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To help the unlettered young bureaucrat or soldier, the Viet Cong have devised a catchy numbers indoctrination game. Thus there are the Three Firsts (first in combat, indoctrination and observing disciplines) and the Three Defenses (against spies, fire and accidents). Life is a series of the Five Togethers (eat, work, play, sleep and help each other); battle is the Four Quicks (advance, assault, clear the battlefield and withdraw quickly) and One Slow (prepare slowly). There are Three Strongs (attack, assault and pursue strongly), Three Ravages (seize, burn and destroy rice and houses), Five Uniformities (unified training, equipment, command, reorganization and organization) and the Five Main Skills (weapons firing, mine detonating, bayonet drill, grenade throwing and armed combat). Presumably the One Headache is peasants so illiterate that they cannot count.
Nothing so illustrates the inclusiveness of the Viet Cong organization as the ubiquitous tax collector. Everything grown in areas governed by the Viet Cong, everything manufactured within Viet Cong purlieus, every item that passes through its roads and waterways, is taxed. Peasants in marginal areas are often taxed by both sides. Merchants in cities under government control find it prudent to disgorge a portion of their profits to undercover V.C. taxmen, who audit their accounts and give them stamped receipts. Restaurant and nightclub owners in Saigon pay protection money. The harlot in bed with a battle-weary G.I. must turn over part of her wages of sin. Even the U.S. pays indirect monetary tribute to the enemy by hiring civilian truckers to transport aircraft fuel; the truckers in turn pay up at Delta roadblocks.
Only two years ago, the Viet Cong were doing a brisk business selling victory bonds redeemable after Saigon's defeat and pegged to the price of rice as a hedge against inflation. The bottom has long since dropped out of that market, but last year the V.C. tax collectors still gouged out enough revenue to pay a third of the war's cost, the rest being made up by North Viet Nam, with a major outside assist from Moscow and Peking. Like everything else the Viet Cong organize, their taxation system is premeditated and calibrated in the extreme.
Larger plantations are taxed an annual rate of $1.75 to $4.15 an acre, plus a 2%-4% sales tax, the precise levy in both instances based on the owner's nationality. French planters are charged the most, Chinese next and Vietnamese the lowest. A rice farmer may have to give up to half his crop after deducting his family's rations, but sons serving with the V.C. forces may be counted as an extra deduction, while sons in the government army mean a penalty tax. The Viet Cong also use taxes to legislate consumer morality and discourage peasant consumption of goods that good Communists frown on. Thus rates as high as 100% are levied on beer and cigarettes. The nylon that Vietnamese women prize for making the diaphanous national costume known as ao dais is often not