dalat and Ben Me Thout, were

where the population—and the VCI—were

concentrated, and these areas were the focus

of PRU operations.

I did not get along well with the U.S.

province senior advisor, a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, because he had some weird

idea that I worked for him and thought I

should keep him informed about what I was

doing. I did, however, get along well with the

district senior advisor in Ninh Hoa District,

an Army major, who was very forward-looking and supportive of our capabilities.

As is so often in combat, great plans are

driven by personalities, and this can make

the difference between success and failure.

An example of this involved an operation

generated by cooperation between this supportive U.S.district advisor and our PRU. One

day, he briefed me about aVCI tax team that

was brazenly stopping traffic on the road between Ban Me Thout and Ninh Hoa on the

coast. We met with the advisor’s Vietnamese

counterparts, and they briefed us on the

modus operandi of this tax team. It seems

the tax team would establish roadblocks at

several points along the road to collect taxes

from passing vehicles, and they tended to use

some of these roadblocks regularly. They did

not establish these roadblocks for long, just

long enough to stop enough vehicles so they

could meet their tax quotas for that day and

then disappear back into the thick jungle.

Working with the U.S.advisor and theVietnamese military, we worked on a plan to

neutralize this VCI tax team. Staff Sergeant

Garza, the PRU chief, and 15 PRU team

members would be used to target one of the

frequently used locations by the tax team. I

hired a covered, civilian truck to transport

this team to its ambush site, and then I

joined up with the advisory team to the Korean Capitol Division near Ninh Hoa to set

up a radio relay site five miles away. This

was the first operation I allowed Staff Sergeant Garza to go on, and I did not want to

25
lose this valuable advisor. I gave him his own

PRC-25 for communications. I also arranged

for pre-planned artillery concentrations and

a reaction force made up of a Vietnamese

Ranger Company in case they were needed

by the ambush team. As a rule, the Khanh

Hoa PRU operated close to the densely populated areas of the province near the coast so

this operation constituted a“deep”operation

for us.

The PRU ambush team set up on a hillside

overlooking one of the favorite spots on the

road that the VCI tax team used. Around

noon on the second day, the PRU team observed the enemy tax team set up a collection

point on the road 300 meters away. The PRU

chief told the team to do nothing, only observe. He told Staff Sergeant Garza to wait

until tomorrow when the tax team would return and the team would be in a better position to attack it. Staff Sergeant Garza

explained to me the strict discipline of the

PRU members as they remained motionless

in their observation position for the next 24

hours, not even moving to make a head call.

The next day, the VCI tax team returned to

the road and set up their collection point directly under the PRU team’s location. The

PRU opened fire and killed the entire tax

team. I do not think a U.S. unit would have

waited 24 hours to initiate an ambush—

Americans like instant gratification—but

one cannot argue with the results.

Most of our operations were on a small

scale, generally ambushes or interdictions

based upon low-level intelligence and set up

for specific targets moving into or between

hamlets which had minimal or no GVN security forces (PF or RD cadre) in them. Generally, these targets were developed from

leads generated at the local level and fed back

through the Census Grievance representatives

or RD Cadre teams working in the hamlets

and villages. We also received leads from informants working for the Vietnamese military S-2s. I do not remember ever generating

a plan or an operation from intelligence

from a higher echelon, but the Vietnamese

did this on occasion, as it should be.

I do not think it is accurate to say that the

Americans were in command of the PRU in

my province while I was there. We provided

support: logistical, financial, and training. I

ran interference for the PRU when people

tried to misuse them or tried to take them

over from us, but I considered the PRU to be

under the command of the PRU chief and his

team leaders, not me. They were, however,

definitely under my operational control. I

passed on intelligence gained by the PRU to

the American side, primarily to First Field

Force Vietnam Headquarters, the U.S. Air

Force, and the Special Forces Headquarters

at the Nha Trang air base.

We had one extraordinary operation in

early January 1968. We received reports from

either a CG or RD cadre that a person in one

of the hamlets outside the city was providing

food and other logistical support to an unknown enemy unit. Our suspect was a female who would carry “parcels” out of the

hamlet almost daily and return emptyhanded. We set up a series of surveillance operations over a period of several days, each

one picking up where the previous one lost

sight of her on her travels. They had her

pretty well triangulated in an area of deep

brush, scraggy trees, and rocky outcroppings.

We wanted to use a PRU team to go into the

area, but it was part of the Korean Logistical

Command’s TAOR, so we held off on the operation until we had their permission. Finally after some negotiating, we met with all

the key players at the Korean Field Force HQ

in Nha Trang and worked out the necessary

coordination to make our operation possible.

