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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 6, 1963)
aiLurunu iiidkLi mturunu, uncuun SUNDAY, OCTOBEK 6 1963 Tactics off Guerrilla War Remain Unchanged nR?nShrvi10tv! us- f-ces Hcult by guerrilla armies root-1 ing 265,000 men armed with.scale battles against Humeri-1 gents in Malaya, the Philip- the countryside. They have his-. Strategic Hamlet. , In South Viet Nam are deep ly embroiled in another in the series of Communist-inspired guerrilla wars to erupt since World War II. In the following dispatch, a veteran L'PI Asian correspondent dis cusses the nature and histori cal development of these back woods conflicts.) By ARTHUR DO.M.MEN - United Press International HONG KONG (UPI) Since - the end of World War II the ; technologies of nuclear war -have advanced by leaps and ."bounds but the tactics of guer , rilla war remain virtually what Mao Tse-tung said they were "in the 1930s. ' During this period there has been no war fought with nu clear weapons. But the other kind of war has become al most commonplace the war fought with hand weapons by small bands of foot soldiers entering lonely villages or set ting ambushes along roads. Except for a few new tech niques, such as the introduc tion of helicopters by the French in Indochina and Algeria, guer rilla warfare has changed hard ly at all in two decades and more. The current example is South Viet Nam, where American men find materiel are massively committed. Pattern Is Set The pattern for this war was set in Greece in 1946-49, in Indochina in 1946-54 and in the Philippines and Malaya during the same period. Anyone who thinks the war in South Viet Nam should be over "in an other year or so" should study the record of these four "brush fire wars." All had a lot in, common: They were protracted (the emergency in Malaya lasted 12 years) and they involved polit ical as well as military offen sives by each side. They were fought in back ward areas, where transport and communications were dif ed into and fighting on their own soil the guerilla army was frequently all the more formid able thanks to a "sanctuary" across an international boun dary. Pit a Small Number They all pitted a relatively small number of guerrillas against a much more numerous regular army, navy and air force. Consider the figures: In Greece, between 20.000 and 25,000 Communist irregulars, mainly recruited on the spot, fought a see - sa-.v struggle against regular forces number- Marysville Man . Gels Prison Term Richard Ralph Bryant, 29, Marysville, Calif., was sen tenced to three years in the Oregon state penitentiary Thursday in circuit court after his probation was revoked. Bryant originally was placed on probation on a charge of receiving and concealing stolen property. He was charged with violating his probation by "ab sconding from supervision" of his probation officer, and failing to make restitution as directed by the court. Imposition of sentence was suspended for three years and Anne Belle Brennan, 47, of 3523 Grant rd., Central Point, was placed on probation on a charge of uttering and publishing a forged check. She had pleaded guilty earlier. The court directed her to make restitution, refrain from drinking and associating with "persons of ill repute." Imposition of sentence was suspended for three years and Nancy Lee Kime, 19, of 1464 Orchard Home dr., was placed on probation for attempting to obtain property by false pre tenses. She had pleaded guilty earlier. artillery and aircraft, and as sisted by American military ad visers. In Malaya about 14.000 hard core guerrillas held off 80,000 British regulars and 130,000 loy al Malay troops; in the Philip pines the guerrillas were simi larly mismatched, numerically. Army of Irregulars . When the Indo-China war be gan in 1946, Hi Chi Minh's mot ley army consisted of 60,000 irregulars armed with an esti mated 4,000 rifles, most of them archaic. In time they had ex hausted the will to fight off 190,000-man French expedition ary corps and of the French Allied 200,000 Vietnamese, 15, 000 Laotians and 10,000 Cambo dians. In South Viet Nam today, th hard-core strength of the Viet Cong rebels is estimated by American sources as 25,000 at most, while the South Vietna mese regular army numbers 170,000 and has attached to it about 14,000 American military advisers. A review of the histories of these rebel movements shows that they all started with the murder of isolated officials civil servants, local military officers, the mayors of villages. The pattern was calculated to instill the greatest amount of terror into the civilian popu lation and to propagate a rebel image of great influence and superior force. Deaths Followed Up These systematic assassina tions, beginning in September, 1946, in Greece and in late 1958 in South Viet Nam, were fol lowed up by attacks on small government patrols and out posts. Then came larger raids on army posts and seizures of arms from isolated garrisons. Then came the clandestine es tablishment of rebel control over whole areas, protected by increasingly audacious sabo tage and requisitioning. All of them ended up with tightly knit and disciplined guerrilla bands fighting full- TheyTl Do It .Every Time By Jimmy Hatlo 1 " GOT anv jobs vov'd N-NO- 15 IT SEEMS IODINE AMD HER I LIKE US TO DO, MRS. j I NOTHING p- CANG ARE ALWAYS UNDER- KUMQuAT 7 RIGHT NOW, J Vi SCHOOL TODAV JTsiA MRS K COULD lg nIIhood i -1 ENROLL THIS WEEK! MEDFORD PUBLIC SCHOOLS ADULT EDUCATION For Full Information 773-7220 MEDFORD JTRIBUNE cally superior, but tactically cumbersome, government forc es. The importance to the rebels of having sanctuary across an onstratcTby the Zmpleof Fie'd "f ... . ..