ABSTRACT
President Kennedy and his administration had decided that a counterinsurgency strategy provided the best chance of supporting the embattled government of South Vietnam in 1961. Several events influenced the President and a handful of advisors to direct the adoption of a strategy that they hoped would combine civic and humanitarian action with political and military efforts. Counterinsurgency concepts and operations were poorly understood. But the anonymously referenced ‘‘playing Batman in the boondocks’’ was often a topic of discussions in Saigon and Washington. One day in early November 1961 the substance of what became known as counterinsurgency came down to one US Army Special Forces medical sergeant, in civilian clothes, driving a jeep into the Central Highlands to see if he could help some of the indigenous highlanders, the Montagnards. US Army Special Forces soldiers were the catalyst for a Counterinsurgency experiment in South Vietnam’s sugged Central Highlands.
