 An anti-guerrilla raid in Vietnam. There is danger here, danger and discomfort, and sometimes death. There are also Americans here, not to fight but to observe. A soldier is trained to command, but there are times and places where all he can do is advise. Such a place is the Republic of Vietnam, where the American military advisor is expected to observe, talk conclusions and give counsel. He may also teach and be a useful friend. What he teaches is the soldier's art. He brings with him years of training in the armed forces of the United States, and because he has been specially selected for his work, a personal aptitude for diplomacy. He also brings courage. For those attempting to destroy this young Republic in Southeast Asia, are well aware of the role played by such advisors in frustrating the attempt at subversion. The American advisor in Vietnam has no immunity from terrorist bullets. Such are the conditions under which he works. This is the story of what he does. This is United States Army Captain William R. Johnston, a native of Michigan with a wife and two children in Chicago. He is seen here within a few days of his arrival in Vietnam. He will be official U.S. advisor to the 1st Battalion, 11th Regiment, 7th Infantry Division of the Army of Vietnam. In particular, he will work with Vietnamese Captain Trang Nhan Cong. His success or failure will depend in large part on the kind of personal relationships he is able to establish. The job will be a little easier because as part of our military assistance program, Captain Cong has already received training in infantry and artillery tactics in the United States. He knows more about the traditions and customs of Captain Johnston's people than the Captain knows of his. The success of any military advisor depends on his ability to grasp the historical background, the customs and conventions of the people he has sent to advise. Unless he develops for them a thorough and sympathetic knowledge, his technical military skills will prove useless. Before he can function efficiently, the advisor must gain a thorough knowledge with the men he will try to help make and do still better soldiers. When Captain Johnston joins his battalion, it is stationed at a sugar mill located in the Mekong Delta, a region notorious as a center of guerrilla terrorism. The mill is the chief source of sugar, rum and molasses for the whole Republic of Vietnam. The first battalion is here to provide security for the mill and to prevent Viet Cong, communist guerrillas, from extorting a tax trying to bring in sugarcane. It is the nature of war in Vietnam that the ordinary affairs of business and commerce must often be conducted in an atmosphere of an armed camp. Advisor Johnston begins by learning. Both from Captain Cong and Sergeant Dach, a former school teacher who serves as interpreter. One of the first things Johnston learns is the difficulty of identifying the enemy. In an area largely controlled by the Viet Cong, it is estimated that fully one-third of the mill's employees are themselves part-time guerrillas operating at night to terrorize the surrounding countryside. Some things an advisor can do immediately. An artillery emplacement is an artillery emplacement. A well-trained officer can offer a number of suggestions for increasing the effectiveness of the battalion's howitzers. He can also suggest that troops in garrison need not settle for shelters improvised from ponchos when their own labor could supply semi-permanent barracks. But for the larger problems, those which typify the undeclared war being waged against the whole of South Vietnam, there are no quick solutions. How, for instance, do you defend endless miles of exposed road between the sugar mill and its major market, the capital city of Saigon? Any morning, word may arrive that in the darkness of night, guerrilla bands have sabotaged the road, making it impassable. Officers and advisor can investigate, summon troops, but their chances of accomplishing much are slight. With miles of jungle into which they can vanish at will, the guerrillas responsible for the sabotage are as elusive as field mice. In the rice paddies and bamboo thickets of the Mekong, odds favor the guerrilla. Aware that attempts to intercept his retreat into the sheltering jungle will be almost impossible. The guerrilla adopts as his motto the adage that he who fights and runs away lives to fight another day. The guerrillas vanish, leaving only civilians protesting ignorance of the whole affair. With the guerrillas driven off or underground, it remains to repair the damage, a job which falls to civilians from the area recruited by the government's district chief. Here is a poignant example of the irony and the tragedy of Vietnam. For many of these same villagers have undoubtedly spent the long night under the menacing guns of guerrillas digging the same holes they must now refill. Destroy its transportation and you threaten the life of a nation. A modern nation like the ancient Roman Empire cannot long survive if her people and her commerce are denied roads and highways on which to travel. Much of the struggle in Vietnam has become a ceaseless effort by guerrillas to close the highways of the government to keep them open. Like