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atest “Guards in cork helmets, with fixed bayonets, led
into the room a tall blond young man in coveralls. He
wanted to appear calm, but | was standing nearby and
saw that his hands were trembling.” The man (at right
in the photo) was Robert Shoemaker of the United
States Air Force, captured during a bombing raid over
North Vietnam.

20th Century barbarians

By A. TER-GRIGORIAN

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Ter-Grigorian, writer of this
. ' IS the Far-Eastern correspon-
’ Someta, the Soviet newspaper Kom-
a Pravda. The incidents
a5 €re were witnessed during
ra > the 17th Parallel in Vietnam

bling dens and brothels of Sai-
gon. By it Buddhist pilgrims had
trudged to their Mecca — Hue.
Now you neither walk nor drive
to Hue by it. Neither will it
bring “you to’ Saigon. The in-
visible sword? of. the demarca-
tion: line: clove the country. We
were on our way to the line of
cleavage, and as we neared it
our tension mounted.

We stopped at a crossing to
wait for a ferry, for not all the
rivers are bridged. Our escort
from the Democratic: Republic
of Vietnam press department
stepped out. He came back with
the information that we must

camouflage our cars. The drivers

covered the roofs of our Volgas
with banana leaves.

Soon after we came to Vinh.
Green and brown striped trucks
were rumbling . through _ its
night-wrapped streets. Near a
tiny bamboo hut was a dimly
illumined table piled with man-
gos, oranges and tins of sweets.

The war was somewhere near-
by. We came: upon it in Dong-
hoi on the next day, Feb. 11.
When the raucous ‘ wail of the
sirens died “out Jan~ Petranek
of Czech Radio pointed to the
sky:

“American bombers!”

The bombers were accom-
panied by fighter planes.

* «35 36, 37,” Pravda corres-
pondent Ivan Shchedrov count-
ed.

“Take cover. in the shelter,
take cover in the shelter,” the
Vietnam comrade responsible
for our safety wearily called to
us, though he had lost all hope
of our “cooperating” with him.

Large-calibre machine guns
chattered, the tiles of the neat
resort-type cottages shattered
with a tinkle. Anti-aircraft guns
blasted away.

We stood on the riverbank
and watched the modern bar-
barians, heedless of their god
and their oft-vaunted conscience,
dive down on fishing junks with
ragged sails and ignite them. On
the opposite bank houses flared
up one after the other.

At long last the first plane,
leaving a thick black trail of
smoke, zoomed down almost
vertically toward the mouth of
the river.

The raid lasted over two

hours. Afterwards“ we saw its”

results. We saw the pale faces
of wounded children, the sad

eyes of injured women, the.

blood-stained bandages on the
heads of young men.
e

The evening of the raid we
all gathered for an unofficial
press conference at the offices
of the Donghoi Administrative
Committee.

The small room was packed.
Among those present. were the
participants in that day’s battle,
anti-aircraft gun crews and

home guardsmen who had beaten
off the air raids on Feb. 7 and 8.

There were Tran Van Cuon,
an officer in a_ black-spotted
green cape tied at his neck; Le
Ngoc Le, chairman of a nearby
cooperative, a short man in a
black jacket, with a stern, intel-
lectual-looking face; Tran Thi
Ly, a very young girl, barefoot
and in black Turkish trousers,
with a string of grenades at her
belt, and others who had shot
down four planes.

Briefly, in military fashion,
they described the battle, how
the planes had appeared, how
their ammunition had given out,
how more had been _ brought
them. They spoke as of ordinary
things, as people accustomed to
and fed up with war, people
who had lived half their lives in
constant danger. They were
calm, terse, stern.

But suddenly their calmness
abandoned -them. Dozens of
clenched fists shook in the air.
A shout rose up.

Guards in cork helmets, with
fixed bayonets, led into the
room a tall blond young man
in coveralls. He stopped in the
doorway, his hands at his sides,
and his eyes flew around the
room. He wanted to appear
calm but I was standing nearby

and saw that his hands were.

trembling. He was tall, strong,
well fed. What harm had these
lean people with the fragile,
slender necks, these people who

had long lived under foreign
oppression and had at last won

freedom—what harm had these

people done him?

A few hours before this
American had probably been
sipping brandy in a Danang bar
or angling for a shot at.a pool
table. What was he. thinking of
then, what was he. thinking
now? Most likely, he was lull-
ing his conscience with the
thought that he had only acted
under orders.

Yes, he was doing just that.
Asked how he felt, knowing
that an infant had been killed
and several persons badly
wounded in the day’s air raid,
Robert Shoemaker, of the U.S.
Air Force, glibly answered:

“The raid was in retaliation
for the North’s actions against
the South.”

But it was apparent that he
didn’t really believe this.

How deceptive were appear-
ances, I told myself once again.
This sturdy pilot did not look
a bit like a murderer. And what

- a nonentity was this Shoemaker

in comparison with the human
material that went into the
making of geology student Do
Tieu Cuong, who fought at Dien
Bien Phu, and the chemist Tu
Quynh Giau, and the heroine
Tran’ Thi. Ly, who had been
born in the South and was
dreaming of returning there to
rebuild her native city.

April 23, 1965—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 7