conference proceedings - Australian Army

ADVISoRS AND oPTIMISM
reports that he chose to ignore. Harkins insisted that all indications suggested that ARVN
effectiveness was improving and the war against the communist insurgency was being
won. Not all US advisors completely disagreed with Harkins’ position on the war. The
senior US advisor in II Corps, Army Colonel Hal D. McCown’ reported to Harkins,
‘during 1963 the posture of the VC has clearly deteriorated in the II CTZ’. 50 McCown
also wrote that ‘the combat effectiveness of ARVN, the CG and the SDC has risen
remarkably during this period. Although much progress is needed to reach accepted US
standards, ARVN has come a long way and in my estimation has the capability to win
the struggle militarily.’ 51 Interestingly, McCown’s deputy, Army Colonel Rowland H.
Renwanz, provided a somewhat different analysis from that of his superior. Renwanz
wrote of ARVN reluctance to participate in combat operations and of the failure of the
strategic hamlet program noting, ‘that it would take six years to pacify the area’. 52 As
with all other negative reports, Harkins chose to ignore Renwanz’s. He would do this
until his replacement in 1964. Harkins’ refusal to allow attention to be called to any of
the problems in training and employing the ARVN meant that a search for solutions
was never fully implemented. This fact contributed greatly to the US’s eventual failure
to achieve its goal of an independent South Vietnam.
Harkins’ most vocal critic, Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann, returned to the US
in June 1963 to discover that his reports had been buried by MACV. After lobbying a
number of senior officers, including the Vice Chief of the Army, Lieutenant General
Barksdale Hamlett, Vann managed to get a briefing to the JCS scheduled for 8 July
1963. Taylor, concerned that Vann’s findings would contradict those of Harkins, had the
briefing cancelled. 53 Mark Perry writes that Taylor’s action led to ‘an open war within
the JCS. The chiefs concluded that Taylor was protecting his good friend Paul Harkins
… whose reputation for competence was widely and openly questioned by Taylor’s
Army colleagues, one of whom told the JCS chairman that Harkins was “just plain
stupid”’. 54 Taylor was correct to be concerned about Harkins’ reputation as Vann’s brief
contradicted MACV’s position on almost every aspect of the war in Vietnam. 55
Kennedy’s military initiatives for Vietnam, therefore, had little success in either
modifying the US military approach to the war or in improving the ARVN’s effectiveness
in prosecuting it. Senior US military leadership in both Saigon and Washington continued
50. McCown cited in Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, 82.
51. Colonel Hal D. McCown to Deputy CoS for Military operations, Debriefing of officers Returning from
Field Assignments, 16 october 1963, in Paul D. Miles Papers, unnumbered box, Pacification January-
March 1964, MHI.
52. Renwanz cited in Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, 82.
53. For a recounting of Vann’s aborted attempted to brief the JCS see, Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie, 339-42.
Also see Korb, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, 154.
54. Mark Perry, Four Stars (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1989), 128-9.
55. For excerpts of this brief, see Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, 83-4.
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