The Snake-Eaters and the Yards
The Snake-Eaters and the Yards by Rebecca Onion, Slate.
… The indigenous Montagnards, recruited into service by the American Special Forces in Vietnam’s mountain highlands, defended villages against the Viet Cong and served as rapid response forces. The Special Forces and the Montagnards—each tough, versatile, and accustomed to living in wild conditions—formed an affinity for each other. In the testimony of many veterans, their working relationship with the Montagnards, nicknamed Yards, was a bright spot in a confusing and frustrating war. The bond between America’s elite fighters and their indigenous partners has persisted into the present, but despite the best efforts of vets, the Montagnards have suffered greatly in the postwar years, at least in part because they cast their lot with the U.S. Army. In a war with more than its share of tragedies, this one is less often told but is crucial to understanding the conflict and its toll…
An interesting ‘Slate’ article on the “Yards”, who paid a huge price for their alliance with the US SOF a long time ago.
What is interesting is that in post-1945 history there are a number of similar experiences for such allies, although not always from such a distinctive community. The French in Indo-China, mainly in Laos, left behind allies; the Harkis in Algeria are better known.
I have read more on the wars in Southern Africa, where Portugal, Rhodesia and South Africa easily recruited local allies (there were other factors, e.g. the high pay of the Selous Scouts).
The article brings back old memories for those CIDG troops that we worked with in III Corp 69/70—while the article indicates that the Montagnards were a mountainous group we had in III Corp some who were termed low land Montagnards who had been brought by the French to work the Michelin rubber planation’s that were north of Saigon and ran deep into Cambodia. The Loc Ninh, Mhin Than, the B Team in An Loc and Tong le Chon camps had at least one if not two Montagnard companies combined usually with one or two Cambodian companies and some camps had one Vietnamese companies.
They were a tough group of fighters as were the Cambodians who never had to be nudged into a fight—the Vietnamese tended to hold back on engagements and had to be nudged to engage.
My longest lasting memory was on a particular recon into Cambodia with two Montagnard recon platoons— we ran head long into a NVA BN coming south on the HCM trail as we were going north—nothing like a full head on encounter—usually the side that engaged the fastest and pushed flankers immediately won the engagement.
The Montagnards had an affinity for flanking it was almost a second nature instinct—anyway the two platoons were in fact pushing the entire NVA BN back north and had successfully started a flanking action which was also confusing the NVA.
We ran into a small stream that to be waded across—and in typical Montagnard fashion everything came to a sudden halt even with the bullets flying—we did not cross until the “water gods” were appeased which took about ten minutes—by the way the longest ten minutes when one is engaged with a BN and basically outnumbered and winning on bravado.
We appeased the water gods and continued to rout the NVA BN.
Our CIDG troops got extra pay for captured weapons and on that day even the advisor ie me had to carry as many AKs and RPKs I could in order to drive up the bounty money—being a SF advisor had it’s moments.
They could fight all day and still in the evening smile, joke, and act like young kids among themselves.
The sad thing was we the advisors were in the fight for one year —they had been fighting for 10 or more years—my point man was 15 and had been a point man for 2 full years—I staked my life on his abilities a number of times and he taught me how to track with the best of the Montagnards.
This a fascinating article indicative of similar problems with ethnic differences and outside influences in Afghanistan. It also illustrates how State Department and host nation unwillingness to allow/force greater autonomy for some ethnicities, ends up becoming a source of continued conflict.
This first example illustrates the need for large numbers of defenders when facing equally large number of attackers be it Viet Cong or NVA. No doubt it took time to train and develop such forces, despite earlier assistance of Montagnards by the French. If regular forces had been available in greater numbers early on, it would have given SF and other regular forces the opportunity to train more forces faster while simultaneously providing wide area security.
You would think if an SF only approach was working, there would have been no need to add increasing numbers of regular forces. It also is interesting that the slow speed of dismounted forces in such terrain forced the advent of greater air mobility and the first use of Fire Bases that today are FOBs and COPs.
The 18,000 Montagnards used as mobile strike forces illustrate that despite a much smaller South Vietnam and narrow land mass close to the sea, air mobility remained essential. In countries the size of Iraq and Afghanistan, air mobility and large coalition land forces were essential.
The next example illustrates that even when small SF units have trained large irregular forces, external support remains a necessity. We all recall Puff the Magic Dragon showing up to save the day in the end in the movie “Green Beret.”
Likewise, a greatly outnumbered SF and ANSF force in Maiwand at Sperwan Ghar as told in “Lions of Kandahar” only survived with assistance from 70+ air resupply and attack sorties. In land masses the size of Afghanistan and Iraq, this air support is not rapidly forthcoming unless multiple FOBs and airfields are available in relative proximity to dispersed regular forces and SF/SOF.
This example paralleled the problem of the Bonn Agreement and a premature rush to institute host nation rule when that leader and U.S./NATO supporters are not prepared to honor the need for greater autonomy of different ethnicities (or religious groups in the case of Iraq and Syria). The FULRO group named was attempting to gain such autonomy. Interestingly, we have SF groups defending and trying to assist Montagnards in gaining greater autonomy while the South Vietnamese and U.S. government had no such interest…as in Iraq and Afghanistan. Note the two quotes from the article that illustrate how greater autonomy or lack thereof can lead to continued conflict.
Note how despite the yeoman’s efforts of small SF groups, 12 men is simply not enough:
The final quote at the end of the article kind of says it all about how the U.S. military attempted to help not only the South Vietnamese and Montagnards, but also the Iraqis and Afghans. Only the National Command Authority’s and State Department insistence on keeping one nation under poorly drawn Colonial boundaries hampered the potential success of coalition forces helping separate ethnicities and religious groups achieve separate self-rule.