Vietnam: A Television History; Interview with Carl F. Bernard, 1981

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Transcript

Role of South Vietnam's regional and popular forces in the war

VIETNAM

C. BERNARD

SR #2870

This is roll 2870. Vietnam Project. T 876.

One Take one. Clap sticks.

Interviewer:

Mr. Bernard, this is going to be a somewhat rambling interview for

which I apologize, but I hope that the rambling will enable you to kick

some things in your memory and deliver something that's...

Bernard:

I ramble a bit.

Interviewer:

Good, that's very good. Can you tell me what the experience of your

first year in Vietnam was? I'd like to basically take you very quickly

up to the end of the Tet Offensive. You don't need to deal with Tet.

But, I wonder what your first few months there taught you? And what,

what you expected and what you came across? Was there a major thing

that stuck in your mind in that first year?

Bernard:

Well, not really. I think I became very aware and very concerned of the

responsibility of the supplementary forces, the regional forces, and

the popular forces and their importance in the war. And, I, and then

probably that the resources devoted to them weren't really ahm,

adequate for the responsibilities that they had.

Interviewer:

Could you explain to me about the regional forces, and the popular

force. I mean what were they doing that ARVN wasn't doing? What risks

were they taking? How were they different from the regular forces?

Bernard:

Well, the regional forces and you've seen a, a hundred movies of them.

The guys in the little mud forts outside the village, outside the

hamlet, responsible for protecting the hamlet at night when the VC were

working the area. Ah, these were normally natives of the area, ah,

grouped in, in, in these ah sometimes quite small detachments. Ahm,

they were essentially walking infantry. Ah, they certainly had very

little equipment.

Ah, and they were not paid very well - I've forgotten what the pay

rates were; I'm sure you can find them. But they were given a very

little subsistence. They were essentially a people's self-defense

force. Ahm, and that's what they were. Now, they varied in quality.

Some were extraordinarily good, and ah, and some were not. They ah, but

their, to me they were the cutting edge of the effort. They, their

presence in an area simply had to be negated by the Viet Cong, or the

Viet Cong couldn't work in the area. And, when I say negated: bribed,

put aside, killed.

Interviewer:

How did you recruit them? How did these particular forces recruit...?

Bernard:

As, now, these were quite often those who were too young yet for

regular service or too old, or too disabled for regular service.

Essentially, these were people that ah the Vietnamese, I've forgotten

what year they drafted their people into the regular army, but it was

some time later. By the way, being in the, in the prov, in the ah PF,

the popular force did not exempt them from being drafted. So a person

might spend some years in the popular force and then be drafted into

ARVN or into the regional forces.

Now the regional forces were organized as rifle companies, while the PF

were essentially platoons. And a platoon implies the static location

and actually no equipment, and responsibilities only for the area they

were in. The regional forces finally, by the end of '67, by '68 you're

talking, had become well-organized, light rifle companies, walking

infantry companies. These were separate as companies; they were never

united into the next larger formation.

Interviewer:

The, there are pretty staggering figures, I find, of ARVN desertions

and defections. What was, was there a similar tale to tell with the ah

RF and PF forces or were they generally more solid in their support? Or

what was the...

Bernard:

Watch your numbers. And, they're staggering numbers. You probably find

that a lot of those "deserter" ARVN were then re-enlisted into someone

else's force, not too long thereafter. But, if you look at the

staggering desertion numbers and then project them against Vietnam over

time, they were out of people. No. A regular ARVN soldier stationed 500

miles from home might get very lonesome and might return home and do

his service as long as he could until caught and return to his regular

unit in a local group, and certainly some of the PF and some of the RF

were also probably on occurred as deserters in the role of somewhere

else. So your staggering numbers don't hold up.

Interviewer:

That was good, we just got that in, that was only half a roll there,

so...

Performance of the Viet Cong before and after the Tet Offensive

[Coughing]

Two. Take one. Clapsticks.

Interviewer:

I'm going to take some various things in your report which just spark

off to me quite interesting things and I wonder just by mentioning the

subject, if it, similar things to go on in your brain. You have one

statement here, the tools of the Viet Cong are primarily nonmilitary

and you then talk about the tools of the government of Vietnam being

overwhelming military. I wonder if you could discuss that subject and

the difference in how you saw it. Was everyone aware of this distant,

difference?

