Marines learn from Vietnam’s CAP
Enemies that fade into civilian crowds, using hospitals and schools as hideouts and watching every move you make from the shadows. How do American troops prevail against them?
By learning to tell apart the good guys from the bad. By winning the good guys to your side.
August 01,2006
ANNE CLARK
DAILY NEWS STAFF
“It’s so important in an insurgent environment to live with the people, work with the people, to win them over,” said retired Marine Master Sgt. John Cooney. “You can’t win without it.”
Cooney might have been talking about the ongoing challenges in Iraq, but he was drawing on his own experience in Vietnam in the mid- and late-1960s.
Back then, he was a squad leader in the innovative Combined Action Program, a Marine Corps initiative that lasted six years in Vietnam.
On July 28, Cooney and fellow CAP Marine, retired Gunnery Sgt. Richard Ray, shared their wisdom with about 40 members of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion 6th Marine Regiment. The generations met at Sywanyks Scarlet & Gold Traditions in Jacksonville.
The young Marines will likely deploy to the Middle East in the future, so the veterans wanted to tell the company’s leaders what it was like to live in one-story tin buildings in a Vietnamese village, patrolling the jungle side by side with Popular Force soldiers from South Vietnam.
“A PF was a farmer by day, who picks up a weapon at night to protect the village,” said Cooney. “He’d go out with a straw hat on, a hoe over his shoulder and a gun in his pocket. But a good PF could sniff out Viet Cong.”
Knowing who you can trust, and how to win them over to your side, was key to CAP in Vietnam. The Army’s top brass initially disliked the program, Cooney said, but Marine general officers, particularly future Commandant Gen. Krulak, had faith in it.
“If you stay on a fire base 10 miles away, patrol two hours and then go away, the (bad guys) will come back in and pick up people,” said Cooney. “They’ll kill mayors and the police chiefs, because they’re animals. The Viet Cong were no different than the insurgents in Iraq. They care nothing about human life.”
Cooney said CAP’s premise —work side by side with your friends to root out a common enemy — has been practiced by Marines in campaigns in Haiti, Santo Domingo, and Nicaragua.
Americans are practicing it today in parts of Iraq, particularly in cities bordering Syria, where they live among the locals and teach Iraqi soldiers.
Back in Vietnam, “the CAP classroom was the bush, and the VC were our training aids,” said Cooney.
Though CAP has its merits — it was a “miracle program” Ray said; one of his favorite tours because he got to know the people he was protecting — it can be pretty dangerous.
In 1966, Cooney took some well-deserved R&R. It was a decision that probably saved his life.
While he was gone, his squad patrolled at night. They made the fatal mistake of taking the same trail two nights in a row.
The enemy had watched them, were waiting for them that second night, and inflicted so many casualties, Cooney remembers, “that when I got back, my squad was gone, wiped out.”
“Never set a routine in an insurgent situation,” Cooney told the young Marines at Sywanyks.
Cooney’s story about taking back a village hospital from the bad guys — so dangerous its doctors and nurses refused to stay overnight — recalls the coalition fight to root out bad guys from a hospital in An Nasiriyah in 2003. There, the enemy hid behind ailing civilians to fire on American troops.
Cooney and Ray said CAP was a great success in Vietnam, so much that between Cooney’s tours in 1966 and 1969, the program expanded from four to 115 villages. The U.S. Army eventually came on board with CAP in 1970, Cooney said.
Cultivating friendships began to pay off for the Americans. Vietnamese villagers, from farmers to professionals to political leaders, began giving intelligence to U.S. troops.
Only the Tet Offensive, and the negative press in its aftermath, changed the mood in America so decisively that the war would be lost politically, Cooney said.
Today, U.S. troops take up the charge in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Capt. Kyle Sloan served in Iraq last year, and has no doubt that CAP’s legacy is at work today.
“You can walk down the street and kids will come up and ask for candy,” said Sloan, who is commander of Alpha Company. “We are affecting that generation; we’re winning their trust.”
Sloan appreciated the older veterans’ advice: be prepared to make hard decisions in country, win over the locals.
“They (the troops) hear from us time and again, so it’s always good to have someone else re-emphasize that,” Sloan said. “It’s neat to see how it translates, 40 years later.”
1st Sgt. Scott Hamm agreed.
“It’s our appreciation of history that sets the Marine Corps apart,” he said.