Indoctrination

A characteristic of a Guerilla war is that the government side never knows how many of the enemy it faces - every cyclo-driver, every Vietnamese who passes in the street could be a Guerilla - but by early 1965 at least 55,000 and perhaps as many as 80,000 "hard hats" were fighting in RVN. Some of them had been fighting for more than a decade and were perhaps the toughest, most experienced Guerilla fighters to be found anywhere on earth. Standing behind them were 14 infantry divisions of the Defense of the Homeland Army, the Red Army of DRV.

In the 1960-61 period, great emphasis was placed at indoctrination sessions on the need for individual initiative by Liberation Army soldiers. A legendary figure of the Scarlet Pimpernel type, the ideal hero of the people's Guerilla war, was one "Ba Bua," whose story was told in clandestine newspaper accounts of mid-1963 but apparently dating a year or so earlier.

He had just been married and was living peacefully in a small house in Cai Cam hamlet when the enemy's troops launched a surprise mopping-up operation and captured Ba Bua's bride, who resisted with all her strength. Infuriated, the troops stripped her, tied her up, and took her back to their post, then raped her and took out her liver and ate, yes, ate it. Upon hearing this Ba Bua almost went mad and could not sleep or eat for a week... Then he joined a Guerilla band.

Ba Bua carefully learned the use of guns... Then one night he and two others were called in and assigned the task of making a raid on a nearby enemy post. The enemy position was a stronghold surrounded by sharp stake fences and barbed wire... There were spiked fields and deep moats bristling with sharp stakes. A single road led into the post, which swarmed with guards who always shut the gate at night.

One afternoon Ba Bua took a bath, dressed well, and entered the post before the enemy troops returned from a raid. He met the two others and they went to a cafe. He stopped in front and called "Mr Kinh, please." Kinh was the notorious commander of a military unit in the post. Kinh came out of the cafe, a pistol strapped to his side. Ba Bua opened fire with his pistol and wounded Kinh in the arm... Kinh ran back into the cafe and out the back door... Ba Bua, hot on his heels, shot him again,... then took his pistol and got away... The guns of the post quickly opened fire, but by this time Ba Bua was back in camp, where the commander smiled and hugged him, and both men could hardly keep back their tears... The news that Ba Bua had entered an enemy post and shot the commander thrilled the people of the entire region...

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the emphasis shifted from the heroic individual to the military team. Mass-media accounts of exemplary individual behavior were replaced by examples of unit dauntlessness. By late 1964 the Liberation Army rather than the heroic individual was making the most lasting contribution to the cause and in fact was the element on which victory depended. Said a late 1961 NFL clandestine newspaper editorial:

We will be victorious because the Liberation Army troops - the beloved sons of the Fatherland, the working-class peasantry have shown themselves extremely valiant in struggling against the aggressive, exploitative enemy because they have managed to endure thousands of shortages and difficulties and to struggle against egotistic, negative, and individualistic thoughts, and because they serve the people wholeheartedly and make sacrifices for the benefit of the Fatherland... The longer we fight the stronger we become, the stronger we become the more victories we win...

Collectively or individually, however, a premium was still placed on human superiority, on the man over the machine. Camp indoctrination lessons (my quy chanh) reported, always included Ho Chi Minh's observation, "During the Resistance we did not lose one tank or one plane." The scorn of the leadership for what it regarded as the GVN's masses of mindless conscripts was underscored in a 1964 article:

What a rapid and marvelous change. Less than 3 years ago one side had 20,000 men and the other side 200,000. After a brief period of fighting the 20,000 figure has become 200,000, and the 200,000 figure side has been feverishly strengthening and supplementing its force in order to increase it to 600,000 men... The above estimates made by the enemy itself can never represent a correct evaluation of our people's force. As for us, we do not make a comparison in such a manner... Even the 10,000-man revolutionary force was invincible... Politics, morale, and organization are the important factors in the strength of a revolutionary army...