Marine Advisors With The Vietnamese Provincial Reconnaissance Units 1966 1970

While most Marines think of the Vietnamese Marine Corps as the primary advisory experience during that conflict, Marines served with other programs. One of these is the subject of this study: Marine advisors with the Vietnamese Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs). This narrative is a combination of experience, research, and reflection.While other journalistic or academic accounts have been published, this is a narrative of participants. Many historians consider the two most effective counterinsurgency organizations employed during the VietnamWar to have been the PRU and USMC Combined Action Platoons (CAP). The author believes that both of these programs have applicability in any counterinsurgency where U.S. forces are called upon to assist a host government. (Originally published by the History Division, USMC)

During the latter stages of the Vietnam War, small teams of dedicated and courageous Vietnamesespecial police, led by American military and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) personnel,fought a largely unsung war against the political leadership of the Communist insurgency. These special police units were called Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs), and they conductedsome of the most dangerous and difficult operations of the Vietnam War. Because these units were created, trained, equipped, and managed by the CIA, they worked in secret, a status that often led to myths and falsehoods about their activities. So pervasive are these myths and falsehoods that many historians often take them at face value without subjecting them to the same scrutiny as other historical aspects of the Vietnam War...

U.S. Marines as advisors have a long history, from Presley O'Bannon atTripoli through Iraq and Afghanistan via Haiti, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, and Vietnam. While most Marines think of the Vietnamese Marine Corps as the primary advisory experience during that conflict, others served with various other advisory programs with the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Joint Special Operations, and U.S. Civil Operations and Rural Development Support. One of these is the subject of this study: Marine advisors with the Vietnamese Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs). This narrative is a combination of experience, research, and reflection. While other journalistic or academic accounts have been published, this is a narrative of participants. Many historians consider the two most effective counterinsurgency organizations employed during the Vietnam War to have been the PRU and USMC Combined Action Platoons (CAP)

This is the second volume in a series of chronological histories prepared by the Marine Corps History and Museums Division to cover the entire span of Marine Corps involvement in the Vietnam War. This volume details the Marine activities during 1965, the year the war escalated and major American combat units were committed to the conflict. The narrative traces the landing of the nearly 5,000-man 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade and its transformation into the ΙII Marine Amphibious Force, which by the end of the year contained over 38,000 Marines. During this period, the Marines established three enclaves in South Vietnam’s northernmost corps area, I Corps, and their mission expanded from defense of the Da Nang Airbase to a balanced strategy involving base defense, offensive operations, and pacification. This volume continues to treat the activities of Marine advisors to the South Vietnamese armed forces but in less detail than its predecessor volume, U.S. Marines in Vietnam, 1954-1964; The Advisory and Combat Assistance Era.

NOTE: NO FURTHER DISCOUNT FOR THIS PRINT PRODUCT-- OVERSTOCK SALE -- Significantly reduced list price The period after World War II saw a number of associated Marine Corps formed in the republics of China, Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand. They had been founded, with the help of foreign military aid, to fight the various conflicts to contain communist expansion in the region. Also present at various times were other Marines from the Netherlands, France, and Great Britain. The beginnings of the Cold War witnessed this proliferation of amphibious forces in Asia, in part because of the reputation the U.S. Marines had earned in the cross Pacific drive against Japan and in other postwar confrontations. This publication is about one of these, the Vietnamese Marine Corps or Thuy Quan Luc Chien (TQLC). This occasional paper provides documents on the topics of the Vietnamese Marines and the U.S. Marine Advisory Unit from this period. Marine Corps History Division Occasional Paper. Prepared by the U.S. Marine Advisory Unit, Naval Advisory Group. Compiled and edited by Charles D. Melson and Wanda J. Renfrow. Related products: Mounted Combat in Vietnam is available here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-029-00574-3 Advice and Support: The Early Years, 1941-1960 (Paperback) is available here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-029-00508-5 Military Communications: A Test for Technology (Paperbound) is available here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-020-01035-9 Other products produced by the United States (U.S.) Marine Corps (USMC) can be found here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/agency/922 "

A young U.S. Marine officer recounts his experiences of the Vietnam War over a nineteen month period. He graphically describes what it was like to perform three distinct combat missions: long-range ground reconnaissance in the Annamite Mountains of I Corps, infantry operations in the rice paddies and mountains of Quang Nam Province and special police operations for the CIA in Tay Ninh Province. Using Marine Corps official unit histories, CIA documents, and his weekly letters home, the author relies almost exclusively on primary sources in providing an accurate and honest account of combat at the small unit level. Of particular interest is his description of his assignment to the CIA as a Provincial Reconnaissance Unit (PRU) advisor in Tay Ninh Province, where he participated in several secret missions as part of the controversial Phoenix Program. The name and contribution of the CIA's most valuable spy during the war, the famous "Tay Ninh Source," is revealed.

America's entrance into the wars in Vietnam came as a result of several factors. Among them was the necessity of bolstering French influence in the area in the face of mounting communist expansion. This expansion was intensified by the outbreak of the Korean War, making it necessary for the United States to revamp its Southeast Asian policy. During the French era, control of Vietnam's rivers, streams and canals became necessary. This led various factions to develop specialized military units heavily dependent on new types of river craft that could traverse the myriad waterways in Vietnam. The focal point of this study is a new assessment of the conduct of river warfare. Drawing on little-known French, Vietnamese and American sources and materials, it sheds light on an important aspect of the Vietnam War. Chapters also detail numerous aspects of river warfare not generally covered in other books on the subject.

In the 44-year long history of the Cold War, few conflicts symbolize it as fully as those in Vietnam. To contemporary observers, it was a war between the two ideological blocs of Communism and the West. From the forces of the Viet Cong and NVA and the American, South Vietnamese, Australian and other Free World forces, the wars that ravaged Indochina throughout the second half of the 20th century can be recreated with Vietnam, the latest companion volume for Force on Force. Orders of battle, scenarios and special theatre-specific rules give players an immersive experience of gaming in in the jungles, fields and towns of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.