Romney Goes to the War

Making a three-day sweep from Danang to the Delta, Michigan's Governor George Romney toured Viet Nam last week to learn more about the war, cheer the troops and gain some public exposure that might do him no harm on the home front. He was no stranger to the territory, of course. The last time he ventured into Viet Nam "in South Korea" and later declared that U.S. officials had "brainwashed" him. This time Romney came away convinced that he had "a firm grasp of the situation. I had the background and knowledge to dig in and penetrate the situations and get at the facts that I wanted to know." A somewhat different appraisal came from one top U.S. official in Saigon: "The Governor seemed bent on some kind of political kamikaze or, better said, hara-kiri."

"Where You From?" Romney, jaunting from mess hall to hospital ward, shook hands with hundreds and passed out countless Michigan-state medallions graven with his name. But he often seemed more like a thoughtless than a thoughtful candidate. At the military hospital at Danang, he marched under the glare of television lights into a ward for seriously wounded U.S. servicemen. He glad-handed one Marine and asked: "Where are you from?" but the soldier could not answer because he had a tracheotomy tube protruding from his throat. "Where were you injured?" the Governor asked another patient, whose bleeding neck had stained the bedsheets. A doctor explained that the man had been shot down that day in a helicopter on a rescue mission. "Good for you,"said Romney, "good for you."

"Where you from?" he inquired, of another man, whose skull was fractured. Staring at the ceiling, the man replied: "I don't know." Turning to the other side of the aisle, Romney found a Marine whose right leg had been amputated. "Do you have a girl friend?" he asked. The Marine said flatly: "Yes." Then Romney started to greet some Vietnamese patients, but when told they were captured Viet Cong, he turned away.

"Get That Hut." Wherever he went, he had a tendency to lecture the troops, even to preach. To Christian and non-Christian alike, he emphasized the divinity of Christ, appealed for stoical acceptance of death on the battlefield and quoted Sherwood Anderson, Joan of Arc, Shakespeare and the Bible. As the troops were eating Christmas dinner at Cu Chi northwest of Saigon, Romney made a little sermonette, suited, if for anything at all, for Good Friday. "We have to lose ourselves for others," he declared, as his audience listened in silence. "Some have to lose our lives young and some when we are older." At the Lai Khe mess hall later on, he insisted upon examining the garbage cans "because I wanted to see how much food they were eating." The soldier whom he watched eat the most got a typical Romney reward: one of his medallions.

One Negro Marine heard Mormon Romney speak and asked dryly: "Is the Governor letting Negroes into his church yet?" Another Marine at Danang refused at first to shake his hand. "I don't like some of the things you've been saying about Viet Nam," he explained. Romney was saying very little publicly on the subject last week, preferring, between field briefings, to conduct a political campaign of sorts. ("Get that hut in the background," he instructed a press aide at one stop, as he lifted a little girl in his arms.) President Thieu and Ambassador Bunker received Romney. U.S. military leaders greeted him coolly, if at all. Lieut. General Robert E. Cushman Jr., commander of the 3rd Marine Amphibious Force, was scheduled to talk with him at Danang but somehow remained busy elsewhere throughout the visit.

As Romney took off for Jakarta on the next leg of his four-week world "fact-finding' tour, he was confident that he had not been brainwashed again. "I'm satisfied with what I got on this trip," he said. "There aren't many public figures in the U.S. who understand the complexities and magnitude of this conflict."

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