Author Description

"Let me ask you something, Coburn. Some young man in the north says goodbye to his family, knowing he'll probably never see them again. Then he walks down the Ho Chi Minh trail carrying a couple of mortar rounds or B-40s with ten of his comrades. By the time he gets to this place, maybe eight of his friends are dead because of malaria or B-52s. This young man comes down here and sits on the river bank waiting for one of those patrol boats to go by. He sits there with dysentery and no food and finally he sees one of those boats and shoots off his B-40. And misses. The patrol boat calls in an air strike and kills him. And while he's dying, another ten men say goodbye to their family and march down the trail." "So what?" asked Coburn. "In the south they take a young man, feed him well, put him in good uniforms, give him boots and an M-16 and train him and pay him. And then he goes to war in a helicopter, jumps out and someone shoots at him. What's he do? He throws away his rifle, throws off his helmet and runs away. So, Coburn, who do you think will win this war?" The different reasons for participating in the Vietnam War between four major groups-the American army, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), the North Vietnamese Army (NVA), and the Viet Cong (VC)-could not be more stark. As much as one approaches it as a war like any other, its mirror opposite sees it more of what war is really about: the struggle between life and death with no compromise. There is no retreat or surrender for those fighting for North Vietnam. There are no weekend passes for R&R, no trips back home after a year, and no returns to base camp for a meal and a shower. There is only squatting hungry in the bush, waiting for the opportunity to kill or be killed-and that's it. These dualities feed off each other in ways far more significant than strategy and tactics can provide summation for. They impact human life at a visceral, horrifying level. And they are the nature of war. For Clark Cob