Hanoi's Humanitarianism

As abruptly as it had begun, the threat by North Viet Nam to put captured American airmen on trial as "war criminals" was lifted. Last week, in soothing messages, President Ho Chi Minh explained that he would "continue to pursue a humanitarian course" with the downed flyers. "No trial in view," he cabled, in answer to a query from an enterprising CBS newsman.

Why the backdown? Ho apparently realized that by trying and executing the U.S. aviators he would alienate many of the sympathizers he has in the West. It was safe to assume that he was impressed by the argument that mistreatment of the prisoners would tend to harden the U.S. mood and create a more unified, favorable attitude toward a tougher war. Since he counts on the U.S. finally tiring of the war and pulling out, he would thus be working against his own aim. Beyond this, the reaction from other countries must have raised for him the unwelcome prospect that he might make Hanoi, rather than Washington, the target of war protest.

Murder & "Mercenaries." As the war went on, U.S. planes last week launched their heaviest raids so far, sending a record 110 missions over the North in one day, topping it with increased ferocity the next. Orange fireballs rose hundreds of feet in the air above oilstorage depots near Hanoi, Thanh Hoa and Vinh.

Word spread in many an airman's ready room of the fate that could befall the pilot who took a deadly hit from Red gunners. A witness was Navy Pilot Dieter Dengler, 28, whose escape from a North Vietnamese prison camp near Vinh was the first of the war. Dengler was born in Wildberg, West Germany, and came to the U.S. with his brother as a teen-ager in 1957; he joined the Air Force that same year, became a U.S. citizen in 1960, and was commissioned as a Navy aviator in 1964. Shot down over the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos last February, it took him until June 27 to escape. He and another U.S. pilot slogged through the jungle for 20 days, living on roots and bananas, until a North Vietnamese patrol snared Dengler's companion. While the Navyman watched in horror from cover, the Reds summarily beheaded Dengler's buddy. Three days later Dengler was rescued by an Air Force "Jolly Green" helicopter--and of course the Russians immediately claimed that Dengler was a West German "mercenary" in American disguise, one of many (claimed Pravda) serving in Viet Nam.

"I Was Lucky." The savage fate of Dengler's companion was shared by six U.S. Marines wounded in a fierce mor tar barrage near the 17th parallel, where Operation Hastings continued to take a heavy toll of Red dead last week. The Marines, helpless and unreachable by their own medical corpsmen, were mercilessly slaughtered by North Vietnamese regulars. "During the night, the North Viets came," said one survivor of the massacre, a radio operator whose abdomen had been ripped by shell fragments. "They took my cigarettes and my watch, but they didn't shoot me. They must have looked at my spilled guts and figured I was dead. I was lucky."

Even if such atrocities were committed in the heat of battle, they cast a dark shadow across Ho's propaganda claim to a "humanitarian" role.

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