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I saw

where
the bombs
fell

The photo at the left shows the damage inflicted on a villager’s

house in Quang Binh.

““TT’S A GOOD THING it’s raining to-

night. The American planes won’t
be out. They don’t like flying in
bad Weather,” said our Vietnamese in-
terpreter as we sped along the high-
Way toward Nam-ha province, which
€xtends east from Hanoi to the Gulf
of Tonkin. We were on our first trip
into a bombed area in North Vietnam.

_ Nam-ta, with its population of
+800,000, had been heavily bombed,
ut U.S. planes had not been active

there in the last few days. We were ,
told th

ere had been 86 raids in the
Province, 169 targets had been bombed,
a houses had been destroyed and
n the largest city, Nan Dinh, 30 per-

Sons had been killed and 60 wounded,

SOme of whom died later.

; Darkness was just beginning to fall
a Hanoi when our camouflaged con-
°y, including a doctor, set out along

© highway. A few miles outside of
aoe all lights were put out and we
ce in darkness. We passed many
ae and small villages, all in dark-

About One and a half hours out of
noi we had our first look at the re-

Sults of U.S. bombing. We had our

first taste of what the land: which
ee of its great humanity and civi-
ation is doing to this small country

_ 4nd its people.

an Was pitch black and raining when

Convoy came to a stop and we

these Out. We found ourselves in

ee of a destroyed village. All
~>* US Were ruins.

Directly in front of us war a large,
storey concrete department store
age lif ad once been the centre of vil-
aks ve. It was flattened like a pan-
large Around us were huge craters as
Ustec’ any I had seen made by block-
Village in World. War II. This was the
8 of Phu Ly.

front Nov. 7 at 2 p.m. 21 U.S. bombers
s eee Seventh Fleet had come over
bustan Waves dropping 1!4-ton block-
Les a One hundred homes were de-
Wess » 10 persons were killed and 30
ren, €d, including women and child-

tf a the rain beat down on our faces
Stood there shocked by the sight.
“If only the people of the

'S spot at this moment there
© such a wave of indignation

By Maurice Rush

The writer of this article is the associate editor of the
Pacific Tribune. He visited North Vietnam at the end of 1965
as one of a three-member delegation of the Communist Party

of Canada and is currently touring British Columbia.

that those responsible for this crime
would be driven out of public office.”

As we were leaving this scene of

_ devastation to drive on to the city of

Nan Dinh a villager came up ‘to our
interpreter and said: “Be sure to tell
them that a 15-year old girl was swim-
ming in the river when the American
attack began. She was killed.”

There was no military target at Phu
Ly. It is the centre of a large rice-
producing area. There were no large
buildings except for the shopping
centre. Nearby was a bridge; but it is
inconceivable that the U.S. bombers,
in the middle of the afternoon, could
have mistaken the village centre for
the bridge.

The only conclusion one can come
to is that the village was deliberately
picked for destruction because of its
proximity to Hanoi and because Nov.
7 was the anniversary of the Russian
Socialist Revolution. The bombing was
likely aimed at teaching the people a
“lesson”. If that was the case it was
wanton and deliberate murder paral-

‘leled only by the Nazi bombing of

populated centres in World War II.

The evidence of psychological or
terror warfare is further seen in the
bombing of hospitals. We saw films
of such bombings before we left Hanoi,
including the bombing of a hospital
for leprosy cases.

Later, returning from a trip to Ha
Long Bay on the Gulf of Tonkin, we
saw -a 120-bed hospital at Uong-Bi
which had been bombed twice and de-
stroyed, even though it had a big red
cross on the roof and the North Viet-
namese government had identified it

as a hospital and had protested the ~

first bombing.

After leaving the destroyed village
of Phu Ly we journeyed to Nan Dinh,
near the Gulf of Tonkin, where the
largest textile mill in North Vietnam
is located. It was built by the Soviet
Union, along with apartments for the

workers and a beautiful kindergarten —

in the eentre of the housing area.

We arrived at the textile plant near
midnight to be greeted by young wor-
keys, men and women, who were on
the job. The mill had been bombed
four times and severely damaged. The
Workers had improvised lighting and
bamboo roofs and had many machines
back in operation.

We were impressed by their youth-
fulness and warm reception. They met
us aS we came in the main gate and
presented each of us with a ring made
from an alloy from the engine of a
U.S. bomber shot down during a raid.

We noticed that the Vietnamese are
organized and determined to carry on
production while fighting off the Amer-
ican air attacks. Wherever there was
a patch of open sky the workers had
dug slit trenches lined with cement.
In the mill we saw stacked rifles and
beside many work-benches a rifle or
autsmatic weapon and a camouflaged
helmet. This was true of the women
also.

After our visit to the mill we were
escorted to the workers’ apartments
which had also been severely damaged.
The kindergarten had been smashed;
but fortunately the children had been
evacuated earlier. I couldn’t contain a
bitter remark to my interpreter: “And
back home the U.S. says it is only
bombing military targets. What’s mili-
tary about a kindergarten and workers’
apartments?”

Before starting back to Hanoi we
met officials in Nan Dinh and heard
how the city had prepared itself to
meet the American attacks while en-
suring that production would go on.

Most industries have been decentra-
lized. The older people and children
have been evacuated from the target
areas. Air-raid shelters have been built
and the population organized and
trained to meet the bomb attacks. Up
to our visit 28 U.S. aircraft had been
shot down in the province.

The population took part in quickly

repairing air-raid damage, including
small irrigation dams which the bomb-
ers had destroyed in the countryside,
On the trip back to Hanoi we passed
many groups of people moving about
in the dark on the highway and beside
it making repairs to the road and fill-
ing craters left by bombs.

The Canadian delegation arrived
back in Hanoi in the middle of the
night. After a bite to eat, over which
we discussed the day’s events, my eyes
lit on the calendar. It was Dec. 4—my
50th birthday. I decided to say nothing
because the grim things we had seen
on that day hardly lent themselves to
any kind of celebration. But as I went

to bed I thought it was one birthday I. —

will remember as long as I live.

A few days later, on a trip to Hong-
Quang province, our tour had to be put
off for one day after three air-raid

- alarms. We were told that U.S. bomb-
’ ers had been in the vicinity but didn’t

bomb the are1 we were visiting.

Despite the bombings the people of
North Vietnam are carrying on. Pro-
duction is meeting the country’s needs,
combined with the help from all so-
cialist countries. Agricultural produc-
tion is rising, especially in the heavily
bombed provinces in the south. This is
an indication of how the people are —
responding to the U.S. attacks with
greater energy. They have brought in
a bumper crop of winter rice. In some
areas production was up 25 percent.

The. American bombings have not
done what Washington thought they
would. Instead of terrifying the people
and bringing the country to a stand-
still they have united. the people and
strengthened their determination to de-
feat the U.S. aggressor who is defying
all international Jaw with his criminal
bombardment of a country with which
he is not at war.

President Johnson and his advisors
have miscalculated as badly as Hitler
did when he thought his bombings of
Britain would force the British people
to seek peace on his terms. What hap-
pened to Britain then is happening in
North Vietnam now: the people have
become determined that the aggressor

shall be taught a lesson.

The bombing of North Vietnam will
go down as one of the blackest pages

‘in American history. To paraphrase

President Roosevelt: It’s an act that
will live in infamy.

February 18, 1966—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 5