Could a CO of the ARVN give orders to a NCO of the US-Army in the Nam. Imagine there is a battle and viet. Officer meet some us-american NCOs, so was he allowed to command them, just coz of his rank ? Regards, Che.
Difficult question. In theory yes but in practice almost never. American NCOs would almost always be under the command of American officers. If they were performing a mission and were separated form their officers they would not follow any orders from an ARVN officer that would cause them to deviate from that mission. They would most likely be in radio contact and would forward the information to HQ who would decide how to handle it. In the heat of battle I am fairly certain that American NCOs would not take orders from an ARVN officer. If their officers were not available American NCOs are trained to take command themselves and often did.
Possibly from ARVN Rnager or Marine oficers, almost certainly not from a "regular" ARVN officer. I had the great distinction of spending a lot of time with a US officer who served with the (US) Rangers in Viet Nam. In his opinion, the ARVN Rangers and Marines were the only good troops they had, "almost as good as US troops". For the most part he considered the rest to be incompotent at best, and usually corrupt; no more than policemen to keep the "democratic" regime in power, and not fit for real combat. He felt genuinely sorry for the those who were truely capable and were motivated to fight for South Viet Nam as a nation. He had no problems serving with ARVN Rangers/Marines and no time for the rest. If I can extrapolate from what he told me, I would assume that other US troops would have felt similarily and US NCOs may have been willing to follow orders from ARVN Ranger/Marine officers.
While I would tend to agree with your Ranger Officer friend in regard to the quality or lack of in regard to ARVN troops my comments were also based on the fact that US troops are almost never put under foreign command and they are not trained to accept foreign command. Personally I would be very surprised to hear of US NCOs accepting orders from ARVN officers in combat and I am unaware of any actual cases where it occurred. For one thing, it's my understanding that when the bullets start flying you would be very unlikely to find any ARVN officers nearby and if you did they would not likely be trying to take command.
Hey Grieg and Canambridge thx for your answers, it was a question that come to my mind, while I was reading a a book, called "death in the rice paddy". =) Thx again. Regards, Che.
in early 60s my dad was an advisor to an rok col while my pop was a lowly captain ...any advise given by my dad was pretty much considered an order by the rok col nam ..once when my dad discovered an ammo storage problem ..he called in col nam and pointed out the ammo being incorrectly stacked ...col nam called in the local depot comander ..a korean captain ..the captain referred to his heavy manuel and showed he had followed procedure...my did then asked if he had recieved ammended procedure bulletin 2s3443... the capt had recieved it but apparently not read it , though it had been there for many weeks .col nam braced the capt at attention and proceeeded to beat him badly about the head and sholders with the heavy book causeing some trauma to nose and lips of said capt ...afterwards my dad informed col nam that if he ever did something like that again, in his presense ,my dad would resign in protest ..his adviser position ...col nam never did beat another subordinate ...at least ,in dads presense ..my dad came to regard col nam quite highly and said when he later read clavells book shogun ,always saw col nams face when reading of lord toranaga the machiavellian samurai general in the novel...
I'm sure such a statement is based on your extensive knowledge as an American soldier serving in the Vietnam theatre, and thus choose not to make any attempt to question your statement, fearing I might be banned anyway. Rather, I will gather this new knowledge with sincere interest and be sure to spread the word that ARVN officers probably got their men killed. However, I do find it interesting that you, as a veteran of this conflict, find such a statement amusing.
much better panzerman, lol ...just between you and me ,panzer ...i did quite a bit of reading about the serbian culture of denial and discovered that A . there is a serbian culture of denial which is widespread and endemic ....and B. though i hate to admit it , the serbs have a pretty good case for suspecting nato ,red cross ,clintonian sculldugery in regards to much of what serbia was blamed for was in fact not substantiated...google up serbian war crimes,balkan ethnic cleansing ,croats ,bosniaks ,ect ...you will be quite amazed to find that though the serbs committed nasty war crimes aplenty they may in fact not be the worst perpitrators and might be victems of some skillfull pr work by their enemys ..and a rush to judgement by nato and the usa...if you were a serb , you would be very suspicious of the west yourself ...go read and then be prepared to erase some 1991 memory banks in your brain ...i did...
I took your advice. Googled Serbian war crimes. I found lots of credible evidence of Serbian war crimes from organizations like human rights watch and so forth. Where specifically is the evidence that they were framed? I failed to find it.
So did I. Tell me Arkans "White Tigers" were not comitting war crimes? And, no offense meant, but what does this have to do with the ARVN?