Bernard:

The Viet Cong were essentially practicing a people's war, which in

short hand is a war of persuasion. It requires a person on a

face-to-face basis to help someone else determine that he's going to

support him. Now, there are lots of ways to determine the support. The

Viet Cong support was heavily based on terror, i.e., one of them might

persuade one of his neighbors to support by speaking unhappily of the

previous neighbor now deceased who had not been of support.

I consider those to be nonmilitary techniques. And they're very

effective. Ah, I think you, quite often Europeans think of Chicago in

this term, in these terms. And, I've always thought and observed much

of the Viet Cong behavior in those senses. But that's what I mean by

nonmilitary. Now, also, by persuasion. In the same sense to, to recruit

people where they were already of age, whether they were women or

children. Ah, by appeal to their humanistic senses, by appeal to their

sense of justice, to me is nonmilitary. The military ah response to

this, i.e., a military formation complete with bands, flags and tanks

was the basis of both the ARVN and the US response.

Interviewer:

How do you think the success, or the national success by the VC changed

in the two years that we are talking about specifically late '68 and

'69? What was happening to their attempts to recruit, and how

successful was their persuasion, their nonmilitary persuasion, call it

what you want, in the pe, period we're now talking about, '69

especially?

Bernard:

I think the, the Viet Cong faltered badly after Tet, and they faltered

through making what looked to be, what was a very surprising error,

ahm, and quite simply, they used, the Viet Cong cadres, hidden people,

for simple military work as guides leading combat units from one point

to another. You can do this all right but it's a very dangerous kind of

work, and they lost an extraordinary number of underground people,

hidden cadres, persons that were the next base for their people, and by

losing them, in, when they made this serious military effort in Tet,

when they misjudged how soft and how easily the Vietnamese government

would fold, then they lost their cadres, they lost an enormous and

important base.

Now, they didn't lose them because we sought out, caught these people,

but simply because he who's with an infantry squad moving up ah suffers

about the same casualty rates as an infantry squad. It's bad work. So,

the Viet Cong laid much of their weakening during '69, weakening during

'68 and '69 with this effort to, to, to move too quickly before they

were ready. And, they lost much of their underground. The underground

which they lost. They lost it about this time. Using them for other

purposes.

Evaluation of the Phoenix Program

Interviewer:

You seem to be suggesting that the infrastructure then is going at this

point because of things like leading the militaries rather than because

of the success of Phoenix. I mean how would you rate the success of

Phoenix at this time? The Phoenix Program. Would you like to talk about

Phoenix?

Bernard:

I've always thought that probably more of the Viet Cong infrastructure

caught during the time of the Phoenix were ahm caught by accident

rather than from the specific efforts of the Phoenix Program. Ahm, now,

certainly, when they were working as infantrymen they suffered far more

casualties than they ever suffered when we were deliberately trying to

catch them. That's very hard work and it requires an ex, a very good

organization working very hard, and with real priorities. I think we

never put the emphasis on the Phoenix Program that it required, if it

was to be, in fact, as advertised, the first priority program in

Vietnam. And I, I find that that promise of priority was never honored.

Interviewer:

Do you think it could have been a good program? Was it essentially a

sound program?

Bernard:

It was the most important program that went in Vietnam. If we were ever

going to to have had a success in Vietnam, it had first to be serious

infrastructure program, but watch what I mean by an infrastructure

program. The ideal use of an infrastructure program is to find a Viet

Cong member, the highest ranking possible, bring him in and his

associates with him, convert him.

Those would, that was the ideal Viet Cong infrastructure program. Where

it worked, it works splendidly. And ah, yes, that was the ah most

important program. Was it well-executed? Not very. Could it have been?

You bet. It could have been and it should have been had we been serious

about the war. Had we understood the war, that was the program that we

would have followed.

Interviewer:

We'll just cut for a minute. We're having severe trouble...

Response of the Vietnamese to American troop withdrawal

Sound. Take one. Clapsticks.

