Honors Course in the Jungle

At breakfast time on a jungle road in Viet Nam last week, Dwight Owen killed a Communist and saw dozens of Americans die. On patrol with a 1st Infantry Division search-and-destroy unit in the Iron Triangle 35 miles northwest of Saigon, the gangling (6 ft. 4 1/2 in.) 19-year-old was walking down a path munching his B rations when a Viet Cong .50-cal. machine gun opened fire. Then, from all four sides and above, more machine guns, grenade launchers and snipers' rifles poured lead into the detachment, felling two G.I.s instantly. From a thicket where he had taken cover, Owen saw a flicker in the dense jungle opposite. "Then it moved again," he recalls. "I fired six shots. No more movement."

There are healthier ways to take a sabbatical from Stanford University. But Dwight Hall Owen Jr., an inquiring, venturesome sophomore from Providence, R.I., who for kicks mined gold in Honduras when he was 18, decided last spring that he had to reach his own decisions about the war, the world and Dwight Hall Owen Jr. "I wanted to see the world while I'm still young and impressionable," he explains, "before prejudices have a chance to harden. I wanted to be on my own completely, for once in my life, and--I don't know--I guess I wanted to prove a kid could still do it."

Alms & the Man. This kid could Armed with $600 in traveler's checks and a beguiling blend of corn and con ("I'm a beggar seeking alms of knowledge, and people have to help me"), he flew to Europe, took a two-month motor-scooter tour of Britain and the Continent and parlayed a school first-aid course into a job as hospital attendant on a U.S. freighter leaving Genoa for Hong Kong. In Saigon, dauntless Dwight flashed a letter from the Providence Journal promising to consider publishing any dispatches he might send home--and was accredited as a full-fledged war correspondent. His first taste of enemy fire came during a Skyraider napalm attack on a Viet Cong stronghold in Zone D.

Next came a riverboat foray in the Mekong Delta ("We took some sniper fire"). After that, Owen got his chance to go out with the 1st Infantry in the "boonies" near Lai Khe. Save for Providence Journal stitched over his left shirt pocket, he was garbed--and armed --like every other foot slogger in the detachment.

Zapped Again. It was on the second day of the patrol that the unit got bush whacked. When the Communists opened fire, Owen struggled loose to form a defensive formation with half a dozen others. After firing a few rounds, his weapon jammed. "I'd never fired an M-14 before," he says. "I figured I'd better learn." Yanking out the blocked magazine, Owen replaced it and aimed at what looked like a moving tree. It spun sideways and fell. "Man, I was really praying then," he says. To stay alive? "Heck, no," he replies earnestly. "I was praying for a clear field of fire."

On its way out, despite heavy support from U.S. bombers, fighters and strafing helicopters, Owen's unit was zapped again--badly. Several dozen men died; more than a hundred were wounded. Viet Cong casualties were twice as high. When the patrol linked up with a forward unit, a captain picked "volunteers" to go back for wounded stragglers. One of the first, because of his size, was Dwight Owen, who protested feebly that he was a correspondent. "Well, son," said the captain, "you're a military professional now." Wearily shouldering up, Owen helped carry 30 wounded troopers "from the darkening jungle into the defensive perimeter.

"Here to Learn." That night, his 170th away from home, Dwight Owen spent in a moonlit foxhole half filled with water, surrounded by the death-black jungle. "I was thinking about the watches still ticking on the wrists of the dead," he recalls. "The guys with their heads blown off--and the guys back at the fraternities having their good times. I thought about mother and dad and a girl back home. And I thought about my country and my own people."

He may not see either for some time. The U.S. Operations Mission is processing his application for a twelve-month job as an assistant province representative. If he gets it, he will be the youngest in Viet Nam. Last week, on his way to a two-week training course with a tough Vietnamese Ranger outfit, Dwight Owen insisted: "I came here to learn." He admitted, nonetheless, that his honors course in the jungle has left "a sadness, a depth of sadness, going all the way through me. It won't ever go away."

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