Rice & Rats

One day last July, Sergeant First Class Roque Matagulay, 31, a Guam-born U.S. military adviser with a Vietnamese detachment, ventured out of his compound near the coastal town of Phanthiet, 90 miles east of Saigon, on an off-duty hunting trip. Instead of game, Sergeant Matagulay ran into a band of Communist Viet Cong guerrillas, was held captive until his release last month. Last week, in his first press conference since he was freed, Matagulay depicted the spartan life and grim dedication of the Viet Cong.

Matagulay said that the Viet Cong moved freely over the countryside and that in the villages peasants freely offered rebels food and shelter. The typical menu for both prisoner and captors was rice, salt and fish oil. Rats were an occasional delicacy that brightened the diet--served both as rat soup and barbecued rodent. Though game was plentiful, the Reds never hunted. "They were afraid to use up ammunition hunting deer," said Matagulay.

For the first several months of his captivity, Matagulay was tied up and constantly reminded that he would be killed on the spot if he made the slightest effort to escape. He underwent no physical torture, instead was daily subjected to eight solid hours of political indoctrination and interrogation. Matagulay was forced to listen to the English-language broadcasts on Communist North Viet Nam's Radio Hanoi three times a day and was regularly tested on what they had to say about the world situation.

Obviously because Matagulay is a dark-skinned Guamanian, his interrogators harped on the plight of the Negroes in the U.S. South. Again and again, he refused to sign anti-American propaganda documents, but finally, wracked with malaria and with his weight down from 185 to 145, he signed four statements, "when I believed I was at the end of my physical endurance." The documents, which Matagulay later had to read aloud so that the Viet Cong could record them on tape, bitterly attacked South Viet Nam's President Ngo Dinh Diem and the U.S.'s support for his government.

Last month, to cheer Matagulay up, the Communists said that they were fixing him a special Christmas dinner. He never got it. On Christmas Eve the Reds held a release ceremony, invited 400 soldiers, peasants, women and children to witness a last act of generosity to their prisoner. Matagulay then was put on a bus and sent back to freedom.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.