The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

Counterinsurgency Readiness 211
authority under minimal supervision from superiors, offered temptations to
corruption and the misuse of power to which a few Marines fell victim.” 60
On a number of occasions, one rather infamously, Marine officers became
so emboldened in their private tropical districts that they refused to follow
orders. One of the most strategically damning episodes came in Haiti at the
hands of Maj. Clark H. Wells, who continued the corvée—the old French
law that mandated physical labor from locals in lieu of taxes—and in particularly
brutal fashion, despite an order issued by Col. John Russell to desist. 61
The Corps paid the price in the form of a renewed caco uprising originating
in Wells’s area. 62
CAP units, on the whole, fared significantly better in their exercise of
junior leadership. This might be expected given the instrumental and intrinsic
incentives to behave well when living an outnumbered life in a Vietnam
ville but remains remarkable in light of the fact that CAP squads were composed
entirely of enlisted Marines. One director of the program pointed out
the enormous administrative responsibility that had been handed to these
young men:
It’s interesting to note that you have a Sergeant running a Combined
Action Platoon [the CAP Marines plus PFs] who maybe has
at most three years in the Marine Corps. He has maybe had a high
school education and maybe not and he is a United States ambassador
to this particular village where he operates. It is also interesting
to note that he is a Commander in the field, he has got to be his own
Operations Officer, he’s got to be his own Supply Officer and he has
to be his own Administrator almost. The major supply sources of
course came from the group but he was the guy that had to order
and I think that it’s amazing that we got as much out of those young
fellows as we did. 63
A second officer focused on the sensitive nature of commanding in the context
of a civilian Vietnamese village:
I think that what the Combined Action Program is—how it turns
out, how successful it is—depends entirely upon the key man, the
Combined Action Platoon leader. In this Combined Action Group
our platoons are led by corporals and sergeants, mostly by corporals.
This was perhaps the first thing that impressed me when I
entered the program. The magnitude of the job that we’ve called
upon this corporal to do; I compared it to the job I called upon my
new lieutenants to do when I had the 1st Battalion 27th Marines
prior to coming up here. I think there is a great deal more to the
task of leading a Combined Action Platoon. It requires an understanding
of the Vietnamese people, appreciation of their attitudes