Our operation was delayed a day because

a Korean unit was in the area. That unit reported the area as empty and that our operation there would be a waste of our time. We

went anyway, and in less than three hours,

we found an occupied cave. The two occupants of the cave were killed in a short firefight, but the body count was not important.

Inside the cave, we found records for the Nha

Trang City Party Committee. It was a real intelligence bonanza and included a complete

26
organizational chart for the party, 110

names of party members (AKA’s to be sure),

and other valuable documents. After Tet,

which was only a few weeks after the operation, we captured enough prisoners so the

Vietnamese could begin to put real names

against the AKA’s on the captured muster

rolls. As a result, we were able to roll up almost the entire city party committee and

deal a blow to the VCI that would set them

back years.

This type of operation was the kind the

PRU were designed for, and it demonstrates

that one single piece of accurate intelligence

provided by a local source, and properly exploited by a well-trained special police unit,

can cause an entire insurgency infrastructure in a major city to be neutralized.

After my CIA assignment, I was assigned

to the FSI Vietnam Training Center to train

district and province senior advisors (civilian and military). I made regular trips back

to SouthVietnam during the period 1969-72

and would eventually visit nearly every district and province where we had advisory

teams. During this time, I witnessed the maturation of the DIOCCs and the Phung Hoang

Program and saw how Phung Hoang had become very effective in nearly all areas, inflicting serious losses on the VCI. Ho Chi

Minh was quoted as saying that he was far

more worried about our success against the

VCI than against his regular forces. 27

Lieutenant Colonel Terence M.

Allen: The Perspective from

Saigon, 1968-1970

When then-Lieutenant Colonel Terence M.

(Terry)Allen reported for duty with the PRU as

the chief advisor for military operations to the

PRU commander in 1968,he brought with him

a high degree of professional expertise and experience in special warfare. As the senior U.S.

military advisor to the PRU in Saigon, he reported directly to the CIA’s Tucker Gouglemann. Along with his able executive officer,

Marine Major Kenneth D. Hyslop, they made

up a formidable senior-level advisory team that

managed the U.S.side of the PRU Program during its most effective years from 1968 until

1970.

Prior to his assignment to the Combined

Studies Division of MACV as the chief PRU advisor, Colonel Allen had been both the executive officer and commanding officer of the 3d

Reconnaissance Battalion and the inspector

and instructor for the 5th Force Reconnaissance Company. This experience gave him extensive firsthand knowledge about, and

training in, the conduct of missions similar to

those the PRU would routinely perform. His

combat experience in Korea and his participation in operations in Lebanon in 1958 gave

him a keen insight into unconventional warfare as well as a deep appreciation for the constraints often imposed on U.S. forces by

geopolitical considerations. In short, he was

an ideal choice for the military-political advisory role in which he found himself.

Living in an apartment in Saigon and working out of the PRU headquarters in Saigon,

Allen ranged across the length and breadth of

South Vietnam planning, organizing, and conducting various missions for the PRU. Not adverse to danger, he routinely accompanied

PRU teams on missions in the provinces, including several parachute missions. He was

also responsible for maintaining and analyzing

the monthly reports that came into PRU headquarters from the U.S. advisors in the 44

provinces of SouthVietnam and conducting inspections of the PRU teams operating throughout the country. As such, he had a unique

perspective on the strengths and weaknesses

of the PRU Program and its overall effectiveness in fighting the VCI. His near-daily interface with Nguyen Van Lang, the national

commander of the PRU, allowed him to influence as well as assist the South Vietnamese

PRU leadership in a way that no other American could.

ColonelAllen reinforced the widely held belief of most U.S.Marine PRU advisors that each

PRU was unique based upon such factors as

the province in which it was deployed,the ethnic and religious composition of the teams,the

27
family and social connections, the military experience, the leadership, and the relationship

with the CIA POICs and the SouthVietnamese

province chiefs. He also pointed out that geography often played a role in how the PRUs

were employed and how their missions

changed over time as the war progressed. For

instance,he said that in the mountainous areas

of South Vietnam where VCI were scarce, the

PRUs often focused on collecting tactical intelligence rather than counter-VCI operations.

In the coastal plains and the Mekong Delta

where the population was dense, the PRUs

were used in a wider array of missions depending on the level of pacification in their

province.

