“To assist somebody you have to understand what he is doing. And it may be that you are much smarter then the person you are advising, but you still can’t do it for him. Let’s say you are a duck hunting guide. The hunter has to rely on you to get him to the blind, get out the duck-calling whistle, make the ducks come in. He can’t do any of that. But when the time comes, he’s got to shoot the duck. Now if he works with you long enough, he might learn some tricks of the trade. It would have been wonderful if we had advisors at every level in Vietnam who were as qualified as the average northern Canadian duck-hunting guide. The trouble was they took these guys off the street – not off the street so much, but out of the Army – put’em on orders, and said, “Now you’re an advisor, go do your job.” Sometimes they got a little training,. And advisors turned over pretty fast, once a year.
So here’s this Vietnamese BN CDR. He’s been fighting the VC for ten years. Living in the rice paddies, living in the mountains. Fighting. Lucky to be alive, in his opinion. He’s got all these problems on his mind, all these troops he has to take care of. He’s not even sure he’s going to survive the next day. And here comes this new advisor, some captain fresh out of advisory school. Doesn’t know how to live in the rice paddies. Gets diarrhea the first week he’s there. Of curse he does know something about helicopters. He might know something about the theory of tactics, and he’s smart enough to know when the troops are dogging it. Nonetheless, what you have there is a very interesting situation: an advisor who has got to learn from his counterpart.
Its an art, an absolute art, to be a good advisor. The first thing you have to do is understand the situation.
If you don’t you have to be smart enough not to act like you do. Don’t be popping off about it. Find out about your counterpart. See what your leverage is. You can’t be a non-entity. You can’t just come along with him to run the radio so he can get helicopters. You have to earn his respect. You come with a certain amount of respect attached, because you represent the United States of America, a powerful country with lots of resources and you represent the U.S. Armed forces”
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