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Showing the Way. It is the U.S. Marines who are providing the best pilot model for a pacification program. No fewer than 10,000 marines stood guard recently while the peasants near Danang brought in their rice crop free of the Viet Cong—who are accustomed to seizing a large part of it for their own supplies. Navy doctors and corpsmen are treating more than 500 civilians a day in forward military Marine areas. To the peasants lined up for sick call, the marines hand out food, clothes, toys and soap (donated in 100-ton lots of slightly used bathtub bars by the Sheraton and Hilton hotel chains), on occasion have even fed the peasants' livestock and rebuilt their pens. They have built schools and paved over the long-unused Saigon-Hué railroad to make the only road in the Danang area that is passable during the monsoons. Result: for the first time in eleven years, peasants are getting their produce to the Danang market.
Recently in Phu Bai a Navy doctor paused in the midst of treating a long line of village children to wipe his brow and expostulated: "Dammit, if we could just get these people to wash their kids off with soap and water, half of the cases we're treating here today wouldn't be sick." A marine corporal near by listened and nodded. Next day five marines, four washtubs and a bag of towels pulled into Phu Bai in a Jeep, and an assembly line was soon set up. One by one the village's toddlers were dunked, scrubbed and rinsed (twice) and finally toweled off. By the time the job was done, the villagers had clearly concluded that it was the finest, funniest show ever staged in Phu Bai—and public health had taken one more small step forward in Viet Nam.
Meanwhile the marines, day in and day out, in methodical, grinding patrols against the Viet Cong, are killing an average 40 Viet Cong a week—at roughly the cost of one marine dead and five wounded a day. Typical was a night's work last week. After dusk a Marine platoon surrounded a hamlet in which V.C. had been reported hiding out, split into five squads and sat down to wait. No one spoke, no cigarettes were allowed, nor was mosquito repel lent, despite the stinging swarms—for a trained soldier can smell the chemical 50 yards away. Around 3 a.m. a drenching monsoon rain roared in from the northeast, but still not a marine moved. It lasted two hours. Finally the wan moon reappeared and picked out four men, its light gleaming from their weapons heading out of the village. The marines opened fire, a grenade exploded, and the leathernecks had one more kill and three wounded V.C. prisoners. "I hate this goddamned place like I never hated any place I've ever been before" growled a leathery Marine sergeant, 'but I'll tell you something else: I want to win here more than I ever did in two wars before."