As the pacification programs associated

with Phoenix began to succeed after the 1968

Tet Offensive, and more and more hamlets

were freed fromVC control,the mission of the

PRU evolved away from tactical intelligence

and quasi-military operations to strictly

counter-VCI, police-type operations. Colonel

Allen also said that PRU teams even conducted

several classified operations into the border

areas of Cambodia against VCI known to be

hiding there. These operations, because of

their sensitivity, were planned and executed

by the PRU directorate in Saigon.

In several interviews with the author,

Colonel Allen mentioned two serious impediments to the PRU Program in particular and

the Phoenix program in general. The first was

the “obstruction and lack of cooperation by

the U.S. State Department” when it came to

PRU missions. He stated that he found the attitude of the State Department difficult to comprehend at times since their officials seemed

to hold“the belief that as long as they were in

control of events,the ambassador was second

only to the President of the United States,” an

attitude that caused them to impose“controls

on PRU employment that were both unnecessary and counterproductive.” Many times the

State Department representatives in South

Vietnam dictated to Allen where Phoenix operations should be conducted, forcing him

often to agree to these demands in principle

but then to disregard them in practice. This

lack of U.S.State Department cooperation and

understanding for the PRU mission was a constant source of frustration for Allen as he

worked diligently to coordinate PRU operations with other U.S. and South Vietnamese

agencies.

While the State Department caused Colonel

Allen the most concern, he also had difficulties with South Vietnamese province chiefs

who misunderstood the proper role of the

PRU or sought to use their local PRU for missions not related to the elimination of the VCI.

He spent a considerable amount of time traveling around South Vietnam talking to

province chiefs about this tendency to misuse

the PRUs. His own MACV and Pacific Command intelligence analysts were also a problem at times since despite incontrovertible

evidence, in the form of captured NVA or VC

prisoners and enemy documents,they refused

to believe the intelligence reports generated

by the PRUs.

The second concern Colonel Allen had was

the problems caused by what he described as

inaccurate and false reporting by civilian journalists assigned to the Vietnam War. Allen’s

cover assignment was that of MACV deputy for

public information. Although his title had

nothing to do with his real job,it did give him

access to considerable information on the

press corps in South Vietnam. He soon found

out that of the 565 reporters working in South

Vietnam,few had either the background or the

expertise to cover the kind of war being

fought in South Vietnam, and many were

openly sympathetic to the enemy cause. He

also found that the North Vietnamese Intelligence Service, the Cuc Nghien Cuu, had thoroughly infiltrated the foreign press offices and

were receiving classified information regularly

from naïve and careless foreign reporters.

In addition to this classified information

being used by the enemy to thwart the pacification effort, it was also being used by the

enemy’s agents within the foreign press corps

to spread disinformation about Phoenix and

other programs that were proving to be successful in hurting the enemy. So much inac28
curate information about the PRU and the Special Operations Group (SOG) was being reported in the U.S. and foreign press in 1968

that Allen found it necessary to go the South

Vietnamese minister for indigenous people,

Paul Nur,and secure a promise from him to no

longer refer to the Phoenix program or the

PRU in any South Vietnamese press releases

and to use the Vietnamese title of Phung

Hoang instead. Allen considered the false and

inaccurate reporting by journalists in the

Saigon press corps to be far more damaging

than anything the enemy did to hurt the PRU

because these stories caused both the Lyndon

B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon administrations to overreact and impose restrictions on

the PRU and their advisors that only served to

help the enemy.

The author asked Colonel Allen several

times about the claim that the PRUs engaged

in assassinations and deliberately killed innocent civilians. He was adamant that the PRUs

never received orders to assassinate anyone

while he was the senior U.S. advisor to the

PRU Program, and he knew of no instances

prior to his assignment where such an order

had been issued. He stated,just as the U.S.Marine advisors interviewed for this book did,

that the PRU were given mission-type orders

that directed them to conduct reconnaissance

and surveillance operations, night ambushes,

and raids on known or suspected VCI targets.

He never issued an order to assassinate a VCI,

only to capture one. As he stated,“the whole

purpose of our operations was to capture VCI

so we could interrogate them and benefit from

the intelligence they provided. We did not

benefit from killing aVCI since a deadVCI was

of no intelligence value.”28

Death at the Embassy House,

Tet 1968

The PRU advisors’job was a very dangerous

one. They lived with their CIA colleagues in

villas that were often vulnerable to enemy attack, and in many instances they were the

only Americans accompanying the PRU teams

when they went on operations in areas controlled by the VC or NVA. The enemy feared

the PRU and considered them and their advisors prime targets for elimination. The following account, written by Raymond R. Lau, who

was a U.S. Marine captain assigned as a Rural

Development advisor in Hue City at the time

of the 1968 Tet Offensive, clearly illustrates

how dangerous living in an embassy house

could be. In his account, he tells the story of

the death of Sergeant Howard G.Vaughn, the

PRU advisor for Thua Thien Province.

