Though the battle headlines—and of late the casualty figures—emphasize the role of U.S. fighting men in Viet Nam, the largest body of troops on either side of the war is still the Army of the Republic of South Viet Nam, some 608,000 soldiers strong. For a small country (pop. 16 million), this is a remarkably large force; it is as if the U.S. (pop. 199 million) had 8,000,000 men in uniform (instead of 3,000,000 in all services). More than 30% of the men aged 16 to 45 in South Viet Nam are in uniform, and that percentage will soon rise even higher. Last week, as part of the overall buildup of Allied forces agreed upon in Washington last month, Premier Nguyen Cao Ky announced that an extra 69,000 men will be added to the army, known to Americans in Viet Nam as ARVN (rhymes with Marvin).
Phantom Troops. The increase comes at a time when the South Vietnamese army is in transition, gradually shifting half its units from search-and-destroy operations—some quite desultory—to providing security for villagers and government pacification teams. Some 17,000 of the new soldiers, gathered by conscription, will go into the Popular Forces—the 171,000 militiamen who now defend the villages and hamlets. Another 33,000 will join the 142,000-man Regional Forces, which are roughly similar in structure to the U.S. National Guard. About 30,000 are destined for duty in the 285,000-man regular army, most of them as replacements for 20,000 "phantom troops" that Saigon discovered did not in fact exist, after the U.S. installed a data-processing system for the ARVN and gave each infantryman a serial number.
The regular army is now spread through the country's four corps areas in ten infantry divisions, an armored division, an airborne division and 20 elite, red-bereted ranger battalions. Though more and more units are being assigned as shields for pacification efforts, government troops are still out hunting the enemy. In the Delta, the war "is still largely a South Vietnamese one, with three ARVN divisions working alongside one U.S. division. In the scrub jungles around Saigon, South Vietnamese units participate in every major U.S. search-and-destroy mission; several thousand ARVN men joined in Operation Junction City last February. Even in the war along the DMZ, South Vietnamese rangers went in with the U.S. Marines in the invasion of the zone's southern half in May and accounted for over 300 enemy dead.
As Good as Koreans? South Viet Nam's units vary tremendously in esprit and fighting ability. Some 115,000 soldiers deserted last year—almost one in five. This year a tough new law has cut the rate in half, but the problem of morale persists. Some harsh critics would write off up to three-quarters' of the overall South Vietnamese forces as effective military units. And the critics are by no means all West Pointers. "I wonder if we will ever be as good as the Koreans," Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Cao Van Vien recently said to a friend. Of the ARVN's notori ously bad 25th division in the Delta, Vien says: "It is the worst division in the army—and perhaps in any army."