Hello everyone!

My name is Stefan Aguirre Quiroga and I am a historian currently affiliated with the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Some of you may know recognize me as one of the moderators over at /r/AskHistorians. I am here today to answer your questions about what I have been researching since 2016: The Kit Carson Scouts during the Vietnam War.

The Kit Carson Scouts was a name given to a group of defectors from the People's Army of Vietnam (also known as the North Vietnamese Army, NVA) and the armed wing of the FNL (The People's Liberation Armed Forces of South Vietnam, more commonly known in the West as the Viet Cong, VC) who volunteered to undergo training to serve alongside American and later Australian, New Zealand, Thai, South Korean and South Vietnamese forces in the field. The role of the Kit Carson Scouts was to serve as scouts, guides, and interpreters. Kit Carson Scouts often walked point, scouting for hidden booby traps, hidden weapon caches, and signs of the enemy.

The Kit Carson Scout Program (1966-1973) has long remained a curious footnote in the history of the Vietnam War, yet the presence of Kit Carson Scouts proliferate in accounts by American veterans. I was fascinated by the idea of understanding why soldiers from the PLAF and the PAVN would make the choice to not only defect, but also to volunteer to fight against their former comrades. In addition, I felt that investigating the motivations of the Kit Carson Scouts could nuance the otherwise monolith representation of the PLAF and PAVN soldier as faceless hardcore communist believers or nationalist freedom fighters. The agency of these South or North Vietnamese soldiers and the choices they made shows them as historical actors who were not passive and who actively made choices that shaped their own lives as well as that of the war that surrounded them.

My research into this question resulted in the article Phan Chot’s Choice: Agency and Motivation among the Kit Carson Scouts during the Vietnam War, 1966–1973 that was recently published online in the scholarly journal War & Society (with a print version to come shortly).

The abstract reads as follows:

Through a focus on agency and motivation, this article attempts to reach conclusions about the choices made by PLAF and PAVN defectors for continuing their lives as combatants in the employment of the United States Armed Forces as part of the Kit Carson Scout Program. Using predominantly fragmentary personal accounts found in divisional newspapers, this article concludes that Kit Carson Scouts joined for a variety of personal reasons that included the desire for better working conditions, the opportunity to support their family, the search for revenge, and political disillusionment. Additionally, the importance of the individual scout’s choice is emphasised.

I am very excited to share all of this with you. This is only a small part of my research into the subject and I am looking forward to keep writing about it. For those desiring a copy of the article, send me a PM and I will send you a link where you can download it. I am also happy to answer any other inquiries.

AMA about anything related to the Kit Carson Scouts!