A Vietnam/Konfrontasi thing I was thinking about...

[MacCaulay]

...I've been looking up a lot of stuff from just about every anti-insurgency campaign that ever happened in the 20th Century for my Alternate Kenya story. This has led me to a lot of research into the Malayan Campaign, Indonesian Confrontation, and Vietnam, probably the three major anti-insurgency campaigns fought by Western powers in Asia during the Cold War.

One important part of the Indonesian Confrontation was Operation Claret. As some folks may know, it was fought by the British, Australian, and New Zealand ground forces in small patrols (the largest groups were platoon sized and had no unit markings or dog tags). Here's wiki's opening write up, which provides a good basic outline:

Claret was the code name given to operations conducted from about July 1964 until July 1966 from East Malaysia (Sarawak and Sabah) across the border in Indonesian Kalimantan during the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation. They were instigated by the Director of Borneo Operations (DOBOPS) Major General Walter Walker with the agreement of the British and Malaysian governments. Their purpose was to seize the initiative and put the Indonesians on the defensive instead of allowing Indonesian forces to be safely based in Kalimantan and attack when and where they chose. However, it was important not to cause the Indonesians to lose face and possibly escalate the conflict, or to enable Indonesia to present evidence of 'imperialist aggression' so Claret operations were highly classified and never publicised, although it seems that some British journalists were aware of what transpired.[1] British casualties on Claret operations were publicly reported as being in East Malaysia.
These operations involved both special forces and infantry. Special forces were mostly reconnaissance patrols crossing the border from the Malaysian state of Sarawak or Sabah into Indonesian Kalimantan in order to find and monitor Indonesian forces who might attack Sarawak or Sabah.[2] Conventional forces were tasked to act on this information and that from other sources to ambush or otherwise attack the Indonesians under a policy of ‘aggressive defence’.[3] Such operations were to be ‘deniable’ as they may have represented a violation of state sovereignty, however they were justified at the time under the "right of hot pursuit".[4] Operation Claret was largely successful in gaining the initiative for the British Commonwealth forces, inflicting significant casualties on the Indonesians and keeping them on the defensive, before being suspended late in the war.[5]

As it mentions, any outcomes of the battles that were thought to be beneficial for release for public consumption were reported as being in Malaysia for diplomatic purporses.

Now...one book that I've just finished reading is The Magnificent Bastards: The Joint Army-Marine Defense of Dong-Ha, 1968. One thing that is pointed out repeatedly in this book is that the battle in question was very much affected by the presence of NVA artillery due to the proximity of the battlefield to the DMZ and the border.

This leads me to a logical conclusion: the Australians in Vietnam no doubt had troops which had participated in and knew about the Claret Operations. Despite the secrecy of them, it's highly likely that some American officers and CIA officials in-country knew of them. What if some Australian, LRRP, Mobile Guerilla Force, etc. officer with sufficient pull made the case that what was needed in the late-60s was a Claret Operation undertaken through the DMZ into North Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos with the obvious intention of cutting NVA artillery support and attempting to at least partially interrupt ground flow on the Ho Chi Minh trail?

 

[Cook]

From a bettersource than Wikipbushitapedia.

‘Claret’ was the codename for cross-border operations carried out by Commonwealth units into the Indonesian province of Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. The need for such operations was perceived early in the Confrontation when British and Malaysian planners realised that by operating only on the Malaysian side of the border they were allowing the Indonesians to seize and hold the initiative. To counter this a strategy allowing ambushes up to 2,000 yards into Indonesian territory or permitting troops to pursue the enemy up to the same distance as well as using mortar and artillery fire to hit Indonesian positions was devised.

Security and secrecy were of primary importance as official public policy held that Commonwealth troops would not cross the border. To this end deniability rested on the inability of the Indonesians to prove that the border had been crossed. Actions that took place before the eyes of villagers or in which civilians were killed would have been difficult to refute but encounters involving, and seen, only by soldiers made it difficult for the Indonesians to substantiate.

As deniability was essential to Claret operations Major General Walter Walker, Commander, British Forces Borneo, devised a set of rules. The earliest Claret missions had to be personally authorised by Walker and only experienced troops were to be involved. Claret’s first participants were therefore Gurkha units, the SAS and the SBS (Special Boat Service). From this group only those troops on their second tour of Borneo were able to participate in cross-border operations. Civilian lives were not to be risked and the distance covered on the Indonesian side of the border was limited. Soldiers were ordered to neither become, nor to take prisoners. Nor were any dead to be left to the enemy. So successful was the strategy that cross-border operations were not disclosed during the Confrontation and they remained secret for years afterwards, not being publically acknowledged until 1974.

