ARVN Request
The ARVN question was the subject of one of my history lessons a few months ago. The best is the CMH Monograph
Begin Intro
"The situation at the beginning of 1965 was critical. By taking advantage of the civil unrest and political instability that had prevailed since mid-1963, the enemy had grown stronger and tightened his hold on the countryside. Estimates of enemy strength had risen from a total of 30,000 in November 1963 to 212,000 by July 1965. The Viet Cong launched their first division size attack against the village of Binh Gia close to Saigon where they destroyed two South Vietnam Army battalions and remained on the battlefield for four days instead of following their usual hit-and-run tactics. North Vietnamese units and reinforcements had now joined the battle and were arriving at a rate of nearly 1,000 men per month. Both the North Vietnam Army and the Viet Cong were now armed with modern weapons such as the AK47 assault rifle, giving them a firepower advantage over the South Vietnam Army which was still fighting with American weapons of World War II vintage. Enemy strategy was evidently based on the assumption that the United States would not increase its involvement and that, weak as it was, the government of South Vietnam would collapse from its own weight if pushed hard enough."
This installment of the JRTC CALL Observation Detachment BiWeekly History Lessons uses one of the Center of Military History's Vietnam Studies Series as its focus. THE DEVELOPMENT AND TRAINING OF THE SOUTH VIETNAMESE ARMY, 1950-1972 by BG James Lawton Collins, Jr, effectively catalogs the US military effort to build the Vietnamese forces into an effective military.
All of that said, this monograph is useful, timely, and revealing. First look at the continuity challenges in the military assistance effort in South Viet Nam; the initial focus was to train the fledgling military to withstand a conventional invasion from North Viet Nam. As the growing insurgency spread across the country, the US military assistance effort had to be restructured even as it attempted to do the same to the South Vietnamese military. Second look at the role of the South Vietnamese government; not always a willing or even cooperative partner, the South Vietnamese government followed its own agenda, one sometimes in conflict with its US backers. Finally, I would understand also that by the time that US forces were leaving the country, the war had in many ways become the conventional struggle between North and South Viet Nam that had first concerned the US assistance effort.
End Intro
You can see the mongraph at
http://www.army.mil/cmh/books/Vietna...nrvn/index.htm
Best
Tom
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