Interviewer:

July '69 the big noises are being made about the withdrawal of American

troops. How did this affect things in your province? How did the

Vietnamese see it? In the regional forces and in, in ARVN what was it

doing?

Bernard:

Well, the...with the first announcements of withdrawal provoked a

variety of emotions. Now, as I recall, ah, there were a number of

protests and this is a little awkward 'cause I don't really recall the

sequence of events, but I do remember ah...I do remember a series of

broadcasts by President Thieu, which I thought were pretty hostile to

the American objectives, and I don't recall well enough to say. Ah, I

do think that...I also recall a number of instances in which I believed

that the Vietnamese appeared to be reducing their commitment to, to

Thieu's government but I'm not good enough at that. I'm afraid we'll

have to let it go.

Interviewer:

That's okay then, fine.

Bernard:

It's out of my memory.

Interviewer:

I don't want to push you where, where you're not happy with it. I

wonder whether you could, in fact, say whether you could truthfully say

that you, there were several in here which seem to suggest that...

Bernard:

In June of '69...

Interviewer:

That once, once the troops were being pulled out that there was a

feeling by some of the Vietnamese anyway that they are being deserted

and that the commitment is going, that the Americans are going just as

other people have left and why that seems to seep through this report.

Now, I wonder if you could talk to that.

Bernard:

I don't know. There are... Ah. I recall particularly a number of

Vietnamese towards my last year there beginning to characterize the

Vietnamese War as an American War. And they believed, in particular,

that that this war was for American purposes but it didn't concern,

involve them. They were seeing themselves far more as an American

battleground. Ah, and that it was less a Vietnamese War in which we

were assisting them and they perceived it far more as an American War.

Interviewer:

Was this surprising to you? This was, was this a new development or had

it always been there and it was just being voiced to you now? Do you

think...?

Bernard:

I don't recall.

Basic errors of the Americans in fighting the war

Interviewer:

Okay. Not to worry, we'll press on. You have, ah this is 1969. "The US

presence itself has been a mistake. I bet, bet, I best make sure that

no one doubts my better judgment this being a mistake largely because

it doesn't work." Why wasn't it working? Why was it? Is there some...?

It's a big question.

Bernard:

Uh huh. Ah, our commitment to the Vietnamese War, I always felt to be a

mistake, because I think we didn't understand at all the sort of war we

were in. Back to thinking about the infrastructure. A French colonel in

a book called "Secret Forces" once explained that in a revolutionary

war, as soon as the infrastructure has been emplaced, the war is over.

It's a matter of time.

Interviewer:

Sorry, I had no idea we'd gone through so much film.

(tape slurs)

Four. Take one. Clapsticks.

Interviewer:

In '69 you already expressed doubts of how the US presence was a

mistake? Why did you feel this way?

Bernard:

Well, not, I, my objections to the US presence in Vietnam were

explained long before '69. My reservations that the US commitment of

military forces to Vietnam date from the very early '60s way before we

had any forces there. And, these were based on a total conviction that,

one: We weren't ready, we didn't understand people's war and second,

the worst possible use of soldiers was in fighting, uh fighting a

popular war.

I've forgotten who the quotation is from. Some French author I think

who explained that it may have been F.O. Miksche who explained that the

worst guerrilla is a regular officer, and the worst person to catch a

guerrilla is a, also a regular officer and I certainly think that all

the training of a professional soldier with the intellectual baggage

that that brings with it, makes him severely handicapped when he has to

go into another kind of political war, popular war. So, my objections

and my reservations dated from my days at Fort Bragg, in the Special

Force as we were first analyzing and understanding this. And, I'm sure

you'll find many of those, many of us from the Special Force of those

days explain those reservations very clearly at that time.

Character of the 7th Cu Chi Regiment

Interviewer:

You talked earlier about Cu Chi and people of Cu Chi and around there.

I have to say that when we were in Vietnam we interviewed quite a few

of the both regular and irregular Viet Cong forces, call them what you

will, people or regional. I wonder if you can tell me what you're

thoughts were about Cu Chi and about the enemy that you were fighting?

