In the last week of September General David M. Shoup, Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, arrived in Saigon to begin a four-day tour of South Vietnam. Shoup, who held the Medal of Honor for his actions as a regimental commander on Tarawa in World War II, was recognized as one of President Kennedy’s most trusted military advisors. Acting in his role as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Commandant was scheduled to visit a number of U.S. and South Vietnamese installations, including several strategic hamlets. [Illustration: CORPS TACTICAL ZONES 1962 ] After a series of briefings at MACV and MAAG headquarters in Saigon, the Commandant and his party journeyed by automobile to the base camp of the 3d Vietnamese Marine Battalion at Thu Duc on the outskirts of the capital. There, accompanied by Lieutenant Colonels Brown and Khang, Shoup reviewed a Vietnamese Marine honor guard and inspected the 3d Battalion. Impressed with the units he had seen, General Shoup commended President Diem on the status of his Marine Brigade. “From my observation,” he wrote from Washington, “the Vietnamese Marine Corps is in an excellent state of readiness from the standpoint of equipment as well as the degree of training of its members.” “Indeed,” he added, “your Corps of Marines seemed to be a splendid and competent fighting organization.”[4-3] The Commandant was less complimentary of the Strategic Hamlet Program. After visiting several of the developments, he concluded that the government’s effort to concentrate the Vietnamese civilians into defended communities was counter-productive to the program’s stated objective of winning the allegiance of the rural population. As Shoup reported to the Joint Chiefs of Staff upon his return to Washington, the forced resettlement of the peasants from their native hamlets and villages into what amounted to fortified camps seemed to be generating antagonism rather than good will.[4-4] At the close of 1962 Vietnamese Marine commanders reported a total of 192 Viet Cong killed, 77 wounded, and another 158 taken prisoner. U.S. Marine advisors felt that even these moderate figures were inflated. They estimated that only about 98 enemy soldiers had been killed, 27 wounded, and roughly half as many actual Viet Cong captured as had been reported by their Vietnamese Marine counterparts. The Vietnamese Marines also had failed to inflict any serious damage on the enemy’s logistic system, capturing only 16,000 rounds of small arms ammunition, 45 grenades, 31 mines, and 50 individual weapons, a printing press, two typewriters, several motors, and an assortment of medical supplies.[4-5] _Some Conclusions_