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Old 10-19-2009, 04:22 PM
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Default Cambodians with SF in RVN

SuperScout posted in a different thread: "And what were Cambodians doing in Vietnam? The Khmer and the Annamese are bitter, long-time enemies. How did you communicate with them? Possibly in French, or do you speak Cambodge?"

**********

Well Mr. SuperScout...... Lemmie say this about that. I didn't speak Cambodian but I surely did have two companies of Cambode CIDG at ODA-322 at Katum that I worked with on a daily basis for almost eleven months. We had 5 CIDG companies. Three of them were Saigon Cowboys and were totally useless and a big waste of oxygen. One of those VN companies was so prone to run off at the sound of a gunshot that they were nicknamed The Camptown Racers. My radio toter, the other USSF'er, the interpreter, and I walked back to Katum in the dark several times after they had fled. The Cambodians were totally different. I'd go anywhere with either of those two companies.

We did in fact keep our Cambodes and VN separated. A-322 was one of the "5-pointed star" camps with each of the five starpoints separated from the others. The Cambodes were in the two most vulnerable starpoints with the VN's in the other three. Most of the Viets would not even consider walking into one of the Cambode areas but one would make a mistake every once in a while and would pay the price for having done so.

There were also two Cambodian companies at our sister camp next door to the west, A-323 at Thien Ngon along with their 3 companies of VN.

We had Cambodians because there were no Montagnards in northernmost Tay Ninh Province where we were. Most of the camps further up in III Corps and the ones in II Corps had 'Yards and not Cambodians. Rob't P, "The Kid", may comment about Cambodes or no Cambodes at A-344. I dunno what they had for CIDG. There were great gobs and bunches of Cambodians about 6 clicks north'ards of Katum. They were, however, across the border over in Cambodia where we were not "supposed" to go. We also were "not supposed" to shoot 105mm howitzers across the border at COSVN but you know how that is .

I would dearly love to know how many of our Cambodian CIDG survived the new government once we were pulled out and left them in the lurch. If they went back across the border to Cambodia to that new government, I don't think they had a prayer of staying alive.

RTManning
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Old 10-19-2009, 04:31 PM
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Default RT Manning

If you would kindly note the thread where I made the claim, you will note that I was responding to the alleged presence of Cambodes way inland, which still seems virtually implausible vs. your very well described experience. Perhaps I should have worded it differently, as I'm certainly not on any antipathetic path! If a mea culpa is in order, I'm all over that. I was also posing some questions about the 'sanity' of SF folks accepting a former security guard who metamorphosed into an SF medic.

And good for you for "forgetting" where the border was! There should have been much more of that forgetfulness; the entire concept of 'sanctuary' is so repugnant to logical and critical thinking that my head hurts just typing this.
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Old 10-19-2009, 04:40 PM
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Katum was just about as far inland as it was possible to be.
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Old 10-19-2009, 06:43 PM
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well long hai is pretty much as inland as you can get and that is where i helped train the cambodian army. i cycled 2 companies, and from the book who's who from uitg/fank an article written by alan dawson at the time states "
"About 300 of the elite Special Forces
troops, aided by other hand-picked officers
with Airborne and Ranger training, have instructed
30,000 Cambodians at three
American-run camps in South Vietnam in
the past 18 months."
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Old 10-19-2009, 07:40 PM
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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" />>>
>>
Now for a history lesson…>>
>>
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.>>
> >
Now for your geography lesson…>>
> >
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.>>

>>
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.>>
>>
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.>>
> >
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.>>
> >
Class dismissed…>>
> >
Robert
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Old 10-20-2009, 05:34 AM
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Quote:
How did you communicate with them? Possibly in French, or do you speak Cambodge?"

**********
that's what we do: Recruit, equip, train, advise and accompany indigenous forces in the conduct of insurgency/counter-insurgency warfare. .
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Old 10-20-2009, 06:43 AM
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As bigD pointed out Long Hai was 150 miles SE of Saigon right on the coast .In 1968 the 3rd Mobile Strike force(Det B-36) had 3 battalions of Mike Force and a Recon Company made up of..yep you guessed it..Cambodians.. I to have often wondered what happened to those great little guys after we left them in a lurch....

Ron P.
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Old 10-20-2009, 02:37 PM
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B-56 (SIGMA) at Ho Ngoc Tau (along Highway 1 between Saigon and Long Binh) used Cambodians and Nungs for their commando reaction companies and RTs.

Richard
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Old 10-21-2009, 04:07 PM
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To say that Cambodians were not indigenous to Vietnam is to say they have limited knowledge of Vietnam. Cambodians saturated the Delta Region of Vietnam.
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Old 10-24-2009, 02:00 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 00Z5S View Post
SuperScout posted in a different thread: "And what were Cambodians doing in Vietnam? The Khmer and the Annamese are bitter, long-time enemies. How did you communicate with them? Possibly in French, or do you speak Cambodge?"

**********

Well Mr. SuperScout...... Lemmie say this about that. I didn't speak Cambodian but I surely did have two companies of Cambode CIDG at ODA-322 at Katum that I worked with on a daily basis for almost eleven months. We had 5 CIDG companies. Three of them were Saigon Cowboys and were totally useless and a big waste of oxygen. One of those VN companies was so prone to run off at the sound of a gunshot that they were nicknamed The Camptown Racers. My radio toter, the other USSF'er, the interpreter, and I walked back to Katum in the dark several times after they had fled. The Cambodians were totally different. I'd go anywhere with either of those two companies.

We did in fact keep our Cambodes and VN separated. A-322 was one of the "5-pointed star" camps with each of the five starpoints separated from the others. The Cambodes were in the two most vulnerable starpoints with the VN's in the other three. Most of the Viets would not even consider walking into one of the Cambode areas but one would make a mistake every once in a while and would pay the price for having done so.

There were also two Cambodian companies at our sister camp next door to the west, A-323 at Thien Ngon along with their 3 companies of VN.

We had Cambodians because there were no Montagnards in northernmost Tay Ninh Province where we were. Most of the camps further up in III Corps and the ones in II Corps had 'Yards and not Cambodians. Rob't P, "The Kid", may comment about Cambodes or no Cambodes at A-344. I dunno what they had for CIDG. There were great gobs and bunches of Cambodians about 6 clicks north'ards of Katum. They were, however, across the border over in Cambodia where we were not "supposed" to go. We also were "not supposed" to shoot 105mm howitzers across the border at COSVN but you know how that is .

I would dearly love to know how many of our Cambodian CIDG survived the new government once we were pulled out and left them in the lurch. If they went back across the border to Cambodia to that new government, I don't think they had a prayer of staying alive.

RTManning
Williamston, NC (and not that town by the same name in "Lower Carolina")
When were you in country ?

I spent a good deal of time going back and forth to Katum and Thien Ngon from May 5, 1970 to June 30, 1970 during our Cambodian "incursion".

Larry
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