Mike Guardia

by American Guerrilla

  But as Blackburn conceded, the amnesty system was flawed and rather ambiguous. For example, if a Filipino were charged with executing a certain collaborator and replied, “Yes, I did it because he was an informer,” then that was enough to exonerate him. However, if he said, “I was directed to execute him by Captain John Smith [hypothetical name]. I was carrying out his orders,” or some other phraseology, the case would be thrown to the Philippine courts. 370 Under that system, many Philippine guerrillas who had served under Volckmann ended up in prison, although some were never convicted legally. Distraught by these results, Volckmann and Blackburn sought to accomplish something from the American side of the Pacific. In June 1947, both men paid a visit to the Honorable Kenneth Royal, Secretary of the Army. If Americans were being implicated in the amnesty trials, then perhaps the U.S. government could create a sufficient diplomatic solution to exonerate any Filipino who had killed upon the orders of an American commander. The result was an amnesty proclamation signed by Secretary Royal stating:

  Due to the fact that the military situation in the Philippine Islands, during the period of Japanese occupation, prevented the orders of the recognized guerrilla commanders and their duly appointed subordinates from being confirmed or made a matter of record, all orders of the former said recognized guerrilla commanders as shown by the official records of the United States Army in the Philippines. Such orders having been issued on the grounds of the absolute military necessity for maintaining discipline among their guerrilla forces, and for the security of such forces concerning the elimination of persons aiding or abetting the enemy in the time of war during the period, 8 December 1941, to 15 August 1945, both dates included. 371

  The proclamation was officially signed and notarized on 12 August 1949. But the proclamation only turned out to be a half-victory. Volckmann and Blackburn had offered to return to the Philippines to testify on behalf of those charged. However, their well-spring of support with the Roxas Administration no longer existed—Roxas had passed away the previous year. Further complicating the matter was the U.S. State Department. As it were, the Secretary of State’s legal experts “cried foul” on the grounds that the amnesty proclamation violated some issue involving international jurisdiction. 372 Thus, Secretary Royal’s amnesty proclamation became a worthless document.

  Nearly a decade later, however, the matter came to the attention of the new Philippine President, Ramon Magsaysay. Magsaysay himself had been a guerrilla in Western Luzon and, upon hearing of the legal plights of his comrades, immediately sprung into action. Sometime in the 1950s, Ramon Magsaysay met with Blackburn to discuss the matter: all cases were to be reopened and accompanied by fact-finding missions to determine whether those guerrillas currently in prison had acted on the orders of an American officer. Magsaysay, however, was not oblivious to the darker side of human nature. At one point during his meeting with Blackburn, the Philippine President said, “Look, so many of these cases of murder were not really aiding and abetting the resistance movement.” 373 With this, Blackburn couldn’t have agreed more. He conceded that some of the Filipinos under USAFIP-NL had vindictively used the opportunity to eliminate their personal enemies. These wayward guerrillas may have escaped the legal system with a simple reassurance that their personal enemy was an informer. But these same guerrillas had inadvertently incriminated themselves by killing not only their adversaries, but killing their families as well. Blackburn and Magsaysay could find no reason why killing a toddler or bayoneting someone’s wife could have furthered the resistance movement. Thus, Magsaysay’s task was to separate fact from fiction and weed out the murderers from those who had killed in the line of duty. Neither Volckmann nor Blackburn ever knew the outcome of the Magsaysay project, although some USAFIP-NL guerrillas eventually regained their freedom. 374

  After surviving four years of continuous combat, Russell Volckmann had returned home to a wife who no longer loved him, angry families of deceased collaborators, and an Army medical system that occupied nearly every minute of his day. Yet in spite of these personal setbacks, Volckmann remained optimistic. If he had survived the jungles of North Luzon, he could certainly survive whatever obstacles the peacetime Army threw his way.

  In the early months of 1948, Walter Reed finally stamped their seal of approval on Volckmann’s medical file and dismissed him from their outpatient clinic. Concurrently, his service at the Personnel Division drew to a close and Volckmann received orders to report to the Infantry Center at Fort Benning, Georgia. Apparently, General Eisenhower had an important job for him to accomplish.

  CHAPTER 11

  A New Kind of Fighting

  Volckmann’s most significant contribution may lie in what he accomplished after the war. Upon his arrival in the United States, Volckmann reflected on the lessons he had learned over the past four years. Nothing in his professional training had prepared him for the kind of combat he had seen in the Philippines. In fact, guerrilla warfare existed nowhere in U.S. Army doctrine. The reasons were numerous: traditional military minds did not understand nor appreciate the art of guerrilla warfare, calling it “illegal and dishonorable.” 375 Professional armies were expected to meet each other in contests of fire and win by attrition. Many also regarded guerrilla warfare as a tactical aberration. It represented nothing more than untrained, undisciplined rebels who could be disposed of in short order by a superior force. However, the success of the Philippine guerrillas had shown military leaders otherwise: unconventional forces were indispensable in obtaining strategic goals. When Volckmann began the process of closing down USAFIP-NL and overseeing the reorganization of its organic components into a new division of the Philippine Army, he began to promote the idea of establishing a permanent force structure capable of unconventional warfare. Ultimately, he wanted to parlay his knowledge into something that future servicemen could use.