What you thought about about, were they a formidable enemy? Did they do

the expected? What, what was special, what was special or not special

about them?

Bernard:

You're caught in an anecdote. At Berkeley, at the University of

California, I was invited to, in 1972, to a demonstration against the

Vietnamese War and I went. Now, there were twenty or thirty young

Vietnamese men and women in black pajamas playing guitars, and they had

a moderator who explained what they were singing, what they were

chanting. The song was the effect that they wanted to defeat the enemy.

They wanted to fight the enemy. They wanted to share, spill their blood

to protect their countries from the enemy.

Now, I listened to this for a while and I got the microphone. I

explained in Vietnamese and in French to the young singers that I knew

who they were and they knew who they were and we talk about this, and I

explained if they wanted to spill their blood to fight the enemy, that

they could do this in a, very well in a bad cause. That they could join

the 7th Cu Chi, those were fighting men.

But, they were song singers and they were on USAID scholarships the

United States. They were sons of province chiefs. They were the sons of

general officers, the sons of functionaries. These were not warriors.

These were not fighters. Fighting was available. The 7th Cu Chi was the

best example. Those were warriors. None of those, we use the terms

candy asses, were of the fighting persuasion. They could go join the

7th Cu Chi and I would honor them as warriors. They weren't. The 7th Cu

Chi was.

We would fight the 7th Cu Chi from time to time and it was serious and

expensive. We would hurt it very hard. It would replenish itself and

come to fight again very well. The Vietnamese, Viet Cong or ARVN or RF

and PF are first-rate soldiers. They're excellent infantrymen, and I

say that as an elder in the trade. The 7th Cu Chi certainly counts as

of the top regiments that I have known.

Interviewer:

How did you...? You say that they would come back again. Was their

strength still holding? Their ability to replenish itself? You're

talking about '69. Tet has come and gone. Were you aware very much that

at that time the strength in Cu Chi seemed to contract or was it still

very, very strong? I mean, there are suggestions, for example, that by

this time the guerrilla forces, guerrilla strength of, of the VC was

going down. It was more and more the reliance would be on heavy main

force units and the war that had changed substantially by the end of

'68. Do you feel that way?

Bernard:

Well, there's certainly...the, the war changed and the persons who were

in the fighting establishments certainly changed. Often by '69, we were

getting fragments of main force units incorporated in regional forces,

i.e., the 7th Cu Chi's major source of recruits were no longer from the

Cu Chi area. Their major source of recruits the, were the residue of

the main force battalions from the north that we had broken up badly

and they would recover some of these young persons and they would

become parts of the, of the regional forces. The Viet Cong regional

forces.

There were no longer the spontaneous recruitment or the ability to

impress young men once the Vietnamese had established ah conscription.

Then the Viet Cong were no longer easily able to recruit or to impress

young people from the village areas. So, the 7th Cu Chi's sources

probably by '68 were main force units from the north and the fragments

of those. The main force units were very vulnerable and ah when main

force units were met by US main force units or ARVN main force units,

they were usually to hurt very badly. The Viet Cong would recover parts

of them, and in, and recruit, co-opt bring them in to their units.

Interviewer:

Speak of the...

End of SR #2870.

Conflicts in communication and objectives between Vietnamese and Americans

VIETNAM

C. BERNARD

SR #2871

This is 2871. Project T 876. 50 cycle pulse. 25 frames a second.

Five. Take one. Clapsticks.

Interviewer:

Tell me a bit about US-Vietnamese relationships in the time when you

were there? What it was like?

Bernard:

I found always a, a particular ambivalent relationship. Almost a

hate/love between the Vietnamese and the Americans. And, this, ah

Vietnamese, think of Vietnamese soldiers not well paid, not well fed,

not very well equipped, pretty constantly brushed aside, disregarded by

their protectors, the larger, richer, stronger American units. Now, the

Vietnamese needed the American units. Yet, this didn't make them feel

very comfortable. First, about needing them. That sense of inferiority

over that.

And, then, second, in, in responding to some of the pretty naturally

patronizing attitudes of the American soldiers and American commanders.

