July 14, 1964 - The United States is sending about 300 more of its elite Special Forces to South Vietnam to advise the Saigon regime and help bolster its defenses against North Vietnamese infiltration.
In addition, another group of 300 military advisers is being sent to South Vietnam to assist the South Vietnamese Army at the battalion level.
The U.S. reinforcements over the coming weeks will establish the total American military manpower commitment at 16,000. Thus the withdrawals that were set in motion last Christmas, when 1,000 of 16,500 men were withdrawn, have been reversed.
The plans became known today. There were also reports of increases in supplies for the South Vietnamese forces.
The materiel includes 105-mm. howitzers, M-113 personnel carriers, radios, and other “odds and ends” of equipment required to maintain the heightened effort to stem the Communist advances of recent months.
In related news, South Vietnamese Government squads, generally operating at night, have begun a new campaign of terror against Viet Cong officials in the Mekong River delta south of Saigon.
Small teams of commandos, armed with daggers and exact intelligence, are moving into Viet Cong hamlets in critical provinces, assassinating key Viet Cong leaders, and slipping away.
They are leaving calling cards on the bodies of their victims — an enormous white eye printed on a black slip of paper.
Counterinsurgency officials say the idea is to fight the Viet Cong with Viet Cong tactics.
The Communists have terrorized rural officials for years, often torturing and slaying their wives and children as well as the officials.
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