  Historically, the Army had been relatively successful in using conventional means to fight guerrillas. Therefore, the principles of counterinsurgency and guerrilla-style warfare remained nothing more than an afterthought within the larger bodies of conventional doctrine. 376 But as the Army found itself participating within the various insurgen

  159 cies that erupted after World War II—the Greek, Chinese, and Philippine civil wars—Volckmann’s ideas suddenly gained new traction. Volckmann knew of the emerging “Cold War” and the shift in military doctrine that accompanied it. With contingencies focusing on a possible war with the Soviet Union, the idea of having to fight enemy guerrillas working alongside conventional forces seemed a viable threat. After all, the same Soviet partisans who contributed to the defeat of the Nazis could just as well be used against the Americans.

  Consequently, Army Chief of Staff General Dwight D. Eisenhower commissioned Volckmann to write what would become the Army’s first official counterinsurgency doctrine. 377 While the Army pondered over what to do in regard to establishing “special operations” forces, they concluded that writing a doctrine for combating guerrillas was a good place to start. The result was Field Manual (FM) 31-20 Operations Against Guerrilla Forces, released in September 1950. Written exclusively by Volckmann, it was the result of nearly a yearlong writing campaign (1948–49). Writing FM 31-20, Volckmann analyzed the tactical gaffes of the Japanese and pondered what methods an army could use to defeat a guerrilla like himself.

  Drawing from his own experiences, Volckmann used FM 31-20 to show the “characteristics, organization, and operations of guerrilla forces.” This was done to provide the readers with a better under_standing of guerrilla nature and the underlying factors that foster guerrilla movements. FM 31-20 focused on two manifestations of guerrilla warfare. The first included conflicts “conducted by irregular forces (supported by an external power) to bring about a change in the socio-political order of a country without engaging it in a formal, declared war.” The second covered operations by irregular forces working “in conjunction with regularly organized forces as a phase of a normal war”—just as the USAFI
P-NL had done a few years prior. 378

  Volckmann conceded that rarely would a guerrilla movement succeed without the support of the local population and a third-party conventional force. Both represented the only lifelines a guerrilla movement had to continue its operation. Without support from the local population, a guerrilla’s only reservoir for recruits and labor would not exist. And even though a guerrilla movement could produce its own network of spies, propagandists, and paramilitary personnel, their long-term supply and logistical needs were best fulfilled by conventional forces. 379

  However, the more important topic for Volckmann was how to undermine the very factors that led to insurgencies. By this, Volckmann knew that “preventing the formation of a resistance movement is easier than dealing with one after it is formed.” Preventing a full-scale insurgency, he claimed, could be accomplished by plans “based on a detailed analysis of a country, the national characteristics, and the customs, beliefs, cares, hopes, and desires of the people.” Volckmann did not claim to be a politician but called on commanders to build a rapport with the local population by restoring law and providing humanitarian relief. 380 This had been a crucial error of the Japanese during the war. Instead of restoring the law, they instituted their own— even in areas where there was no overt resistance to the occupation. Humanitarian relief was conspicuously absent from their operations as they burned, raped, and plundered entire villages.

  Once the proper political framework had been established, the theater commander’s first priority would be to develop an effective intelligence apparatus. Operations Against Guerrilla Forces called for more intelligence assets than would normally be given to conventional forces. Psychological warfare specialists and counterintelligence personnel were also called upon to weave through the indigenous cultural dynamics. 381

  FM 31-20 proscribed three stages of counterguerrilla operations: The first was to isolate guerrillas from the civilian population. The second was to deny them any external support. Volckmann emphasized the importance of cutting off external aid as he knew that, had his guerrillas not been resupplied by the U.S. Sixth Army, it would have taken USAFIP-NL much longer—possibly years—to defeat the Japanese. The third and final stage called for the destruction of guerrilla forces.

  To accomplish this, FM 31-20 envisioned three types of offensive action: “encirclement,” “surprise attack,” and “pursuit.” According to Volckmann, encirclement represented the most effective way to isolate and destroy guerrillas. Once the guerrillas had been isolated by encirclement, commanders could use one of four methods to eliminate all resistance within the enclosed area.

  1. A “tightening encirclement” in which all forces move in and shorten the perimeter.

  2. A “hammer and anvil” technique that consisted of one attacking element advancing while the other stayed in place waiting for the fleeing guerrillas to be driven into their path.

  3. Splitting an encircled area in two and destroying either one in turn.

  4. Conventional assault against fortified positions.

  Whatever method a commander might use during the encirclement phase, Volckmann emphasized that it would not be easy. However, he stressed the importance of small-unit operations throughout counterguerrilla warfare. Small infantry units would employ scouts and guides—drawn from the local population—to direct them to a guerrilla outpost and attack either at night or at dawn. 382

  Pursuit, the third offensive tactic, represented what regular forces would likely find themselves resorting to in counterinsurgency warfare. If guerrillas escaped either encirclement or attack, the pursuit option guaranteed their final destruction. Volckmann did not outline specifically how it should be done, but he made it clear that small units linked by artillery and close air support would pound the guerrillas incessantly. 383 The Japanese had failed to do this in Luzon. Artillery miscalculations, the lack of coordination among infantry teams, and the virtual absence of Japanese air support guaranteed their demise.