Lau’s commentary begins on the day before

the Tet Offensive was launched, shortly after

he had returned to Vietnam from extension

leave. He had volunteered to spend an additional six months inVietnam over his initial 13-

month tour so he could continue to work with

the Rural Development Program. His account

is taken from an outline of events he wrote on

7 February 1968, the day he ended his harrowing seven days behind enemy lines.

After the short half-hour flight from Da

Nang air base aboard an Air America flight,

we landed at the small dirt airfield located

in the northwest corner of the Citadel and I

was met there by Jim Harris, a young former

Special Forces, now with the embassy. We had

become good friends in the short time we had

known each other. We rode back into town

in the jeep chatting about what happened

during the past month, and we stopped at the

Embassy Provincial Headquarters before

going to the house where we were both staying. At the American compound, I met Tom

Gompertz, a young FSO (Foreign Service Officer) assigned to Hue. He was the quintessential all-American boy, clean cut, good

looking, with a ready smile that seemed to

say that he was in on some joke. I’d known

Tom since coming to Hue. We played soccer

against the Nung guards and talked together

often. Tom welcomed me back and said

something about getting together soon, now

that I was back. That was the last time I saw

Tom until I identified his body some 10 days

later. I visited his gravesite in 2002, finally

“getting together”35 years later.

That night after dinner, Jim and I chatted

in the living room of our house while we

29
loaded the magazines of the Swedish K submachine guns that we had just gotten. Jim

had gotten them that day and had grabbed

one for me. It was like a new toy. We admired

the weapons because of their simple uncluttered design, the green metal body with its

folding stock, its wooden pistol grip, and the

leather carrying case for the 20-round magazines. The Swedish-Ks were different from

the M-2 carbines, M-3“grease guns,”or AK-47s

that we usually carried. I remember thinking that the Swedish Ks were a bit too“pretty”

for combat, but hell, we hadn’t seen much

combat during the last year.

Anyway, Jim and I figured there was not

much sense having the weapons around if

the magazines weren’t loaded, so we stayed

up late that night loading the magazines.

When we finally went to bed, boxes of 9mm

ammunition and tear gas grenades were still

sitting on the living room table. Other than

that, it was pretty much a normal night. I

felt good being back in Hue. I was back

home.

The next morning, 31 January 1968, the

first day of Tet, the Year of the Monkey, we

were awakened at about 4:00 a.m. to the

sound of gunfire and explosions in the distance. The three of us who shared the house

at No. 6 Nguyen Hue (Jim, Bob Ennis, and

myself) gathered to find out what was happening. According to our Nung guards outside, the guard camp across the canal at Nam

Giao was coming under attack, and they

were noticeably concerned. To us, it wasn’t

that unusual because we’d had probing attacks every few night in the previous months

as the Viet Cong probed outlying ARVN and

Marine outposts. A couple months previously,

the Viet Cong had attacked and overrun a

Marine CAP (Combined Action Platoon) post

just south of Hue. They killed the young Marine CAP unit leader, a corporal, whom I had

just met a couple weeks before.

30

Photo courtesy of Mr. Rudy Enders

The Embassy House in Hue City after the Tet 1968 attack. At right is the Military Region 1 regional officer-in-charge (ROIC), Mr. Harry Mustakos.
While it wasn’t particularly alarming, the

sustained firefight indicated that it was

something bigger than a probe. We continued to listen to the surreal pop-pop-popping

of small arms fire. I thought how almost

harmless it sounded, like firecrackers, not at

all like gunfire as portrayed in the movies.

We continued to monitor our radios, as we

could hear the sounds of the firefight move

west toward the Provincial Reconnaissance

Unit (PRU) camp, located at a stately old

French colonial compound called“Gerard.”

We were cautiously monitoring the fighting, but not unduly alarmed. There were

conflicting reports about whether “Gerard”

was under attack up until then, but soon we

got confirmation that it was coming under

heavy attack. We continued to hear the

sounds of small-arms fire and the“crump”of

grenades and exploding mortar rounds coming from the two locations. The fighting was

intensifying rapidly.

