Other Guns

Friday, Jul. 22, 1966
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The Philippines last week became the fourth nation to join South Viet Nam and the U.S. in the war against the Communists. President Ferdinand Marcos signed into law a bill dispatching 2,000 Philippine troops to South Viet Nam: an engineer battalion and an accompanying security battalion targeted for duty in a hazardous section along the Cambodian border. His signature was a reminder that the American and South Vietnamese troops do not fight alone.

From 100 canny Australian jungle warriors seeded as advisers through the northernmost I Corps, through the tough South Korean infantrymen and marines nearly 25,000 strong on the central coast, down to the 4,550 Australian "diggers" and New Zealand artillerymen near Saigon (see map), the other fighting allies are present and accounted for. If they are sometimes overlooked in the flow of dispatches, they are hardly ever by the Viet Cong. For each contingent has brought its own unique style and skills to the Viet Nam conflict.

Lead Poisoning. One recent night, South Korean 1st Lieut. Lee Young Woong looked into a peasant cottage as a woman and her two children were eating their evening rice. He noticed at once what a Westerner might easily have missed: there was too much rice for three people. Company was expected, he concluded. Lee and his squad of ten Koreans rounded up the villagers and placed them under guard in three houses. Then his men moved out to set up an ambush. Two hours later, three Viet Cong came to dinner—and died of lead poisoning.

That incident was one of 8,400 ambushes laid by the Koreans of the Tiger Division since they arrived in Viet Nam last November. Assigned to guard the port of Qui Nhon and open long stretches of Highway 1 and Highway 19, the Tigers have accomplished in eight months what eluded the French and Vietnamese for 20 years: securing the lush and prosperous coastal plain of Binh Dinh province. The Koreans have brought some 170,000 Vietnamese in Binh Dinh under government control, and together with the men of the Korean Blue Dragon Marine Brigade in Phu Yen, have killed 3,386 Viet Cong and captured 695 more while losing only 290 of their own.

Grass & Insecticide. To Westerners, the process sometimes seems as brutal as it is effective. Suspects are encouraged to talk by a rifle fired just past the ear from behind while they are sitting on the edge of an open grave, or by a swift, cheekbone-shattering flick of a Korean's bare hand. (Every Korean soldier from Commanding General Chae Myung Shin on down practices for 30 minutes each day tae kwon do, the Korean version of karate.) Once, when the mutilated body of a Korean soldier was found in a Viet Cong-sympathizing village, the Koreans tracked down a Viet Cong, skinned him and hung him up in the village. Not surprisingly, captured Viet Cong orders now stipulate that contact with the Koreans is to be avoided at all costs—unless a Viet Cong victory is 100% certain.