Tuesday, February 2, 1988/The Battalion/Page 7
Photo courtesy of Terry Anderson
JSerry Anderson met a boy in a Hanoi park and helped the boy catch
phis lunch, an eel. Anderson said he met many starvinc Vietnamese
children.
ietnam
Iverl®
(Continued from page 1)
the North Vietnamese leader who
lead the Viet Cong forces.
I “Suprise, disbelief, then smiles
as the usual reactions when I iden-
lified myself,” Anderson said. He
aid he was suprised by the Vietnam-
se friendly welcome, especially
since about 1 million Vietnamese
ied in the war.
“I thought there might be an old
5illli r: ®ady who would spit on me and say,
|You killed my son,’ ” Anderson
aid. “But it never happened.”
Even in Hanoi, the new country’s
lcDaii®apital and former headquarters of
he North Vietnamese forces, he re
ceived a friendly welcome. During
he war, the Hanoi area sustained
|>ne of the most fierce bombing at-
acks of the war.
Anderson said the North Viet-
amese usually greeted him by say
ing, “The war is over. Let’s be
) Jriends.”
I “Most of them had never seen an
merican and they would stop and
jtare,” Anderson said. “I was proba-
ply the only blond American they
ad seen in years.”
In the south, he said, his welcome
vaseven friendlier. In Da Nang, one
aan told Anderson and Eder in a
ack room of his shop about his son
ivho left Vietnam in a boat and is
low a professional in Philadelphia.
As we left, the old man stood up,
owed, and said, ‘America No. I,’
nderson said.
n 1966, Anderson was a fire con
trol technician. He pulled the trigger
it 5-inch guns that shot 2-foot-long
hells with a range of 19 miles.
Anderson remembers his captain
leing so pleased at his shooting that
he captain once climbed to the sig-
lal bridge and ran to Anderson,
'hook his hand and said, “Nice shot,
ion! Nice shot!”
The captain was happy because
Anderson had fired a shell into a
ave that was reported to contain
Viet Cong and munitions.
“I had never seen that old, fat guy
un,” Anderson said. “Oh, he was so
happy,”
The cave was on a cliff a mile away
from Anderson, who was on a ship
rolling with the waves in the Gulf of
Tonkin.
“I adjusted my sights for my third
hot. Fired. And it just went screech-
tig into the cave," Anderson said.
And the God-awfulest enormous
amount of smoke belched out of the
ave. The whole cliff shook. Then I
obbed three more right in a row.
ight in the hole. It was a great clav
or the U.S.S. Basilone.”
Anderson recognizes the irony of
lis different roles in Vietnam. In
966, he went to shoot weapons, and
le never set foot on Vietnamese soil,
n 1987, he went to meet the people
nd to shoot pictures.
“I must have caused a tremendous
amount of damage during the war,”
Anderson said. “It was a technologi
cal war in which I never met the
enemy. It was amazing that these
people, with no technology, could
beat the sophisticated technological
war we used against them.”
While crawling through the dark,
hot and narrow Cu Ghi tunnels out
side of Saigon, Anderson learned
firsthand how the determination of
Vietnamese peasants beat the soph-
istiflcation of American experts.
“I tell you, I don’t see how people
could live down there for years on
end,” he said. “I was hot, sweaty and
had claustrophobia after 15 minutes
of crawling.”
The tunnels, which are hundreds
of miles long, were one of the opera-
tinal headquarters for the collapse of
South Vietnam in 1975. The tunnels
are an average of 4 feet tall and 3
feet wide.
The tunnels had cooking areas
that were about 10 feet by 10 feet.
Smoke would be diverted 30 to 40
feet from the tunnel to a bushy area,
where it would not be detected.
There were also bunks built into the
tunnel walls.
Anderson said there was a large
number of men that lived in the tun
nels during the day and would attack
American military installations dur
ing the night.
“The average today American
says it was an easy war and that we
should have gone over there and just
kicked some ass,” Anderson said.
“The point is, we didn’t know who
the enemy was or where they were.
That happened to my ship.”
The U.S.S. Basilone was fired
upon when it was protecting ships
traveling on the Saigon River.
“Il was about sunset when we
were fired upon,” Anderson said.
