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GI’s Dedication Is Unmatched(EDITOR’S
NOTE: Charles Black, Ledger-Enquirer
military writer, has been recuperating from a pongee stick wound in
Saigon but
reported that he has now joined the 1st Cavalry Division at its
headquarters in
An Khe. Black is in South Viet Nam to
cover activities of the division.
Following is an analysis of the current political situation in
that
country.) By CHARLES BLACK Ledger-Enquirer Staff Writer |
SAIGON - Of all the
frustrations for the U.S. public to consider in the war in South Viet
Nam, to
be considered is the failure of men in Washington and in the U.S.
Operations
Mission here to perform their duties with the same dedication and
efficiency as
the men who have worked and fought here while wearing uniforms.
The troops of the U.S. units
engaged in fighting have not been given a break by the civilian
agencies
charged with the responsibility for consolidating fighting
accomplishments into
lasting pacification.
American soldiers are not
the civil affairs experts which would be demanded if the military
segment of
this struggle had full responsibility for its successful outcome.
An American soldier in a
rifle battalion is a tough, well-trained, well-equipped fighter who has
proved
astonishingly aggressive and individually dangerous in combat.
This is quite enough
accomplishment to demand of a youth serving a two-year selective
service tour,
fighting in a strange war in a strange place.
That these same American
soldiers have been more often than not caught up in a personal regard
and
sympathy for the Vietnamese people in the war zones of the rural areas
speaks
highly of their personal qualities as well-meaning human beings.
The voluntary efforts on
American troops’ parts to “do something” to alleviate some of the
misery they
see in the Vietnamese of the countryside have been amazing, both in
their scope
and in the ingeniousness of their efforts.
They have written letters
home asking for help to further some volunteer program for an orphanage
or a
refugee center near their bases. They
have often dug into their own resources.
The fact that they are
victimized by the Vietnamese in the cities, where the war is something
entirely
difference than out where 70 percent of this country’s people live, can
bring a
typical troop reaction to the front - hostility, resentment and
contempt. It causes a split personality
among our
soldiers in their estimate of the people.
It is in the cities, where
profit, corruption and the never-ceasing jockeying for power between
warlords,
infuriatingly enigmatic religious leaders, and a profiteering
commercial
establishment - to list only a few of the endless cliques and bands who
keep
the headlines filled with odd events while the bulk of the people in
this country
remain silent in apathy waiting for an end to terror and destruction -
that the
bulk of the men who should be out in the countryside are found.
This reluctance to go out
into the areas where troops are sent is actually not even recognized by
the
agencies involved. They produce
statistics and figures which show dramatic plans, projects under way in
certain
areas, a huge and unrelenting expenditure of money and talent, for
example,
when asked why there are no USOM teams kept out with American military
units
based around the countryside.
The work of pacification and
civil affairs has to commence when the first American face is seen in
an area
of this country. Splitting the campaign
into segments such as has been done thus far (that is, secure an area
by military
force, occupy it by military force, and then pacify it by development
of civil
affairs programs) is an efficient method of guaranteeing a Saigon
headquarters
for some specific pacification program a long, profitable and
air-conditioned
tenure of planning and organizing.
I have been on too many
operations which knifed into the villages in the Binh Khe valley which
accomplished a military purpose, but set the future of civil affairs
work back
into the realm of near impossibility.
This is a specific account to illustrate:
In September of 1965 I was
with an American unit which entered a village and set up an artillery
battery
to support an operation against Viet Cong positions in the region. There was no council with any agency in Saigon
charged with pacification work in the planning of this operation.
There were no civilian representatives from any portion of USOM at any of the field headquarters directing the operation. The sketchy “county-insurgency” training of the soldiers involved was typical of most efforts - it evidenced a desire on the part of the commanders to instill that capability into the youthful riflemen and artillerymen, it simply could not be intensive enough training and indoctrination to produce results. The soldiers would have had to sacrifice the basic essentials of their own profession if they had been turned into civil affairs and public relations experts.
There were civilians in
the village where the artillery was set
up. The troops were wary and suspicious
of them or completely unguarded with them as the individual
personalities of
the men indicated.
As the men grew accustomed
to the odd surroundings and the odd people, they prowled on “patrols”
which
were really sightseeing tours. This
village had more huts deserted than occupied.
The troops searched
them. The troops carried away souvenirs
and other such items which infantrymen of all times have seen as their
own by
right of discovery and absence of any apparent ownership.
They also gave away their C-rations to the
people they encountered and the medics treated children on their own
volition.
The troops found pineapples,
oranges, melons, etc., growing around the village gardens and because
of the
apparently deserted air of all of this - one house in five retained any
residents in this fought-over area - they swept them up in passing and
varied
the C-rations.
