Word: delta
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Founded in 1953 (eight years before the Peace Corps), l.V.S. currently counts 135 staffers in Viet Nam, stationed from Danang to the Delta, as well as 96 members in Laos. Of that number, 24 are girls and 25 are conscientious objectors for whom l.V.S. service takes the place of duty in the armed forces. Others are young men who-rejected by the armed forces-joined l.V.S. in order to serve in Viet Nam in some worthwhile capacity. With an average age of 241 and college backgrounds ranging from etymology to economics, the I.V.S.ers are do-gooders with a difference: though...
...tape and age-old Vietnamese traditions along the way. One I.V.S.er, 28-year-old Paul Lukitsch of Milwaukee, discovered a U.S. AID-provided wheat thresher that the Vietnamese, ignorant of its workings, had not even uncrated. After "liberating" the machine, Lukitsch modified it for rice harvesting in the Delta, and reduced the threshing time of 1,000 bundles of rice from two days to 2½ hours. "We now have an unbelievable list of farmers who want to use it," he says proudly...
Strength & Stamina. Despite firsthand exposure to Viet Cong terrorism, many I.V.S.ers retain their distaste for the war. "We're nothing more than sugar-coating for the genocide that's going on here," argues David Gitelson, 25, a U.C.L.A. graduate and ex-G.I. now stationed in the Delta. A lanky loner who lopes around in sandals and faded Levi's, Gitelson carries his worldly possessions with him in a wheat sack, is known to the Vietnamese as "my ngheo"-the poor American. U.S. officials consider him the most effective American of all the thousands involved in Delta...
...casualties, Rusk discovered that most were caused by the Viet Cong, who follow a deliberate policy of killing civilians. In a hospital in the Mekong Delta, Rusk came across a five-year-old girl who had lost both legs at the knees. The Viet Cong raided her village, and when they discovered that all the men had fled, flung grenades into houses where the women and chil dren were hiding. At another hospital, Rusk witnessed the arrival of 17 civilians who had been badly mauled when their bus ran over a Viet Cong land mine-one of the principal causes...
Before bombing commences, continued the Economist, the target is pinpointed by observers, who "reconnoiter the area for hours in slow-flying aircraft, often at great personal risk. If there is a possibility of hitting civilians, the whole thing is usually called off." In some areas of the Mekong Delta that have been declared "friendly," U.S. patrol boats are forbidden to return enemy fire for fear of hitting civilians. B-52 bombers, used only in full-scale open fighting, are electronically controlled and have a "remarkable" degree of accuracy. "The picture is reasonably clear," concluded the Economist. "Perhaps never before...