Understrength in Vietnam

My platoon in Vietnam was never full strength. An infantry squad for the times--probably still true today--was eleven men: a squad leader and two rifle teams of five men each. The concept, I believe, emerged from World War II. The squad leader could maneuver his two teams in leap frog order: "Alpha team, lay down a base of fire. Bravo team, move out!" Then Bravo team, once sufficiently advanced, could lay down covering fire while Alpha team moved.

That's the concept, and one we were trained with but didn't use. Why not? Doing so in the jungles and lush tropical vegetation of Vietnam where visibility was limited would have resulted in an increase of casualties, and we already had enough of them.

During the times when we had sufficient visibility and cover (they can't shoot you) and concealment (they can't see you), we conducted fire and maneuver with squads or platoons rather than rifle teams. We didn't even have rifle teams although we sometimes referred to the assistant squad leader as the Alpha Team Leader. That's as close as we came.

Back to the main point: My platoon and squad were never full strength. Rather than the eleven soldiers on the staffing chart, the most we ever had in our squad was eight, and that wasn't for very long. Usually we had around half a dozen. Likewise my platoon was always under strength. Each platoon was composed of four squads plus a platoon leader (lieutenant), platoon sergeant, and a radio-telephone operator (RTO), the guy who carried the lieutenant's radio. Doing the math, that's forty-seven men. The most we ever had during my year in Vietnam was twenty-eight, and we usually operated with fewer. On four occasions we were down to less than ten. Following one prolonged battle we were left with six men standing.

At the time, we felt we were understrength because of draft dodgers. I once read that the huge majority of young men eligible for the draft in the 60s and very early 70s--the draft was suspended in 1972--successfully employed a variety of tactics to dodge it. Be that as it may, we felt that if more guys back home hadn't tried so hard to get out of the draft, we would have had more men in our platoons and squads, which would have resulted in spreading the work load among more men. We would have been a bit less busy and less exhausted. If only. . . .

But I later found out that the reason we remained consistently short handed had nothing to do with draft dodgers. I learned the truth from a university professor with five books about war to his credit and a PHD in military history, which he earned by studying the 25th Infantry Division, the division I served in.

Very simply he explained, "There was not one day during the time the 25th was in Vietnam that they were understrength by a single man. The reason you were so short handed in the field was that the division created additional jobs in the rear and pulled slots from the infantry brigades to fill them."

My mouth dropped open, and you could have knocked me over with a napkin. So it was our own division that was doing it to us! Who would have thought? And I'm sure such shenanigans were not limited to the 25th, but rather I presume that all divisions in Vietnam did the same thing.

It's crazy when you think about it. My division was there to plug a hole caused by the southernmost exit of the Ho Chi Minh Trail into South Vietnam. It funneled North Vietnamese regulars and their equipment and weapons to an area near a town called Tay Ninh where sufficient overhead cover (woods, jungle, rubber plantations) existed so that an army could be massed without observation from above (planes, helicopters), all within a night's march--albeit a long one--of Saigon. The fulfillment of that mission required infantry units, lots of them. But instead of properly staffing the brigades and battalions, etc. that engaged in combat, the higher ranked NCOs and officers in the rear diverted infantrymen to what we called REMF jobs. (I'm not gonna define that just now, but a quick internet search will pull it up.)

Two thoughts come to mind: 1) I'd love to see a list of the positions created in the rear that were so important that we in the field had to go on more ambush patrols, listening posts, pull guard duty or radio watch more often, and lose even more sleep each night than we would have had we been properly staffed, not to mention have enough soldiers to increase our chances of survival when we made contact with enemy forces. And 2) this brings to mind the saying, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." Interestingly, that quote originally came from the Pogo comic strip.

On most days he is covered up with other things and the passage of time but that soldier is still in there. 

Roger Out