others, Johnston is well aware that there will be no real security until the guerrilla can be denied free movement through the jungle. Nor is there any reason why government troops should not take a leaf from the guerrillas' book, stationing themselves in the jungle for a nighttime ambush. An obvious need for regular, aggressive, night patrols throughout the area. But such tactics run counter to those taught Vietnamese troops for more than a century, based on the venerable military maxim attack by day, by night, defend. At considerable personal risk, Captain Johnston demonstrates the effectiveness of night patrols by accompanying them himself. Eventually they become part of the battalion's standard procedure. This too has become standard procedure. American helicopters have brought mobility to Vietnamese troops in their efforts to pin down the forces before they can achieve their customary disappearing act. The helicopters are flown by U.S. Army pilots. Part of the U.S. advisor's job is to coordinate the helicopter elements with the Vietnamese troops whom they carry and will do the fighting. From the air, hidden waystations along the guerrilla supply route are found and destroyed. A communist propaganda booth is discovered and destroyed by Johnston's battalion and a local village such mobility can be effective. The test is the death or capture of hard-core guerrillas. In any engagement, many of the guerrillas will prove to be half-trained propaganda indoctrinated villagers or farmers. All prizes are the professionals who do the training and the propagandizing. Men like these, long sought by the government, has known professional terrorists. It is also an American advisor's responsibility to help get armor support for his unit. These armored personnel carriers have been brought in at the request of Captain Johnston to assist the first battalion in an anti-guerrilla sweep of its area of the Mekong Delta. In such terrain, the effort to uncover even a single guerrilla is so great that one observer has compared it to a thousand-dollar bill chasing ten cents around the rice paddy. The situation is inevitable, however, until the initiative is seized once and for all from the Viet Cong. Until then, every resource of equipment, tactics, and strategy must be brought to bear on the problem. It is an advisor's job to make his counterpart aware of what is available, encourage him to use his artillery, his engineers, his communications, his ordinance, his medical facilities, and to coordinate his efforts with other services. Since the battalion to which advisor Johnston was assigned has the primary mission of defending a guerrilla-infested area, the captain finds himself helping to train men who have already known months, and in some cases years, of combat. Because no one can predict when a training exercise might suddenly become the real thing, classes are conducted with loaded weapons. No matter what the difficult is, no matter how blooded by combat they may be, troops must be continuously retrained if they are to win a victory in war. With training comes success, without it, disaster. The Vietnamese is potentially an excellent soldier. He has intelligence, agility, and courage. Properly trained and motivated he can become one of the best fighting men in Asia. To encourage adequate training in the military arts and science is perhaps the most important job of the American military advisor in Vietnam or anywhere else. He teaches by demonstration as well as by lecture. Here he lays wire for a demonstration of the Claymore anti-personnel mine. While his interpreter explains the function of the mine from notes prepared for him by Captain Johnston. While teaching technique to the men Johnston is also communicating by example a subtle message to their commanders. There is nothing wrong about getting your own hands dirty in a job. The anti-personnel mine has great potential for the war in Vietnam. Used properly it can have devastating effect on the night traveling bands of guerrillas. It is an advisor's job to gut such equipment into use by increasing the number of Vietnamese officers and troops who know how to use it. With two thirds of his Vietnamese tour behind him, military advisor Bill Johnston takes over the units of the regiment in the fortification of a native village. It is the battalion's responsibility to provide from their own supply stores a large portion of the food, medicine and household goods necessary to set up whole families of Vietnamese whose men folk belong to the self-defense corps which will defend the village. It is on the Buddhist calendar the year of the tiger. Somehow this seems appropriate. With the captain's own tour it is the first Lieutenant Joe Clement of Atlanta, Georgia who may ultimately be his replacement. Lieutenant Clement has four months to learn his way around. He'll need them. So will master sergeant Jones of Baltimore the battalion's first enlisted advisor. The object of this program is to draw together residents of tiny villages scattered throughout the area and relocate them in larger communities which can be fortified to resist roving bands of guerrillas. The troops are here mainly to guard workers during the construction. Protection must also be furnished for laborers