[ussfa344]

My camp, Detachment A-344 at Bunard, was about 32 miles from the Cambodian border in a part of Viet Nam where it was maybe 110 miles from the ocean to Cambodia. We had about 40% Cambodians among our Civilian Irregular Defense Group personnel, half were Stieng Montagnards and the rest were Vietnamese; Saigon Cowboys as we called them.fficeffice" />>>
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Now for a history lesson…>>
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I know that the program is not well known outside of Special Forces, but there was also the FANK training program. A great number of SFers trained Cambodians in that program for a few years starting in 1970 (I think that was the year). Anyway, it was after Lon Nol took over Cambodia in March of 1970. I was not involved in the program as it started after I got out of the Army, but if you Google it you should be able to learn about the program. Maybe some of the SFers on this forum can explain the program.>>
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Now for your geography lesson…>>
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All of IV Corps and most of III Corps was part of Cambodia prior to the French colonial period. The rest of III Corps and a good part of II Corps was country called Champa, populated by a race of people that were not what we come to think as ethnic Vietnamese. Annam was consisted of I Corps, with parts of II Corps and parts of what we called North Viet Nam during the war. The people were originally from Annam province of extreme northern Viet Nam who had been driven south by the Nguyen (Vietnamese) people that occupied the Red River region of North Viet Nam just prior to Le Thai To whipping China about a thousand years ago. The Annamese took over the northern part of what had been Champa, I Corps and most of II Corps. Forcing the Champa people further south towards Cambodia. Champa became a smaller and smaller country squeezed in between Cambodia and Annam.

The French referred to Central Viet Nam as the Annam Protectorate during the colonial period. They referred to what we called IV Corps and most of III Corps as Cochinchina. Following the French defeat in 1954, the predominantly Catholic Nguyen people of the north went south to form their own country and government in what had been the southeastern most provinces of Cambodia or Cochinchina as it was known by the French, all of Champa and part of the French protectorate of Annam. Think everything below the DMZ.>>
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While there certainly would not have been many, if any, Cambodians in I Corps, II Corps and the northernmost portions of III Corps, that part of Viet Nam that had been Cochinchina between 1868 and 1954 had a lot of Cambodians throughout the countryside. There just weren't many in the cities as the cities were taken over by the Vietnamese people from the north following the partitioning of what came to be known as Viet Nam. Google Khmers Kampuchea-Krom to learn what was never mentioned to the American people by our Communist based news media, our double digit IQ politicians and a broken down education system.>>
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One of the primary purposes of Special Forces in Viet Nam was to bring the remote areas of the countryside under the sphere of influence of the central government in Saigon. Think Agroville, Strategic Hamlet and New Life Hamlet programs here. That remote countryside in IV and III Corps was heavily populated with the people that have lived there for thousands of years before the French and their Vietnamese lackeys from the north got there: the Cambodians. The hill country was populated with Montagnards. My camp was kind of in between the high country and the flat land of the south. That was why we had both. Those guys in the flatlands would not have had many Montagnards so their CIDG would have been ethnic Cambodians and Vietnamese.>>
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Personally I think that we were on the wrong side during the war in Southeast Asia. We should have helped the Cambodians liberate their home land, helped the Montagnards gain sovereignty over their ancestral homelands in the mountains, return Champa and Annam to their original state, and send the Vietnamese back to their homeland in the Red River valley. But I was not a policy maker at the time. Mine was not to reason why, mine was to do or die.>>
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Class dismissed…>>
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Robert