Up until 1965 what was the role of US advisors to Vietnam and what did they actually do?

Factual Questions
1

Hi
Up until 1965 what was the role of US advisors to Vietnam and what did they actually do? Did they perform any unofficial functions. Any combat for example?
I look forward to your feedback

2

My understanding is they were there to advise the South Vietnamese on their military operations, but I assume if they were fired upon they would obviously fire back.

3

From what Colin Powell talks about in his book, (he was such an adviser), they were embeddd with ARVN forces and fought alongside them giving tactical advice to the troops.

4

So these advisors did fight but they weren’t combat troops. Can you explain why they were permitted to fight and what limits there were to that fighting?

5

I remember hearing on the news there were debates over whether or not advisers there would be allowed to return fire.

6

I’m not familiar with Vietnam but I am familiar with Army Special Forces advisors roles in Central/South America and Africa at around the same time during the Cold War when serving in host countries to fight rebels.

Army Special Forces mainly helped with setting up base camps, training soldiers, and basically doing everything to ensure the troops could effectively patrol around the area and defend it. There would be a few squads of Special Forces (about 10-20 of them) with about 100-200 local military forces. Speical Forces would also do goodwill stuff to ingratiate themselves with local civilians such as giving out food/medicine, healing the sick and doing small public works projects.

Combat-wise the soldiers tended to act in leadership roles to the local military forces, a single special forces soldier would go out with a few squads of local troops and they’d find and engage the rebels. Special Forces would open fire on the enemy but mainly preferred to hang back and tell the local military forces what to do in a command role. Eventually with enough experience the local military forces would go out on patrol without them and the special forces would then pack-up and move onto establishing the next base.

While it was rare there were times when the Army Special Forces would forgo the local military forces and go after targets themselves but that was limited to extreme cases such as going after enemy VIPs or doing advanced recon. It wasn’t officially sanctioned and they didn’t like doing it (after all their entire job was to train someone else to do it for them) but it did happen.

7

Thanks Asuka. Than you all. Very helpful.