Incident on Route 1

Rolling along Route 1 near Danang last week, the driver of a U.S. Army tractor trailer was forced to hit the brakes when a vehicle in front of him abruptly slowed. The tractor trailer jackknifed, knocking a minibus loaded with Vietnamese veterans off the highway. The bus was the last vehicle in the funeral cortege of the leader of an antigovernment veterans' faction, who had been killed by a gunman in Danang. Eight of the veterans were injured, three seriously.

The episode could have ended there, as have many before it. But some of the veterans were armed, and about 100 Vietnamese angrily surrounded the U.S. convoy. After shooting out the front tires of the first and last trucks in the nine-vehicle U.S. convoy, the veterans strung barbed wire around it and demanded the equivalent of about $9,000 to ransom the 14 Americans involved. Eight hours later the G.I.s were finally released after U.S. officers and the province chief agreed to give the veterans $720 in cash, 170 cases of salad oil and 150 cases of cereal.

The incident is a reminder that G.I.s have long acted as if the roads of Viet Nam belonged exclusively to them; the wise Vietnamese gets out of the way when he sees them coming. Many Americans, moreover, are prone to boast that they would not stop for an accident if they could possibly get away. As one Army major in Saigon put it: "There is a long-established pattern of force and offense among Army drivers. You assume the road is cleared until it proves otherwise." Route 1 proved otherwise.

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