By January 1965 the radius of Claret operations had been extended to 10,000 yards and the number of contacts and enemy killed in action increased dramatically. Australian units did not experience a contact on a Claret Operation until a patrol of the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (3RAR) engaged Indonesian troops in May 1965. 3RAR carried out 32 Claret operations during its four months in Borneo. Contacts were rare but elements of the battalion were involved in four major clashes with Indonesian troops. Each resulted from platoon ambushes and in one case, when the Indonesians launched a counter-attack, artillery was needed to cover the Australians’ withdrawal.

http://se-asia.commemoration.gov.au/australian-operations-in-indonesian-confrontation/claret-operations.php

Claret, for those that don’t know, is an Australian term (And English?) for blood.

 

[Rickshaw]

This leads me to a logical conclusion: the Australians in Vietnam no doubt had troops which had participated in and knew about the Claret Operations. Despite the secrecy of them, it's highly likely that some American officers and CIA officials in-country knew of them. What if some Australian, LRRP, Mobile Guerilla Force, etc. officer with sufficient pull made the case that what was needed in the late-60s was a Claret Operation undertaken through the DMZ into North Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos with the obvious intention of cutting NVA artillery support and attempting to at least partially interrupt ground flow on the Ho Chi Minh trail?

It was tried. MACV SOG forces often operated deep into Laos and Cambodia, attempting to disrupt the flow of supplies down the trail into Vietnam. However the Trail is not just one road, it was a large network of parallel roads and tracks, which allowed the PAVN to switch convoys down different roads and avoid ambushes and interdiction efforts. The MACV SOG operations were also pin pricks, particularly compared to the massive USAF and USN effort to interdict and disrupt the PAVN resupply effort.

What must be understood is the difference in scale between Konfrontasi in Borneo and the Vietnam War. In Borneo, the largest force which was used for the most part were Company sized units, dispersed along the border, patrolling in an effort to prevent Indonesian concentration. CLARET operations were usually conducted by Sections and at most Platoons (or in the case of the various SAS units, Patrols and Troops). Anything larger was too politically unacceptable. I served with several Australian soldiers who had been on CLARET operations and they often discussed how small they were, with single guns from the RA and the RAA being tasked in support. Vietnam on the otherhand you're talking about operations at the Brigade and even Divisional level which are a bit hard to hide behind diplomatic nice language.

 

[jackalope]

"What if some Australian, LRRP, Mobile Guerilla Force, etc. officer with sufficient pull made the case that what was needed in the late-60s was a Claret Operation undertaken through the DMZ into North Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos with the obvious intention of cutting NVA artillery support and attempting to at least partially interrupt ground flow on the Ho Chi Minh trail?"

Laos/etc activities were used, but media damage had already been done
of aerial attacks, and North Vietnam really decided to hold off on public
disclosure. For that and other reasons it is not the same. I am pretty
confident Claret and Malay Peninsular activities since 1945 were
looked into by quite a few Vietnam war planners of US/Aus/NZ groups,
and a few others would have as well. How much they were listened to
and at which dates is not so clear to me.

Talking with a few of the SF and in books, the stressed action is watch
and guide air attacks. Suharto was not Ho Chi Mihn. Not only was
the goal not so absolute, insofar as Malay peoples have never been
completely conglomerated historically but Vietnam did a number of
times and other aspects as temperment. Claret worked as a strong
tool to diffuse the situation, and shows what can be done. But after
Diem's 1956-58 routines, Ho Chi Mihn made a decision which was
quite a bit more firm than Suharto.

Besides, Claret pretty much ended with Suharto's ouster, and provided
Sukarno/other generals with ammo to have a graceful way out. I mean
the Generals were directly targeted for assassanation by the communists
with deadly effect. So they had other issues much more pressing. It is
highly doubtful the NVA would be any where nearly as easily deflected.

So I think.

 

[Arachnid]

Yeah the big difference was that Vietnam was a much more high intensity conflict on both sides. The Indo's were far more cautious about openly sending troops across the border and the Commonwealth forces were similarly restrained. Uncle Ho was aiming to drive out Free World forces through open use of force while Suharto was much more constrained and thus much more vulnerable to such an operation. Also the US routinely carried out cross-border operations, primarily air strikes but these were often guided by special forces.
MACV could have learned a lot from Commonwealth practice but an Operation Claret was not something that was appropriate for the Vietnam situation.

 

[MacCaulay]

Well, you guys are taking the facts I already knew and putting them in a logical order. I'm convinced!

I was talking to my dad yesterday and pitched this (he was in the Gaurd in the 60s and obviously lived through that in America), and his response was: "If anyone ever found out about that, it'd go over about as well as when we invaded Cambodia. Like a lead balloon. It's widening the war, and that wasn't popular."

Alright...case closed! That being said, I'm probably going to look up and find some books about the SOG groups that went across the border into Laos and Cambodia to see how it operated in OTL.