Friday, Sep. 17, 1965

Tears or Death?

A tragic but inevitable feature of the ground war in Viet Nam is that civilians are all too often caught up in the shooting. Time and again U.S. troops are fired upon from the huts of peasant families, from villages that the Viet Cong have commandeered. Should the response be a blast from every deadly weapon available? Or should the troops hold their fire for fear of hitting innocent civilians, and risk letting the Viet Cong escape?

Last spring, when the U.S. tried one alternative--harmless tear gases--an A.P. reporter latched onto the story, and from the hue and cry that followed, one might have thought that the scene was Ypres and the weapon was that deadly grey-green fog of 1915 called chlorine. In Washington, Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara rode out the storm, their protests that the gas was utterly harmless drowned in the fatuous worldwide din of indignation. While not publicly giving way, the U.S. tacitly decided that for the moment even tear gas was too hot to handle in Viet Nam.

The absurdity of such a concession to ill-informed public opinion was illustrated last week with the tale of Lieut. Colonel Leon Utter, 39, who was leading his Marine battalion in a search-and-clear operation on a steep hillside near the port of Qui Nhon, eastern terminus of vital Route 19 to the highlands, which was reopened in Operation Ramrod after months under Viet Cong control. Utter soon found the enemy: 20 fully armed Viet Cong troops who promptly took refuge in a nearby network of tunnels. It would have been easy enough for Utter and his men to wipe them out with grenades or incinerate them with flamethrowers. Trouble was, the V.C. had herded 390 women and children into the tunnel with them. So Utter chose the humane way, shoving into the tunnel mouth 48 canisters of CN, a mild tear gas that is briefly aggravating to eyes and nose, has no other effect whatsoever. Out streamed the Viet Cong, and the 390 captives into the hands of the marines.

Once again world headlines blared the story and Hanoi yelled that the U.S. was using "toxic gas." Utter found his decision to try gas again under investigation, even though tear gas has remained regular issue for all Marine units. Unless Washington orders otherwise, Lieut. Colonel Utter is likely to fare kindly at the hands of U.S. brass in Saigon. Privately, most of them think that he did the right thing under the circumstances--and that a reluctance to use tear gas is an unnecessary and even inhumane restriction in doing what is one of the most unpleasant and difficult jobs in the world.

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