PROJECT AIDS

by /David Nuttle

When starting an assistance or other effort, there are a number of aids or actions that will help make the project successful. To provide examples of same, I am listing a few actions I used on my national development and security projects in S. Vietnam. To wit;

a) In working with a Montagnard tribal group, I formed an advisory group of tribal Elders and Chiefs to tell me what assistance they needed and how that should be accomplished. I used this same group to help me write a detailed ethnological study to help me understand tribal customs, culture, traditions, and behaviors desired from visitors/ strangers coming to one of their villages. This study, entitled "EDE" was published by USIS to assist other outsiders who might work with the Montagnard.

b) I found and recruited a bright Montagnard, Y-Rit, with multiple skills and fluent in several languages to be my project assistant. We started courses, for tribal members, in community development, agricultural improvements, and entrepreneurship according to desires of the above tribal advisory group. Y-Rit and I identified, vetted, & recruited 10 young Montagnard

males who we instructed in the English language so they could provide interpreter services in the event of project expansion by American NGO volunteers or other English speakers.

c) We were hunted by communist Viet Cong forces seeking to gain control of Montagnards in our project area. In addition, we were traveling and working in a jungle environment with hazards of its own. I thus did a favor for Chi, the Viet who directed the Viet jungle warfare campaign against Japanese occupation forces during World War II. Chi returned my favor by giving us training in the arts of jungle survival and instructed Y-Rit and I on the basic jungle warfare tactics the Viet Cong would use that might threaten us.

d) I lived and worked in Montagnard villages and was always welcome since I had acquired a 375 H&H Mag. elephant rifle that had enough power to stop a man-eating and hungry tiger on an attack charge. This was a real hazards because tigers in the area had acquired a real taste for human flesh from eating human bodies left on a battlefield during armed conflicts between government and communist forces. The aid lesson for me was bringing what those tribal villagers were in need of.

e) POTUS JFK wanted to create a demonstration of all-population defense against the attacking communist forces, I thus requested all the help I could get, to start a model Village Defense Project (VDP), upon being asked to start that effort. As a result, I received help from CIA Special Ops, GVN ARVN, USA Special Forces, and USAF Air Commandoes. President Diem assigned a Viet friend and ARVN Capt. Phu to assist me. A Rhade village Chief and friend, Y-Ju, volunteered his village of Buon Enao to start the VDP model.

f) The command and support team created to assure success of the VDP model included CIA Station Chief, Bill Colby, and his Special Ops Director, Col. Gilbert Layton, who both had extensive special ops experience. Special operations coaching was provided by Richard Noone, the Brit who directed defeat of communist forces in Malaysia, Col. Ted Serong, the Aussie Director of Jungle Warfare Training, and Marine Lt. Gen. Victor Krulak, highly skilled in assorted combat tactics. Having such an advisory team was a great aid. N. B. Krulak liked the VDP's civic action/ village assistance projects and asked me to write such a program for his Marines. Thus, I wrote and published the "Civic Action Field Guide" his Marines used in S. Vietnam with great success!

The above project aids are unique, but each is valid and may be modified to help create a number of similar aids for most any project. I used the same aid-seeking approach on my later projects in Africa, elsewhere in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle east as well as the U. S. The basic formula for aid creation does work and will give you advantages.

A man alone without support of any type can seldom anchor himself to prevent being blown away in a very strong wind.

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