For the Vietnamese Marine Corps, 1963 was to be highlighted by innovations in the important areas of training and operations. Prior to Lieutenant Colonel Moody’s arrival in Vietnam, all Vietnamese Marine recruits had received basic training at ARVN installations, an arrangement tolerated but never appreciated by the U.S. Marine advisors. Before his departure in the fall of 1963, Moody was able to convince Khang that he should push for the authority to establish a separate Marine training center. In late 1963 the JGS approved this proposal, whereupon the Vietnamese Marine engineers, advised by Captain Robert C. Jones, began building a small training facility at Thu Duc. In a related action Moody set in motion plans to have a small number of specially selected Vietnamese Marine noncommissioned officers sent to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at San Diego for training as drill instructors. Although these plans would not come to fruition during Moody’s assignment, the concept of a separate recruit training center promised to permit the Vietnamese Marine Corps to establish and maintain its own standards for basic training. Another change to occur in 1963, this one in the area of tactical operations, was the reinstitution of multi-battalion combat operations under the control of provisional Marine Brigade headquarters.[8-A] Although the VNMC had performed such operations in 1960, they had been abandoned in the ensuing years in favor of battalion-sized deployments to the various provinces and corps tactical zones. Moody, however, prevailed upon Khang to alter this pattern by seeking assignments that would enable the brigade headquarters to exercise tactical control of its battalions. [8-A] Such task-organized Marine forces were usually called either provisional brigades or provisional regiments but on at least one occasion the organization was designated a Marine Task Force. In each case the composition was similar--two or three infantry battalions, an artillery unit, an engineer or reconnaissance company, and a command element. [Illustration: _Lieutenant General Carson A. Roberts, Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific (right center), inspects an honor guard of Vietnamese Marines in Saigon. With him, from left, are Lieutenant Colonel Le Nguyen Khang, Commandant of the Vietnamese Marine Corps; Major General Richard G. Weede, Chief of Staff, Military Assistance Command, Vietnam; and Lieutenant Colonel Clarence G. Moody, Jr., Senior USMC Advisor to the Vietnamese Marine Corps. (Official USA Photo)._]