Kit Carson Scouts
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The Kit Carson Scouts (also known as Tiger Scouts or Lực Lượng 66) belonged to a special program initially created by the U.S. Marine Corps during the
Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
involving the use of former
Viet Cong , , war = the Vietnam War , image = FNL Flag.svg , caption = The flag of the Viet Cong, adopted in 1960, is a variation on the flag of North Vietnam. Sometimes the lower stripe was green. , active ...
(VC) and
People's Army of Vietnam The People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN; vi, Quân đội nhân dân Việt Nam, QĐNDVN), also recognized as the Vietnam People's Army (VPA) or the Vietnamese Army (), is the military force of the Vietnam, Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the ...
(PAVN) personnel as intelligence scouts for American infantry units. VC and PAVN combatants who defected and became aligned with the
South Vietnam South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam ( vi, Việt Nam Cộng hòa), was a state in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975, the period when the southern portion of Vietnam was a member of the Western Bloc during part of th ...
ese government were known as Chiêu Hồi or Hồi Chánh Viên, the latter being a term loosely translated as "members who have returned to the righteous side". Only a very small number of these Chiêu Hồi were selected, trained, and deployed with the U.S. Marines and later also other American and Allied (non-Vietnamese) infantry units between 1966 and 1972.


Background

Most Hồi Chánh Viên recruited into the fledgling Kit Carson Scout program had defected to Saigon's side in the war because they suffered either from
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or grave wounds beyond what could be medically treated with the rudimentary medical care available on the VC/PAVN side. Those who volunteered for selection and training as Kit Carson Scouts had, during their service with the enemy, little or no contact with anyone speaking English. Few had any knowledge at all of the English language, creating a communication challenge as they were deployed with American units. A further complication was that almost all Hồi Chánh Viên had a distrust of South Vietnamese soldiers and interpreters because of the degree to which friendly forces had been infiltrated by enemy agents. As the program evolved, recruitment of non-military VC cadre and defecting PAVN officers were added, and these Kit Carson Scouts also became valuable sources of intelligence in the conduct of the war.


