ABSTRACT
America seemed omnipotent then," wrote former Marine Philip Caputo of his dispatch to Vietnam in 1965. The Westmoreland strategy relied partly on the sheer magnitude of US resources. US forces in South Vietnam rose from approximately 80,000 men in 1965 to a peak of 543,000 in 1969. A vast complex of infantry support bases sprang up all over South Vietnam. Some 2,000 aircraft were posted to Guam, the Philippines, Thailand, and carriers at sea. As Westmoreland prepared to put US forces into combat, the Communists set their own plans in motion. Up to that time, Central Committee Directorate for the South (COSVN), the Central Committee's forward element in the South, had been headed by Nguyen Van Linh, a native of Hanoi who had spent almost all of his revolutionary career in the South. If Westmoreland was predestined to be Military Assistance Command-Vietnam commander, Nguyen Chi Thanh was even more the inevitable COSVN chief.
