THE ' PACIFICATION ' OF PHU LOI

...Paul Sabin, the battalion's photographer, groaned as he fumbled with his combat gear in a dimly lighted tent...

...They were quick to reject such handouts in favor of beefsteak au jus or pound cake...

...For a picture of the physical results of the Twenty-sixth Infantry's operation in the area, here are some figures reported at the midpoint of our fifty-nine day pacification mission: Intelligence teams interrogated 1,327 villagers and found thirty-two army deserters, eleven Vietnamese with false identification, and 176 draft dodgers...

...But it was first necessary to phase in another infantry unit of comparable size which would assume the pacification "hold" on Phu Loi and guarantee its success by initiating similar security and good will operations...

...Gorman and his troops had startled the Vietnamese...

...a high-pitched Vietnamese voice blared through a loudspeaker...

...Several teen-agers approached some American troops who were eating C-Rations...

...While offering good-natured smiles, hot beans, aspirin, trombone solos, and other charitable handouts, the tall ones began work on their other objective—to separate the good peasants from the bad...

...A Catholic altar, extending almost all the way to the roof, was found in almost every hut...

...Hagley, "is tottering and on the verge of collapse," according to a dispatch from Saigon to The Christian Science Monitor by Beverly Deepe in mid-May...

...But fortunately for Gorman and the whole unit, he had a genius for tactics and a heavily armed battalion of more than 600 men...

...On one occasion a villager was taken aside as a suspect and directed to show his Vietnamese identification card...

...Gorman's men had surrounded the hamlet without disrupting a Communist song rally...

...The huts were practically identical...

...The mothers of the deserters became hysterical and wives wept bitterly as their husbands were taken away...

...Two months later—after what was considered by unit commanders to be the completion of a successful mission —it was time for the Twenty-sixth Infantry to return to its primary function as a fighting unit...

...The road ahead is long and painful—and no one can tell where it really leads...

...The card seemed in order...

...But even well-meant kindness must seem superficial to peasants who see alien invaders taking over their village...

...In less than an hour the entire battalion was in position around the hamlet...

...Initially, the Vietnamese reacted cautiously to the green-clad Americans...

...eleven roadblocks, one propaganda sign, and one pair of Ho Chi Minh sandals...

...One old woman stood by, watching almost without expression as her tiny hut was searched for hidden tunnels and enemy weapons...

...For starving people, they don't care much about the beans," Sabin said as he focused his camera on several children standing near a pile of discarded paper plates heaped with beans in tomato sauce...

...They found caches of enemy weapons—Russian and Chinese rifles, grenades, and ammunition...

...The bandsmen, wearing green jungle fatigues, kept their weapons a hand's reach away...

...The card was good...

...Providing the Vietnamese people with thimbles of security, along with entertainment and charitable handouts, may be the best way, at present, to prevent a Communist takeover of the South...

...Infantrymen also turned up three homemade grenades and seven rifle grenades, fifteen 60mm mortar rounds, four anti-tank mines, twenty black uniforms, one Thompson submachine gun, 120 rounds of .45 caliber ammunition, two 200-pound bags of rice, thirteen 105mm artillery rounds, and one carbine rifle...

...troops also apprehended ninety-two Vietcong suspects, captured twenty-three guerrillas, wounded two Vietcong, and killed two other V.C...

...In an open area near the center of the hamlet, Captain Rodney K. Hutson, the battalion surgeon, was setting up an improvised aid station from pieces of torn canvas...

...Faces quickly appeared everywhere...

...But the reaction was understandable...

...Babies, too young to walk, were crawling on the hardened earth floor, falling down on their bare bottoms...

...A Communist soldier, investigating the pile of bodies to make certain the GI's were dead, grabbed Gorman's right hand and cut off his fourth finger, then moved on...

...Several young and attractive popular female singers from Saigon were the highlight of the program...

...Elsewhere in the clearing a group of soldiers pitched large tents to shelter cooking equipment...

...When the man turned and fled, an excited GI wounded him with a rifle shot...

...By mid-afternoon the tropical heat had slowed down the carnival, and the villagers began returning to their bamboo dwellings...

...This village is surrounded by American troops...

...Load 'em...

...As members of the psychological warfare team shouted instructions to the peasants, other units entered the area...

...Superficially, he appeared ideal for his mission of securing popular support from the villagers...

...We need a new strategy of how to secure the countryside and how to win over the peasant...

...One of the first to arrive was a detachment of Vietnamese National Police, an agency similar to an American state highway patrol...

...At three o'clock in the morning, Gorman's battalion was awakened by the drone of helicopter engines warming up on a dusty, red, laterite air strip...

...THOMAS R. HAGLEY served for a year in South Vietnam as executive officer to an infantry rifle company in the First Infantry Division...

...shouted First Sergeant Manuel Montes from New Mexico...

