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Tell Of Life After Green Berets Lift
Them Out
RESCUED VIET TRIBE RIP RED "LIBERATORS"
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By DON TATE
Scripps-Howard Staff Writer TRUNG DUNG,
South, Vietnam - The North Vietnamese, who assert their "moral right" to
liberate the South and reunify the "fatherland," might get away with this
line in Paris and places conveniently far from the battlefield. But here in a Special Forces camp 128 Montagnard "liberated" eight years ago by the Communist say, "Please, not again." They have been liberated from their. 'liberators' in one of the boldest escape maneuvers of this war. These Montagnard, primitive people who live in loin-cloth and beads in the mountains of, Central South Vietiam, say the Viet Cong who came to their village, "took |
them away to be human pack animals to carry their guns, ammunition and supplies." They were used as servants, trail guides and whipping boys, to work corn and potato fields daily between 5 a.m. and, 7 a.m. before the American planes came, to dig 40 - foot deep tunnel complexes, to build base' camps, and to do other back breaking chores so the Viet Cong would be free to "liberate" others in the South. For eight years they were herded from place to place until settled in a triple-canopy jungle on the side of a 3000-foot mountain about 30 miles west of Nha Trang. Here they made corn fields and hacked a base camp out |
of the side of the mountain. The camp was invisible from the air. Big enough for 100 soldiers, it had tunnels so deep American planes would have to blow off the top half of the mountain to destroy them. As a reward, they were sometimes given the leftover corn and potatoes. They were always under guard, and if they did not play ball they were beaten. If they still did not knuckle down, their heads were cut off. Punishment at other times took the form of watching their children's throats slit. All this time the Viet Cong and political officers of the many North Vietnamese troops who came through assured the Montagnard that the Communists were protecting |
them from the American aggressors, who would "take them high up in the air in the birds with the whirling swords and drop them into the river." By this month, many of the Montagnards had been starved to death or worked to death. Others were so eaten up with worms, leprosy, malaria, malnutrition, body sores the size of oranges, tuberculosis and bone diseases that they were willing to take any risk to get away. Some had found Chieu Hoi (open arms) leaflets dropped by Allied planes, and one of them could read well enough to see the promise of something better than living in "liberation" with the Reds. |
Three of the Montagnard,
led by Mang Quang, plotted escape.
For two years Quang, the sturdiest and strongest willed of the group, had been re- stricted to working in the village. At night he was tied to a post under guard. About a week ago Mang Quang persuaded his Viet Cong guard to let him work with the others in the field. As soon as they were in the field, Quang and two others bolted and eluded their guards. Three days of working their way through the jungle brought them to a special forces outpost at My Lot, From there they were taken to (Cont'd on page 9, Column 4) |
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Special Forces - The Silent Professionals |
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