Family Ufeclcly Auguat It, MS
TT An American GI in Vietnam Asks:
f ! "WHAT AM I
Ai DOING HERET
ut.Thomat A. Homer
A rifle cracked. A bullet crumped
.into the dry rice paddy, and First
Lieut Thomas A. Horner hit the dirt,
just as a submachine gun opened up.
The 20 men on Horner's patrol dived
for cover behind the low dikes that con
tain the water in the fields during the
rainy season.
The rifle shot marked the 18th time that
Tom Horner, a member of our "peacetime
army," had come under direct fire from the
Communist Viet Cong during seven months
in Vietnam. The fire was coming from a
jungle-covered hill 150 yards away in an area
where the Vietnamese patrol had been try
ing to flush out a group of about 15 VCs.
Now Horner watched the patrol start for
ward in two groups. One group laid down a
cover fire while the other moved a few yards
closer to the hill. Now sprinting, now crawl
ing, the patrol leap-frogged to concealment
in the dense underbrush near the hill.
Then the fight was over. The VC disen
gaged, as they always do when outnumbered,
and disappeared. They had fired 3,000 rounds
at Horner's patrol and had been answered
with 2,500 rounds. One member of the pa
trol was wounded in the shoulder. Blood on
the ground indicated that the VC had had
some casualties, too.
"Except that more men were involved, it
was a typical action," says 24-year-old Hor
ner. "A long search, a lot of firing and noth
ing obvious accomplished. Sometimes you
feel that fighting the VC is like trying to
bottle fog.
"I've been on about 70 patrols in areas
where we know VC were in strength. We
made contact with them about a quarter of
the time. The other times, we just walked.
"In the dry season, our brains fry. In the
rainy season, we never dry out But it's got
to be done to keep the VC off balance, or
they'd be stronger than they are. It's a
strange war."
The strange war has its origins in "cur
rent events" which Tom Horner studied in
1954 while a student at Acalanes High School
in Lafayette, Calif., near Oakland. The
French gave up Indo-China, and the major
part of the colony was divided into the Com
munist Democratic Republic of Vietnam, bor
dering China and, to the south, the non-Communist
Republic of Vietnam. The partition
didn't satisfy the Communists.
In 1959, the year Tom Horner went to
Officer Candidate School and decided to make
the Army his career, Red guerrillas began
infiltrating the country. Once there, the Viet
Cong were as indistinguishable from loyal
citizens as, say, natives of Delaware would
be in New Jersey.
By 1961, 25,000 hard-core VC were in the
country, and they could rely on help from a
shifting group of 80,000 to 100,000 sympa
thizers. After the rainy season, they opened
large-scale hostilities. They mined roads and
attacked outposts and villages in an effort to
seize control of outlying provinces. To help
the government resist them, the U.S. agreed
to equip and help train an army of 150,000
men. At the time, Tom Horner had a pleas
ant peaceful assignment in France. Now,
two years later, he's in a tropical jungle
dodging bullets.
An Answer Cemes eventually
"What am I doing here now?" asked Hor
ner recently at his station in the steamy river
town of Long Xuyen (pronounced Lawn
Zwin). "In some moods, I wish I knew my
self. I volunteered to come here for a stand
ard one-year tour. My country was involved
in a war, or so I thought and if I wasn't
ready to fight in it, then I had no business
in the Army. My wife Judy wasn't happy
about the separation, but she felt I ought to
make my own decision about it I don't regret
my decision, but being here a while has sure
helped round out my education."
Tom didn't understand at first that he
wasn't in Vietnam to fight a war. Like 12,000
other American soldiers, airmen, and Ma
rines, he's there only to train Vietnamese to
fight. But while most of the Americans in
the country are assigned to training depots
and support echelons, Tom's job, along with
a few hundred other officers and NCOs, is
to evaluate training results and to observe
how Vietnam troops use American equip
ment on the battlefield.
The Enemy Must Shoot First
This doesn't mean that he goes up against
the enemy unarmed. "Of course, I carry
weapons," he says. "But only for self-protection.
I can't fire first I have to wait until
I'm fired upon."
Thus Tom often finds himself in the un
enviable role of a duck in a shooting gallery.
Last November, for example, he was on an
aerial photography mission over Co-To. The
light plane was skimming the treetops: "I
spotted VC emplacements in our line of
flight. They weren't shooting. They've
learned to hold their fire against aircraft un
til they can get off concentrated volleys at
close range. I knew this, and so did the pilot,
but there wasn't a thing we could do about
it even though I had a Tommy gun and gren
ades. We had to fly over and take it
"We got a few hits in the wing, but they
weren't crippling. Once they fired, I could
have answered it but we were moving out
of range, so what was the point?"
Despite the hazards of being a sitting
duck, Tom prefers being out on operations to
some of his other duties. "In the field you
know what you're fighting. Even when you
don't see VC, you know they can see you and
(Continued on page 7)
rily Wttkly, AuguM II. IH3