________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
now in '68'69. How did the war look different? How did you view things that were going
on there.
There are obvious differences, and I suppose, in my view, obvious similarities, but it's
interesting to be there in the two time periods, earlier and then sort of mid-war, five years
apart.
A:
To go back to the same area.
Q:
Yes, back to the same area. Right.
A:
Well, there was quite a difference. During the first one, of course, I was an adviser in an era
when there weren't many Americans and no operational troops, other than aviation.
Everything then was oriented toward the Vietnamese doing it, and our energies were spent
trying to make that happen.
When I came back, I was in the American chain. We still had advisers who were out doing
the same, but now we in U.S. troop units were all very much oriented to our own particular
missions and how they supported the whole. So, I was caught up in the operational activities
associated with U.S. units.
We were everywhere; every place you went there were helicopters flying, operations going.
We were reading about them in Stars and Stripes, and participating in them, and the activity
level was high.
It was very much, from my viewpoint, a U.S. operation by that time. We dealt with the
province chief and with the province advisers, but the whole context was different from when
I operated there before. If I'd gone back to be another adviser, I'm sure that context would
have been a lot closer to my earlier one.
Going back into Tuy Hoa and trying to reconstruct where we were when I left and where we
were when I came back, I guess I would say we were about at the same place. We certainly
hadn't "pacified" or made any other inroads to extend our areas of control. I guess I was
amazed when I put together all that happened in the interim. When Diem had been
assassinated, all the province chiefs had gone out, including the one in Phu Yen Province.
Whereas, as I told you before, when we moved into Tuy Hoa, the lights came back on
because the Vietcong moved out, well, after Diem's overthrow the Vietcong moved back into
Tuy Hoa.
So, once again, then, when the Americans came back--the 4th Infantry Division had come in
there, and then the 173d Airborne Brigade had operated in there aggressively--the Vietcong
had been pushed back to the jungle and mountainous fringes once again.
So, there were indications that progress had been lost and things had not been put in place to
stay. Control appeared to be about like it was--no better, no worse. The Vietcong still went
to a lot of places at night and then wouldn't show themselves during the day. We still
operated out and around, went after them in the fringes now, which we could do much more
127
Previous Page