At about 7:00 a.m., Bob Hubbard, a Marine detailed to the embassy, and Howard

Vaughn, a Marine sergeant advisor to the

PRU, arrived by jeep at our house. They, too,

had been monitoring the fighting and

preparing to evacuate to the MACV compound about a mile away. Hubbard first

wanted to go to the house of the Police Special Branch (PSB) advisor, located at No. 9

Phan Dinh Phung, to check on several people

living there. Hubbard said they had not had

any radio contact with them that morning.

Hubbard and Jim departed through our

backyard toward the Phu Cam Canal where

the other house was located.

The sky was brightening, but the day was

gray and overcast. A light mist shrouded the

streets, and there was a slight chill in the air.

Sergeant Vaughn and I went out to the front

of the house to see if we could detect any activity. We did not have to wait long. We were

standing by our gateposts when Sergeant

Vaughn said he could see enemy soldiers

running down Lam Son Street toward the

provincial headquarters about 70 yards

away. The soldiers were dressed in green uniforms, trousers rolled up above the knee,

with each carrying a rucksack and a

weapon. I looked out and could see small figures, crouched over, moving across my front

about 100 yards away. It seemed like an endless stream of people running down the

street.

Sergeant Vaughn said he was going to

mark them with fire and let loose a short

burst of fire from his M-16. Almost immediately, it was answered with automatic fire.

Chips of stone flew off the gatepost, and

Vaughn wheeled away from the post and fell

to the ground. He spit up some blood, but

otherwise there wasn’t a lot of bleeding, so I

could not tell how seriously he was wounded.

He said he had taken one bullet below his left

arm. He was coughing up blood, meaning

the bullet had punctured a lung. I bent over

Vaughn, but still did not know the seriousness of his wounds.

At that moment, a couple of mortar

rounds struck the roof of our house and

showered us with shards of broken tile. I

asked SergeantVaughn if he could move into

the house. He pushed himself up and stumbled, hunched over, into the house and fell,

sprawling on the living room floor. I stayed

outside a couple more minutes watching the

NVA stream down the street, watching to see

if they turned up the street toward our house.

Things were getting more serious by the

minute, yet how serious it was to become

would not be known until later. Bob Ennis,

who had been inside the house, went out to

one of the jeeps to monitor radio transmissions. The radios we had in our jeeps were

squawking with a steady stream of English.

This was a dead giveaway that there were

Americans nearby.

A few minutes later, about 7:30 a.m., Bob

Hubbard and Jim Harris returned. They asked

if I thought we could make a run for the

MACV compound. I told them that a lot of

enemy troops had already moved down toward the MACV compound and I did not

think we could make it. Besides, I said, SergeantVaughn was seriously wounded. Harris

31
and Hubbard entered the house and went into

one bedroom to check the condition ofVaughn

and to try to establish radio contact with the

MACV compound. I was across the living

room in the other bedroom, watching the

front door and a window on my side of the

house. A few minutes later, I could see about

a half dozen Viet Cong come from the adjacent house, No.4 Nguyen Hue, cross in front of

our house, and walk off out of sight...

About 8:30 a.m., I saw a grenade coming

from somewhere to my right, out of my line

of sight, and land on the seat of one of the

jeeps parked outside our door. A second later

there was an explosion and the jeep was engulfed in flames as the grenade touched off

the gas tank. The second jeep soon followed

the same fate. So much for using the jeeps to

escape.

I don’t know what happened to Bob Ennis.

Frankly, in the confusion of the moment, I

did not even think of him, as my attention

was focused on the rapidly deteriorating situation. Several minutes went by, and I saw

fourVC parade a group of prisoners past out

house, their hands above their heads in surrender. I recognized a couple of people as

members of the IVS (InternationalVolunteer

Service), although I did not know their

names. Also among the group were two of

our Nung guards.

Around 9:30 a.m., one enemy soldier entered the house. He walked slowly toward the

right side bedroom where Bob Hubbard and

Jim Harris were. I was squatting down,

pressed up against the door jam, hidden

somewhat by a couch, watching the scene

unfold. I looked over at Hubbard, who was

watching the enemy approach. When the VC

was about 10 feet from Bob, Bob stood up,

and they both started firing on full automatic. It was like the gangster movies of the

1930s. Chips of wood were flying off the door

around Hubbard, but Hubbard’s bullets

found their mark, and the VC wheeled, staggered a couple feet, and collapsed at our

front door entrance. Somehow during this

violent exchange, one of the French doors to

the bedroom where Hubbard was standing

swung away from the wall, obscuring his

view of the front door from that room. This

was to have an impact on who engaged the

next VC intruders. Bob came away without

a scratch. Engaging the enemy at a distance

is one thing, but a shootout at 10 feet was

another thing. My adrenaline was pumping.

