South Viet Nam: Other Guns

(2 of 2)

South Vietnamese peasants see another side of the Koreans. When refugees come back to a Korean-cleared village, they are likely to find their houses cleaned and repaired, the grass cut, the area sprayed with insecticide. Koreans scrupulously and sensitively follow Oriental custom in their dealings with village elders and the populace as a whole. Two Korean soldiers who raped a Vietnamese woman were summarily shot in front of their company.

Blood All the Way. The Australian (New Zealand's "Kiwi" contribution to the Australia-New Zealand Army Corps is a 150-man, six-gun, 105-mm. battery) approach to the tactics of the Viet Nam war was honed in jungle warfare against the Japanese in World War II and the Communists in Malaya. Their credo: avoid trails, avoid villages, avoid resupply; slide into the jungle like a snake and hide, then terrorize the enemy at will. "Fortunately, we've trained and equipped ourselves for such a war as this in Southeast Asia for years," says Brigadier O. D. Jackson, commander of the First Australian Task Force in Viet Nam. Whereas U.S. commanders resupply their units every other day in the field, the Aussies slide into "the deep green" prepared to go it alone for a week at a time—and manage to pack ten pounds less per man than the G.I.s.

The Aussie patience and tenacity is near legendary. One eleven-man patrol tracked a single Viet Cong sniper silently through dense jungle for 14 hours before it caught and killed him. In their 14-month stint in force in Viet Nam, the Aussies count 146 killed and 192 wounded Viet Cong, to 24 killed and 132 wounded Australians. The total of enemy casualties is probably far too low for the damage the Aussies have done, because of their own stiff accounting standards. No enemy dead is ever claimed unless an Aussie can walk up and put his foot on the body; no wounded counts unless he can be trailed 300 yards, with blood seen all the way. The Aussies allow no Vietnamese inside their compounds, an inhospitality justified, they feel, on security grounds. Going into the jungle, they rarely wear helmets, strip the insignia from their uniforms. The average Viet Cong, they snort, is really "no jungle fighter; he uses trails, paths and villages. We don't. But you have to go out into the jungle to trap him. That's when we meet him on our terms instead of his."