Other Guns

The Philippines last week became the fourth nation to join South Viet Nam and the U.S. in the war against the Communists. President Ferdinand Marcos signed into law a bill dispatching 2,000 Philippine troops to South Viet Nam: an engineer battalion and an accompanying security battalion targeted for duty in a hazardous section along the Cambodian border. His signature was a reminder that the American and South Vietnamese troops do not fight alone.

From 100 canny Australian jungle warriors seeded as advisers through the northernmost I Corps, through the tough South Korean infantrymen and marines nearly 25,000 strong on the central coast, down to the 4,550 Australian "diggers" and New Zealand artillerymen near Saigon (see map), the other fighting allies are present and accounted for. If they are sometimes overlooked in the flow of dispatches, they are hardly ever by the Viet Cong. For each contingent has brought its own unique style and skills to the Viet Nam conflict.

Lead Poisoning. One recent night, South Korean 1st Lieut. Lee Young Woong looked into a peasant cottage as a woman and her two children were eating their evening rice. He noticed at once what a Westerner might easily have missed: there was too much rice for three people. Company was expected, he concluded. Lee and his squad of ten Koreans rounded up the villagers and placed them under guard in three houses. Then his men moved out to set up an ambush. Two hours later, three Viet Cong came to dinner--and died of lead poisoning.

That incident was one of 8,400 ambushes laid by the Koreans of the Tiger Division since they arrived in Viet Nam last November. Assigned to guard the port of Qui Nhon and open long stretches of Highway 1 and Highway 19, the Tigers have accomplished in eight months what eluded the French and Vietnamese for 20 years: securing the lush and prosperous coastal plain of Binh Dinh province. The Koreans have brought some 170,000 Vietnamese in Binh Dinh under government control, and together with the men of the Korean Blue Dragon Marine Brigade in Phu Yen, have killed 3,386 Viet Cong and captured 695 more while losing only 290 of their own.

Grass & Insecticide. To Westerners, the process sometimes seems as brutal as it is effective. Suspects are encouraged to talk by a rifle fired just past the ear from behind while they are sitting on the edge of an open grave, or by a swift, cheekbone-shattering flick of a Korean's bare hand. (Every Korean soldier from Commanding General Chae Myung Shin on down practices for 30 minutes each day tae kwon do, the Korean version of karate.) Once, when the mutilated body of a Korean soldier was found in a Viet Cong-sympathizing village, the Koreans tracked down a Viet Cong, skinned him and hung him up in the village. Not surprisingly, captured Viet Cong orders now stipulate that contact with the Koreans is to be avoided at all costs--unless a Viet Cong victory is 100% certain.

South Vietnamese peasants see another side of the Koreans. When refugees come back to a Korean-cleared village, they are likely to find their houses cleaned and repaired, the grass cut, the area sprayed with insecticide. Koreans scrupulously and sensitively follow Oriental custom in their dealings with village elders and the populace as a whole. Two Korean soldiers who raped a Vietnamese woman were summarily shot in front of their company.

Blood All the Way. The Australian (New Zealand's "Kiwi" contribution to the Australia-New Zealand Army Corps is a 150-man, six-gun, 105-mm. battery) approach to the tactics of the Viet Nam war was honed in jungle warfare against the Japanese in World War II and the Communists in Malaya. Their credo: avoid trails, avoid villages, avoid resupply; slide into the jungle like a snake and hide, then terrorize the enemy at will. "Fortunately, we've trained and equipped ourselves for such a war as this in Southeast Asia for years," says Brigadier O. D. Jackson, commander of the First Australian Task Force in Viet Nam. Whereas U.S. commanders resupply their units every other day in the field, the Aussies slide into "the deep green" prepared to go it alone for a week at a time--and manage to pack ten pounds less per man than the G.I.s.

The Aussie patience and tenacity is near legendary. One eleven-man patrol tracked a single Viet Cong sniper silently through dense jungle for 14 hours before it caught and killed him. In their 14-month stint in force in Viet Nam, the Aussies count 146 killed and 192 wounded Viet Cong, to 24 killed and 132 wounded Australians. The total of enemy casualties is probably far too low for the damage the Aussies have done, because of their own stiff accounting standards. No enemy dead is ever claimed unless an Aussie can walk up and put his foot on the body; no wounded counts unless he can be trailed 300 yards, with blood seen all the way. The Aussies allow no Vietnamese inside their compounds, an inhospitality justified, they feel, on security grounds. Going into the jungle, they rarely wear helmets, strip the insignia from their uniforms. The average Viet Cong, they snort, is really "no jungle fighter; he uses trails, paths and villages. We don't. But you have to go out into the jungle to trap him. That's when we meet him on our terms instead of his."

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