A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam
defend. It was organized into squads and platoons that operated at the district level and below and was called the Self-Defense Corps, or Dan Ve in Vietnamese, and commonly referred to by theadvisors as the SDC. The SDC was the most numerous (about 18,000 men) and the most poorly armed force in the five provinces. The militiamen had to make do with the bolt-action rifles the French had given them. Theoretically the SDC was the equivalent of the early American village and town militia, because the men were local residents who wore no uniform. They dressed in the same pajamalike blouse and trousers of black calico that their fellow peasants wore as work clothes. There was an important difference from the early American militia: the SDC militia, like the Civil Guard, fought for pay.
    Vann moved to remedy the lack of training by laying out a three-week “refresher course” for the division regulars at an old SDC training camp, which Clay had improved, near Tan Hiep village center about six miles up the road toward Saigon. The airstrip for My Tho was located there. Cao agreed to put all of the division’s nine battalions through the course one by one. They were also to conduct marksmanship and small-unit training at their home bases when not out on operations. Clay had already started training courses for the territorials. Vann increased the course capacity to bring the Civil Guard and the SDC up to par more rapidly. To measure progress, he established specific training and operational goals for every division battalion and for the territorials under each province military headquarters. Every advisor had to submit a “Monthly Critique,” with a copy to his Vietnamese counterpart, stating whether the goals were being attained.
    Cao did not listen happily to the arguments Vann made for another priority that Vann and Porter had agreed upon—halting the growth of the Communist-led insurrection by depriving the Viet Cong of the freedom of the night. Cao’s face would go blank or he would frown as Vann explained why they had to teach the troops to patrol and lay ambushes after dark. “It is not safe to go out at night,” Cao would say. Most of the five province chiefs regarded night activity with the same fear that Cao did. They and Cao had their units report night patrols and ambushes to fob off the Americans. No one went out, or if anyone did go out he did not go farther than the nearest canal for a nap on the bank. When persuasion failed, Vann turned to bravado. He issued an order requiring all American officers and any sergeant involved in combat training to go out on at least one night patrol or ambush a week. Cao and the province chiefs could have ignored the requirement and made a fool of Vann. The advisors could not, after all, venture out on their own. Cao knew that Porter was behind Vann on the issue, and Harkins had also been preaching the virtue of night activity to Diem. After an outburst the previous November when the Kennedy administration had tried topush him into political and administrative reforms as the price for U.S. military intervention, Diem’s relations with senior American officials had improved. The guidance from the presidential palace was to accommodate the Americans where it would do no harm. Cao and the province chiefs acquiesced. A consistent if limited pattern of night patrols and ambushes began. Vann set the example by traveling to a different regular or territorial unit at least once and sometimes twice a week for a night foray. With his ability to function on a couple of hours of sleep, being up most of the night did not bother him.
    He made it a point, over the objection of Cao, who was fearful that he might be killed or captured, to go out with squad-size groups of about a dozen men. Vann knew there was a better chance of laying a successful ambush with a small unit and also less chance of being counterambushed in the dark. To his chagrin he was rarely able to ambush guerrillas. He learned

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