Category Archives: The War

This is an idea advocated by John Nagl at Small Wars Journal which makes a lot of sense to this old Army advisor in Vietnam. The role has never been more important, as American counterinsurgency advisors have helped turn around the Iraq campaign and could do the same in Afghanistan. In any case, they will be the last Americans assigned, assisting and training the indigenous armies we leave behind to defend their own countries.

But, as in Vietnam, where the effort was later termed "the other war," as if it wasn’t very important, it seems today’s Army is being even more ad hoc about it. I got pulled out of a cav regiment for a job advising a couple of companies of Regional Forces and Popular Forces militia known as the Rough-Puffs. We did some training for them, but, with little experience and limited language skills, we hardly ever actually advised the SVN lieutenants and sergeants who ran the patrols and night ambushes. They were usually older and had more combat experience than we did.

I was one of the lucky ones who attended the Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg where many of our instructors were Special Forces though we were not. The current advisory crop apparently has less training and one of the same disadvantages, i.e. being outside normal channels, making the assignment no plum for careerists. Advisory work in Vietnam was not even considered command time for line promotion. An Advisory Corps, with permanent units with esprit, etc., could change that.

It also might improve on what me and my five-man team of two officers and three NCOs primarily did. We mainly called in artillery, airstrikes and medevac as needed. Artillery was useful, if the regular unit guns we called were good. Air strikes were, then, usually flown by F4 Phantoms and were often inaccurate. American medevacs, however, were prized, as the SVN troops were afraid of their own medical corps. Our dustoffs would land in the midst of a fight at night. The SVNs would come, if at all, only in the day. Their soldiers also knew their doctors would quickly amputate a wounded limb, which American docs would try to save.

The Internet, of course, is a superlative resource for all deployed soldiers which we would have loved to have had forty years ago, so the current crop of advisors is luckier, in that way, for things such as this nice collection of advisor advice available with one click.