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South Vietnam - Conscription

South Vietnamese manpower was a major problem area in the expansion of the Republic of Vietnam armed forces. Difficulties were caused by an ineffective conscription program and a continually high desertion rate. The conscription program dated back to September 1957, but Vietnamese military authorities had never made any real effort to enforce conscription laws, and by the end of 1965 an estimated 232,000 youths had been able to evade military service. More pressure was now placed on the South Vietnam government to correct this problem.

With expansion underway in 1964, Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, undertook a manpower resources survey to determine if sufficient manpower was available in areas of South Vietnam government control to make up the required military forces needed to defeat the insurgency. The survey estimated that about 365,000 men were available and qualified for the regular forces, and that an additional 800,000 men could meet other force requirements. The survey confirmed that the planned force goals were not impossible, and the results were subsequently used as the basis for manpower planning procurement.

Troops for the armed forces were obtained through voluntary enlistments and conscription. The military service law enacted 29 June 1953 prescribed a continuing active and reserve obligation for all male citizens between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. Under the conscription program, initiated on 1 August 1957 and amended in January 1959, male citizens aged twenty and twenty-one were called up for an eighteen-month service period.

On 6 April 1964 the National Public Service Decree declared that all male Vietnamese citizens from twenty to forty-five years were subject to service in the military and civil defense establishment. Subsequent decrees prescribed draft criteria and lengths of service, and another incorporated the Regional Forces and Popular Forces into the regular force (Republic of Vietnam armed forces) organization. A review of the South Vietnam government laws by a representative of the U.S. National Selective Service concluded that the draft laws were adequate, but better enforcement was urgently needed.

A nationwide call-up was conducted from 20 October to 2 November, 1964, and a one-month enforcement phase followed to apprehend and induct draft dodgers. Pre-call-up publicity emphasized that this was the last time youths twenty to twenty-five could voluntarily report and that the "tough" measures to apprehend and punish evaders would follow. Initial results were gratifying as over 11,600 conscripts were inducted into the regular forces. Careful planning, effective publicity, and creditability of the enforcement procedures accounted for the success. Unfortunately, the enforcement phase was less than satisfactory. Its implementation required the execution of detailed procedures by province chiefs and local officials, and this execution was not done in a uniform manner. The failure fully to enforce the initial call-up took the sting out of the program, and subsequent draft calls in late November and early December brought fewer recruits than were anticipated or needed to meet force level goals.

By the late 1960s deteriorating civil~military relations were compounded by the Vietnamese draft laws, which caused military service (for an indefinite term) to fall disproportionately upon the poor and disadvantaged. Converseiy, children of the rich could easily avoid service. Resentment over this situation undoubtedly contributed to the lawlessness of the South Vietnamese troops when the collapse came in 1975. Rather than volunteering to help, students in Saigon demonstrated and fought with police. As late as the battle of Xuan Loc, occurring on the northeast portalof Saigon in April 1975, civilians in the capital showed little interest in the war."