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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 13, 1965)
disgruntled North Vietnamese Officer Defects To South Editor’s Note — Reporters in Viet Nam dom get to interview a Viet Cong defector ’ore he is handed on to higher authorities tflj,; intelligence debriefings. Hugh Mulligan, j n g j ilting for stories near the Cambodian border, f ()r 3i|’ked for nearly an hour with a North Viet- or 2(j nese officer. By HUGH A. MULLIGAN IIA NGHIA, South Viet Nam <A>) _ Dang ushin n Trong, a Viet Cong second lieutenant, ne out yards, ... d with fo,,: of the jungles on a steaming hot a few dried beans clutched in his Joe For him the war was over. He had had it. Lt. Trong had been walking for three An infiltrator from isive (•; assist) pl ay nths and four days. jth Viet Nam, he left a staging area above > 17th Parallel with a platoon of 28 men. y 18 were left. Ten had died in the past ikj four of starvation. ®hat in statistical form was Lt. Trong’s ry. How much he held back or how much invented can only be ascertained by trained dligence teams. Trong said his orders were to get his men ’ 1 ione D, a vast jungle area 100 miles wide IpO miles deep. Government troops have etrated only it fringes. The Viet Cong suspected to be staging a massive troop dup there with fresh units infiltrated vestlfl — from the North. But Trong, a North Viet namese regular, never got there. Instead, he slipped away from his men in the dense jungles of Quang Due Province, somehow made his way to Route 14, walked into the nearest Montagnard village, and gave himself up. He was given some beer and rice, which immediately made him sick, and was treated kindly by the raggedly uniformed popular force guards who man sandbagged outposts in the little hamlet. The Montagnards passed Trong onto Gia Nghia, the province capital, where again he was treated kindly and taken to the officers club for beer and rice, while waiting to be shipped on to corps headquarters at Pleiku for extensive questioning. Although he never heard of the expres sion, Trong was treated as a “chieu hoi” — received with open arms, which is what the program means in Vietnamese. The govern ment’s chieu hoi is designed to encourage defectors. When he surrendered Trong had on the traditional black pajamas of the Viet Cong fighter. In the compound at Gia Nghia, where he chatted amiably through an interpreter, he was dressed in garrison fatigues which he had carried in his rucksack. His captors had laundered them for him. Trong had lost so much weight that the fatigue uniform hung loosely. His cheeks were deeply recessed, his eyes dull and hollow looking and his arms thin and covered with leech bites. His sandals had been worn down at least a quarter of an inch. Trong was hungry and tired and dis enchanted. He said he had been led to be lieve at least four-fifths of the people of South Viet Nam were friendly to the Communist cause. But he found himself walking for weeks without being allowed to talk with anyone, friendly or unfriendly. Some observers of the war doubt there is such a thing as the so-called Ho Chi Minh Trial, the series of trails through Laos and Cambodia for infiltrating men and supplies into South Viet Nam. Trong had never heard it called by that name, but he said he crossed the border into Laos three miles above the 17th Parallel, walked south through Laos and Cambodia, then crossed into South Viet Nam in Darlac Province. There his real troubles began. His 28- man platoon was part of a force of more than 400 being infiltrated at that time, he said. He never saw any of the others, be cause each platoon moves separately through the jungles, and is passed from station to station. The stations, Trong said, were always two days apart. Each station knew where the unit was heading next, and so directed them, but never knew where they came from. The lieutenant found such security procedures strange in a country where he had been led to believe the Communist were overwhelm ingly popular. Air Force and Navy bombers have been pounding the jungles with air strikes for months to prevent Mass Communist infiltra tions. Trong never saw or heard an air strike during his three months in the jungles, but he knew they must be awesome because people operating the jungle stations spoke of them in terrifying terms. The jungles abound in fresh fruits and wild edible plants, but the lieutenant’s pla toon found themselves slowly starving to death. After a