- . . . one rmtlr near nnmmanti ond m. Viet Minn in North Viet Nam, pines and Greece. The most important may have been dynamic leadership and imaginative planning. In Greece, for instance, it was where the Communist victory gos took over command and re organized his troops along lines next door in China permitted i "VV'1.? 1ir"8'r war . ... r - i fan that thA halaniv lutaan ii tne timely supply of torically depended on a "reser voir" of sympathetic manpower in the countryside far larger than their own combat effec tives. To combat such guerrillas re quires special training, includ ing familiarity with the local language and customs. Since arms against the French in the cru cial stage of the eight-year war. Contribute to Defeat Conversely, the lack of sanc tuary is believed to have con tributed heavily to the defeat of the guerrilla campaigns in niaiaya, uie rnuippines and Greece. The closine of the Yueoslav- Greek border by Marshal Tito in July, 1949, cut off at one blow the Greek Communists' sanctuary and doomed their entire movement. One of the factors worrvine Ameircan advisers now in South Viet Nam is that country has hundreds of miles of bor der with Communits controlled areas of neutralist Laos, and the the Viet Cone have the use of havens within these borders whenever they are hard-pressed by a government offensive. Unlike the Greek commu nists, however, the Viet Cong find plenty of food to eat right inside South Viet Nam, which is a rich rice-growing area. This compounds the difficulty for the antiCommunist startegists. Definite Positive Factors Aside from the factor of sanc tuary, there were definite posi tive factors which made for the defeat of the Communist insur- fare that the balance began to I the guerrilla leans heavily on tip. Even American material the peasant, it is necessary to help on a massive scale, Ameri can military advisers with Greek general, units down to company level and an American veto over Uie Greek general staff had been insufficient. In the Philippines, it was the foresighted leadership of Presi dent Ramon Magsaysay which made all the difference in the struggle against the Juks. Mag saysay continually got out among the peasants, heard out their complaints, gave them land and at times risked am bush to meet the rebels in their own countryside and out smart them. Training Major Factor Training is a second major factor in "brushfire" wars. Guerrillas traditionally operate in terrain and under conditions in which a regular army might face piecemeal disintegration. In Indo-China, whole French battalions combed certain areas in vain attempts to pin down and destroy a single Viet Minh company. Success was rarely commensurate with men and material expended. Insurgents operate as indivi duals, or in small groups, car rying their own food, using camouflage, light weapons and the most weighty knowledge of win the peasant away from the guerrilla. Third Decisive Factor This leads to the third deci sive factor in effectively coun tering Communist guerrillas: good intelligence. A reliable intelligence net work that will inform the se curity forces where the guerril las are hiding can only be built on the confidence of the popu lation. British military advis ers in Malaya found that once they had demonstrated to the population that they could be counted on, constantly, for pro tection and support, the intelli gence so desperately needed be gan to filter in. From that point on, the terrorists were lost be cause they had no place to hide. A fourth factor of inestimable importance is the ability to starve out the guerrillas. This was done in Malaya by con structing fortified villages and checking who went in and out, who took his food with him, by rationing certain staple foods, and by imposing controls that went so far as requiring gro cers to open tin cans of food when sold to prevent them go ing into communist caches. Half a million people were re settled in Malaya. In South Viet Nam, the gov ernment has been following the same lines by constructing "strategic hamlets." Already, however, it reported that many of these hamlets have been suc cessfully infiltrated by the Com munists. U.S. military advisers in South Viet Nam say the nature of the guerrilla war there is that of "buying time" until the anti-Communist Diem govern ment can win the support of the people. The recent bitter dis pute between the Roman Cath olic presidential family and the Buddhists, who constitute HO per cent of Viet Nam's popula tion, raises grave questions about whether that is possible. Military action against the Viet Cong insurgents has pro gressed reasonably well, but the guerrillas seem to have little trouble supplying themselves from the peasant population and, because of fear or hostil ity, government forces get pre cious little intelligence from the peasants. Not Won By Might The protracted, unbalanced and bloody struggles in Greece, Malaya, the Philippines, Indo China and South Vict Nam have shown that brush-fire wars are not won by military might alone or by pqlitical propagan da alone, but by a judicious blending of military, political and social means. It was Sir Henry Gurney, British high commissioner for Malaya, who spoke the now-famous words, "This is a war for the hearts and minds of the people." 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