on a nearby road project. Shortest route between the village and the capital at Saigon the road was rendered useless by Viet Cong saboteurs more than four years ago. It must now be put back into use and somehow kept that way. Reconstruction is accomplished by Vietnamese Army engineers. Assistance is also rendered by local civilians recruited by the district chief. Captain Johnston speaking for the infantry consults with other U.S. advisors attached to the engineer units. In Vietnam the main arteries of travel and commerce are not concrete but water. Vietnam's many rivers and networks of canals have been for centuries the key to the nation's economy. These two must be kept open free from guerrilla harassment. While less permanent damage can be inflicted on such a waterway everyone travels in peril of sudden ambush from the surrounding jungle. It should be said that part of an advisor's job is to acquaint himself with the ordinary citizens of the country to which he is assigned. On occasion advisors may assist other agencies in the distribution of books pamphlets or school supplies. But their main concern is directly military. On this occasion for example Johnston has recommended the movement of guerrillas from battalion headquarters down river to a key site in the delta canal system. Their self defense corps volunteers can protect farmers trying to get their produce to market. Putting an end to systematic Viet Cong extortion reported from that area. On the advisor's recommendation troops are sent ashore to dig in and secure the area before barges are landed. Failure to take such precautions in the past has resulted in serious and unnecessary losses. For as Captain Johnston points out to the regimental commander the Viet Cong will attack by day if the stakes are high enough and there are ample clues to the presence of guerrillas in the area. With the area reasonably secure the first craft an American LCM can be signaled to come in. Following plans drawn up jointly by Captain Johnston and Captain Cong the battalion begins construction of fortifications for a native village their purpose in making the trip. A triangular wall is built with mud dry it will be almost as hard as concrete and a good deal easier to come by. So far as possible building materials are collected locally. Captain Cong personally supervises most phases of the construction something he might not have done a few months earlier. Johnston's presence has had its effect the ground can be seen smoke from fire started to clear the brush from the surrounding area depriving guerrillas of concealment near the outpost. At each angle formed by the mud triangle a block house is constructed a wide moat is dug around the entire post reminiscent of the middle ages but highly effective against guerrillas inevitably there is a casualty a self-defense corpsman dropped by a single bullet from an unseen sniper. Johnston radios a request for helicopter evacuation hoping to get the wounded man to a hospital in time to save his life. Maximum care for wounded in the field is something any American advisor can be expected to stress and is in sharp contrast to Viet Cong treatment of their own wounded. The lesson is not lost on Vietnamese troops fortifications nearly completed the battalion starts to move a bulldozer across the canal on the other side of which it intends to reach tower and now mud recently so useful becomes a king size nuisance with an unknown number of Viet Cong in the area waiting for just such an opportunity this delay could prove a serious matter. Either the bulldozer will be pulled out before their plight is discovered or the battalion can expect to lose both its equipment and a good many lives. The mission is completed. The fortifications have been built fence corps men their families and villagers move in bringing firewood for cooking and drinkable water a scene of domestic tranquility against a backdrop of anticipated violence the village fortifications built and men in place to defend it the battalion heads for home it arrives with a few unfriendly companions Viet Cong guerrillas encountered on the way home the battalion has done its job well returning home in good order with a minimum of casualties good news but for captain Johnston the real news is that he too is going home his year is up and there are those two kids and wife back in Chicago yet in parting there was also a regret Johnston and the men of the first battalion have shared much together have suffered much together in ways that only they can fully understand he leaves behind many good friends he leaves behind someone else as well his successor lieutenant clement who for the next year will be the battalion's new American advisor what Johnston learned Clement now knows within the guidelines laid down by us policy the lieutenant must now seek to further in his own way what was begun by captain Johnston and his predecessor there will be problems and he knows it but the new advisor has more to on than did captain Johnston as a year or so from now the American who comes after lieutenant Clement will have more than he so it will be until peace finally comes to this beleaguered republic a peace for which the arming advisor in Vietnam will be in no small part responsible