About 30 minutes passed before two other

NVA would approach. I was surprised that

our little firefight had not attracted more attention right after it happened—not that I

was eager. The lead NVA glanced down at the

body at the door but continued to enter the

house slowly. The second NVA knelt down to

examine the body more carefully. You could

see that the NVA were used to jungle fighting,

and their training did not prepare them for

urban combat. I don’t think either side was

trained for urban warfare....The defender—

in this case us—always has the advantage of

surprise. This was certainly the case here, for

I was crouched at the entry way to the left

side bedroom watching the enemy enter.

When he was about 10-12 feet away, I stood

up, braced my back against the doorway,

and opened fire on full automatic. I was so

nervous that my first rounds hit the floor,

and I remember walking the bullets up the

enemy’s leg to his body. He turned and collapsed. I raised my Swedish-K a bit and shot

the other NVA soldier kneeling at the main

doorway, and he went down right there. . . .

[Notes that this is the first man he has killed.]

Another ten minutes or so went by, and

the front doorway was rocked by an explosion from a RPG rocket, fired from across the

street. The blast blew a hole in the wall, to

the left of the front doorway. All I could remember was this cloud of red brick dust, and

the blast picking me up and throwing me

about 10 feet back into the bedroom. I was

a bit shaken but unscathed as I quickly got

up and crawled back into position at the

doorway to the bedroom. I could now look

out to the street through the open doorway

and the hole blown through the wall, but I

was feeling very vulnerable having to divide

my attention between the front door and the

32
windows of the left side bedroom, which had

been blown open by the explosion. I assessed

my position as being too untenable, so I scurried across the living room to join the others.

Bob Hubbard was crouched near the window opening out to the street. Jim Harris

was just inside the doorway I had just come

through. Howard Vaughn was lying in the

center of the room, fading in and out of consciousness. It looked very serious. I took up

a position at the doorway, on the opposite

side from Jim Harris.

I looked into the living room at the three

bodies of the VC. I could see that a piece of

the wall above where the RPG rocket had hit

had come down and crashed on top of one of

the bodies. If the fellow was not dead before,

the piece of the wall surely finished him.

Hubbard continued to try to establish

radio contact on the PRC-25—“Waverly

Waver . . .Waverly Waver.”. . .At one point, we

could hear communications between some

unidentified units. I thought it was the Air

Cav because they referred to someone as

“pony soldier,”but we could not raise anyone.

Unknown to us at the time, MACV had been

under attack since 4:00 a.m., and they had

changed frequencies and call signs.

It was about this time, about 10:00 a.m.,

that the NVA made a concerted effort to dislodge us. Several NVA ran and took cover just

outside our front gate. I thought I saw one

carrying a satchel charge and could only

think of the death and destruction such

charges made to the Marine CAP unit outside of Hue. A blast rocked the other side of

the building. I could see one NVA soldier hiding behind the gatepost—the very same post

that Vaughn was leaning against when he

was wounded. I could see only a part of his

head, so I aimed my Swedish-K at him and

let loose a burst of fire. He screamed and

went running down the street holding his

head.

We looked out again and could see an NVA

soldier scurry across the street with an RPG,

and a couple seconds later, a second NVA followed carrying two rockets. I think the same

thought ran through each of our minds

then,“Oh shit, here it comes.” I think it was

then that Bob Hubbard grabbed the bottle of

Drambuie off the fireplace mantel, took a

swig, and passed it around. Hell, it could be

our last drink, so we each took a swallow. We

quickly made a pact not to surrender, that

we would fight to the death. I was not sure I

liked that last promise, but we had to remain

united.

A couple moments later, our house was

rocked by the explosion as another RPG

rocket hit our house. They had aimed at the

other side of the house and again we were

safe. I recall looking over at the windows

and noticing that the plastic sheets we had

used in the windows instead of glass was

shredded, but that probably saved us from

the injuries by flying glass....

