U.S. Efforts In Vietnam Praised

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31116, 20 July 1966, Page 14

U.S. Efforts In Vietnam Praised

The Americans were doing a tremendous amount of good in Vietnam, said Lieu-tenant-Colonel J. W. Ardagh, commander of the 3rd Field Ambulance, in an address to the Christchurch Tin Hat Club last night.

Colonel Ardagh, a Christchurch surgeon who visited Vietnam recently, said he went to that country with a civilian’s outlook. Warfare in Vietnam was grim. There was no front line, no back line and no side line.

After seeing something of the American effort in Vietnam he had returned to New Zealand very pro-American, he said.

“People say the Americans are ‘do-gooders.’ Yet all they get is kicked in the teeth for their work. I believe they deserve better treatment than this,” he said.

The ordinary people of Vietnam were whole-heartedly anti-Communist. The total population of Vietnam was 14 million and of this total only 2 million lived in the major cities.

“Yet it is this vast peasantry that goes unreported. All we read about in our press is of what goes on around Saigon.” In that city two floors of the Majestic Hotel were taken over for use by reporters and it was from there that they wrote cables of the Vietnam war. Yet the only way to see what was going on in the countryside was to walk with

the Army on its search-and-destroy missions. Colonel Ardagh said he did not blame the reporters. It was difficult to get out on such missions. He himself did so in his capacity as an Army officer. He said one read of the riots in Saigon in the daily press of New Zealand. "I was interested to witness one of these. The one I eventually did see was not protesting against the South Vietnamese Government’s policy of war, but was against the Government itself, which had not been duly elected into power. “Such riots as did take place created no greater impression in Saigon than would a group of teen-agers obstructing the police in Cathedral square on a Saturday night. What we sometimes see re-

ported as riots is nothing but the biggest load of hoo-ha I’ve ever heard of in my life,” said Colonel Ardagh. The war in Vietnam was dirty on both sides, but more so on the Viet Cong side. Colonel Ardagh said he had been impressed by the aggressiveness of the American soldier in ambushes. Of the allied casualties he said the ratio of wounded to sick was one to one. And of those wounded the death-rate was only 1 per cent Rapid evacuation and front-line surgery had greatly helped to reduce the death-rate. The Vietnamese peasants were charming, relatively hard working, and relatively honest Ninety-five per cent of the population were either total or part landowners. They were not interested in collective farming.

In outlining the history of the Vietnamese people, Colonel Ardagh said they were a nation which had never buckled under to domination of any kind. “They do not want Communism and its tyranny. They had a spell of freedom once, and they are determined to hang on to it,” he said.