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Visit of Lieutenant General John H. O'Daniel to Vietnamese Defense Minister, 1 February 1954 at Saigon.

I called on the Minister of National Defense of Vietnam, Dr. Pham Huy Quat, accompanied by the Deputy Chief of Mission who served as interpreter.

Dr. Quat told me that the plan for augmentation of the Vietnamese national forces had been approved by the High Military Committee at its meeting on January 18. This called for an increase of 66 battalions in 1954, plus 16 specialized companies. However, Dr. Quat had proposed a new system of accelerating the increase of the Vietnamese National Army. This consisted in drawing on the local militia as the initial base for recruitment to the light battalions, and the light battalions, in turn, would serve as the base for filling out the regular battalions. Dr. Quat felt that, by the adoption of his system, it would be possible to decrease the present training cycle of four months to only two months. He said that if his system were adopted (and stated that it had already received the approval of Bao Dai) he could raise 130,000 additional troops in the current calendar year.

The Minister of National Defense said that one of his great problems was that of cadres. There simply were not enough officers of field grade to go round. He had an absolute ceiling limitation of 800 French officers for the Vietnamese National Army, and a large proportion of these were employed in training activities. If, by chance, he could secure American officers as instructors, this would liberate an equivalent number of French officers for combat service. Rh