Drifting down the rivers from the hills come logs rigged with paper sails that bear Viet Cong propaganda messages to the U.S. Marines. More leaflets are strewn among the American dead on battlefields. All plug the same hard-sell theme: refuse to fight, desert to the Viet Cong. But lately, the Viet Cong are narrowing their sights. In an attempt to ride the upswing of racial disorder in the U.S., they are aiming their psychological offensive at the Negro fighting man. "Black G.I. in the U.S. Army!" exhorts one leaflet. "Twenty million of your fellow countrymen in the U.S.A. are being abused, oppressed, exploited, manhandled, murdered by racist authorities." Pleaded another leaflet: "You are committing the same ignominious crimes in South Viet Nam as the K.K.K. clique is perpetrating against your family at home."
Lyndon Bird. Radio Hanoi beams out greetings from Black Power Extremist Stokely Carmichael, repeating tapes that he recorded in North Viet Nam. "To hell with the white man," Carmichael tells the Negro. "It's his war. Let him fight it. The Viet Nam war is for the birds—Lady Bird, Lyndon Bird and all the other birds." Leaflets turned out by the Viet Cong are crude and peppered with misspellings and misstatements (Newark becomes Neward; South Bend, Southden; and Grand Rapids, Gerand Rapid). Though the leaflets show a growing sophistication, current American idiom often booby-traps the V.C.
Viet Cong ideologists rank Binh Van (subverting enemy troops) as one prong of a triple-lined war effort, accompanied by political and military action. "Direct propaganda at U.S. troops, especially draftees and colored soldiers," ordered a captured Viet Cong directive. But while Negroes are promised special treatment if they defect, other Viet Cong slander them, terrorizing villagers with tales of cannibalism by Negroes.
No Weak Links. There is overwhelming evidence that the V.C. barrage is backfiring badly. Black American soldiers are not flattered by such wooing. "It's a bunch of jibe," says Negro Platoon Sergeant John F. Foulks. "I read it—and forgot it." Other Negro soldiers get angry. "Where was all this brotherhood crap when my friends got killed?" asks SP4 Gerald Walker.
Nor have Negroes proved to be a weak link that the Viet Cong could hope to break. "The violence back home the V.C. write about is true," says Negro PFC Gregory Putnam, 20, a Detroiter from an East Side storm center of last summer's rioting. "But it has nothing to do with the war." None has ventured to seek Viet Cong help. The V.C. have not, in fact, won over a single American defector, while 27,178 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese defected last year. G.I.s flatly mistrust Viet Cong promises. "I've seen enough of their brutality," says Negro Medic John Crews, "to know that the V.C. draw no color lines in their killing or mutilating American soldiers—black or white." When it comes to standing up to Victor Charlie, there is no color difference among U.S. troops.