The Air Commandos: Preventive Medicine

In Bangkok's resplendent Temple of the Emerald Buddha last week, 1,500 soldiers of the Thai Black Panther Di vision worshiped before leaving for Viet Nam to become part of a Thai fighting force that will soon total 10,000 men. Addressing them, Prime Minister Thanom Kittikachorn made it clear that they were going off to fight for Thailand, which he believes is "the next victim" of Communism in Southeast Asia. "Even today," he said, "the Communists are infiltrating Thailand and increasing their subversive actions against our country." In fact, at least 2,000 guerrillas are busy spreading terror through Thailand's Northeast, the country's poorest region.

Mindful of how it became entangled in Viet Nam by small degrees, the U.S. is not anxious to involve itself in any major way in Thailand's attempts to put down the insurgency. Nonetheless, while Thai soldiers go off to Viet Nam, the U.S. has quietly mounted an effort to help Thailand fight the Communists in the north. It consists of a small and unique U.S. military force, the 606th Air Commando Squadron, whose 66 members wear no uniforms and carry no guns. Their mission is to help the Thai government win allegiance from Northeasterners by supplying needed services, including medical aid and instruction in digging wells or building bridges. TIME Correspondent Louis Kraar recently returned from Northeast Thailand, where he observed the Air Commandos in action. His report:

Monsoon rains have turned the roads to quagmires in the Northeast, but the Commandos press on, moving from village to village in Japanese-made Jeeps, or rented oxcarts if the going gets too heavy. A Thai official goes along to explain that "our government has asked these foreigners to help us." The medics give shots, dress wounds and treat minor diseases, including dysentery. Their long-term aim is to teach the Thais these skills and so to work them selves out of jobs.

The U.S. Air Force investment is modest: only $27,000 worth of medical supplies a month. But it is effective, since the program brings treatment to some 800,000 rural patients a year. By ensuring that the supplies are parceled out free of charge and always dealing through Thai officials, the Commandos are cementing relations between the Northeasterners and their own government in Bangkok.

Subtle Suggestion. The Commandos are strictly forbidden to engage in any combat operations, and so far none has been killed. But there have been some unnerving moments, When he first went to live in a village, Technical Sergeant Kermit H. Moffett, 30, was greeted by the sight of a schoolteacher hanging dead in a tree, a victim of Communist terrorism. But Moffett stayed on, providing medical help and living just as the Thais did. Communist propaganda teams twice came to the village to hold meetings, but both times they left Moffett alone. He had become too popular with the villagers to be attacked. At another village, Sergeant Jim Stensgard, 21, was told that a Communist agent was stirring up trouble at night. Forbidden to do anything about it himself, Stensgard merely observed that the villagers outnumbered the agent. Next morning the Thais grabbed the agent and clubbed him senseless with bamboo sticks.

Helping takes many forms. The Commandos are expert scroungers of discarded or unused material. They build schools from bomb crates, use jet-engine containers for water-storage tanks. They painted one school in six colors, using dribs and drabs begged, borrowed or swiped from various sources of supply. Equipped with a three-month crash course in Thai, the Commandos operate according to local custom. They live, eat, sleep and bathe the Thai way. Lieut. Ron Turner, for example, organized a string of seven villages into work crews to construct a 75-ft. dam for a fresh-water communal reservoir, even rigged up electric lights for night work to get the job finished faster. When, in the Thai manner, the volunteer workers jumped into the reservoir to celebrate the dam's completion, Turner and his Commando team stripped down and jumped in too.

Choice of Fate. Thai traditions sometimes make the Commandos' tasks more difficult. Often they cannot blast for fresh-water wells for fear of disturbing evil spirits in the ground. Many villagers do not grasp the concept of germs, are convinced that they are some sort of foreign superstition. Dental hygiene is virtually unknown; although thousands of toothbrushes have been parceled out, the Commandos provide no toothpaste because most Thais just throw away the brush when the paste is used up.

To get around bothersome traditions, though, the Commandos often manage to find unusual solutions. When the Buddhist Thais objected to a Commando plan to kill 3,000 stray dogs as part of a rabies-control program, the Commandos solved the problem Thai-style. The dogs tagged for elimination were presented with two pieces of meat, one poisoned, one unpoisoned; the animals thus could more or less determine their own fate.

The Commandos have proved popular in the Northeast. Grateful villagers have held festivals in their honor and given them Buddhist amulets for good fortune and protection. Sometimes, to test the Commandos, the villagers have offered them Thai girls, a pleasure often accepted by Thai officials. But the Commandos always declined. Their polite refusal has proved one more way of winning friends in the Northeast.

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