I've been reading a terrific (and massive) new book
edited by Lewis Sorley, The Vietnam War:
An Assessment by South Vietnam's Generals, and a passage in it provokes me
to return to the issue of the literacy
of local security forces. Col. Hoang Ngoc Lung, who had been a senior South
Vietnamese intelligence officer, wrote in 1978 that:
Only country people had a natural affinity for night
operations. ARVN officers and noncommissioned officers were all urban dwellers.
They were chosen for their educational backgrounds; high school graduates were
sent to officer candidate schools and junior high school certificate holders to
noncommissioned officer schools...Rural peasants almost never had this
opportunity. Even most enlisted men in the National Army were not rural
peasants but urbanized peasants and worked to had had contacts with the machine
age. (Pp. 117-118)
Tom again: Who would you prefer protecting your village
while you sleep -- someone who grew up in that environment and isn't afraid to
patrol at night, or someone who can read a field manual but wants to be behind
closed doors when the sun goes down? It seems to me that who you recruit and how
you train them depends a lot on where
and what the fight is.
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