The Hero

The greatest Communist folk hero to emerge from the Viet Nam war is a skinny teen-ager named Nguyen Van Be, who left his home in the Mekong Delta to join the Viet Cong. Van Be's death is recorded in poem, song and story throughout North Viet Nam and among the Viet Cong. Prompted by Hanoi's radio and newspapers, North Vietnamese schoolchildren compare his deeds to "a thousand thunderbolts." His picture, taken when he was a guerrilla, has become a pinup among the Viet Cong, who name squads after him and hold periods of silent meditation to gain strength from his example. The Viet Cong have awarded him a posthumous decoration for "indomitable loyalty resoluteness and sublime bravery," and declared that he "has shaken an entire region of the country and terrorized the enemies." Earlier this year, his deeds were celebrated at a gathering in Hanoi of an organization called, in the best Communist fashion, "The Anti-U.S. National Salvation Heroes and Emulation Combatants Congress."

Just what were the deeds that have made Nguyen Van Be such a hero? As the Communists tell it, he was crossing a canal in the upper delta one day last May in a sampan, together with eleven Viet Cong companions and a heavy load of ammunition, when the sampan was attacked by a squadron of U.S. and South Vietnamese amphibious armored carriers. Nguyen Van Be fought off the attackers for 30 minutes with his rifle and was taken prisoner, "covered with mud and blood," only when his ammunition was gone and his companions were all dead. Pretending cooperation with his captors, he then managed to pick up a 20-lb. Claymore mine. Raising it over his head, he valiantly shouted, "Long live the National Liberation Front!" and dashed it against the armored carrier, killing 69 U.S. and South Vietnamese troops as well as himself.

Strong Resemblance. The main flaw in this heroic story is that Nguyen Van Be is alive and in a South Vietnamese jail. When he was captured ten months ago, he was taken to a jail in the delta town of My Tho (there were no prisoner-of-war camps in the region at the time). Recently, an alert South Vietnamese policeman noticed the strong resemblance between the jumbo photos of Be in the Hanoi press and a rather withdrawn Viet Cong prisoner in a corner cell. Astounded to hear of his courageous exploits, Be soon saw the wisdom of his interrogators' assurance that he was valuable to the Viet Cong only as a dead Red, and thus could never rejoin them. He decided to cooperate, gratefully accepted a clean white shirt and told the real story.

Surrounded by the armored carriers, the overloaded sampan had immediately begun to list and overturned into the water. When one of their number had been killed, the Viet Cong squad jumped out of the sampan and fled to shore. Be also leaped into the water and was trying to hide himself under the surface when a South Vietnamese soldier grabbed him by the hair and pulled him out. He was the only one taken captive--and he had never got to fire a single shot.

Precious Instant. This week the U.S. psychological-warfare team--to which Nguyen Van Be is indeed a hero--will begin distributing some 7,000,000 leaflets and 100,000 posters in both South and North Viet Nam showing Nguyen Van Be posing beside Communist newspapers headlining his fictitious martyrdom. More than one-third of the leaflets will be dropped over North Viet Nam, where the government recently erected a statue in downtown Hanoi showing Comrade Be holding his mine overhead at the precious instant of immortality.

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