A Viet Cong agent set a hand
grenade booby trap on the third day and it was found by the riflemen
patrolling
there. Word spread around the artillery
positions.
Six deserted but
possession-filled huts had been close by the position and one of these
also was
found to be booby-trapped during the night.
The six howitzers of the
battery, which had been itching for “direct fire” as all artillery
batteries do
because the business end of their shooting is almost always out of
sight and
gun crews like to see that they shoot at, suddenly got their chance. The commander of the operation said to clear
those hootches and it was done by shooting them apart with the 105s.
An old villager herding
buffalo out of sight was hit in the shoulder by a fragment and women
out trying
to find overlooked fruit for their families were terrified.
The village population to
the immediate front of the battery commenced moving to some of the
empty huts
in the hamlet behind it. The women were
carrying shoulder poles of food and clothing followed by children; the
few old
men in the village herded the buffalo out to another area.
The women chose a circuitous
trail to take them around the artillery position and were spotted by
the
now-edgy infantrymen securing the position.
They stopped them and for an
hour the women, children and their loads made a pitiful group in a
little
field, guarded by two half-angry and half-ashamed riflemen.
The loaded baskets were
searched. Finally after many long radio
conferences, trucks came down the trail with an angry trio of military
intelligence agents and all of the “captives” were loaded up and sent
off to the
province headquarters, 20 miles away, presumably for questioning and
security
investigation, actually only because American soldiers had been forced
to deal
with a continuing problem which they knew nothing about while men
drawing many
thousands of dollars per year because of their expert knowledge of this
problem
were never aware that the whole thing was happening out in the
boondocks.
Even as the American
riflemen and artillerymen supervised the packing of women and children
into
trucks, they gave them C-rations and helped them gather possessions and
the
medic was busy working on a sick old man whom a patrol had discovered
and
brought in to join the group being sent to Binh Khe.
Very Bad Thing
There was not a single
soldier who did not know that it had all been a very bad thing to have
happened, of course, and nobody could really put a finger on when it
had all
begun to happen. There had been no real
thought given, in fact, to who was loaded on the trucks and who stayed
behind. The families in the hamlet to the
rear of
the position were left there.
The moving people had simply
become involved in a discussion of what ought to be done about them for
the
security of the men involved and they ended up being sent off as “Viet
Cong
suspects.”
None of the troops ever
thought to offer payment for any of the things they carried away from
the huts
found vacant. Often the huts were
vacant because the few people in the village were out competing in the
harvest
of fruit going on, which nobody thought of paying for either because it
was impossible
for anyone to find out who was supposed to own anything.
Nobody could speak the
language and the whole village was confusing, what with some people
living here
and others on the run to refugee camps.
The Viet Cong sniped at the
perimeter from hillsides around the area that night and there was a
stiff
little firefight which netted three bodies with rusty carbines.
The riflemen handled this
affair with efficiency and the patrols probed aggressively the next
day,
turning up an ammunition cache and a lot of documents.
The day following, the
operation up the valley was finished and the artillery battery and its
infantry
guard packed up and left. Nobody
involved knows what happened to the truckloads of people sent in as
suspects or
to the ones who didn’t get involved in that affair.
Everybody knew that the Viet
Cong platoon in the area was back as soon as the last howitzer had gone
out of
sight.
Since then other operations have rolled up and down this valley and it is due to become a “pacified area” sooner or later, when Vietnamese troops can be spared to stay there and keep the Viet Cong from returning.
The pacification experts
will come then and put in hard, long hours of work in a primitive
environment,
and the projects they set in motion (public health, school houses,
resettlement
of people who fled the area or ran from it, well digging, agricultural
advice,
etc.) will be pointed to with great pride by men in Saigon and
Washington who
will use them as refutations of arguments that the civil affairs end of
this
war just doesn’t get out in the boondocks.
It may be that involvement
at the very start of that operation back in September by some of the
pacification and civil affairs experts waiting their turn in the
countryside
might have assisted a harried battalion commander, a confused company
commander, a bewildered platoon commander, or a completely
double-crossed
American rifleman who had done the best soldier’s job a nation could
ask of him
and coped as best he could.
I personally don’t want to
go back to that village when our aid program, if they ever really get a
chance
to get started there, bear fruit.
When the residents of that village have the safety of a police force, the security of a good harvest, the future of educated and healthy children and can turn their attention to politics with the same energy their city cousins exhibit, they may remember the time we had to use their buffalo pasture for an artillery position and how the soldiers finally answered the questions none of the experts were around to give them advice about.
© Columbus Ledger-Enquirer