lifetime of eating rice, the jungle food made them sick. Malaria and dysentery killed six of his men. Trong used to hoard his few handfuls of beans and rice to keep his men from try ing to jump him and steal his fast dwindling supplies. The few beans he had when he walked out on Route 14 were all the food he had left. Like the others he dared not pluck a banana or a mango from a tree. The platoon was under orders never to fight. Their assignment was to get to Zone D and avoid contact with the enemy before getting there. They never dared shoot a deer or kill a lizard or snake to eat, lest government forces find their campfire or discover a carcass. The lieutenant had gone north to join the Communist cause after the armistice with the French in 1954, but now he was 32, wiser and weary of war. He spoke in an abstract way, as if it no longer concerned him, about the island of Hainan in the Gulf of Tonkin. He had been told that 200,000 Chinese troops were waiting there to join the war. No one had told him that the U. S. 7th Fleet was in the gulf waiting for that possibility. He spoke of a Hanoi factory where ma chine guns and mortars were stamped with Chinese markings as they came off the as sembly line, so that people in the South would get the idea that China was supporting the war in a big way. Finally, he spoke of the jungles where his friends had died and his cause had vanished, and he said he never wanted to see those dense rain forests again. itroleii: openin; 'rude tv loymet ild, Ci re whi: Che Battalion rit y- Mu me 61 COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1965 Number 214 ater, Water verywhere, one For City Icr a^OOKINGS, Ore. (A 3 ) _ re was water, water every- re around this coastal town 1,000 Tuesday except in the | of the Brookings Water Co. nd city councilmen were so they decided to try to buy I company, which has supplied town with only a trickle I e Saturday. ^Btfiere is plenty of water in the Pacific Ocean and in riv- and wells but the supplying pany’s reservoir is dry from than normal rainfall. And | the emergency supply in Chetco River was tapped, company’s lines failed. ihools were closed. So were mrants, motels, taverns and r businesses. p one was going thirsty. But dents were busy borrowing sr from a lucky few with s, or hauling it from the f and then boiling it. the water company promised /ater at noon. We still have 2,” fumed Mayor Bruce ly. t‘s an engineering problem, we need someone who knows it to do. We’re told the water pany’s line will take about founds and then it blows.” Manly. enry Kerr, a council mem- was named to head a com- ee to negotiate for purchase he water company, or take i steps toward solving the Jem. Great Issues Presents U.S. Consul Tonight Dr. S. R. Gammon III, 1946 Texas A&M graduate and U. S. consul general at Asmara, Ethi opia, will give a Great Issue Discussion Series talk at 8 p.m. tonight. The graduate of Stephen F. Austin High School in Bryan will give his talk in the Assembly Room of the Memorial Student Center. Dr. M. T. Harrington, A&M’s director of foreign programs, urged a large attendance to hear Gammon, who is here visiting his parents, Dr. and Mrs. S. R. Gammon. The elder Gammon is former head of the Department of History and Government at Texas A&M. After graduation from high school, Gammon began United Noted Scientist Joins Faculty A&M CONSOLIDATED TWIRLERS Twirlers for the A&M Consolidated High Drum Major Kay Callahan, Barbie Jones School Band include, from left, Carol Whit- and Rita TheBerge. ing, head twirler, Wanda Marquart, Head Director Praises Navy Sealab Project LA JOLLA, Calif. <A>) _ The director of the Navy’s Sealab 2 underwater research project, summarizing its achievements, said Tuesday: “We obtained our key goals. We proved that men can live in ocean depths without physical harm while they carry out work assigned them.” Sealab 2 is an underwater lab oratory 205 feet deep off the Southern California coast. The third of three diver teams who spent 15 days each living and working there told about it at a news conference Tuesday morn ing. Each said it was the thrill of a lifetime. Capt. L. B. Melson, project di rector, who visited the lab but wasn’t a team member, said: “We don’t really know yet all that we have learned. It will take a long time to study and analyze information.” Undersea divers traditionally have been able to work for short periods in shallow depths, de scending quickly and rising slow ly to avoid the dread water pres sure