Ahm, I give you ah something comes to my mind because of some of my

French associations. The Vietnamese officers who'd been reared in the

French army and who spoke French very well, those that didn't acquire

English, were pretty well cast aside quite soon. Those who became

important to the Americans were those with whom we could speak. Those

who spoke English better.

I used to, in one, an early job, I used to get very senior Vietnamese

officers who would just come over to sit in my office and talk with me

cause they could talk in French. Now, our, our relationship was partly

a rejection of their relationship with most of the Americans. But, a

lot of it was based really in this business of communication. An, an

inability, unless they went into the Vietnamese lang, into the English

language, to be able to talk with us. And, one of our enormous

handicaps were that so few of us were competent in the Vietnamese

language.

Interviewer:

You say, I mean I'm amazed actually think...

Stop a minute.

Six. Take one. Clap sticks.

Interviewer:

It's 1969. You've got half a million Americans in Vietnam. How many of

them spoke Vietnamese and how high a priority was it?

Bernard:

Not very many.

Interviewer:

Could you say? Could you set the context?

Bernard:

Ah, yes. Ah. One of my associates and probably the most successful

adviser that I knew in Vietnam was a guy names Tom Barnes, a foreign

service officer, who used to explain that when you could read the cheap

novels of a country, you were beginning to approach the culture and to

him for the adviser to speak the language of the country, was as

important as the AK-47 was to the Viet Cong.

I agree completely with Tom's assessment. A considerable part of the

friction which didn't cause us to lose the war, but made us very

uncomfortable and constantly was the inability of our soldiers, and

then, in particular, the advisers to be able to talk with their

Vietnamese colleagues in their own language.

This was one of our priorities, but it was a spoken priority. It was

never made a serious priority. The very short tours we had in Vietnam

made learning the language a burden. It couldn't be used anywhere else,

and it certainly wasn't a quote "career-enhancing" sort of thing to

have done. The Vietnamese language is not difficult to learn, but it

requires an assiduous application. And, there was no, it was never a

real priority. Only one that was spoken of from time to time.

Interviewer:

You have a, in your report, you have, let me see...some of the

frictions and problems you had in terms of Vietnamese-US relations. I

wonder if you could talk of what would be a typical thing that would

cause you real, real problems in terms of US-Vietnamese relations in,

in, in your province? What was the sort of thing that were consistently

causing you problems and what did you try and do about it?

Bernard:

A major source, and probably the philosophical problem between

Americans and Vietnamese, were our very different missions. Ah, now

this was spoken of often enough in the French literature, but we had

exactly the same problem. The Vietnamese had a, a mission of protecting

the people. The American responsibility, the American main force units

were killing the enemy. Now, that an enemy might be shielded in a

village or that it might be difficult to tell from the rest of the

Vietnamese people where he was hiding himself ah didn't make killing

him less a priority.

So, I think our basic problem in dealing with the Vietnamese were these

very different priorities. Yeah. And you've heard the body count

decried in all, in every bit of literature. Everyone who was in Vietnam

were as dissatisfied with that as a measurement of how well we were

doing as members of the press were, as the persons in the United States

were. But it was very difficult to measure what was happening. And at,

in that day, we had a serious concern with measuring to understand how

well we were doing.

Our problem really was the introduction of a very large American force

into a culture that we could not hope to understand without an ability

to understand the language, without long and arduous training. We

didn't understand. Our priorities were very different. The Vietnamese

priorities, they di, they understood us as little as we understood

them. We essentially were very foreign bodies occupying the same

ground. The, the frictions were inevitable.

Ah, just the use of a highway was ah was a very dangerous thing. It was

a dangerous thing because American soldiers worried about ambushes

driving very large trucks, using the same poor highways, which, if they

weren't paved were easily mined, were concerned with their lives, with

their mission. Result: We had a lot of Vietnamese run over. Ah, if you

look at a firefight, you have the same problem. It's very difficult for

men in an airplane to understand, one, where he is or to be very, very

discriminating in what he hits. I think the, the, the best quotation

this subject came from my most valued colleague, John Paul Vann.

I give you the quotation. John used to say that the best weapon to kill

a guerrilla with is a bayonet and the worst weapon is an airplane, and

the next best is a rifle, and the next worse is an artillery shell.

