Columnists: Refreshing Viewpoint

Ann Landers? In Viet Nam? But there she was, getting the tour and interviewing General Westmoreland. Except for Westmoreland, however, Ann avoided the brass. She headed instead for the hospitals and spent her ten days in Viet Nam talking to the wounded. "I saw 2,100 boys and talked to every one of them," she says. "Since I've been back, I've made 305 long-distance calls to wives, parents and sweethearts of guys who gave me a telephone number and asked me to call someone back home. The trip was worth every minute of the 20,000 miles and those 18-hour days."

What was her viewpoint on the war? Refreshing. "I'm not a political analyst. I'm not a political columnist." Thinking it over last week after she returned to Chicago, Ann finally reached a decision on whether to write about the Viet Nam situation. She won't. "Not one word."