affliction, bends. The Sealab series is aimed at finding ways to permit divers to stay in depths for long periods —days or weeks—and perform useful work, such as salvage, con struction, research. The last team came up Sunday. All but one left a decompression chamber Monday. The team com mander, Robert Sheats, a master chief torpedoman and veteran diver, suffered from bends and didn’t get out until Tuesday morning. He wasn’t at the news conference. Sheats, 50, required an extra- long stay in the decompression chamber to remove helium gases that had built up in his body tis sue due to water pressure. But a Navy spokesman said he was in good condition. In all, 30 aquanauts spent a to tal of 45 days in the 12x58-foot, steel Sealab 2. The project be gan Aug. 26. An internationally renown oceanographer, Dr. Luis R. A. Capurro, of Argentina has joined the Texas A&M Department of Oceanography as a research sci entist. Capurro is president of the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research, an international or ganization with representatives from 36 nations. Listed in Who’s Who in Argen tina, Capurro was recently ap pointed to the Upper Mantle Project of the International Council of Scientific Unions. With other scientists, he will stu dy the first 1,000 kilometers of the earth’s crust. He will attend an Oct. 28-30 meeting of SCOR in Marsailles, France, and address the In tergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, a division of UNES CO, Nov. 2-12 in Paris. Capurro is also president of the National Committee o n Oceanography, vice president of the Intergovernmental Commis sion on Oceanography, a member of the Pan American Institute of Geography and History, Amer ican Geophysical Union, Interna tional Union of Geodesy and Geo physics, International Council of Scientific Unions, and a charter member of the special commit tee on oceanic research of ICSU. Since 1961, Capurro has been working in physical oceano graphic and marine biology pro jects in the Southwest Atlantic and Antarctic regions for the Argentine Navy, in which he is captain. The native of Buenos Aires earned a doctor of science degree at the University of Buenos Aires, plus an M.S. degree from the University of California’s Scripps Institution of Oceano graphy. States Army service and later returned to A&M where he earn ed his bachelor’s degree. He attended Princeton University and was awarded a master’s de gree in 1948. From 1949-50 he was Interna tional Rotary Foundation Fellow at the University of London. During the Korean War from 1950-52, he served overseas as a captain in the Army. He earned a Ph.D. from Princeton in 1953. Prior to entering the For eign Service in 1954 he served as an insructor at Emory Uni versity in Georgia. Gammon was a foreign affairs aide to Vice President Johnson for two years. The free public program is un der joint sponsorship of the Of fice of International Programs and the Great Issues Discussion Group. Grad Record Exam Set For Dec. 10-11 The Graduate Record Examin ations (Institutional Testing Pro gram) will be administered on Dec. 10-11 to all seniors sche duled to graduate in Jan., 1966. The Aptitude Test will be given on Dec. 10, and the Advanced Test Dec. 11. Students may register for the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) at the Counseling and Testing Center in the Academic Building, Room 107, after filing for the degree in the Office of the Registrar and after paying the fee for graduation in the Fiscal office. ggie Sweetheart Cheri Holland: Girl Of Varied Interests, Talents , ’v; : ■ '(/ BEAUTY QUEEN v Aggie Sweetheart was a queen also in high school. ! A&M Consolidated graduate was homecoming queen, it representative girl and a Miss Teenage America of ■statio 11 iston semifinalist during her senior year at the College ion high school. KINDERGARTEN TWIRLER Cheri had ambitions of being a majorette way back in kindergarten. She re alized this goal, serving as a twirler with the A&M Con solidated High School band. ANIMAL LOVER All her life, Cheri loved ani mals. Here, at age 12, she holds her pet cat Daisy which she still has. Dogs have also been a favorite around the Holland house. TALENTED SINGER Cheri is also fond of music—and very tal- appeared in campus hootenanies and were ented at it. In high school she sang with the guest performers for the Cotton Ball Pag- Trezettes which included Diana Weirus, left, eant in 1964. Cheri is a voice major at TWU. and Peggy Breazeale. The group has