An Interview with Bernard Fall

[SWJED]

The Small Wars Journal / Small Wars Council has been given permission to republish several articles from the archives of the Marine Corps Gazette (1916 – 2005).

We have been researching COIN related articles from the Vietnam War era and there is an outstanding selection to choose from. We certainly do not want to take advantage of the Gazette’s kind offer and will be selective in what we publish in the SWJ Magazine and post here at the SWC and to the SWJ Library.

Articles address many issues to include insurgency / counterinsurgency, cultural considerations, the Combined Action Program (CAP), the Kit Carson Scout Program and much more. We enjoin you to post Vietnam-related topics (remember the MCG is a USMC publication and will center on Marine issues) that you would like posted and we will see what we can come up with through a data-base search.

Again, we will be selective to ensure we do not abuse this most gracious offer and request you honor the original copyright.

We begin by linking to this 1967 Marine Corps Gazette article – An Interview with Bernard Fall. The article is the text of a taped interview with Dr. Fall shortly before his death 12 February 1967. Dr. Fall was killed by a land mine while accompanying a Marine patrol 14 miles north of Hue. He was a professor of government at Howard University and the author of Street Without Joy, The Two Viet-Nams and Hell in a Very Small Place. The interviewer is Marine Sgt. Roy Johnson of Combat Info Bureau, Da Nang.

Q. Since your arrival in "I" Corps, Dr. Fall, have you visited any of the Combined Action Companies?

A. Yes. I visited with CAC-31 over at Marble Mountain.

Q. What did you think about them, sir?

A. That's an interesting experiment. I've seen it while the French were fighting here in Viet-Nam in 1953-54. This was done very often in Korea also. We had what was called KATUSAS-Korean and American Army Troops. You have Vietnamese and Americans working side by side in the same units. Usually this works out rather well. The Americans profit from the local experience of the Vietnamese-meaning the Vietnamese know where the ambushes are, or they usually get the word fairly fast and vice versa. The Vietnamese profit from the American know-how, the military technology and the ability to get fire-power when needed.

Volume Four of the Small Wars Journal (January 2006) will contain another article related to Dr. Fall written by Lieutenant Colonel W. G. Leftwich – An Afternoon with Bernard Fall– published in 1969.