A Half Step Toward Home

EVEN as the fighting in Viet Nam suddenly flared, the U.S. was completing its third--and largest--troop reduction since President Nixon took office 15 months ago. By next week some 115,500 fewer U.S. soldiers will be serving in Viet Nam than during the high point of the American commitment in early 1969, when the troop count reached 543,400. Like so much else about the Viet Nam War, the U.S. withdrawal is complex and at times confusing. On Pentagon recommendations, the military is cutting back on replacements rather than literally "bringing the boys home." Thus, to the Americans most interested in withdrawal--G.I.s already serving in Viet Nam--the whole process seems little more than a numbers game.

The special nature of the U.S. scale-down was evident last week at Di An, 11 miles northeast of Saigon. There, as a bugler sounded taps, an honor guard struck the colors of the U.S. Army's First Infantry Division, the famed "Big Red One." It had been the first full Army division to arrive in Viet Nam in 1965 and now, as part of the third-phase reduction, it was being shipped back to headquarters in Fort Riley, Kans. That did not mean, however, that its troops were going home. Only the 340-man honor guard, carrying the colors, left Viet Nam as First Infantry members. The large majority of the division's 17,000 men have been reassigned to vacancies in other outfits to complete their one-year stint in Viet Nam. The transfer process is more efficient than filling such vacancies from Stateside, of course, but it does not please the individual G.I.s. "Man, Nixon's just foolin' the people," said one disappointed trooper. "The division's goin' home, but all of us are stayin' right here, still humpin' it."

Disastrous Curve. As the Big Red One prepared to disband, TIME Correspondent Burton Pines observed the process. His report:

During the last few weeks, Division Commander Major General Albert E. Milloy, determined to carry out his primary mission of fighting until the last possible moment, ordered banners flown at every base urging his men to "Make Every Day Count." The troops had their own slogan: "Count Every Day."

The division's battlefield responsibilities, centered over an 880-sq.-mi. area north of Saigon in III Corps, were assumed largely by South Viet Nam's Fifth Division. Much of the Big Red One's equipment, including 27,000 weapons, 4,500 Jeeps and trucks and 500 artillery pieces, was handed over to the South Vietnamese and other U.S. units. As the pull-out date neared, nonessential supplies all but disappeared. The base PX ran out of everything but men's swim trunks. Two "massage" parlors and the Crossroads Bar just outside the main base, foreseeing a disastrous curve in the local business cycle, closed down.

Parts of the base were taken over by ARVN troops, who brought their wives and several dozen crowing chickens. U.S. commanding officers, faced with Army paper work even in withdrawal, stayed up late attending to forms recommending promotion, awards and discipline. The division handed out more than 17,000 awards--better than one per man--during its withdrawal phase. The commander of the only remaining regiment in the field, Colonel Paul Braim, held a farewell party for his staff officers. The junior officers spent the evening spraying each other with beer and trying to recall the words to old war songs. The majors and lieutenant colonels chatted quietly about their new assignments as advisers to South Vietnamese units. On the last day in the field, Colonel Braim issued a final order to his battalion commanders: "You've got 18 hours left. Go out there and kill some Charley."

One battalion commander, without actually contradicting these orders, quietly passed the word that he wanted "everything to go at half step." In nearly 57 months of combat, the division had already lost 2,700 men dead, 17,600 wounded, and he did not want to add to that total. His men spent most of their last day cleaning armored personnel carriers and exploding huge piles of rusty ammunition and moldy grenades. "Sure, Charley's in the area," said a platoon leader. "But why should he snipe at us as we leave? If he waits another week, he has the Fifth ARVN all to himself."

That night, between turns at patrol duty, the men brewed cocoa from their C-ration packs, listened to rock and soul music on a Japanese cassette recorder, and played poker with a deck of pornographic cards. There was a certain amount of bitterness about not going home with the division. The angriest man was Sergeant Albert Barnett, 24, who had been assigned to the First Infantry from a unit withdrawn last year and was about to be transferred to his third division in less than twelve months. There was also apprehension about joining a strange outfit. Explained Sergeant Jack Hatcher, also reassigned: "When you're pinned down in a firefight, you've just got to know instinctively how the guy next to you reacts. Everyone here has been through that kind of hell once, and no one likes the idea of having to do it again."

Flashing V-Signs. The next morning, the ride back to base camp lasted five hours. As tanks, trucks and personnel carriers stretched out in a mile-long convoy, it seemed for a while as if the Yanks really were going home. G.I.s jubilantly squirted shaving-cream peace symbols around the white stars on their vehicles. South Vietnamese kids flashing V-signs lined the streets of villages along the way while helicopters flew overhead. Two miles from base camp, the convoy halted. Officers ordered the men to wipe off the peace symbols. Gunners turned their 50-cal. machine guns to the rear. Troopers removed the ammunition clips from their M-16 rifles. Private Crispan Guerra, one of the few men whose nearly complete tour of duty entitled him to accompany the division home, muttered tiredly: "This goddam war is over."

For most, it was simply in recess for a few days while the formalities of transferring to another division were completed. The base camp scheduled U.S.O. entertainment and each company bought nearly 300 cases of beer and soft drinks for its men, a ratio of about two cases per trooper. Then, after four days, the men lined up for new immunization shots, dog-tag replacements, their most recent paycheck and whatever ribbons had been awarded them. The last stop, before boarding a bus for their new assignment, was the camp tailor shop, where half a dozen South Vietnamese girls busily sewed on the shoulder patch insignia of each man's new division.

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