Kit Carson Scouts

The Kit Carson Scouts (Vietnamese: Hồi Chánh Viên, a term loosely translated as "members who have returned to the righteous side") belonged to a special program initially created by the U.S. Marine Corps during the Vietnam War involving the use of former Viet Cong combatants as intelligence scouts for American infantry units.

The Kit Carson Scout Program recruited Viet Cong defectors (Hồi Chánh Viên or Chiêu Hồi) to work as intelligence scouts with U.S. Marine infantry units. The concept of using soldiers and cadre who had previously fought on the enemy side in this way originated in late 1966 with the 5th Counterintelligence Team, which had counterintelligence tasks within the DaNang Chieu Hoi Center as one responsibility. Major General Nickerson, commanding the 1st Marine Division at the time, welcomed the idea and enthusiastically facilitated its development. The first six Kit Carson Scouts were placed in the field with the 1st and 9th Marine Regiments as part of a trial program in October, 1966.

Most early Kit Carson Scouts had defected as Hồi Chánh Viên because they suffered either from malaria or grave wounds beyond what could be medically treated with the rudimentary medical care available on the Viet Cong/NVA side. Those Chieu Hoi (Hồi Chánh Viên) who volunteered for selection and training as Kit Carson Scouts had, during their service with the enemy, little or no contact with anyone speaking English. Few had any knowledge at all of the English language, creating a communication challenge as they were deployed with American units. A further complication was that almost all Hồi Chánh Viên had a distrust of Vietnamese soldiers and interpreters because of the degree to which friendly forces had been infiltrated by enemy agents.

Less than a month after the first Kit Carsons were assigned to American combat units, a Staff Sergeant with 5th CIT (counterintelligence team) placed two additional former Viet Cong with the 7th Marine Regiment in Chu Lai. These two newest Kit Carson Scouts were for the first time paired with an American handler able to speak Vietnamese, U. S. Marine Pvt. Allen Sells, who had weeks earlier graduated with the first class trained at the Marine Corps Vietnamese language school at Camp Del Mar in Camp Pendleton. Sells had been in Vietnam ten days when he was made team leader and charged with the hands on development of combat tactics resulting in the best use of these Kit Carson Scouts.

...
Wikipedia