________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
attempted to achieve, they go way inland. Then when you get a feel for the terrain you say,
"My goodness, how could anybody anticipate doing that?" I mean, you don't do sweeps of
whole units in the World War II mode in Vietnam.
They didn't have the helicopters. Ours were still fairly rudimentary when we were there. The
best we had to start with was the H21, a pretty nice helicopter, but just a few of them. They
had less than that trying to sustain things as deep as Dien Bien Phu. Figure out how far Dien
Bien Phu is from Tuy Hoa--they really were extended. Look at Mobile Group 100. That was
just one mobile group, and a pretty good one, but it didn't have the air cover like we have
today or the helicopters or the ability to reinforce. When they were caught at Kilometer 15 on
Route 19 it was their own battle--how they fought their way out of that ambush or not. There
was no help to be gotten.
So, my feelings toward the French were not negative at all at the local tactical arena. Maybe
the lesson there was that nationally they never put into it what was needed to go at it and
everyone lost faith. That was our own experience later on when the country turned down the
war. We never had done enough across the border to assure a win.
So, to answer your question, there was never a negative feeling toward the French. They had
their situation. They were more austere, less prepared. We were better prepared in a smaller
area, and we knew more about it because we had their experience. So our typical can-do
approach was, "We're smart enough to figure this thing out, so let's figure it out and go at
it."
Q:
Anything else about the Vietnam advisory period? It's a very interesting period because it's
so early.
A:
I guess I could mention one other thing. We had a senior engineer adviser in Saigon, and at
least toward the latter part of that period that officer had developed more influence. He
pulled people in from all over the country to try to come to grips with engineer issues: "What
else can we do? What more can we do?" He convened a senior leaders conference where he
pulled people in to get their ideas. I remember, as the deputy Corps engineer and the 20th
Engineer Group adviser, going down to Saigon and participating in one of those. We tried to
bring the best of our ideas to bear, and so we would share information about our experiences.
I think I needed to make that point, that it wasn't all just Corps on down in the engineer
advisory business. That was certainly our emphasis. We were in an executing kind of mode,
but there was this attempt to pull out lessons learned, and determine how we could do things
better and what else was needed.
Q:
Another question. At the time did you consider this a good assignment? Was this considered
a good assignment?
A:
I certainly didn't go there thinking it was a good assignment. Like I mentioned, I thought I
should go to Korea because I knew I needed to have a company command. It was a
frustrating assignment but it was satisfying. By the time I left, it was pretty obvious this was
where the action was. So, I came back from having been one of the early officers there where
73
Previous Page