...The intentions of good will toward the people were indeed genuine on the part of the American troops...

...Any one of Gorman's jungle carnivals in the Phu Loi area illustrates the tactics and great resources required for the military—or first phase —of pacification of a single village...

...Out along the perimeter of the hamlet, some of Gorman's troops were busy patrolling...

...Was his spirit otherwise...

...Not far from the aid station the First Infantry Division Band was tuning up for a concert...

...She was dressed in black pajamas, her feet were bare and her teeth badly decayed...

...Made of dried clay, similar to the primitive charcoal ovens still used by the Vietnamese, these shelters were dug approximately three feet into the ground and covered over with eighteen inches of hardened earth...

...Known now as RD (revolutionary development), the program has deteriorated so rapidly that, in the words of a Vietnamese officer, "It is too late to salvage it...

...Troops scrambled aboard the aircraft and shortly the first wave of fourteen helicopters lifted from the strip in a cloud of red dust...

...The Twenty-sixth's mission was to win control of the contested hamlets of Binh Chuan, Tan Phuoc Khanh, Hoa Nhut, Vinh Truong, and Binh Quoi from Communist guerrillas...

...For example, there was the carnival at a hamlet near Binh Quoi, which began one week in June...

...Vietcong...

...Under cover of darkness, platoon leaders moved their men in single file to pre-selected ambush sites...

...Vietnamese troops, together with Gorman's reconnaissance platoon, had begun a hut-to-hut search for hidden weapons and supplies...

...The sole survivor, Gorman stayed alive by crawling under the bodies of two dead comrades...

...As part of pacification operations in the Phu Loi area, troops conducted extensive patrolling each day and set deadly ambushes at night...

...A Vietnamese man in civilian clothes was shouting in circus barker fashion to attract those who needed medical aid...

...Like most Vietnamese women she was tiny and fragile-looking, no taller than five feet, &nd her waist must have been less than seventeen inches around...

...it remains questionable, to this observer, as to what degree such a method will affect the destiny of the primitive Vietnamese nation...

...Is it always possible to make an accurate distinction...

...When the novelty of the lunch meat, baked beans, bread, and grape juice wore off, the children looked for other kinds of entertainment...

...A legend accompanied him, apparently earned when he was a young lieutenant in the Korean War...

...First Infantry Division left its base camp at Phuoc Vinh, a village fifty miles north of Saigon, and skirting the fringes of War Zone D headed for the area of Phu Loi, a large village only thirty minutes driving time on the highway northwest from Saigon...

...Such sandals were not worn exclusively by the enemy, so the occupants of the hut were left alone and the search continued...

...Some excitement was caused by the discovery of a pair of Ho Chi Minh sandals in one of the huts...

...When the carnival came to a close, the mass of black pajamas seemed to bend submissively, like a field of bamboo in the wind...

...I'd feel better about going in during daylight...

...Their optimism was based on an increased degree of cooperation from the villagers who turned in the names of local guerrillas which were recorded on blacklists kept by some higher village authority...

...But no American or Vietnamese leader has even started to think about that yet...

...The cymbal-clashing and the blare of horns went on into the afternoon as the bands alternated, playing marches and national tunes...

...one could picture him winning the war single-handedly by bounding into a hamlet on a sleigh full of toys, spreading good will like Santa Claus...

...Roosters, pigs, and dogs had free run of the shelter, while several water buffalo lumbered around the outside grounds near the huts...

...Sergeant Rod...

...To the dismay of the troops, orders were issued not to fire...

...Seldom was there a hut without a family bomb shelter...

...As crowds of people gathered, the police began to screen the villagers, checking for identification papers and registration cards...

...Mothers and their children were rummaging through the discarded paper and food, digging out paper cups and plastic utensils...

...Surprisingly, the children could identify the less appealing meals, such as ham and chopped eggs, almost as well as the troops...

...It was the Vietnamese National Police Band, dressed in starched khaki uniforms with gleaming white pistol belts...

...On the Verge of Collapse' The Vietnam pacification program, described in these columns by Mr...

...Stateside starch was still holding the creases in my battalion commander's green fatigues when he, Lieutenant Colonel Paul F. Gorman, laid down the ground rules for the jungle carnival concept which was then a key feature of military "pacification" operations...

...the task of peddling good will in a Communist-contested area is no assignment for Santa Claus...

...people peered suspiciously through the doorways and windows of their little bamboo huts on either side of the dirt street...

...For example, the village of Khanhvan, The New York Times recently reported, has been pacified for the fifth time in seven years...

...the shouting and chanting apparently covered our advance...

...Unit commanders were also encouraged by informants whose reports led to the discoveries of weapons and supplies...

...A group of five policemen, dressed in khaki uniforms with shining badges, set up an interrogation point at the far end of the hamlet...

...When the rally finally ended about an hour later, the singers disappeared into the darkness...

