Basic HTML Version
"TO KILL A
PEOPLE"
(Contin11ed from page 6)
before
to
accomplish. And before, it
was merely "impossible."
The parallels between the air war
over Korea and North Vietnam are
inescapable. In each case the enemy
enjoyed safe sanctuary. He could pick
and choose when he wished to send up
his MIG .fighters
to
contest Americans
in the air. He could carcfully pick and
choose where and when
to
place his air
defenses. And he could learn where his
military supplies were safest on the
ground.
All this led to a rather unheal–
thy attitude among American military
personnel.
In spite of this, most of them contin–
ued to do their impossible job - and
many of them died.
On the ground, the parallels are
slightly different.
In Korea, U. S. soldiers had a front.
They knew the enemy was "up there,"
in the North, and that their rear
area, the PX, a cold beer, letters from
home, and maybe a chance USO show,
were al! "back there."
If
battle lines
can ever be said to be "tidy," then
the war in Korea allowed "tidy" lines
where possible.
But in Vietnam, there has never been
a front. The enemy is everywhere. On
all sides, in the jungle, in the rice pad–
dies, selling you a beer in the bar that
noon, and donning his guerrilla uni–
form and equipment
to
attempt to kili
you that night. The enemy could be that
beautiful Vietnamese girl inviting you
to bu
y
her a drink (so she could inform
her friends in the Viet Cong of all you
said), or that little boy herding the
water buffalo along (which are used at
night to carry arms and ammunition to
secret Viet Cong hideouts).
A map of South Vietnam, showing
enemy strongholds, appears to be lep–
rous. The enemy is everywhere, and
nowhere.
In Korea, there was a front and a
rear.
The
PLAIN TRUTH
But in Vietnam, there has never been
a front, nor a rear, nor even a home
front.
T he American Figbting Spirit
Something was happening, too, to the
minds of American soldiers. They could
.fight tenaciously, ferociously, and they
could win - they had proved that.
They could fight like no other soldiers
when it was for
victory
-
when it was
to conq11er,
to enforce a
SURRENDER
upon a bated foe.
They could .fight for girl friends, and
Moro and Dad, they could fight to stay
free, or to protect their country. But
could they .fight with the same spirit for
limited political objectives in a strange
country to carry out their part as
functionary of worldwide geopolítica!
considerations?
Could young Americans be called
upon to become Legionnaires? Legion–
naires are professional soldiers who .fight
because they are told to. They were the
Romans, who fought to keep a vast
empire together, and their mercenaries,
who fought for the !ove of fighting.
The famous French Foreign Legion was
always known to be a sanctuary for
criminals, sadists, and men whose only
satisfaction in life carne from .fighting.
They were
paid
to fight - and so they
fought.
But American young men are not of
the stuff of legions. They proved, in
World War II, and again in Korea, and
in many cases in Vietnam, that they are
superb warriors. They preved they can
Wtn.
But they also proved in Korea, and
are even now proving in Vietnam, that
they need to fight for a
CAUSE
more
than an order, for a
VICTORY
more than
stalemate, for
TERRITORY
rather than for
attrition.
A great blow to the American fight–
ing spirit was dealt during the "peace
talks" at Panmunjom.
Exactly half as many men were killed
and wounded during the long peace
talks at Panmunjom as were lost during
the violent war that surged up and
clown the península earlier. The line
had stagnated along the same area,
roughly, as the contested "parallel" (38
degrees North) of 1950. This time,
February 1971
however, the line was determined by the
choice of steep hills and valleys, and
military considerations. The most well–
remembered names to come out of the
Korean War were labels for the bloody
battles of "Pork Chop Hill," or
"Bunker Hill,'' or "Heartbreak Hill"
and "Bloody Ridge."
These infamous names carne from
that deadly game of "King of the
Mountain" played between U.N. forces
and the North Koreans and Communist
Chinese all along the line stretching
completely across the Korean Península
dm·ing
the "Peace Talks" at Pan–
munjom.
Once the talks began, it was lost on
none of the troops that the war just
MIGHT
be over "at any moment." There
was always that hope. Born of that
hope were the myriad rumors flowing
up and down along the line of the
imminency of peace, and a trip back
home, and to sanity, away from the
body-strewn, hideous, stinking moun–
tains and paddies of that forsaken land.
Disastrous New Tactics
Commanders began to experience
something new in the American .fight–
ing spirit.
Once the talks began, every common
soldier knew in his heart his command–
ers, all the way up to the highest diplo–
matic levels, did not want victory -
they did not want North Korea - they
wanted truce. Each .fighting man knew
in his heart he would never see the
Yalu - that he would never drive the
enemy from North Korea.
He learned, quickly, that the enemy
seemed perfectly willing to figbt to the
death for a small piece of ground, seem–
ingly forever. Tiny knobs and hills
assumed enormous propaganda value
out of all proportion to their
military
worth. Massive struggles over utterly
worthless territory assumed huge
im–
portance.
Whoever lost a hill lost face.
At Heartbreak Hill, during those
moments of initial jockeying for posi–
tion, and proving to the enemy that he
must come to the "peace table" (a pol–
icy pursued in Vietnam in spite of hide–
ous lessons learned), the 23rd Infantry
assaulted various ridges and knobs for a