  Among the grandest mistakes that Volckmann had witnessed from the Japanese were their frequent troop rotations. This deprived their soldiers and commanders an opportunity to adjust to the local political and military climate. Volckmann not only warned against this but also advised any regional commanders to coordinate their efforts with one another. One of the worst mistakes they could make would be to allow guerrillas safe passage from one sector to another. 384

  Although he designed FM 31-20 from an Infantry perspective, Volckmann contended that close air support and ground-attack aircraft were vital to counterguerrilla warfare. However, the existing methods of air support were inadequate to meet these demands. Recalling his meetings with the 308th Bomber Wing in the Philippines, Volckmann promoted the same ideas that he had used to employ his forward air controllers in coordinating air strikes. 385 By the time Volckmann wrote FM 31-20, however, the Army Air Forces had become the United States Air Force. Now its own separate branch, the Air Force assumed all responsibility for employing forward air controllers, but nonetheless traced many of their doctrinal precepts to Russell Volckmann.* And although fixed-wing aircraft largely became the Air Force’s responsibility, it did not impede Volckmann’s contributions to Army Aviation. FM 31-20 was the first manual in Army history to forecast the viability of employing helicopters in counterinsurgency warfare. 386 Concepts set forth by Volckmann in this regard laid the foundation for the modern air cavalry.

  The concepts detailed in FM 31-20 set the precedent for all future counterinsurgency doctrine. It synthesized military principles into a comprehensive doctrine that could easily be adapted to any situation. Moreover, it outlined the tactical dispositions that American forces would use in Vietnam. Subsequent editions of the manual, including those that became the operational basis for infantry units in Vietnam, merely recycled the same principles that Volckmann had written earlier.** Even today’s counterinsurgency manual, FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency, regurgitates the same concepts and tactics Volckmann wrote over 50 years ago.

  As Volckmann’s manual went before the Army review board, the first conflict in America’s Cold War began. With the goal of reuniting the Korean Peninsula under Communist rule, the North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) stormed across the 38th Parallel on 25 June 1950. Though officially termed a “police action,” the Korean War pitted the United Nations, led by the U.S., against the Communist forces of the NKPA and later, the Chinese Army. In October 1950, one month after publishing Operations Against Guerrilla Forces, Volckmann was on his way to Korea via Tokyo.

  * Recall Volckmann’s participation in the Air Force-sponsored Rand study.

  **FM 31-15 Operations Against Irregular Forces and FM 31-16 Counterguerrilla Operations, published respectively in 1961 and 1967.

  The Korean War represented a unique opportunity for Volckmann. Throughout the conflict, unconventional warfare occurred in two overlapping phases. In the first phase, spanning from June 1950 until fall 1951, U.S. conventional forces conducted counterguerrilla operations against the NKPA irregulars. The second phase of unconventional warfare, from January 1951 until the cease-fire in 1953, saw the U.S. Eighth Army develop its own “special operations command” to conduct guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines. The North Koreans made extensive use of guerrilla units during the first year of combat. From a military standpoint, NKPA guerillas served two functions: (1) their tactics could offset the superiority of American maneuver forces; and (2) while camouflaging themselves within the local population, NKPA partisans could work to undermine American ideology. The irony of the situation was not lost on Volckmann, for the NKPA strategy was nearly identical to the plan he had developed against the Japanese a decade ago.

  As North Korean partisans wrought havoc on American assets, the newly appointed Army Chief of Staff, General J. Lawton “Lighting Joe” Collins, scrambled for a cohesive plan to neutralize the enemy guerrillas. Among the most significant problems caused by NKPA irregulars were their attacks against lines of communication and rear areas. The has
tily devised solution from the Chief of Staff thereby included a directive to all in-theater units—as well as those tapped for deployment—to receive instruction on counterguerrilla techniques. 387 When the stateside units began their predeployment training, they utilized the only literature available on counterguerrilla operations: Volckmann’s FM 31-20.

  Meanwhile, General Douglas MacArthur, now the commander of UN forces, pondered his next move. He was confident in handling the conventional aspects of the war, but dealing with the NKPA partisans brought to mind an aspect of warfare that he had hoped to leave behind in the Philippines. Admittedly, he had never been a fan of irregular warfare or the “special operations” concept. 388 Nonetheless, during his days at SWPA, he had feverously supported the USAFIP-NL and had even been quoted as saying that the guerrillas were indispensable to the outcome of the campaign. Whatever the genesis of MacArthur’s reservations towards unconventional warfare, he nonetheless approved of the creation of special Army units to combat enemy guerrillas. 389 However, creating the framework and the operating principles for these units could not be done without the help of someone more knowledgeable in the ways of guerrilla warfare. Recalling the young officer who had radioed him from North Luzon years earlier, MacArthur gave simple instructions to his staff in Tokyo: find Russ Volckmann and get him in here.