Just as suddenly as the attack began,

things went quiet. We could hear the sound

of helicopters outside, and I saw a Huey at

treetop level, firing into the tree line. We were

certain that this was the counterattack that

we were waiting for and that the battle

would soon be over. For the next half hour,

things were deathly quiet. Suddenly, just outside our door, we could hear one of the

33

Photo courtesy of Mr. Rudy Enders

The Embassy House in Hue City after the Tet 1968

attack.
wounded NVA, moan and cry. We were concerned that his cries would bring others, so

Jim Harris grabbed a gun, crawled outside,

and fired a couple rounds into him. Jim returned and said that he had taken care of

him, but it wasn’t more than a couple minutes later that the wounded man began

moaning and crying again. We looked at

each other, and Jim again went outside and

rolled two grenades outside the front door—

KRUMP, KRUMP. We were sure we had heard

the last of him, but soon, the cries began

again. Jim said,“Forget it, he’s not real.”

It had been a long, quiet period, and with

the sight of the Hueys earlier, we were certain

that things were drawing to a close. This

seemed to match the enemy’s M.O. [method

of operations] of attacking during the night

and early morning, then withdrawing during daylight. I don’t think any of us thought

that the NVA would hold Hue through daylight. However, we would wait until friendly

troops could mop up and move through our

area before we came out. Around 11:00 a.m.,

I saw a group of soldiers walking down the

street. I thought they were friendly forces,

probably ARVN because they had on green

uniforms like what the ARVN wore and the

lead individual was wearing a steel helmet.

Right about then, we took another rocket

on our house. I thought it was a case of mistaken identity and told the others in the

room, that I would try to identify us to these

people. I called out “Hoa ky, Hoa ky,” meaning “American, American.” Almost immediately, it was answered by a burst of

automatic fire. I dropped to the floor, hugging the tile, as bullets ripped through the

wall. Bullets were coming through the brick

wall not more than eight inches above my

head, and I could see splinters of wood fly off

the headboard of the bed.

Jim Harris, who had been squatting

against the wall on the other side of the doorway, whispered“I’m hit!” I thought he meant

a superficial wound and did not give it much

thought until I saw him lean away from the

wall, and it was covered in blood. Still, Jim

seemed all right and not seriously wounded.

We were to find out later that two rounds

had gone through his right upper arm and

34

Another view of the Embassy House in Hue City after the Tet 1968 attack.

Photo courtesy of Mr. Rudy Enders
penetrated his back and lodged inside his

right lung. Still thinking that it was mistaken

identity, I called out again,“Hoa ky, Hoa Ky,”

which was answered by grenades and more

small-arms fire.

It seemed as if the NVA were now in the

other bedroom, as one grenade rolled into

our room. Bob Hubbard dived for it and

threw it back outside into the living room,

where it exploded. A second grenade rolled

and stopped at the door frame, about three

feet from me. I plastered myself against the

wall as the grenade exploded with a deafening blast. Except for a single small fragment

of shrapnel on my left arm, I was not injured.

I could smell a familiar odor, for a minute

uncertain what it was, but soon realized it

was tear gas from the stash of tear gas

grenades we had left on the dining room

table. Apparently, the explosions had ruptured some of those grenades, and the smoke

was wafting into our room.

Reminiscent of the movie Butch Cassidy

and the Sundance Kid, Jim whispered, “Anymore good ideas?” He quickly added,

“friendly or not, we’re not going to take this”

and produced two fragmentation grenades.

Jim pulled the pins and nodded to me. I did

not need further direction; I extended my

Swedish-K into the doorway and sprayed a

full magazine of bullets into the other room.

As soon as I emptied the magazine, I pulled

back and motioned to Jim, who rolled the

two grenades into the other room. Two loud

explosions in the next room seemed to silence

things, and the house became quiet again.

By now, it was obvious that we could not

stay in the house. I was closest to the back

door and nervously I pushed it open, fully expecting the NVA to be on the other side. I was

“scared shitless,” but I couldn’t ask someone

else to do this since I was there, closest to the

door. I thought of the case of fragmentation

grenades, just on the other side of the door.

As I inched the door open, I was surprised to

find that there was no one there and the

coast was clear. I went to the back bathroom

and came back to motion everyone to escape

through the rear window. Bob Hubbard

helped Sergeant Howard through the window and hobble to one of the back houses. I

think these were old servants’ quarters, but

they were empty now.

We took the last room in the row. Here we

joined up with Bob Ennis and four of our

Nung guards. Hubbard hid Vaughn under a

concrete table, affording him good protection.

The rest of us took up positions to cover the

windows and doorways. We listened as the

enemy moved through the main building

and systematically blew up the house.

We stayed in this room for about an hour.

