Notebook: The Rice Soldier

...As the anti-guerrilla actions they are forced to engage in become more intense, the individual soldier shows an ever-increasing desire to play it safe...

...There isn't enough cash or foreign aid in any Asian country to make everyone rich, and in Asia spoils are divided according to rank...

...The regime for which the rice soldier works may easily be able to kill more guerrillas than the guerrillas can kill soldiers, especially during the early period when the poorly armed and inexperienced guerrillas go into battle against the trained troops of a regular army...

...The rice soldier of a corrupt regime is probably sharing in certain forms of petty racketeering...

...An artillery unit came to flail wildly at the forests...

...Six companies of Vietnamese soldiers were helicoptered in to block the path of the fleeing enemy...

...With the realism inculcated by centuries of oppression, the rice soldier will not kid himself that in return for his risks he has much chance to become rich...

...The prevailing misery can be relied on to recruit the sons of starving peasants and the surplus children of city coolies...

...A common soldier has neither rank nor connections, and he is supposed to be satisfied with enough to eat and a little windfall now and then...

...inevitably he asks himself what it is he is risking his life for...

...He soon learns, however, that this very rarely occurs in guerrilla war...

...No armies are as finicky about proper uniforms and military deportment as those with an uneasy desire to substitute the rituals of an armed force ready to fight on command for the intangible bonds of common loyalty that make such readiness possible...

...A man who becomes a soldier for an oppressive regime is not likely to be affected by intellectual argument or by considerations of justice or humanity...

...Going slowly also gives the enemy guerrilla a chance to escape without battle...

...He knows that one soldier can be executed for disobeying an order but only rarely will a whole company be punished for the same disobedience...

...but as the killing goes on without end there comes a point at which even the most miserable will not join the army...

...The army's dead are examples to the survivors of precisely what they don't want to happen to them...

...When the rice soldier cannot get out of doing something he considers dangerous, lie proceeds towards it with all deliberate slowness...

...He is a man with a uniform, a weapon and a job in a military organization...

...No one knows better than he that the real gravy is reserved for the higher-ups...

...Men are driven to the savage grandeur of guerrilla war as an alternative to soul-destroying privation and injustice, and as long as the privation and injustice persist the guerrillas will have recruits, however large their losses may become...

...But the casualty ratios are of no comfort to the individual soldier worried about his own life...

...The rice soldier is a product of what Orwell called the "horsemeat economy," that condition of extreme scarcity in which small differences in goods or status take on enormous importance...

...From "The Elusive Viet Gong" by Jerry Rose, The New Republic, May 4, 1963...

...In military situations in which a bold attack would work wonders, that attack is often not made, despite orders, or is delayed so long that it doesn't work...

...That first group was still there in the field, tents up and cooking lunch...

...Fortunately, there is an acceptable substitute...

...When the rice soldier is forced to become a combatant he is a combatant without a cause...

...They hadn't moved a damn inch...

...Although he may want to retain his job despite the increasing dangers, he never volunteers and he limits what he will do to the absolute minimum...

...As soon as guerrilla bands begin to kill and terrorize, the rice soldier must consider the possibility that he may now die in battle...

...Ideally, he would like to claim credit for as many enemy dead as possible, with only negligible losses to his own side...

...The guerrillas have no such recruitment problems...

...Casualties on both sides are regarded by the rice soldier as a direct threat to his life—the more military action there is, the more likely that he may have to participate...

...Usually this consists in doing things that he knows will ultimately help the guerrillas...

...Love however, is never given in return for mere material benefits, not even in the most underdeveloped Asian countries...

...Foreign advisors are often flabbergasted when for the first time they see a whole military formation decide, by some mysterious and rapid process, not to obey a dangerous order...

...The rice soldier now sees other soldiers die...

...There is' always a voracious market for arms and supplies in a country beset by guerrillas, and the soldier who sells pilfered weapons or goods knows that what he has sold will almost certainly end up with the guerrillas...

...Even the least popular regimes in Asia find men to join their armies...

...The stronger the opposition becomes and the longer the fight lasts, the more likely is it that sizable numbers of regime's soldiers will be killed...

...In the following days Vietnamese troops streamed into Plei Mrong and the surrounding jungles...

