Monday, April 24, 1972
Viet National Cemetery Busy Place
BIEN HOA, Vietnam (AP) --There is a waiting line at the National Cemetery of South Vietnam.Buddhists on the right, Catholics on the left, officers in the middle. The dead wait patiently in a row of flag-draped coffins for burial on a bleak, dust-swept hillside 12 miles northeast of Saigon.Some lie for days awaiting relatives from distant towns. Others are buried more quickly because the government provides bus service for families from the capital. But their places are always filled by more victims of Hanoi"s current offensive.Mourners' wails compete with the busy tapping of carpenters' hammers. Caskets are made on the premises and the coffin makers are working overtime. Every hour army trucks bring more customers.Loudspeakers announce that coffins and grave sites are free. They offer tin caskets to bereaved families who want to move their dead to private plots and promise: "The government will take care of your children."But there is too much agony to listen to their cackle.There are seldom fewer than 30 coffins in the line, adorned with flowers, joss sticks and pictures of young men in camouflage fatigues and Rudolf Valentino poses. Many have crosses of gallantry pinned to their flags."It is easier to win a medal when you are dead," explained Capt. Uong Nghi, one of the cemetery administrators, "many dead, many medals.""Before the offensive we buried one or two people a day. Now we bury five to 10."The National Cemetery here is the country's main military burial ground, but it is not a true indicator of the casualties inflicted by invading North Vietnamese troops. Many South Vietnamese dead have been buried on the battlefields, others are in family plots or military cemeteries adjoining every major town and city.The Bien Hoa Cemetery was opened in 1968 and it now has more than 6,000 headstones. But there is plenty of land left and rows of vacant graves yawn expectantly beside the mounds of freshly turned earth.The ceremonies are quick.Tran Thanh Huong served the Saigon regime as a paratrooper for 10 months before he was killed on "bloody Highway 13." The government buried him in 10 minutes.An ancient black hearse raced the coffin to a small group of waiting relatives wrapped in mourning cloth. A sweat-soaked honor guard presented arms, a bugler played taps and Huong's mother wailed piteously as the coffin was lowered.Trucks rumbled nearby on the Saigon-Bien highway, a neighboring cement factory belched clouds of gray dust and distant artillery boomed its message of death.Before the grave diggers had time to cover the coffin the honor guard broke ranks to buy sticks of mung bean ice cream from a bicycle vendor. The bugler began practicing a jazz tune.Twenty minutes later the empty grave next to Huong was also occupied."Viet National Cemetery Busy Place", by Holger Jensen (AP), published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes on Monday, April 24, 1972 and reprinted from European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes.