Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
but that it had in the words of of a 1/101 Bn Cdr "Some of the nicest incompetents you'd ever meet..." On two occasions when they first came in country, I had to break up fire fights between 1-22 Inf units. That was one of the better things I saw of the Bde that was on the coast. The Div was dispersed, a Bde and Div Hq in the Highlands, one Bde on the coast and another IIRC down south in Tay Ninh; thus not so much an area but initially trying to operate as a Div when the Bdes should have been seen as the independent units they actually were...

No matter, I think you're correct on them being the originators of the idea. It did not exist in '66 but was firmly in place when I got back in '68 though 3/82 just ignored it as unworkable while I was there, may have changed later.
I should have been more accurate. They weren't spread as far as the Americal, but they did operate in terrain that (especially in the early days) they didn't seem to understand, and also had to deal with the presence of large NVA concentrations just across the border (which, again, they seemed to have issues dealing with). My read on their ops in the early days has always been that after a few rough encounters they went over to larger-unit patrols and operations within artillery fans no matter what. That comment of course applies to the units working the Highlands and no so much those down near the coast.

You're quite correct, I think, in their desire to continue controlling ops as a division as opposed to recognizing the decentralized elements of their environment. There was also the issue of the "brigade swap" between them and the 25th ID down by Saigon. I've never seen much concerning how that might have impacted their operations, although I'd certainly suspect that it wasn't for the better...

I'm not sure, but it might have been General Peers who came up with the SRP (short range patrol) concept. Don't remember off the top of my head, but it came into use around 1967. Some units did ignore it, while others tried to put it into place.