50th Anniversary Issue — October 1, 1995

By Joe Schneider

It was 1965, during the massive buildupf the American forces in Vietnam.

Pacific Stars and Stripes staffers had arrived at a rambling villa in Saigon and were eager to cover the war.

But there was a snag: socks.

Missing socks.

Mismatched socks. Mangled socks. Forget the heat, bugs and dysentery. Screwed-up socks were lowering morale.

A launderer on one of Saigon's back streets pointed to a boiling cauldron and promised that whatever went in came out sparkling clean.

There would be no mismatched socks, he said. And he was right -- they vanished entirely.

Our salvation came in the form of a woman who arrived at the door one day with a letter of reference written in a graceful French script.

She was hired and soon turned chaos into order.

An old-style wringer washing maching arrived from Tokyo, along with an iron and a board. The house began to sparkle. Dirty clothes became crisp and clean -- and socks were matched.

Spirits lifted. What did it matter that the clean clothing was soon returned to the washing machine covered with mud and smelling of sweat?

We ignored the other gremlins -- a byzantine phone system, malfunctioning water pumps and air conditioners, blackouts and electrical wiring that must have been installed by the Marquis de Sade.

When routine operations reached a state of relative order, the bureau chief could head for the field after delegating a staffer to handle the 5 p.m. MAC-V briefings and other chores.

Getting from one place to another during the Vietnam War was sometimes a matter of wrangling and waiting. At other times, transportation literally dropped from the sky.

A call from an Army unit alerted us to a nearby battle.

Driving to an open field near Tan Son Nhut Air Base, I stopped and looked skyward. A small helicopter appeared over the horizon and landed. I climbed aboard and was off to the battle scene.

That short helicopter hop yielded a story in which tanks had been used to lure an enemy force into an ambush set up by troops of the 1st Infantry Division.

It worked.

There were flights to the Mekong Delta. After touching base with Army units, I boarded a Coast Guard cutter that spent the night chasing gunrunners on the Gulf of Siam.

Automobiles couldn't be used for long trips. The countryside wasn't secure. Travel was by helicopters, Caribous, C-123s, C-130s, venerable two-engine Gooney Birds and single-engine aircraft.

The war could never be conceived as a grand design of strategy and tactics -- there was no coherent overview.

This war had no defined front line. It wasn't a repeat of World War II.

In a brief interview with U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge in 1965, he summed it up in a nutshell: The military situation had improved dramatically with the buildup of U.S. troops, but the political situation in Vietnam was still unstable.

Our coverage focused on the human element -- the day-to-day grind of the men and women who went about their assigned duties.

The enemy came in many guises -- firing automatic weapons and mortars, hurling satchel charges and planting body-shattering mines. There was no safety in a hospital, airport terminal or snack bar -- they were all targets.

And the elements added to the misery. Humidity and heat were prevalent, and each terrain had its own variety of discomfort.

There were visits to aircraft carriers where Navy men worked long, grueling hours to keep a steady aerial pressure on the enemy.

In addition to the many strafing and bombing runs, lumbering aerial tankers, nicknamed "Whales,'' would hook up with jets whose fuel tanks had been ruptured by enemy fire and nurse them back to the safety of the floating airfield.

For each save, a tiny whale with an ailing fighter under its flipper was painted on the tanker's fuselage.

A quick ride to Bien Hoa provided stories on the operations of the U.S. Air Force. Farther north, we covered the operations of the U.S. Marines.

Operations were not limited to daylight.

In briefing a couple of reporters, a lieutenant described the objectives of the operation at hand: A battalion of U.S. soldiers would march during the night and encircle a major Viet Cong force.

At dawn, the trap would be sprung.

The lieutenant said there would be spectacular pyrotechnics. Blazing phosphorus grenades would explode in our midst, and tracers would rip overhead. He was the Cecil B. DeMille of briefing officers and seemed to enjoy making the reporters sweat on a cool night.

Smoking was prohibited on the march. Commands were whispered. Even the crunch of boots on the dirt road seemed muted as the troops made their way to the village.

The sounds of the night were many. Dogs barking. A lone artillery shell whistling through the sky. A Vietnamese chanting in the distance.

Dawn.

The village had been surrounded as planned. A few bursts of machinegun fire from a helicopter gunship and it was over. There were no fiery tracers or blazing grenades.

"They got one Viet Cong,'' a briefing officer said. "Probably stayed too long with his girlfriend and was trying to escape when we got here....''

The element of surprise obviously had been compromised.

Following the established procedures, the headman had been told that an American force would be moving on his village. Aside from the one Viet Cong who had overslept, there were no adult males left in the hamlet when the trap was sprung.

And there were reminders that armed conflict is ugly -- there's no haven for civilians in modern warfare. The Vietnam struggle was no exception.

A commander agonized over whether to drop shells near a village where the enemy was blocking the pursuit of a Communist force in the Central Highlands.

The results of a soul-wrenching decision were announced by the carummph, carummph of 105mm howitzers. Shells exploded near the cluster of thatched huts.

There was no joy in this operation. Sullen GIs went forward. The limp body of a young Vietnamese man was lying on the ground.

A grave was dug. Was the young man a combatant? You couldn't be certain in this war.

Who would ever know?

In the gravediggers' haste, the man's hand was left protruding from the ground.

A soldier pressed a cigarette between the dead fingers and moved on.

Women and children -- there were no adult males -- were huddled together, many sobbing, others with faces frozen with shock. The troops went among the villagers, offering food and water.

"What's the matter, haven't you ever seen anything like this before?'' asked veteran Associated Press photographer Henri Huet, who had covered countless operations.

"No,'' I replied.

This was different from the carnage of police beats in American cities. The violence that disrupted the lives of these people was impersonal -- they had gotten in the way of a war.

Huet's words were not taken as a reproach. It may have been his way of expressing outrage. He had seen similar scenes and would see them again and again.

The photographer would die in 1971 when the helicopter he was aboard was shot down in Laos.

In 1966, I left Vietnam for a two-year stint with European Stars and Stripes in Darmstadt, Germany.

It was during a stopover in Kentucky while returning to Pacific Stars and Stripes that another tragic piece was added to the understanding of war.

My wife's brother -- and my good friend -- came home from the Mekong Delta in a crate marked "not suitable for viewing.''

He was the point man for a unit of the 9th Infantry Division. He tripped an ambush and saved his comrades but paid with his life.

With military honors, he was laid to rest in Zachary Taylor Cemetery in Kentucky. As a child, he had played in the nearby forests with his brother and sister.