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Last week Ayres spent most of his time transporting gasoline from air-base to airbase for use by planes at tacking the Viet Cong. It was not a very glamorous assignment, but it was essential. Says Ayres: "Every day we add something to our conduct of this war, and it's finally beginning to pay off. If we're just not pulled off, we're going to win this. We can bring more power to bear than any other nation on earth, and thank heavens we're finally starting to use it."
The Commander in Chief
In that statement, Ayres certainly spoke for the vast majority of American fighting men in Viet Nam — for Risner and Rogers, for Skunk Hunter Hunt and for Mac the Fac, for Niedringhaus and Necaise, for Dodson and Bradley and McNeil.
It has been a long, ugly war, and it will undoubtedly get longer and uglier. But the increased use of American strength has begun to pay off. Communist powers have retaliated mostly with shrieks of anger: "Moscow last week threatened, not for the first time, to permit "volunteers" to go to South Viet Nam if the U.S. continues its "aggression." There is aerial reconnaissance evidence that a site is being set up near Hanoi for Russian-made SAM II antiaircraft missiles.
But at the same time, the work being done by the American combatants, given a greater but still limited amount of combat leeway, is having its intended effect: it is hiking the price of aggression to the point where Hanoi and Peking obviously are beginning to wonder whether it is worth the cost. Last week even a left-wing French journalist, recently a visitor in North Viet Nam, reported that the Hanoi government was alarmed and astonished by the American stand, that it might be starting to look for a way out of continuing a more and more costly conflict (see THE WORLD). Keeping up the pressure, the U.S. made plans for an even greater expansion of its naval forces in the area, while top-level U.S. military officials prepared to fly to Honolulu at week's end for a conference on Far Eastern strategy.
And the American combatant in Viet Nam could certainly find encouragement in the words of his Commander in Chief. Last weekend President Johnson, even while announcing that the "window to peace is still open," vowed once more that unless and until South Viet Nam's independence and sovereignty are assured, there "is no human power capable of forcing us from Viet Nam. We will remain as long as necessary, with the might required, whatever the risk and whatever the cost."
That is about all Risner and his fellow fighting men could or would ask for.