Well, the tools we were using were not the sort of tool that was

required to work in this kind of war. Airplanes and artillery shells

cause friction in a heavily populated area.

Interviewer:

Let's cut a minute.

That may have been...

American engagement with the Communists in Laos

Sound. Take one. Clap sticks.

Interviewer:

Can you just start by setting the parameters of who was involved in the

fighting when you were there, what sort of military engagements you

witnessed or were involved in?

Bernard:

Well, there was little actual fighting. Now, there were a variety of

skirmishes.

Interviewer:

Could you say in 196...?

Bernard:

Oh, sure. In Laos, in 1961, there was little actual fighting. Now,

occasionally, a unit would get pretty well ambushed and we'd get

reasonable numbers of casualties. My first contact with the French army

was at that time when the French medicine chef in Louangphrabang used

to repair all the damaged Laotians that we'd bring back to him.

I loaned him the sergeant; medical sergeant from my special forces

team, plus all of the medical materials and he, as a superb surgeon,

ah, took care of the varieties of wounded that we could bring back.

Ahm, now, the fighting, mostly went between, occasional contacts

between Miao irregulars, or Yao irregulars and Pathet Lao forces.

Now, in addition, there were regular Vietnamese army units searching

for ah, in not a very vigorous manner, for Pathet Lao units. Now,

normally, there are varieties of ways to fight. And, there are

varieties of ways to win. Winning without fighting was more attractive

to both sides. The Pathet Lao would send word that they had a regular

Vietnamese battalion with them to weaken the will of our forces to

fight by merely announcing the same sort thing in reverse that we had

Lu, i.e., Chinese with us. That made the Pathet Lao much less sincere

about holding the particular bits of ground that they were on.

Interviewer:

Can you set the framework for your presence there? Why was it not

publicized at the time? What was the reason behind that?

Bernard:

The...Hmm. Um, there was very little publicity on our activities in

Laos in those early days. As I recall, these were the first

times...immediately, you recall, after President Kennedy was

inaugurated, in which he, which it became very obvious to us, that

there was a considerable danger that, that ah, Laos would become a

Vietnamese puppet, fall to the North, easily enough.

I think the first of the military units, the special forces units,

which I belonged to in there, were there to stabilize the country as

best we could working to improve the the capabilities of the Lao, to,

to keep their own control over the country. And, that there was very

little of this that was yet part of US policy. My inclination would be

to think of us more as there as an active reconnaissance, i.e., we were

able to report what the situation actually was from our position in

place, and this gave the United States time enough to decide what we

were going to do.

Now, there may be something a little wrong in this because, as I recall

now, ah our presence was before Mr. Kennedy. We also had a presence

there before Mr. Kennedy was inaugurated. So, ah, but I as my

recollection goes, ah, we, if I were characterizing this now I'd use

that military term, an active reconnaissance, and then, in order to

know better what the situation was and then what might be done about

it, a role that perhaps journalists play today. But there weren't as

many available at that time.

Interviewer:

Okay. Cut.

End of SR #2871

Transcript

Transcript

Series: Vietnam: A Television History

Raw Footage: Interview with Carl F. Bernard, 1981

Contributing Organization: WGBH (Boston, Massachusetts)

AAPB ID: cpb-aacip/15-w37kp7v317

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Description

Credits: Interviewee2: Bernard, Carl F.
Publisher: WGBH Educational Foundation

AAPB Contributor Holdings: WGBH
Identifier: a23370d5564726bb0e43a60dbafb06ae9916d140 (ArtesiaDAM UOI_ID)
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Color: Color
Duration: 00:36:47:5

Citations: Chicago: “Vietnam: A Television History; Interview with Carl F. Bernard, 1981,” 1981-07-16, WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed August 14, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-w37kp7v317.; MLA: “Vietnam: A Television History; Interview with Carl F. Bernard, 1981.” 1981-07-16. WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. August 14, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-w37kp7v317>.; APA: Vietnam: A Television History; Interview with Carl F. Bernard, 1981. Boston, MA: WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-w37kp7v317