For Action: Revisions to Scouting Trip Materials

[Kelly E Johnson]

Hi G2,

We met with Matt and Logistics yesterday to explain the current schedule for the trip. The general response from Matt was utter amazement at what y'all have put together, seriously, he's astounded.

We plan to send Matt and Jon on the trip with the following:

• Logistics/Research Master Synch matrix (saved in drop box main ISR 2013 folder as "ISR14_SynchMatrix_MASTER")
• Research Character Details (saved in ISR2013/Research folder as "Presentations Schedule 10 JAN 13 1100")
  
• Your character/historiography backgrounds (saved in ISR2013/Research/Historiography and Characters as your individual documents)
• Relevant maps that they can test out to see if they're useful for the flyaway books

In order to do so we need your help with the following:

- Character/Historiography: Everyone, If you are able to update your template by midnight tonight to reflect the order and questions in the latest spreadsheet that would be great. However, if you cannot, I will likely quickly delete the extraneous characters and go with what you have. Matt caught a glimpse of the existing documents and was super-pumped about reading them and I think Matt and Jon would benefit from the information contained therein even if it isn't perfectly keyed to the current itinerary. Just save your changes in the dropbox folder and I will use the latest version available.

- Maps: Everyone, if you have come across any good maps in your research that we could send with Jon and Matt to see if they're useful for the flyaway book, please send them today. In particular, a good map for Hue that shows the movement of troops throughout the battle would be helpful (more on Hue below). Email me any good specimen.

- Hue - We had some difficulty explaining the progression of fighting in Hue to Matt (more a reflection of our rustiness on this part than anything but still, given the number or troop movements, we wanted to make sure that it's clear where they should be looking for the best presentation spots). I have added a bit of detail on the US military characters to the "Presentations Schedule" file to try to clarify who was where and why; however, have a few questions:

- Eric, in the narrative before Captain Nelson you mention the 2nd Battalion of the 5th marines (which from what I can tell was Cheatham's south of river-focused BN); however, Nelson was in the 1/5. Also you say they focus north east of the Palace, when Phase Line Green says they were focused on the southeast wall of the citadel. Can you revise or clarify the language so that a dummy like me can understand where and on whom the action is focused? Thanks! Sorry this is in the weeds but Matt was struggling to visualize where we would want to have the walk through. Also, generally check the language that I added

- Louie or Corey, as I read back through the sequence of Hue fighting this morning, I had the idea that it might be good to have the currently unidentified "Visceral Vietnamese reaction" be someone based in Gia Hoi, since we will not be able to visit the area and chronologically it works since it was cleared last. I have Louie as the lead for this item, but Corey, if you have come across any good individuals, please work together on this.

- Everyone, Jon has proposed the following for Day 3 morning presentations. If anyone has strong thoughts, let us know.

0330ish call "stand to"- rally the troops for a couple of presentations about the attack on the MACV compound (I think we can get on the low roof of the Saigon Morin and see the city, university, and perhaps even the compound, we will check on this visit. Otherwise there is a good courtyard in the hotel to use.)

0400ish back to bed

1000 late start, head to rooftop of the Imperial, next to the Saigon Morin Hotel where we are staying

1130ish lunch there, to provide an incentive to use their building, Steph said this would be in the restaurant one or two floors below the rooftop, but still with a good city view

1300ish move into the city 

Published schedule should say that we will begin at the Imperial Hotel roof in the morning following breakfast at 0800. That will be everyone's assumption until getting woken up in the middle of the night. I think we should even leave the professors and DVs outside the loop, but that is worth discussing further. When we put everyone back to bed, we tell them the schedule has slid to the right, instead of a 0800 start it is now 1000, or something like that.

I think that doing the middle of the night thing fits withing taking this staff ride to the next level. I do not think that we will "lose people" with this type of event. Instead I think it will help participants to appreciate the reality of what this was like by catching them off guard. Although they may bitch at first, it will be an unforgettable experience that they will be glad they had, no doubt it will stand out in their SAIS career. Obviously we will need to chose the right presenters and give them a heads up, probably the day before. Perhaps someone like Chris Hume who will really play it up. We can mitigate issues of getting everyone together by close coordination through Meghan and the squad leaders, who will need to have a tighter hold throughout the trip anyway. I think we ought to bring her into this conversation for input, but that the circle of trust should end there. The presenters can think they are presenting in the morning from the rooftop until just beforehand. Maybe we can do one VC and one USMC. No research changes are required, it is just a slight timeline rearrangement.

- Characters - Prof. Grygiel is no longer coming, so it is likely that we will need to drop another character. More to follow when we shift to character identification after Matt is wheels up.

Ok. I apologize for the quick turnaround and thank you again for your patience with some questions that are probably too far in the weeds. If you see any other errors/issues in the documents I reference above, please let me know. We trust your judgement on shaping these characters and just want to make sure your intent is clear to Matt and Jon while they're scouting.

Sincerely,
D&K
--

Kelly Johnson

M.A. Candidate, 2013

Strategic Studies and International Economics

The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)

Johns Hopkins University

 

Cell: +1 202 664 0690

Email: kjoh...@jhu.edu