In conjunction with the reorganization of the VNMC and the stress being placed upon small unit and individual training, much of the U.S. advisory effort during this period was devoted to logistics. The Marine advisors soon discovered that the Vietnamese officers, who had not been directly concerned with supply matters under the French, tended to ignore this important area. “The real problem,” explained Captain Breckinridge, “was the newness of it all. The Vietnamese officers simply possessed no base of experience or training in logistic matters.”[2-6] This shortcoming dictated that the American advisors not only design a workable logistics system but closely supervise its operation as well. Wilkes and Wilkinson instituted intensive schooling of supply and maintenance personnel and emphasized the value of command supervision to the Vietnamese leaders. The Marine advisors, for example, taught their counterparts that equipment shortages could often be prevented if command attention were given to requisitions. Still, even with constant supervision and formal schooling, the Vietnamese Marine Corps continued to experience problems in this area throughout the 1950s and well into the next decade. Breckinridge, who returned to serve with the Vietnamese Marines again as a lieutenant colonel in the late 1960s, recalled shortages of such vital and common items as small arms ammunition even then. The years between 1955 and 1959 also saw the Marine advisors working to overcome a potentially more serious problem, one that also dated from the French-Indochina War. From the outset of their experience with the Vietnamese Marine Corps, the Marine advisors perceived that a strong defensive orientation seemed to pervade every echelon of the small service. Most Americans, including U.S. Army advisors who were encountering similar difficulties with the Vietnamese Army, agreed that this “defensive psychology” was a by-product of the long subordination of the Vietnamese National forces to the French High Command. Indeed, a criticism frequently voiced by USMAAG officials during the Indochina War had been that the French tended to frustrate the development of the Vietnamese military forces by assigning them static security tasks rather than offensive missions. Even though the forerunners of the Vietnamese Marine battalions had operated as commando units, they too had seen extensive duty protecting _dinassaut_ bases and other French installations. Now this defensive thinking was affecting the attitude of the Vietnamese Marine toward training. Moreover, it was threatening the American effort to transform the service into an aggressive amphibious strike force.