Our War Was Different: Marine Combined Action Platoons in Vietnam

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. (May)