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derivative filename/jpeg
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363-07954 to 363-07959.pdf
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Digital Object Identifier
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363-07954 to 363-07959
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Title
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Article about U.S. efforts to militarily train Montagnards
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Description
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Keever's title: "Mang Buc Outpost: Green Berets Train Hill Tribesmen", Article draft about U.S. efforts to militarily train Montagnards, for Newsweek Magazine
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Transcript
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Beverly Deepe
101 cong k
Saigon, Việt Nam
The desolate post of Meng Buo rpt Mang Buc snuggles in a valley
encircled by 7000-foot jungled peaks midway between Viet Nam's coast
on the South China Sea and the Laotian border. Across these mountains
300 miles north of Saigon filter Communist Viet Cong propaganda agents,
soldiers, supplies and equipment through an important infiltration route
known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail-a series of paths, animal tracks and
jungle clearings. Not far from Mang Buo lies a Communist guerrilla
stronghold known as the Viet Cong's Fifth Inter-Regional Headquarters.
From this center of Viet Cong activity around Mang Buc, U. 3. Marine
helicopters have been fired at eight times in the past month; ambushes
and raids occur weekly.
(More)
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Deep0-2
A dozen dirt-floored, rice-strew shacks roofed with corrugated
tin, Mang Buc is a five-day walk-or half-hour helicopter ride-to
civilization. Scattered down the valley outside the bamboo fence of the
camp at are the dismal shacks of the trainees' dependents-known as
"brown buggers" and an open shed for the bartering of rice, salt and ducks.
During the current season of almost continuous rains and thick clouds, the
small outpost is "souped in" for weeks at a time, making impossible
the "Stink-o Special-flights for airdropping or helicoptering in live
pigs, ducks, sinks and chickens caged in wicker baskets.
Living in this "hellhole on a high plateau" to train and equip
the primitive montagnarde-the Frence word for mountaineers--is a
12-man team of U. S. Army Special Forces-a detachment of highly-trained,
green-bereted specialists in light and heavy weapons, operations,
intelligence work, demolitions, communications and two medios.
Intelligence sergeant for Mang Buo's team is 36-year-old SFC Lawrence
(correct) H. Allen, a red-haired, mustached native of Tacoma, Washington,
known throughout the area as "Oriental Al.".
Stationed four times in the Far East, including four years of World
War II combat from the Solomn Islands a to Iwo Jima, the six-foot "rice
paddy daddy has learned to adjust quickly to the Oriental way of life.
His normal breakfast is rice and hot coffee if pancake flour and bacon run out.
He joins the montamards for lunch of rice, dried fish and their delicacies
of stewed grubs, termites or toasted rats. Like the tribesmen, his "int
"laundromat and shower room" is a lashing cold stream near the camp. Last
week, he was presented a red and blue beaded necklace-a Special Forces
status symbol-making him a "warrior" in a nearby village.
(More)
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Deepe- 3
Through a Vietnamese interpreter, "Oriental Al" helps teach the cadre
AnD
of the Katang tribe ambush and surprise tactics how to use carbines
instead of ER crossbows. The dozen Katang cadre then instruct 200
Actics
tir tribesmen in weapons use and maintenance, taots and operations.
The most influential members of the Special Forces team are the two
medios. At Mang Buo, 22-year-old baby-faced Sgt. Tom Duffy of Chicago
treats 30 to 50 montagnards a day and gives medical training to two
native cadre. The health program at one Special Forces camp included
passing out thousands of iron pills, vitamin capsules and bars of soap
to cleanse the montagnards scaley, infected skin. The Special Forces
team out the death rate in neighboring villages from four a day to four
in ten weeks.
"The Special Forces medics are the key to the whole damn team,"
one high ranking American officer explained. "They go into a strange area
to meet strange people to whom a pill for pain is a miracle."
live semi-nomadically throughout
An estimated 700,000 montamards
the high plateau region blanketing the northern two-thirds of South Viet Nam.
Described as being similar to the American Indian 300 or 400 years ago, the
montagnards have never used electricity, are terrified to ride on a
helicopter, brush their gleaming white teeth with their fingers and mud,
and are just now learning to eat with spoons instead of their fingers.
