Indian Wars, Congo, Hue City

[Tom Odom]

I never cease to be amazed at just how small a world we live in. I stumbled across this May 1960 Military Review article by then Lieutenant Colonel D.V Rattan entitled "AntiGuerrilla Operations, A Case Study From History." The subject of the article is General Crook's campaign against the Appaches in arizona and New Mexico.

Then Colonel Rattan was an action officer in the Pentagon in the fall of 1964 and when the Congo Hostage Crisis erupted found himself on extended TDY to the Congo as a logistics advisor attached to the Belgian military and mercenary effort to retake the Congo. he had an interesting time; he was in the mercenary column that rolled into Stanleyvile from the south as the Belgian Paracommando Regiment jumped on the city.

Later Colonel Rattan took his battalion into Hue City during the 1968 Tet Offensive. He retired as a Major General after commanding 8th ID. I interviewed him in 1986 when I was working the Leavenworth paper 14 project on the Congo. See http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resour.../odom/odom.asp. During Desert Shield, his nephew was a Major with me on the army staff.

Here is a an extract from the 1960 article on Crook and the Apaches:

To conduct antiguerrilla operations without sound intelligence and counterintelligence wastes time, material, and troop effort. However, the intangible aspects of guerrilla warfare create intelligence obstacles that can be overcome only by patient determination and the utmost resolve.

Plans for antiguerrilla operations are based primarily ore a detailed analysis of the country concerned and its population. The political, administrative, economic, sociological, and military aspects of the plans correlated with the overall military plan.

I will send the full article to Dave for posting.

Best
Tom