...The sandals were made of sections of a rubber tire, laced with vines...

...It can still appear to work for a while— but it is only an illusion...

...Even when, by noontime, a certain degree of confidence was gained and children's fears turned to curiosity (and later to amusement), many parents still looked upon the "tall ones," as the troops were called, with suspicion...

...A graduate of West Point, Gorman joined the battalion immediately after it arrived at Phu Loi...

...The concept of pacification, later dubbed "rural construction," and more recently called "revolutionary development" by Premier Ky, has been treated by many politicians as if it were no more perilous than "urban renewal" in the United States...

...Next to Hutson, a civil affairs agency worker from Saigon opened bundles of clothing...

...When the trucks arrived at the air strip, the first sergeants divided their companies into helicopter groups of seven men...

...grenades, eighteen of them boobytrapped...

...Gorman's battalion had two major objectives—to win the hearts of the villagers and to find some Vietcong...

...Assemble outside your homes...

...Another band, about twenty yards off, was also warming up...

...The five hamlets, located only twenty-eight miles from Saigon, which were pacified by the Twenty-sixth Infantry, represent only a fraction of South Vietnam's 11,000 hamlets...

...Almost immediately, several draft dodgers and army deserters were apprehended...

...Almost instinctively the men, with their packs bouncing against their backs, hurried to the edges of the clearings to secure them for the next landing...

...The hamlet, centered in a clearing, was dotted with some thirty huts, each housing a family...

...These crude shelters were sparsely furnished, usually with a low wooden table used as a place to eat, to sleep, and to fold laundry...

...The price paid—in men, material, and effort—to secure just five villages makes it clear that it could take more than twenty years to pacify all of South Vietnam in the same manner...

...The troops were carried to pre-desig-nated landing zones in a perimeter around the hamlet...

...Trails led to other groups of primitive shelters off the dirt street...

...And what has been accomplished once may have to be done again and again...

...The wary infantrymen watched out for snipers, booby traps, and hidden tunnels...

...The incident went unnoticed by the crowds of villagers listening as the divisional band played Dixie...

...Outwardly, Gorman impressed observers as a wise, middle-aged, charitable man...

...The guerrillas returned after the first four attempts had been made to secure the village for the Saigon government...

...Children stayed close to parents and parents milled about with other parents...

...In less than ten seconds each craft was emptied in its respective zone...

...Three thousand hamlets are contested by the Vietcong, 3,500 are controlled by them, and 4,500 support the Saigon government, according to figures published in The New York Times...

...Some of the men were close enough to see the shadows cast by Vietcong gathered around the blazing camp fires...

...The Twenty-sixth Infantry's pacification operations required more than 1,000 American and Vietnamese troops, more than 700 ambush patrols, more than 500 search and clear operations by thirty-man teams, and more than 10,000 rounds of supporting artillery fire as well as jet fighter support, doctors, employes of civil affairs agencies from Saigon, Vietnamese National Police units, brass bands, and food and clothing handouts...

...Whether or not the legend was true, it expressed the rugged inner character of Gorman as a combat soldier...

...As our battalion heard it, Gorman and his infantry platoon were holding a strategic hill which was eventually overrun by the enemy...

...He is now a graduate student in journalism at Ohio University...

...But to American troops it is a dangerous and difficult method of eliminating Communists—but not necessarily Communism—from South Vietnam...

...The children were quiet and apparently afraid...

...I don't know about these night operations," Sabin said...

...By mid-morning, the tiny hamlet looked like a Kiwanis Club barbecue in a public park...

...At dawn the battalion's reconnaissance platoon and a Vietnamese psychological warfare team entered one end of the hamlet...

...As the effort progressed, unit commanders grew more and more optimistic about the American soldier's role in this type of operation...

...More than seventy GI's were wounded during the mission...

...As he left the tent, he slammed forward the bolt of his .45 pistol and headed for a line of trucks filled with troops feeling no more cheerful than he did...

...This is the grim assessment of experts closely involved in the crucial program, mostly South Vietnamese officials who are substantially more pessimistic than the American officialdom," the dispatch reported...

...Infantry troops discovered nine tunnel complexes, three base camps, thirty individual fighting positions, three twenty-pound bombs, seven bunkers, two bundles of punji stakes, twenty-two U.S...

...Her children stood by without uttering the usual "Okay...

...Each one consisted of an inside framework of bamboo, with walls and roof filled in by dried, interlaced palm fronds and a layer of rice straw thatched on top...

...Anyone who runs will be shot...

...The battalion's photographer was on his sixth roll of film by noontime...

...The people of the hamlet were too occupied to realize they were a captive audience in the most literal sense...

...Soon the place was alive with men, women, and children, milling about in curiosity and apprehension...

...or "Number One...

...He was plump and his fat cheeks were baked cherry-red by the tropical sun...