Few have ever seen "the magic lenterna movie. In the 1800's the French
regarded the montagnards as animals and commonly believed they had tails.
One Frenchmen even organized an expedition to try to capture one of them
for a Paris 200.
(More)
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Deepe-4
paid.
"We are trying to get a polaroid camera up here," green-bereted
M/Sgt. William S. Burke, of Baltimore, Mang Buo's team sergeant,
"Phots of themselves would throw these people in a tizzy. They are
fascinated engey enough with a mirror.
"We tried passing out bubble gum to the kids," he continued. "But
that didn't work too well. They swallowed it." 195
Yet these uneducated people in the critical plateau are industriously
intelligent. "In our camp, they learn English end Vietnamese on their
own, strking matches or using our lighter fluid at night," Burke
explained. "One of them has learned to speak in unaccented GI-ese
Give me a cigarette, Burke'./
Once they learn something, they never
forget it. They rely on memory like we rely on pencil and paper.
"Some of them can count from one to one hundred in English," he
concluded. "This is important for accurate information. Before when we
asked them how deep a stream was, they'd answer two elephants deep'."
are "dead shots with a
"Oriental Al" added that the montamards
carbine and could hear a tree leap map before I'd even see anything. It
I don't hesitate a minute to go out of this compound with them. They can
handle any trouble we get into."
"This is the major hope for Viet Nam," one high-ranking officer
explained. "We're trying to rob the guerrilla of his food,
intelligence network and his security.
We are trying to jeopardize him by
reclaiming the montagnards who could be our friends but who have been
terrorized into being our foes."
(More)
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Deep0-15
A year ago only a handful of Special Forces teams were in the country.
In June, 1962, they began mobilizing 100,000 montagnards
in the critical
high plateau area. After a joint Vietnamese-American survey team
selects a location for a detachment--President Ngo Dinh Diem approves each
location-local security is established in the area and the medios
begin treating the tribesmen and training village medios. Other team
members persuade village men to volunteer for combat training. Soon nearby
villages begin volunteering for the program. "We've been so successful
Iwe have to set high standards for which villages to admit," one high
official explained.
The first village tax a Special Forces team worked with in the
high pleatu plateau has expanded in ten months into a 179-village
complex under government control. Now a number of teams are scattered
throughout the plateau region to form a human-wall defense against
Laotian infiltration and Viet Cong raids.
Some of the villages where Special Forces teams are working
are me
OTHER
In some areas Special Forces train and equip some of the 130,000
ombuganin montagnards rega refugees who have left Viet Cong-controlled
villages to enter government secured areas.
These people have voted with
their feet-their barefeet-to be free," one American official explained.
In lowland areas, the teams mobolize such loyal civilian elements as Catholic
youth groups or villages commanded by Catholic priests.
(More)
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Deepe--
Other phases of Special Forces work, upon coordination snosidading
with the Central Intelligence Agency, are so highly classified the
teams have been called "sneaky petes" or "spp "spooks."
This week a 76-man Special Forces headquarters company arrived in
Viet Nam to establish and even tighter organisation and better supply and
Channel
communications cannels for training and equipping the primitive
montagnards-until nowemuan "people who were born, died and nobody
knew or cared."
-30-
Note to Editors: The headquarters company is scheduled to arrive the
first week in November, but if it should be delayed I'll notify you by
cable.
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Date
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1962
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Subject
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Vietnam War, 1961-1975; Montagnards (Vietnamese people); Soldiers; Military education; Vietnam (Republic). Quân lực
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Location
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Saigon, South Vietnam
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Coordinates
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10.8231; 106.6311
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Size
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20 x 26 cm
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Container
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B2, F4
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Format
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dispatches
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Collection Number
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MS 363
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Collection Title
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Beverly Deepe Keever, Journalism Papers
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Creator
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Keever, Beverly Deepe
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Collector
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Keever, Beverly Deepe
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Copyright Information
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These images are for educational use only. To inquire about usage or publication, please contact Archives & Special Collections.
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Publisher
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Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries
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Language
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English
