Sunday, May 7, 1972
What Makes A Red Tick
SAIGON (UPI) --The "typical" North Vietnamese soldier does not exist any more than any other typical man.He is from the city and the country. He is happy or disgruntled about being sent to fight in South Vietnam. He fights well and hard for his country he also defects to the Saigon government.Official Hanoi speaks of "enthusiastic youths flocking to join the Army." But according to prisoners and defectors there may be as many potential draft-dodgers in North Vietnam as in the United States.Escape routes are not as handy. Young people are mobilized in the tightly-organized North Vietnamese society, serving in the Army, the government or industry.An example:Pham Van Loc, 18, was captured early in April near the Demilitarized Zone shortly after the beginning of the North Vietnamese offensive."I was mobilized six months ago with two of my classmates," he said. "Another six from our school went to become workers."Loc, however, is not typical -he was captured in his first battle.Nguyen Khac Soan, 35, combat veteran, was captured in the same fight by South Vietnamese troops. He was, in the American military term, "highly motivated.""The attack (over the DMZ) was to support the revolution in the south," he said. "It was not the final battle, but a great battle."The statement is usual from all North Vietnamese troops to whom Westerners have talked in the camps for prisoners or defectors, in North Vietnam itself or in the makeshift camps in which captured American or newsmen have been held in South Vietnam or Cambodia. North Vietnamese soldiers know why they are fighting.Defense Minister Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap has always stressed political indoctrination of his troops as well as the conventional military training.U.S. military officers believe that only intensive political training would make a North Vietnamese soldier chain himself to a machine gun in a tree or take part in the type of suicide commando force that broke into the U.S. Embassy grounds in Saigon"The only difference between North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese soldiers is that motivation," more than one American officer has commented. "The Communists know why they're fighting. The South Vietnamese don't."The North Vietnamese soldier is a main-force fighter, never a guerrilla.He is equipped with a Chinese-made AK47 assault rifle, which many military men believe is better than the American M16. He wears a green or khaki uniform, boots and a pith combat helmet. He wears rubber-soled canvas boots and in his pack carries several days' supply of food -rice in a plastic bag, some salt, a little fish sauce and, if he's lucky, some dried fish or pork.He knows it is very unlikely he will get mail from home. It is also improbable he will see his family before the war is over. He also knows -or rather believes because he has been told so often -that the war will end soon in the "liberation of South Vietnam.""What Makes a Red Tick", by Alan Dawson, published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes on Sunday, May 7, 1972 and reprinted from European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes.