The Soldiers’ View from Viet Nam
Marines Protect
A Bullet-Riddled
Schoolhouse
By GEORGE ESPER
CAMNE. South Viet Nam (AP)— In the midst of this hamlet
sits a run down, bullet-riddled schoolhouse that has become a
symbol in the Vietnamese war
Sixteen U.S. Marines guard it around the clock. The Viet Cong
fire at it by night.
‘ It is a symbol of American help to the South Vietnamese Peo
ple." says Lt. Col Robert Tunnell. Fallbrook. California
He commanded the 3rd Battalion of the 9th Marine Regiment
until Friday, when he lost his right leg. He stepped on a pound
block of dynamite planted by the Viet Cong and set off by a home
made pressure fuse While helping to evacute him, Sgt. Adolf
lfartschlag. Vista. California, stepped on a similar mine and lost
his left leg.
Newsmen I.ook
A few davs before. Tunnell had taken two newsmen to the
schoolhouse.’ His battalion only recently had moved into the Hoa
Thai village complex just south of Da Nang.
Speaking proudly of the Marines' determination to hold the
battered schoolhouse. Tunnell said:
‘ It is a thorn in the side of the Viet Cong I think they want
to capture it rather than destroy it so they can say, We kicked
the Marines out,
Tunnell said that a year ago Cam Ne was ‘‘a pure Communist
town."
106 out of 600
Todav according to Nguyen Luong. 51. the village chief, there
are 600 families in the Hoa Thai village complex, which inculdes
the hamlet of Cam Ne. Of these 600, he says, 106 are Viet Cong
sympathizers.
Luong is under constant Marine guard while he is in the village
area because he is on the Viet Cong s list for assassination.
The schoolhouse is about 75 feet long and has five small rooms
The Marines have established defensive positions inside; sandbags
have been placed in some of the doorways and open windows.
Medical Aid Station
During the day, the schoolhouse serves as a medical aid station
for villagers, treated by a Navy medic, Dennis Neu, 20, Santa
Cruz, California.
The villagers and Marines plan to rebuild the schoolhouse and
. start classes again.
It was at Cam Ne that the Marines burned several huts last
August after being fired at by the Viet Cong concealed inside the
huts.
Luong said he thinks his people understand: “It is war and
the Marines try to kill the Viet Cong and they don't like to bum
houses.
“The people would like the Marines to stay here to protect
them in rebuilding this village and try to clear out the \ iet Cong.
Emerald
Focus
on the
World
This is the first of a series
of special pages on national
and world news which we will
run from time to time. The
editors of the Emerald feel it
is part of the newspaper’s duty
to present some background
information on various non
campus topics.
This first page deals with
Viet Nam at it's seen by the
soldier in the trenches and the
rain forests. This will probably
be the first of several special
pages on the war in Viet Nam,
since that is a major topic of
discussion at the University
this year. Future pages will
deal with other aspects of the
war, as well as with other
topics, such as civil rights, the
war on poverty, other domestic
legislation, and so on.
A Young Soldier
Protests the Protesters
(Editor'!) note: the following letter was sent to us by Arthur II.
Arp of Eugene. It was orlRlnally printed In the Arizona Republic
as a letter to the editor hut actually takes the form of an open
letter to those protestlnR the war In Viet Nam. It was written by
a 20-year old Marine now servInR In Viet Nam. He are not neces
sarily printing It as a representation of the Emerald s stand »'«
the Viet Nam war but only because we feel comment from soldiers
actually stationed on the front In Viet Nam mlRlit add something
to the current discussion of the war on this campus.)
First, I am RoinR to ask you a question you probably cannot
answer: "What are you really protestinR about?" It cannot be the
fact that you want to show your Americanism but that is not the
American way. You are supposed to stand by and support your
country. . . .
There is a simple answer
Somewhere, someone has gone astray In your bringing up or
you have had a bad accident that has damaged your brain, or even
simpler, and more precise in your eyes, you are just afraid of
being called to light for your country and what it stands for and
the privileges you are now enjoying
I read an article in one of the few magazines we can get, and
with the article was a photograph of a Berkeley student holding
a sign which read: "13 Have Gone to Jail to End the War in
Viet Nam What are You Doing About It?”
Well, I'll tell you what we are doing about it We live in tents
with nothing but sandy earth for our floor. When it rains, which
is frequent, we live in mud We eat, but you can't call a constant
diet of dehydrated pods really eating We have all lost, on the
average, 16 pounds But is our morale low?
Morale High
No, it is not low, it is outstandingly high, even considering
the little mail we receive You know why’ Because we are fight
ing for our beloved country that we may never see again, and to
protect our loved ones, and kids like you, so you can go to your
dances, parties, and those absurd protests.
We go on patrols not knowing when, where, or how many will
hit us this time or will it be us that will never see home again.
Then a sniper’s bullet rings loud in our ears, at the same time a
friend, a close friend, clutches his stomach with both hands, his
eyes widen but see nothing and his lips mutter those heartbreak
ing words, "God—somebody help me "
But do we stop" No, we do not stop, because there is a job to be
done, and God willing we will do it.
Yes. we are fighting the Viet Cong on their own terms, and we
are beating them at their own game, because we are fighting for
a much greater cause: so our families can live in peace in the
greatest country in the world.
Nobody Made Us
When we joined our country’s greatest fighting organization
nobody made us do it and we knew its past glory, and we also
knew the chances we were taking if any country forced us to
move, and there is not one of us here who is sorry to be in Viet
(Continued on /**/£/«• 11)
A Viet Cong Talks about Hunger, Fatigue, and Death
By HUGH A. MULLIGAN
GIA NGHIA, South Viet Nam (AP) — Dang Van
Trong, a Viet Cong second lieutenant, came out of the
jungles on a steaming hot day with a few dried beans
clutched in his hand.
For him the war was over He had had it.
Lt. Trong had been walking for three months and
four days. An infiltrator from North Viet Nam, he
left a staging area above the 17th Parallel with a
platoon of 28 men. Only 18 were left. Ten had died in
the past week, four of starvation
That in statistical form was Trong’s story. How much
he held back or how much he invented can only be
ascertained by trained intelligence teams.
Trying for Zone D
Trong said his orders were to get his men to Zone D,
a vast jungle area 100 miles wide and 60 miles deep.
Government troops have penetrated only its fringes.
The Viet Cong is suspected to be staging a massive
troop buildup there with fresh units infiltrated from
the North. But Trong, a North Vietnamese regular,
never got there.
Instead, he slipped away from his men in the dense
jungles of Quang Due Province, somehow made his
way to Route 14, walked into the nearest Montagnard
village, and gave himself up.
He was given some beer and rice, which immedi
ately made him sick, and was treated kindly by the
raggedly uniformed popular force guards who man
sandbagged outposts in the little hamlet.
Treated Kindly
The Montagnards passed Trong onto Gia Nghia, the
province capital, where again he was treated kindly
and taken to the officers club for beer and rice, while
waiting to be shipped on to corps headquarters at Pleiku
for extensive questioning.
Although he never heard of the expression, Trong
was treated as a “chieu hoi”—received with open
arms, which is what the program means in Vietnamese.
The government’s chieu hoi is designed to encourage
defectors.
We he surrendered, Trong had on the traditional
black pajamas of the Viet Cong fighter. In the com
pound at Gia Nghia, where he chatted amiably through
an interpreter, he was dressed in garrison fatigues
which he had carried in his rucksack. His captors had
laundered them for him.
Loose Uniform
Trong had lost so much weight that the fatigue
uniform hung loosely. His cheeks were deeply recessed,
his eyes dull and his arms thin and covered with
leech bites. His sandals had been worn down at least a
quarter of an inch.
Why had he decided to call it quits?
Trong was hungry and tired and disenchanted. He
said he had been led to believe at least four-fifths of
the people of South Viet Nam were friendly to the
Communist cause. But he found himself walking for
weeks without being allowed to talk with anyone,
friendly or unfriendly.
Trail Doubted
Some observers of the war doubt there is such a
thing as the so-called Ho Chi Minh Trail, the series of
t. v.i Mil!: in:: !!n;mi;:,;«:tin iin iMisr.-jii: i !.wmimummimmimii
Editor’s Note—Reporters in Viet Nam seldom
1 get to interview a Viet Cong defector before he
j is handed on to higher authorities for intelli
gence debriefings. Hugh Mulligan, hunting for
1 stories near the Cambodian border, talked for
nearly an hour with a North Vietnamese officer.
trails through Laos and Cambodia for infiltrating men
and supplies into South Viet Nam.
Trong had never heard it called by that name, but
he said he crossed the border into Laos three miles
above the 17th Parallel, walked south through Laos
and Cambodia, then crossed into South Viet Nam in
Darlac Province.
There his real troubles began.
His 28-man platoon was part of a force of more than
400 being infiltrated at that time, he said. He never
saw any of the others, because each platoon moves
separately through the jungles and is passed from
station to station.
Always Two Days Apart
The stations, Trong said, were always two days
apart. Each station knew where the unit was heading
next, and so directed them, hut never knew where
they came from The lieutenant found such security
procedures strange in a country where he had been
led to believe the Communists were overwhelmingly
popular.
Air Force and Navy bombers have been pounding
the jungles with air strikes for months to prevent mass
Communist infiltrations.
Trong never saw or heard an air strike during his
three months in the jungles, but he knew they must
be awesome because people operating the jungle sta
tions spoke of them in terrifying terms.
Plenty to Eat
The jungles abound in fresh fruits and wild edible
plants, but the lieutenant's platoon found themselves
slowly starving to death. After a lifetime of eating
rice, the jungle food made them sick. Malaria and
dysentery killed six of his men.
Trong used to hoard his few handfuls of beans and
dry rice to keep his men from trying to jump him and
steal his fast dwindling supplies. The few beans he
had when he walked out on Route 14 were all the food
he had left. Like the others he dared not pluck a
banana or a mango from a tree.
The platoon was under orders never to fight. Their
assignment was to get to Zone D and avoid contact
with the enemy before getting there. They never dared
shoot a deer or kill a lizard or snake to eat, lest gov
ernment forces find their campfire or discover a carcass.
Went North
The lieutenant had gone north to join the Communist
cause after the armistice with the French in 1954, but
now he was 32, wiser and weary of war.
He spoke in an abstract way, as if it no longer con
cerned him, about the island of Hainan in the Gulf of
Tonkin. He had been told that 200,000 Chinese troops
were waiting there to join the war. No one had told
him that the U.S. 7th Fleet was in the gulf waiting
for that possibility.
He spoke of a Hanoi factory where machine guns
and mortars were stamped with Chinese markings as
they came off the assembly line, so that people in the
South would get the idea that China was supporting the
war in a big way.
Finally, he spoke of the jungles where his friends
had died and his cause had vanished, and he said he
never wanted to sec those dense rain forests again.