On the Street Without Joy

Punji sticks bloomed like lethal lotus on every side, and bunkers by the dozen thrust from the sand dunes as the Marine company moved through the brush 14 miles northwest of Hue. The territory was familiar ground to the one civilian with the Marines: stout, cheerful Bernard Fall, who, by his books and visits to the country, had made himself the best-known international commentator on Viet Nam.

Fall had visited this barren real estate 14 years earlier and used its nickname as the title of a book, The Street Without Joy, a chronicle of the French battle against the Viet Minh. Now a professor of government at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Fall was back, sweat-stained and bearded, to observe the perilous Street at close range once more.

Despite the obvious evidences of Viet Cong in the area, Fall was relaxed and in good humor. He even joked about the danger. "The dean of Howard told me to be careful. He said it would sound like hell if they had to name a building Fall Hall." As the patrol inched toward a helicopter pickup point, the Marines fanned out in a protective arc. Fall was walking slowly along the edge of a dirt road talking with a combat photographer when his boot came down in a high clump of grass. The Marines saw his body lift into the air even before they heard the explosion. Though a Marine patrol had passed safely through the area only seconds before, Fall's boot had come upon a buried land mine left by the Viet Cong. Badly maimed by shrapnel, Fall sank to the ground, was dead within two minutes. The photographer died with him.

Personal Mission. Fall was the seventh correspondent to be killed in action in Viet Nam (another 30 have been wounded). A French citizen born in Vienna in 1926, he was fighting in the anti-Nazi underground by the time he was 16, first went to Viet Nam in 1953 to record the death struggle of the French army. He became fascinated by Viet Nam, and turned the task of understanding and explaining the agony, hopes, failures and confusion of the torn country into a personal mission. Armed with master's and doctorate degrees from the University of Syracuse, he became at once a journalist, academician, lecturer and pundit.

Fall built up an extraordinary store of knowledge and a remarkable string of sources on seven working trips to Viet Nam, including a personal interview with Ho Chi Minh on the subject of the war. From his experiences he turned out not only Street Without Joy, a military classic, but his definitive Two Viet Nams and an account of the French defeat at Dienbienphu, Hell in a Very Small Place (TIME, Feb. 10). Two months ago, Fall made a return trip to South Viet Nam on a Guggenheim fellowship for a year's study of the psychology and tactics of the Viet Cong. Just two weeks ago, his American wife and three daughters flew to Hong Kong to join him.

Frequent Critic. A provocative commentator who loved to argue his viewpoints--and sometimes irritated others by pushing them too aggressively--Fall was respected for his courage and knowledge even by those who disagreed with him. Established in the front rank of Viet Nam experts, he was heard--if not always heeded--by official Washington, and frequently lectured at the National War College. A difficult and sometimes irascible man, he could not abide experts who did not do their homework, or those who saw the complicated struggle in black and white. He disdained anyone who pontificated about the war without getting to see, as he had so often, "the real, bleeding Viet Nam."

He was a frequent critic of aspects of

American policy in Viet Nam, but he never allowed himself to harden into a fixed position. He at first too strongly equated the American and French experiences in Viet Nam, which led him to be pessimistic about U.S. chances; but in 1965, after a trip to Viet Nam and a look at the massive military buildup going on, he changed his mind and agreed with other U.S. correspondents that the war could not be lost. He also changed his view about the autonomous nature of the Viet Cong and conceded that they depended on the Hanoi government for support, a point he made clear in a memorandum to President Johnson. But he maintained to the last his conviction that the price of a U.S. victory in Viet Nam was not commensurate with what victory would achieve. Part of that price, as it turned out, was his own life.

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