Far East Military Assistance Advisory Groups 1958 US Army; The Big Picture TV-400 (Patreon)

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'Eight countries in Far East covered on film for "THE BIG PICTURE" series -- THE BIG PICTURE camera under the supervision of veteran combat cameraman, Captain Gaetano Faillace, travels to the Far East to record for television the story of those colorful and exotic countries. The film is a record of how they and the United States have been strengthened by the work of U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Groups stationed there. The military aid to the nations of the Far East is one of the most effective defenses the free world has against Communist aggression in that most vital area. Included among the countries visited are Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines, Taiwan, Korea and Japan. Nowhere is the will and the strength to resist more vital to this country than in the Far East, some of which is already heavily scarred by Communist aggression since World War II. Passions not known to Americans stir many of these lands. War and its holocaust--the struggle for and birth of independence--these and others have brought their special problems. "Far East MAAGs" is a documentary that covers many miles of ground and many peoples of the world.'

Originally a public domain film from the National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Assistance_Advisory_Group

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) is a designation for United States military advisors sent to other countries to assist in the training of conventional armed forces and facilitate military aid. Although numerous MAAGs operated around the world throughout the 1940s–1970s, the most famous MAAGs were those active in Southeast Asia before and during the Vietnam War... the functions performed by MAAGs continue to be performed by successor organizations attached to embassies, often called United States Military Groups (USMILGP or MILGRP)...

In September 1950, US President Harry Truman sent the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) to Vietnam to assist the French in the First Indochina War. The President claimed they were not sent as combat troops, but to supervise the use of $10 million worth of US military equipment to support the French in their effort to fight the Viet Minh forces. By 1953, aid increased dramatically to $350 million to replace old military equipment owned by the French.

The French Army, however, was reluctant to take U.S. advice, and would not allow the Vietnamese army to be trained to use the new equipment... Eventually, the French decided to cooperate, but at that point, it was too late.

In 1954 the commanding general of French forces in Indochina, General Henri Navarre, allowed the United States to send liaison officers to Vietnamese forces. But it was too late, because of the siege and fall of Dien Bien Phu in the spring. As stated by the Geneva Accords, France was forced to surrender the northern half of Vietnam and to withdraw from South Vietnam by April 1956.

At a conference in Washington, D.C. on February 12, 1955, between officials of the U.S. State Department and the French Minister of Overseas Affairs, it was agreed that all U.S. aid would be funneled directly to South Vietnam... as the United States became more deeply involved in what would come to be known as the Vietnam War.

The next few years saw the rise of a Communist insurgency in South Vietnam, and President Diem looked increasingly to US military assistance to strengthen his position, albeit with certain reservations. Attacks on US military advisors in Vietnam became more frequent. On October 22, 1957, MAAG Vietnam and USIS installations in Saigon were bombed, injuring US military advisors. In the summer of 1959, Communist guerrillas staged an attack on a Vietnamese military base in Bien Hoa, killing and wounding several MAAG personnel. During this time, American advisors were not put in high-ranking positions, and President Diem was reluctant to allow American advisors into Vietnamese tactical units. He was afraid that the United States would gain control or influence over his forces if Americans got into the ranks of the army. The first signs that his position was beginning to shift came in 1960, when the number of official US military advisors in the country was increased from 327 to 685 at the request of the South Vietnamese government...