Battle Ready

way. The Vietnamese Marine sentry shouted for him to stop; but he just laughed and sped on. The sentry then aimed his rifle and shot him dead.

The incident shocked young Zinni, but gave him a quick insight into the Vietnamese Marines: They did not fool around.

THE ADVISERS

The Marine Advisory Unit traced its beginnings back to a U.S. Marine colonel named Victor J. Croizat. A fluent French speaker and World War Two veteran, Croizat had experience with the French forces in Algeria and in the Indochina War; served an initial tour in MACV as it formed after the Indochina War; and was directly involved in the forming of the Vietnamese Marines. He modeled the advisory effort to support the Vietnamese Marines after the French approach: Instead of American advisory “teams,” as was the usual American practice with Vietnamese units, there would be only two U.S. Marine advisers per infantry battalion, and specialty advisers for artillery, communications, medical, motor transport, and senior staff positions. The advisers completely immersed themselves in the units. They and the Vietnamese troops were essential parts of the same team; the Americans couldn’t isolate themselves. They wore Vietnamese Marine uniforms, ate their food, spoke their language, and shared their hardships. This forced total integration and dependence, and built mutual trust.

In 1967, there were thirty-five advisers total in the Marine Advisory Unit. The number would grow in later years as the VNMC grew toward division size.

Between two and three hundred U.S. Marines served in the Marine Advisory Unit during the war. Since they were generally among the top U.S. Marine officers, they were respected and valued by the Vietnamese (and called “covan,” a term of respect). Overall, the personal relationships between Americans and Vietnamese were superb, though now and again an adviser would suffer severe “culture shock” or experience a serious problem adjusting to the Vietnamese way of doing things and have to be moved from the unit.

The role of the adviser was not specifically defined. Zinni never received a briefing or written description of the duties he was to perform. He was expected to immerse himself in the job and figure out what he had to do.

This did not surprise him. It is the U.S. Marine way: You are given what you need and then the job is your responsibility; the assumption is that you can do it. Such an approach to life suited Zinni.

Though he didn’t receive much initial guidance, the specific military responsibilities of the advisers quickly became obvious to him: They coordinated all operational activities with U.S. units and with the support provided by U.S. units, such as airlift, logistics, and fire support. They controlled and directed all artillery, naval gunfire, and air support. Beyond this, each adviser contributed whatever else he could add, based on his own experience and the desires of the Vietnamese commanders.

Vietnam is a vastly diverse land. It has steep mountains, broad coastal plains, thick mangrove swamps, tangled jungles, and a vast flooded delta. Because the Vietnamese Marines moved all over the country, they had to adapt to a great variety of terrain, enemy, and operational characteristics that shaped the unique nature of the local conflict. The advisers saw it all.

Because they moved from unit to unit or could be called back to their headquarters at any time, they saw more of Vietnam than any other group of U.S. military personnel. (They were given blanket travel orders that authorized them to travel anywhere in Vietnam at any time.) As the junior adviser, Zinni moved from unit to unit all over the country wherever a hole had to be plugged, scrounging rides from all sorts of military and nonmilitary means of transportation.

Each area presented a unique set of challenges for conducting military operations and for surviving from day to day. As an example, unlike with U.S. units, the Vietnamese Marines had to come up with their own food. Where they couldn’t buy it, they had to catch it. Food was plentiful in the delta region, where fat white grubs could be cut out of the mangrove trees and large iguana-like lizards were easy delicacies to come by. In the jungle, food was more difficult to acquire unless you knew what to look for and were patient enough to forage or hunt for such delights as monkeys, snakes, bamboo shoots, or breadfruit. In the northern mountains, food could be scarce, especially in the dry season, and bitter greens, dried fish, and a little rice could be all you ate in a day.

There were two seasons in Vietnam: wet, and dry. Each was extreme. During monsoon season everything was drenched by afternoon deluges and the constant damp made it hard to dry out. In the dry season, the heat was intense and unrelenting, even at night. The killer heat made field operations difficult. For Americans like Zinni, it took a while to acclimatize and learn how to survive.

South Vietnam was divided for the war into four Corps Tactical Zones (CTZS), the Rung Sat Special Zone (RSSZ), and the Capital Military District (CMD).

During his tour of duty in 1967, Zinni experienced what amounted to five very different wars. He served with the Vietnamese Marines in the mangrove swamps and river complexes of the RSSZ; the water world of endless rice paddies, canals, and rivers of the Mekong Delta (IV CTZ); the dense, steamy jungles near the Cambodian border (III CTZ); the broad coastal plain and high mountains of the central region (II CTZ); and the complex of villages and colonial plantations that surrounded Saigon (CMD).

In his second tour of duty in 1970, he completed the circuit by serving in the northernmost zone (I CTZ — better known as I Corps).[9]

The enemy in each of these regions could range from first-rate North Vietnamese Army (NVA) regulars to competent mainline, or full-time, Vietcong units, to guerrilla forces of varying fighting skill. They cleverly adapted their style of fighting to the environment and local conditions to add to the uniqueness of operating in each area. The style of VNMC operations differed greatly, depending on the type units assigned to the region and their own adaptations to the area.

Zinni learned very quickly that this was a war without consistency. There was no way to reliably characterize it. In the First World War or the Korean War, there had been battle lines and fronts — one side here, the other side there. In Castro’s revolution, the war had been won by guerrillas and insurgents, embedded in the people; they could be anywhere. In Vietnam, many different kinds of wars were fought.

Tony Zinni’s travels allowed him to experience most of them. The experience affected him deeply.

He has thoughts on the subject:

Back in the United States, those who considered themselves knowledgeable about the war tended to call it an insurgency, with all the usual props and trappings: clandestine rather than overt operations, political actions to win hearts and minds, acts of terror and intimidation, guerrillas — workers or farmers by day, fighters by night — no fixed battle lines, skirmishes and raids rather than pitched battles.

In Vietnam, there were times when we ran into guerrilla-type actions. But there were also times when we’d find ourselves in pitched battles with regular North Vietnamese forces. In fact, in the northern parts of South Vietnam, that was more often the case than not. In the south, the reverse was more usually the case. There we were more likely to encounter guerrilla action; but even there we ran up against different kinds of war. At times, we would be dealing with farmer by day, guerrilla by night, a very different kind of situation than dealing with mainline VC units, who were full-time guerrillas. But these were very different, again, from NVA soldiers, as was the nature of the combat with them.

And then to add to the complications, each environment had its own special requirements. If you were in the Mekong Delta in the Rung Sat Special Zone, you had a much different style of fighting than you might encounter patrolling in the jungle or in the large unit engagements we had in the north, along the coast, or on the open plains. And combat was different again up in the mountains.

The geography, the nature of the enemy, the style of fighting, and even the nature of some of the units all added their own particular character to what we might encounter. All tended to create different types of wars, if you will, or a different type of the same war.

Because I experienced so many different aspects of the war, I came back with a real understanding that this war was multifaceted; everything was all over the place. There was no clear and simple way to look at it. But most Americans who served in Vietnam had perhaps a year tour and saw only one geographical area. For them it was like the blind man and the elephant. The war they saw was real, but