“We didn’t know what to do. Where
did that come from? You look out
there and there’s a huge jungle.
What do you do? So we just floated
down stream and waited.”
Anderson did, at times, see his
enemy killed. He remembers watch
ing, from his ship, a Vietnamese
man running for his life down a
beach while an American plane
chased him with machine gun fire.
“We all watched while this plane
mowed this human being down,” he
said. “And he just laid there in a
slump. Just dead. I had grown up on
John Wayne movies and I always
thought watching the enemy die in
war would be ‘Wow! This is it. We
are winning the war!’
“But there were half a dozen of us
young sailors on the signal bridge,
and none of us could look each other
in the face afterward. No one said a
thing. We all just turned away and
went our separate ways.”
At that time, Anderson said, he
realized there was nothing heroic
about war.
Bullock says
economy has
bottomed out
FORT WORTH (AP) — The
Texas economy has hit bottom and
may soon be bouncing back up,
according to State Comptroller Bob
Bullock.
In a recent report, Bullock said
signs of better economic times are
“solid and widespread” and that the
rebound should continue over the
next two years and surpass the na
tional rate of growth.
He attributes the expected recov
ery to the declining value of the dol
lar and high levels of defense spend
ing that are spurring growth in
manufacturing, petrochemicals,
electronics, aerospace and other in
dustries.
Sectors of the economy not ex
pected to share in the growth are fi
nance, insurance and real estate,
Bullock said.
Dallas club
creates airline
for smokers
DALLAS (AP) — Three Dallas
businessmen say smokers won’t be
treated as second-class citizens on a
charter airline that will let passen
gers light up despite a federal smok
ing ban during short flights.
The Great American Smoker’s
Club will initiate service from Dallas
Love Field on April 22, the day the
federal ban takes effect on flights of
less than two hours.
“We want to offer cigarette smok
ers a choice to continue their right to
smoke,” said Glenn Herndon, club
president. “To fly on a plane nowa
days, smokers are treated like sec
ond-class citizens and must sit on the
back rows.”
Group shows
film to honor
history month
By Barbette Foley
Reporter
peopl
showing of a film on desegregation
in Southern schools sponsored by
the Black Awareness Committee
Monday night in honor of Black His
tory Month.
The film titled “Eyes on the Prize:
Fighting Back” was the second of a
six film series which covers the time
period of 1957-1962. The film deals
with the psychological and sociologi
cal consequences of desegregation
on blacks and whites.
France Brown, chairman of BAG,
said this film was the first program
of many that the organization will be
presenting in February.
“I think that it is time that A&M
realizes and recognizes the great
achievements and experiences of the
Black American, and Black History
Month is the perfect opportunity to
educate an unfamiliar audience on
these experiences,” he said.
The film depicts the struggles of
the first blacks who had to deal with
the separate-but-equal law and later
the fight for desegregation in states
such as Mississippi and Arkansas.
It vividly shows the mobs that pro
tested the enrollment of the nine
black students at Central High in
Little Rock, Ark. in 1957.
The film also emphasized James
Meredith’s struggle to register at the
totally segregated University of Mis
sissippi in the 1960s.
During that ordeal, 35 marshals
were shot and two people were
killed.
Dr. Cedric Herring, a sociology
professor, was asked to facilitate the
discussion after the film.
Herring asked the audience seve
ral questions, including their opinion
of desegregation if blacks had to
confront it today.
Among the many responses, one
student said this was an unfair ques
tion because today the situation is to
tally different.
Herring voiced his opinion on the
separate-but-equal law after the
open discussion.
“Separate but equal is not inher
ently unequal,” Herring said. “But in
the American context it is (unequal)
because of the power structure in
America.
“All institutions of power are con
trolled by whites. Even if some insti
tutions are set up by blacks, there is
an invisible higher level of whites
controlling the institution.”
Brown, a junior speech commu
nications major, said it was an ac
complishment for blacks to have
gone from Black History Day to
Black History Month.
“We have already accomplished
one goal, which is to earn the respect
of black students as a legitimate pro
gramming organization sponsoring
quality programs enlightening the
entire community on the black expe
rience,” Brown said. “We must first
get the respect of our own before
getting respect from others.”
The
Economist
February 2,1988/Texas A&M University
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