...The armed forces of an Asian landlord regime contain very few anti-Communists eager to fight, even in the upper ranks...

...The thought of his own possible death in battle strikes him not merely as unfair but as absurd...

...If the guerrilla war becomes bitter and long—and that is almost inevitable in all such wars—the guerrillas, as they grow more skilled, will be able to extract a price in blood for every anti-guerrilla operation the regular forces undertake beyond their normal static defense and patrol duties...

...They are not soldiers in the usual sense, no matter how much they may look like soldiers and no matter how impressive they may be on parade...

...Although the rice soldier may understand that he is defending a regime which makes most of his countrymen miserable, he also knows that he himself is not quite so miserable...

...Since the guerrillas are known to operate in specific areas and since it is known that the civil population is helping the guerrillas, anyone in the affected areas can be labelled a guerrilla sympathizer...

...That point comes when the risks of death in battle be come large enough to overshadow all material benefits...

...It is bound up with all kinds of abstract ideas such as justice, expectations, and trust...

...A government supported by the bulk of its people, supported by soldiers who love it, would make short shrift of guerrillas...

...But since he sees his own officers and political leaders doing the same thing, he rarely suffers pangs of conscience...

...Ultimately, it may even be wholly political in origin and growth...

...Today I went back to the same field with another load and you know what I saw...

...The long-term hopelessness of many military actions against guerrillas does not at first affect army recruitment...

...Since the rice soldier has a job, a uniform, and a weapon which may be worth more on the black market than he earns in a year, he is much better off than a poor peasant or worker...

...Perhaps an American helicopter pilot had the explanation...

...and that is the presence of enough guerrillas operating against the regime to endanger his own life...

...Idealists are objects of contempt to the rice soldier, a complete materialist if ever there was one...

...But they made no contact with the guerrillas...

...For his bargain is a good one only when "his" army is not fighting heavily...

...Guerrilla war is based on the truism that with proper motivation and ideology, whether true or false, almost any man is capable of the most astonishing heroism...

...Rice soldiers are not willing to trade their lives for many more enemy lives, no matter how generous the ratio may be...

...In the face of enemy fire the rice soldier often shows an utter lack of aggressiveness...

...This is often an interest that the two sides have in common...

...Yesterday," he said, "I dropped a whole bunch of those Vietnamese troops into a field...

...Speed always upsets him, because it brings him face to face with risks before he has figured out ways of avoiding them...

...If ten soldiers are almost certain to die in an assault which would destroy hundreds of guerrillas, that assault may not be made because those ordered to make it will not want to be among its certain casualties...

...and he certainly didn't join to fight against desperate fanatics...

...The rice soldier hates helicopters or any other fast transport which, by propelling him suddenly into a guerrilla concentration and taking the guerrillas by surprise, force desperate battles that otherwise could have been avoided...

...The individual rice soldier may be content with the bargain he has managed to make during times of relative peace, but he is almost sure to change his mind when faced with a risk of losing his life...

...Rice soldiers have an intuitive understanding of the thoughts of their fellow soldiers...

...The rice soldier is without strong beliefs of any kind...

...Such a government could be destroyed only by pitched battles won by superior enemy forces...

...Going slowly gives him opportunities to dope out the situation to his own advantage...

...Only one thing can quickly change the psychology of the rice soldier from a satisfied fat-cat to a worried combatant...

...That is why a guerrilla force, however securely bagged it may be, can usually get away...

...In Southeast Asia anyone with an assured source of food and income already has a standard of living above that of the vast majority of his countrymen...

...The only answer is that he is risking his life for a job, a ration, a salary...

...Indiscriminate mil itary actions which cause the death of such people serves the rice soldier's career admirably...

...That the political results of such actions may be disastrous to the regime is no concern of his...

...To the rice soldier, his own side's casualties are not seen as comrades to be avenged but as unfortunates who lost their bargains...

...But the rice soldier joined the army for material benefits, not out of ideological or martial fervor...

...These men are the rice soldiers...

...Still, the regime hands out promotions and other rewards in proportion to the number of guerrillas destroyed, so that the same soldiers who have an interest in avoiding battle also have an interest in turning up with the dead bodies of enemies...