Abandoned in Hell : The Fight for Vietnam's Firebase Kate (9780698144262) Read Online Free Page B

more immediate threat to the Degar. Invading their forested slopes, they enslaved able-bodied men as porters, conscripted younger ones into their military, stole food, and, when it suited them, liquidated entire communities.
    Seeking safety, by the sixties many Montagnards had abandoned their seminomadic lifestyle to live in government-sponsored villages with rudimentary sanitation and bare-bones social services and schools.
    Team A-236 worked with the Montagnard clans in and around Bu Prang, trained their men to defend the community, and recruited able-bodied adults into the Civilian Irregular Defense Group, a kind of mercenary militia equipped as light infantry and deployed in a wide variety of mostly defensive roles.
    CIDG was originally a CIA program. Created in 1961, four years before US combat units were deployed, the CIDG was intended to counter expanding Viet Cong influence and control in the Central Highlands, bothto defend settlements against attack and to deny Viet Cong the ability to conscript Montagnards as slave labor.
    â€œA” Teams from the Army’s newly minted Special Forces moved into selected Montagnard hamlets and villages and set up “area development centers.” Each small unit drew upon the specialized training of its NCOs in weapons, intelligence, engineering, communications, and medicine. They concentrated on local defense and initiated such civic action projects as digging wells, teaching sanitation essentials to families who had never known soap, and building schools and rudimentary hospitals. Green Berets trained villagers and provided weapons, equipment, and supplies for defense. They handpicked the best militiamen for further training, recruiting them into quick-reaction forces poised to respond to nearby Viet Cong attacks. The program was almost instantly successful. As each village was pacified, it served as a training camp for neighboring settlements.
    By 1963, the CIA believed that greater success against the Viet Cong could be realized by moving both CIDG units and Special Forces teams to military control, where they could carry the fight to the enemy instead of waiting to be attacked.
    Operation Switchback transferred the CIDG program to MACV. To manage it, the US Army’s Fifth Special Forces Group moved to Vietnam from Fort Bragg, North Carolina. CIDG units were employed in support of conventional military operations, especially patrolling border regions. It quickly became apparent that with patience, training, and leadership these diminutive soldiers could become a loyal, reliable, well-disciplined, and highly effective fighting force.
    Nevertheless, South Vietnam’s systematic oppression of minorities, and especially Montagnards, continued. In 1964, the Montagnard autonomy movement turned militant. On September 20, 1964, the Degar Highlands Liberation Front revolted, killing many government officials. Several sympathetic Special Forces soldiers volunteered to become “hostages” in order to serve as negotiators. Saigon made concessions and released movement leaders from prison. At the insistence of the US Embassy, the Saigon government, then run by a former Diem supporter, General Duong VanMinh, restored Montagnard institutions and took steps to win back their loyalty.
    Still suspicious of Saigon, organizations advocating for autonomy for the Cham and Kampuchean minorities joined with the Montagnards to create an umbrella organization called the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races (in French, Front Unifié de Lutte des Races Opprimées). FULRO was chaired by Y Bham Enuol, a charismatic and often-imprisoned Montagnard.
    Leaders of the three organizations agreed that their first priority must be to win the war against the Communists. While accepting the need for Montagnard CIDG units, South Vietnam’s leaders nevertheless viewed FULRO with hatred and suspicion. FULRO went underground, meeting in secret, biding its