Our War Was Different: Marine Combined Action Platoons in Vietnam - Hardcover

Hemingway, Albert

3.89

9 ratings by Goodreads

9781557503558: Our War Was Different: Marine Combined Action Platoons in Vietnam

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1557503559 ISBN 13: 9781557503558

Publisher: Naval Inst Pr, 1994

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Shares the experiences and observations of Marines who were part of the CAP, or Combined Action Program, one of the few successes in Vietnam

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From Publishers Weekly:

Between 1965 and 1971 the Marines in Vietnam allocated 4% of their resources to an experimental effort that turned into one of the rare American successes of the war. The Combined Action Platoon (CAP) program was based on the belief that winning the support of the Vietnamese people was of primary importance. The CAP concept, duplicated in more than a hundred villages in I Corps, was a simple one: a squad of Marines plus a Navy corpsman joined forces with the local militia to protect villagers from the Vietcong, denying the latter recruits, food and intelligence. Hemingway here collects 27 oral histories by men who took part in the day-by-day pacification effort that included civic-action projects such as repairing bridges, digging wells and building schoolhouses, as well as patrols and ambushes. This little-known program, in which American fighting men were thrust into an alien culture to live, work, fight and die, has long deserved the objective analysis it receives here. Hemingway, senior editor of Vietnam magazine, offers the thought-provoking argument that the CAP concept could be successfully resurrected in low-intensity Third World conflicts. Photos.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

The Marine Combined Action Platoons in Vietnam were among the few American units that actually resided in the villages, working with their inhabitants and training the local Popular Force militia. This is the first full-scale oral history of a facet of the American Vietnam effort that was probably underused during the war and has been understudied since. The usual problems of oral history afflict this one--it fails to provide quite enough background information on the war (particularly its interservice politics) and the U.S. Marines for the general reader's comfort. But except for that typical shortcoming, this is a valuable addition to Vietnam conflict studies. It is, as well, a thought-provoking glimpse of a type of military operation that is being reconsidered for use in the post-cold war world. Roland Green

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