Combined Action Program - Comparison With Non-Marine Programs

Comparison With Non-Marine Programs

CAP was one of several programs, during the Vietnam War, where US personnel worked as a team with a local defense group.

"The Marines and the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, disagreed on war strategies. U.S. Army leaders wanted to search and destroy the communists in the rural and less-populated areas of South Vietnam; the Marines wanted to clear and hold the populated areas. CAP was a manifestation of the strategy the Marines felt best suited the conditions in Vietnam.

"With U.S. Marines living and fighting side-by-side with the Vietnamese people, CAP seemed to represent an effective, long-term, around-the-clock commitment to combating the Vietnamese communists at the grassroots level. CAP worked well in some locations; elsewhere, its results were transitory at best—with villagers becoming over-reliant on the Marines for security. "

There were some similarities between what CAP did and what was done by the United States Army Special Forces (aka Green Berets). However, most Marine units worked in the lower lying areas with Vietnamese RF / PF units, while Special Forces tended to work in more remote areas using a variety of troops, including indigenous minorities such as the Sino-Vietnamese Nung and Dega (aka "Montagnard") tribesmen. (An exception to this pattern was Oscar Company, which was stationed at Khe Sanh in the mountainous regions of Quang Tri. The Marines drew from the same local Dega tribe, the Bru, as the Special Forces of nearby FOB 3, though the Special Forces, since they could offer a better rate of pay, usually got their pick of the tribe.)

The main difference between the Marine CAP and the Army programs was that the Marine program was a "hearts and minds" civic action program seeking to gain the trust and friendship of the Vietnamese they lived and worked with through a combination of military training and civic action projects, while the Special Forces Civilian Irregular Defense Group (CIDG) combined village defense units with mobile strike forces of mercenary light infantry. The original CIDG programs with Special Forces were sponsored by the Central Intelligence Agency, and were essentially a mercenary unit program. However, most of the CIDG units eventually became Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) Ranger units.

An additional combined operation involved MACV-SOG Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observations Group. (Studies and Observations Group was actually a code for Special Operations Group.) These were not local defense, but highly secret covert cross-border operations (aka "black ops"), in areas the US was not officially operating in at that point in the war, such as Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam. In many cases, both units formed a strong bond with their indigenous counterparts – a necessity for small units operating alone deep in enemy-held terrain.

Eventually, the regular Army also initiated a form of CAP – US Army Civil Action Patrol Team – similar to the Marine CAP on a smaller scale. However, they didn't live in the villages as the Marines did. Typically they were a 3-man team including an officer, enlisted instructor and radiotelephone operator. The HQ was in a nominally secure area, and they ventured out to arranged meeting places to provide instructional support in weapons maintenance, etc. One such element was an adjunct of the 1st/502d Inf, 101st Airborne Division and was sited at Eagle Beach in June 1970. (The foregoing per former Army CAPT member, "M-60" Mike Kelley, in an E-mail to F. J. Taylor, USMC (Ret.), formerly of CAP Oscar-2. Unfortunately, the original E is no longer extant.)