Newspaper Page Text
Page 26
— Griffin Daily News Wednesday, April 26,1972
Statistics can’t measure the suffering
Human cost of war
By TOM TIEDE
PLEIKU, Vietnam—(NEA)
—Except for this brief men
tion, the world will little
note the passing of Te Hoa
Binh, age seven months. The
infant, daughter of a Cham
Moi tribesman, was killed
during the first days of
North Vietnam's spring of
fensive. She was shot
through the head by a stray
bullet during an obscure,
nameless battle.
One more dead here.
Quickly forgotten.
The world, of course, can’t
be expected to note each of
the individual sorrows of this
bleak war. The suffering
has been too immense for
that. People can respond,
usually sympathetically, to
the plight of one victim of
cruelty—or sometimes many
victims, if their disaster is
shocking enough. But when
the situation involves mil
lions, drawn out over dec
ades, the events are simply
too catastrophic to register
on any humane, day to day,
life to life basis.
Thus, few really know the
distress of Vietnam.
It has just been too much.
There are the statistics,
certainly. Anyone can collect
them. The figures are dis
torted and often imprecise,
for many reasons, but in the
main they give a fair peek
at the human shrieking that
has taken place here during
the last decade of war.
The United States, to start
with, has sent almost 2.5 mil
lion men to this torture since
1961. The first to die, of
ficially, but not actually, was
James Davis, a 25-year-old
Army radio operator who
was killed in a guerrilla am
bush three days before
Christmas, 1961. Since then,
more than 55,800 have been
killed, 80 per cent under
hostile conditions. Some 303,-
000 more have been
wounded, of whom about half
have been hospitalized and
3 per cent totally disabled.
The figures are hardly
warm. They don’t remind us
of the unrecorded suffering.
The 10 per cent of Vietnam
veterans who can’t find
work. The 4 to 5 per cent
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who picked up a narcotics
problem. The thousands who
have had their wives divorce
them or girls abandon them.
The intolerable question of
the 1,600 who’ve been cap
tured or are missing in ac
tion. Or the incalculable aft-
VIETNAM
er effects of combat which,
in at least one case, led a
Vietnam veteran back in the
United States to kill a man
and then strip his body as if
still at war.
Then there are the calcula
tions for the South Vietnam
ese military forces. Official
ly, almost 140,000 dead, more
than 350,000 wounded, 30,000
missing in action, 65,000 dis
abled. One of the latter fel
lows, named Lam, lost both
legs early in the war. He had
no medical treatment and
healed so badly his people
sent him to a leper colony.
He escaped after some an
guished weeks. Now he’s a
beggar in Pleiku. He gets
around on a board on a
roller skate. He eats out of
garbage piles. And he can’t
remember, much, what he
was like before.
Also, there are the enemy
figures. The U.S. command
says that an estimated 825,-
000 Viet Cong and North
Vietnamese have been killed.
“And for every one who
dies, at least two others are
wounded.” About 30,000 of
the other side have been
taken prisoner, some of
whom have been tortured,
some of whom have been
tossed out of helicopters, and
at least one, whom the statis
tics don’t mention, who was
bludgeoned by his own de
capitated leg before being
shot dead.
Finally, most grievous and
melancholy, there are statis
tics for the people them
selves. There have been at
least 300,000 civilians killed,
since 1961, in South Vietnam.
Perhaps a million overall
have been wounded. Three
and-a-half to five million
have been displaced. The
War Veterans Ministry says
the nation has at least 90,-
000 war widows, and twice
that number of parents of
dead soldiers. Orphanage of
ficials believe there are in
excess of 350,000 parentless
children. Social services peo
ple say young women in the
country may have given
birth to 15,000 to 25,000 ille
gitimate, now unwanted, GI
babies.
And so there it is. Per
haps four-and-a-half million
men, women, children, sol
diers and civilians killed or
wounded in a single decade
of a small nation’s life. Plus
immeasurable, unspeakable,
related human woe.
But maybe that still
doesn’t register.
Then consider one final in
dividual case.
There is a woman in a
Saigon hospital who has no
face at all. None. Just eyes
and teeth showing. Her fea
tures were destroyed by an
exploding mortar. The hos
pital can do nothing for her.
But she is too revolting to
let out in public. So she re
mains there until, it’s sup
posed, one day she will suc
cumb to grief, murder her
self. and become one more
of the dead here, quickly for
gotten.
(NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE ASSN.)
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SOMETHING NEW
LEICESTER, England (UPI)
—Ron Hallam has introduced
something new in his off-track
betting shops—a topless young
lady chalking up race results on
the board.
Jane Siddons, 21, had the first
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crack at the job Tuesday and
said while her boss feels her
presence will increase trade,
she is not so sure.
“I doubt whether many will
even notice me,” she said
“They get far too excited over
their bets.”