We had no illusions that we could hold this

position, but we had no idea where to move

without stumbling into more NVA, so we

stayed put. At about 12 noon, a rifle muzzle

appeared outside our door. A shot came

through the door, with the bullet striking

Vaughn, this time blowing off his pinkie finger and breaking his leg. Hubbard yanked

the door open and fired, killing three NVA.

Hubbard pulled back, yelling that he was out

of ammunition. I went to the door, ready to

fire, but noticed the three NVA lying outside

the room and no one else. I spied a grenade

and extra magazines for an AK-47 on one of

the bodies, and I stooped to take them. The

grenade was knotted to his belt and I was

trying to undo the knot.

Looking up, back at the main house, I

made eye contact with a NVA soldier standing there in the bathroom window we had

come through not that long ago. I think he

was an NVA officer because he was wearing

a tan pith helmet and seem to be in authority. We looked at each other for several seconds, and then I got up and casually walked

around to the back of the building. I am convinced that he took me for a localVC because

I was in civilian clothes and carrying an AK47.

At the back of the building, I linked up

with Hubbard and Vaughn. I motioned that

I was going over the wall to check out the

next compound. I rolled over the wall and

ran to the nearest cover, which turned out to

35
be a watershed. As I entered, I saw a body in

the water trough. No sooner that I had gotten over that shock than the body rose up. It

scared the pants off me, but I motioned him

to be quiet, pushing him back down toward

the water, and stepped out of the shed.

The only other place was a closet-like room

with a small water trough. I went over to it,

and it looked like a way to climb up to the

attic crawl space, where I thought we could

hide. I waved to Hubbard to follow, and the

two of us hoisted Vaughn up the wall and

pushed him up. He let out a muffled scream,

and then we heard a thud and moan. It soon

became apparent that what I thought was an

attic was only the other side of the wall, and

we had just dropped Vaughn over the wall.

Hubbard climbed over and I quickly followed. On the other side, there was another

water trough, and I kneeled on the rim, facing a window and door. Vaughn was lying

on the floor. Bob had taken up a position

looking out another window.

This was the first chance that we had to

regroup. During the last skirmish, everyone

scattered, and now only Hubbard, Vaughn,

and I were together. We did not know where

Jim Harris and Bob Ennis had gone, nor did

we know where our Nung guards went. I do

not remember how long we stayed there. We

could hear some activity going on around

us, but we did not see anything. Sometime

later that afternoon, I saw aVietnamese outside our building. He wandered about for a

while and then came to the door and peered

through the crack, straight at me. I was still

squatting on the water trough, with a

weapon cradled in my arms. I stared back,

but otherwise did not move. I was certain he

saw me, but I wasn’t certain whether he

would report our presence. Luck was with

us, and nothing came of this incident.

As night fell, I moved into the small room

with Hubbard. He had already moved

Vaughn and slid him under the bed in the

room. Hubbard faced out the small openings

to the back, while I sat in the doorway looking out the window. We had made it through

day one. It seemed like forever.

Some time during that first night, I suddenly heard voices coming from directly in

front of me, and in the faint light coming in

the window I could see two figures. I think

they were a man and a woman. I do not

know how or when they came into our building, but they were suddenly there, not more

than four feet away. I called to them in my

limited Vietnamese, saying that I was a

friend and not to be afraid, all the while

slowly moving toward them, hand over hand.

By the time I reached the window, they were

gone. I never found out who they were or

how they got in and out without us hearing

anything. The rest of the night and the next

day were uneventful, and Bob and I kept our

same positions. Vaughn continued to fade in

and out of consciousness, and we did not

know how long he would last.

On the second night, 1 February 1968,

Bob noticed two figures moving outside. By

their movements, we could tell they were Jim

Harris and Bob Ennis. We called to them in

a whisper and guided them into our building through a back door. They soon joined

us and told us of their story of taking refuge

in the main building of this compound. They

said that they hid in a closet, while just outside their door less than five feet away, NVA

soldiers gathered and chatted in the dark.

This night, they decided to sneak past the

NVA soldiers and try to escape, when we

called to them. They joined us in our small

room. Bob Hubbard, Jim Harris and Bob

Ennis sat on the bed, Sergeant Vaughn was

lying under the bed, and I sat across from

them on a bag of rice. Vaughn was still alive

but getting weaker, slipping in and out of

consciousness. We shared a bar of brown

sugar and an apple that we had taken from

the worship altar and water from our water

source.

Jim Harris had lost quite a bit of blood

and was weak. Bob Hubbard rolled Jim on

his wounded side to drain the blood from his

good lung into the bad lung and gave Jim

water. By the next day, Jim had recuperated

36