Vietnam by Nigel Cawthorne

rounds of naval gunfire, 139,769 artillery rounds, and 171 B-52 sorties. Some 3,078 bombs were dropped containing 2.5 million pounds of high explosives, 500,000 pounds of napalm and 35,000 pounds of CS gas.
    This so-called 'Pacification Program' also aimed to move the civilians out from areas where the local population either supported or were intimidated by the guerrillas. Destroying crops was meant to deny supplies to the Vietcong. It also meant that the inhabitants that had been moved out could not return. The villagers were given food and medical attention but, to add insult to injury, the villagers were supposed to build the defences of their new 'defended' hamlets without payment. The move was particularly traumatic for the ancestor-worshipping Vietnamese who had to leave behind their graveyards and ancestral fields. The social institutions that flourished in the villages were destroyed and the villagers became resentful and uncooperative. This was no way to win their hearts and minds – which was the official policy. This mattered little to cynical GIs who remarked in words later attributed to Richard Nixon, 'If you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds soon follow'.
    Robert Komer, director of Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support, reckoned that 60 per cent of the countryside was under VC control. Indeed, an estimated 36,752 village officials and South Vietnamese civil servants were summarily executed by the Vietcong between 1957 and 1972. To counter this, Komer recommended setting up the Phoenix Program, a joint MACV-CIA operation to identify the estimated 70,000 members of the Vietcong infrastructure. Under the programme 17,000 VC sought amnesty and 28,000 were captured. In 1971, 20,000 had been killed, but the number increased sharply after that. Former CIA operative Frank Snepp said that, once the prisons were full, suspects were simply murdered by hit squads. There have been allegations that the Saigon government used the programme to eliminate political enemies. It has also been alleged that the Phoenix Program built up a profile of those likely to join the Vietcong – students, dispossessed peasants, those with VC in the family – and they were sought out and shot. William Colby, who took over the programme from Komer and later became director of the CIA, ordered that, 'If any American sees anyone being assassinated he's to object and he is to report it to me'. But this did little to stop the abuses. The problem was that the information gleaned on suspects came from unreliable sources: paid informants, victims of torture, and those trying to ingratiate themselves in the government. In the end it became an unchecked hit list.
    The indiscriminate use of US firepower drove more peasant farmers off the land. At any one time there were at least 1.2 million refugees within South Vietnam. This peaked at around 3.5 million. Refugees swelled the population of the cities where corruption was rife and broke down the social cohesion that was the best defence against Communist insurgence. Although some men were inducted into the Regional and Provincial Forces, the 'Ruff-Puffs', which formed Combined Action Platoons with the US Marines, the refugee population remained a fertile recruiting ground for the Vietcong.
    Even though it took a massive expenditure of ordinance for each VC killed, the US forces kept upping their firepower. They built fire-bases on the tops of hills, which puzzled the Vietnamese who assumed they were looking for gold. These firebases could rain down shells on the surrounding area. Artillery support could be devastatingly effective when the position of the enemy was known and relayed to the gunnery officers accurately. But the VC and NVA often melted away while this was being done or corrections were being made. If the Communists found themselves in real trouble, they would move in on the US positions so it was impossible to hit them without hitting US troops too. Artillery