Pursuant to Mark's re: the Australian AO
But wouldn't you agree, Mark, that the main player on the enemy side in Phuoc Tuy was the 274th Regiment of the 5th VC Division--and that by 1970 the troop strength of the 274th was composed of NVA fillers instead of VC, the result of attrition of southern-born combatants in two years of very heavy fighting that began with Tet 68? I suspect that is Merv's point.
Cheers,
Mike.
The NVA and the "insurgency"
I think Mike and Steve may have stated my point better than I did. It should be noted that by 1965 the NVA was already operating in division size units in south Vietnam. When I say they were using a raiding strategy, that should also include in some cases pretensions of an insurgency. It was important from a propaganda basis for them the pretend that they were part of a "civil war" in the south. However, in northern I Corps where I operated in 1968, they did not have any pretensions of an insurgency. They wore their NVA uniforms and maneuvered in battalion size and larger units. It should also be noted that the siege at Khe Sanh was all NVA all the time including their heavy field artillery situated in Laos. After Tet most of the VC units were no longer combat effective and the NVA had to fill in most of the holes. As I have noted before the Diem regime did a pretty good job of controlling the insurgency until 1963 when the communist infiltrated the Buddhist movement and severely weakened the government with the help of our state department. Moyar in his Triumph Forsaken points out that the communist forces were reduced to around 6,000 total by 1959. It was at about that time the North realized they would have to send their troops down in large number and that they would have to do it through Laos, because the direct route into the south had been cut off by the ARVN.