Introduction

Soldiers, politicians, and diplomats in Saigon and Washington struggled with concepts and plans for counterinsurgency strategy and operations in the fall of 1961. As this struggle of ideas and bureaucratic politics occurred, a single Special Forcesmedic took his aid bag into the CentralHighlands. This mission began what would become the only successful counterinsurgency program in the midst of the insurgent victories in South Vietnam. This Special Forces medic, Sergeant First Class Paul Campbell, helped launch a pilot program in November 1961 that would grow by 1963 to reach and mobilize many of theminority groups in the culturally and ethnically diverse South. The efforts of this pilot program quickly stabilized a significant, threatenedpart of SouthVietnam’s highlands.Organized and trained to lead anti-communist, guerrilla forces, US Army Special Forces soldiers quickly adapted their operational techniques. These unique soldiers experimented with organizational and operational structures to mobilize indigenous, mountain-based communities, the Montagnards. This inquiry examines the nature of changes in operational practices designed by US Army Special Forces in Vietnam at the beginning of the Second Indochina War.