A Question of Protection

Besides being short, I didn't haveany knowledge of the area. It wasn't worth maybe getting shot.

Short, in the vernacular of the G.I., is the happy state in which one has only a few more days or weeks to serve before shipping home. That was the status of the Air Cavalry soldier who explained last week his reasons for declaring that he would not go on patrol. In a sense, it is also the status of the entire 210,000-man force remaining in Viet Nam. Nobody wants to take risks, but particularly not a soldier who is short--as an incident at Fire Base Pace indicated.

Located alongside South Viet Nam's Route 22, Fire Base Pace was established for two long-range 175-mm. U.S. guns and two 8-in. howitzers to support Vietnamese army operations along the Cambodian border. The guns and the artillerymen who fire them need defensive support from infantry to keep North Vietnamese troops from getting close enough to use their mortars, bazookas and even small arms.

For four months after Pace was set up last May, the North Vietnamese caused no problems. Since then, however, they have stepped up operations, and the South Vietnamese troops assigned to provide security for Pace are not up to such duty. "We are not strong enough," a Vietnamese sergeant assigned to the base complained last week. "Everytime we move out, we get our asses kicked off."

Slap in the Face. The U.S. command has tried with only limited success to protect Pace and similar bases strung along the Cambodian border by means of B-52 raids and assaults by helicopter gunships. As a result, despite orders to keep casualties down, U.S. officers have been compelled to send Americans out on patrols to protect some bases themselves. Few G.I.s in Viet Nam these days are unaffected by the "I don't want to be the last man shot" syndrome. Thus, when such a patrol was ordered at Fire Base Pace last week, five 1st Air Cav G.I.s took advantage of the presence of a visiting freelance newsman, Richard Boyle, to announce that they did not intend to go. They did not actually disobey a direct order, however, and when they were given such a direct command next day they did go on patrol.

For U.S. commanders, bases like Pace are a quandary. "If the guns are pulled out," said one artillery officer, "it will be the same as a slap in the face to the Vietnamese. We will be saying to them that we don't trust them to protect our firebases." At the same time, ARVN must learn to defend such installations, which, after all, are there to support the Vietnamese. Unless they do, a U.S. general said last week, "our men are going to be more and more involved in securing fewer and fewer bases."

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