By the time Lieutenant Colonel Croizat returned to Saigon in early 1955 these units, which totalled approximately 2,400 officers and men, had been evacuated from North Vietnam. Several of the commandos had been assembled at Nha Trang on South Vietnam’s central coast where the French still maintained an extensive naval training facility. There, under the supervision of a junior French commando officer, several former commandos had been organized into the 1st Marine Landing Battalion (or 1st Landing Battalion). The balance of the newly designated Marine units, however, were scattered in small, widely separated garrisons from Hue to the Mekong Delta. These units included six river boat companies, five combat support light companies, and a small training flotilla. Diem had appointed a former Vietnamese National Army officer, Major Le Quang Trong, as Senior Marine Officer. But because no formal headquarters had been created and because no real command structure existed, Major Trong remained relatively isolated from his far-flung Marine infantry units. Upon returning to Saigon, Croizat was assigned to the MAAG’s Naval Section and subsequently to TRIM’S Naval Division as the senior U.S. advisor to the newly created Vietnamese Marine Corps. In this capacity the Marine officer quickly determined that the small Vietnamese amphibious force was faced with several serious problems. First, and perhaps its most critical, was that despite Premier Diem’s decree, the Marine Corps continued to exist essentially on an informal basis. “The Marine Corps itself had no real identity,” its U.S. advisor later explained. “It was a scattering of dissimilar units extending from Hue to the Mekong Delta area.”[2-2] The fact that its widespread units were still dependent on the French Expeditionary Corps for logistical support underscored the weakness inherent in the VNMC’s initial status. Other problems arose from the continuation of French officers in command billets throughout the Vietnamese naval forces. Under the Franco-American agreement which had created TRIM, a French Navy captain doubled as chief of the combined training missions’ Naval Division and as commanding officer of the Vietnamese naval forces. This placed the French in a position to review any proposals advanced by the U.S. Marine advisor. Complicating the situation even further, a French Army captain, Jean Louis Delayen, actually commanded the 1st Landing Battalion at Nha Trang.[2-E] [2-E] Delayen, described by Croizat as “an exceptionally qualified French Commando officer,” later attended the U.S. Marine Corps Amphibious Warfare School at Quantico. (Croizat, “Notes on The Organization,” p. 3.)