"The early VC/PLAF campaign in South Vietnam, 1959-63" Topic

Hi there,

Is anyone able to give me an idea of the kind of violent activity on which the VC (or PLAF) campaign tended to focus in its early stage – i.e., 1959-63?

How much focus did the VC tend to give political assassinations of government officials (and at what level – senior or local)?

How much did the VC go for attacks on the government troops (i.e., ambushes of ARVN patrols)?

And how much did they go in for pure, near-random terror against the general civil population (car bombs in Saigon, etc.)?

And how much of their efforts in the countryside were essentially non-violent (i.e., peaceful propaganda campaigns).

Any input greatly appreciated!

Cheers,
Redcoat

There certainly were ambushes on ARVN troops. The scale of combat increased. In January 1963 a VC battalion held off several battalions of ARVN (mostly militia but one airborne battalion) all day and made off after nightfall at the battle of Ap Bac link
US ground forces were sent in because many ARVN units were proving unable to beat VC in stand up fights.

I don't know the answers to your other questions.

Ap Bac was very telling and somewhat a preview of things to come.

US ground forces were sent in because many ARVN units were proving unable to beat VC in stand up fights.

Sounds like history repeating itself … in Iraq …

Complete down to the incompetent and corrupt politicians** in charge, L4.

** Given that the definition of an honest politician is "one that stays bought," a dishonest politician is one that takes money from everyone and doesn't continue doing what he was paid to do.

Tread lightly Lion … It's too easy to be dawghaus'd around these parts lately … But of course I do agree with you …

Good books for this might be the first half of 'A Viet Cong Memoir' (Truong) and the first third of ''A Bright Shining Lie" (Sheehan)

As I understand ..in this period in SVN (immediately after the French), there was a new government, a new army, and a few thousand or so refugees from the north -the place was chaos… against the 'reactivated VC'…ie; the old VM guerillas ..sent from the North.
The VC in this early stage thought they were in the 'final' stage of guerilla war .. ie; direct conventional combat vs the fledgling ARVN. and they were winning …in order to prevent the total collapse of SVN US combat troops entered in 1965. …after which time the VC reverted to guerilla war.
In the 1959-1965 period the VC believed they 'owned' the population …and they did in some areas.
But straight out of the ChiCom / VC playbook was all the mass murder, cooercion, taxation, labour gangs etc forced upon the civilian population that we (in the west) became aware of during the later war years. For example ; the 'Strategic Hamlet Program' which was a feature of US advice in this period, resulted in the VC controlling the hamlet program through intimidation etc of local hamlet chiefs.

The book 'Mao -a life" (Short) is the best detailed account I've read of how the Communists' playbook of mass subversion works. Read the middle part of this for the full spectrum of 'social coercion' methods that the VC perfected in Vietnam.

? Attacking ARVN, civilian/political heads, terrorism ? .. yes everything, all the time, at any level.

? Peaceful dialogue ? no, they wanted violent revolution, and they sorta tricked the Buddhists into being the proxies here. The press of burning Buddhists and Comments of Catholic Mme Nhu worked into their political hands.

The Communists worked deliberately to tie together all the dissenting nationalist /religious groups etc. under a Communist-held banner. This wasn't clear to the genuinely nationalistic southerner VC until it was much too late.