History

The concept of using soldiers who had previously fought on the enemy side in this way originated in late 1966 with the 5th Counterintelligence Team, which had counterintelligence tasks within the
Da Nang Nang or DanangSee also Danang Dragons ( ; vi, Đà Nẵng, ) is a class-1 municipality and the fifth-largest city in Vietnam by municipal population. It lies on the coast of the East Sea of Vietnam at the mouth of the Hàn River, and is one ...
Chiêu Hồi Center as one responsibility. Major General Herman Nickerson Jr., commanding the
1st Marine Division The 1st Marine Division (1st MARDIV) is a Marine division of the United States Marine Corps headquartered at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California. It is the ground combat element of the I Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF). It is the ...
at the time, named them Kit Carson Scouts after
Kit Carson Christopher Houston Carson (December 24, 1809 – May 23, 1868) was an American frontiersman. He was a fur trapper, wilderness guide, Indian agent, and U.S. Army officer. He became a frontier legend in his own lifetime by biographies and n ...
the American
frontiersman A frontier is the political and geographical area near or beyond a Border, boundary. A frontier can also be referred to as a "front". The term came from French in the 15th century, with the meaning "borderland"—the region of a country that ...
. The first six Kit Carson Scouts were placed in the field with the 1st and 9th Marine Regiments as part of a trial program in October 1966. All but one of the original group of six would later be killed in action. The VC defectors initially recruited to work as intelligence scouts with U.S. Marine infantry units were paid by the U.S. military and were treated as staff non-commissioned officers with a nominal rank (not official) of
staff sergeant Staff sergeant is a rank of non-commissioned officer used in the armed forces of many countries. It is also a police rank in some police services. History of title In origin, certain senior sergeants were assigned to administrative, supervi ...
. From October to December 1966,
III Marine Amphibious Force III Marine Expeditionary Force (III MEF) is a formation of the Marine Air-Ground Task Force of the United States Marine Corps. It is forward-deployed and able to rapidly conduct operations across the spectrum from humanitarian assistance and d ...
(III MAF) credited Kit Carson Scouts with killing 47 VC, recovering 16 weapons and discovering 18 mines and tunnels. By the end of 1966, 19 scouts were serving with the 1st Marine Division. By the end of 1967, the 132 Scouts serving with the Marines in
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were credited with killing 58 more VC, capturing 37 and recovering 82 weapons. General
Lewis William Walt Lewis William Walt (February 16, 1913 – March 26, 1989) was a United States Marine Corps four-star general who served in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Walt was decorated several times, including two Navy Crosses for ext ...
ordered the program to be adopted throughout III MAF and a Kit Carson training center was established at Da Nang to standardize training. On 29 April 1967, the Intelligence Section of the
Military Assistance Command, Vietnam U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) was a joint-service command of the United States Department of Defense. MACV was created on 8 February 1962, in response to the increase in United States military assistance to South Vietnam. MACV ...
(MACV) published a procedural document detailing the expansion of the Kit Carson Scout Program for all active U.S. Army units in the country, including the scout's terms of service and wages. In September 1967, General
William Westmoreland William Childs Westmoreland (March 26, 1914 – July 18, 2005) was a United States Army general, most notably commander of United States forces during the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1968. He served as Chief of Staff of the United States Army from ...
issued an order directing all infantry divisions in Vietnam, including U.S. Army units, to begin using Kit Carson Scouts in conjunction with friendly operations. He directed that a minimum of 100 scouts per division was necessary to ensure effectiveness with a target of 1,500 scouts by the end of 1968. In 1968, the number of scouts increased from 132 to 476, with 102 serving with the 1st Marine Division, 106 with the
3rd Marine Division The 3rd Marine Division is a division of the United States Marine Corps based at Camp Courtney, Marine Corps Base Camp Smedley D. Butler in Okinawa, Japan. It is one of three active duty infantry divisions in the Marine Corps and together with th ...
, 153 with the
101st Airborne Division The 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) ("Screaming Eagles") is a light infantry division of the United States Army that specializes in air assault operations. It can plan, coordinate, and execute multiple battalion-size air assault operati ...
, and 115 with the 23rd Infantry Division, with a further 22 undergoing training. Throughout the year, scouts were credited with killing 312 VC/PAVN, apprehending 851 suspects as well as locating 720 tunnels and supply caches and over 1,300 booby-traps. During 1969, the number of scouts working with III MAF grew from 476 to 597 despite the redeployment of the 3rd Marine Division during the year. The scouts were credited with killing 191 VC/PAVN, capturing 539 and recovering 195 weapons, and locating 143 tunnels and caches and 518 booby-traps. In January 1969, scouts began being assigned to Allied forces, starting with the
1st Australian Task Force The 1st Australian Task Force (1 ATF) was a brigade-sized formation which commanded Australian and New Zealand Army units deployed to South Vietnam between 1966 and 1972. 1 ATF was based in a rubber plantation at Nui Dat, north of Bà Rịa i ...
, followed by the
Royal Thai Army Expeditionary Division The Royal Thai Army Volunteer Force ( th, กองพลทหารอาสาสมัคร), or the Black Panthers (กองพลเสือดำ) was a unit of the Royal Thai Army which served in the Vietnam War, replacing the Royal Th ...
in August 1969 and South Korean forces in December 1970. At the beginning of 1970, over 2,300 scouts served with U.S. forces, with 165 serving in the III MAF. III MAF recruited potential scouts from Chiêu Hồi centers in Da Nang and Hoi An. An experienced Marine NCO investigated the background of motivation of each potential recruit and those who passed would then go to a training center west of Danang for 28 days of training and evaluation. Class sizes were small, usually consisting of no more than eight men. Training including fieldcraft, field sketching, use of sensors and basic English. As the Marines redeployed from South Vietnam the number of scouts serving with III MAF dropped to 111 in July and 95 in December. During 1970, III MAF scouts were credited with killing 43 VC, capturing 313 and recovering 96 weapons. A report given to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February 1970 listed 230 Kit Carson Scouts killed in action and 716 wounded.In June 1970, as part of the
Vietnamization Vietnamization was a policy of the Richard Nixon administration to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War through a program to "expand, equip, and train South Vietnamese forces and assign to them an ever-increasing combat role, at the same ti ...
program, the Kit Carson Program name was changed to ''Lực Lượng 66'' (Vietnamese for Force 66), but scout numbers declined as U.S. forces withdrew from South Vietnam with only 400 scouts serving by the end of 1970.


References


Further reading

* Quiroga, Stefan Aguirre. "Phan Chot’s Choice: Agency and Motivation among the Kit Carson Scouts during the Vietnam War, 1966–1973," ''
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'' 39#2 (2020) pp. 126-143, *{{cite news, title =After Crossing Over, publisher =
TIME Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
, date =1968-08-23, url =http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,838610,00.html, archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20081228050019/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,838610,00.html, url-status =dead, archive-date =December 28, 2008, accessdate = 2007-09-30 Indigenous counterinsurgency forces Military units and formations established in 1966 Military units and formations of the United States in the Vietnam War Military units and formations of the United States Marine Corps in the Vietnam War Viet Cong