So he sent an Army survey team to Indochina to determine the requirements for fighting a ground war there. What he wanted was the basic needs and logistics of it. He sent signalmen, medical men, engineers, logistics experts. What were the port facilities, the rail facilities, the road facilities? What was the climate like, which were the endemic diseases? How many men were needed? The answers were chilling: minimal, five divisions and up to ten divisions if we wanted to clear out the enemy (as opposed to six divisions in Korea), plus fifty-five engineering battalions, between 500,000 and
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