The Village of Ben Suc - soldiers reactions

"Suddenly a Vietnamese man on a bicycle appeared, pedaling rapidly along the road from the direction of the village. He was wearing the collarless pajamalike black garment that is both the customary dress of the Vietnamese peasant and the uniform of the National Liberation Front. … he had, it appeared, already run a long gantlet of American soldiers without being stopped. But when he had ridden about twenty yards past the point where he first came into sight, there was a bust of machine-gun fire from a copse thirty yards in front of him, joined immediately by a bust from a vegetable field to one side, and he was hurled off his bicycle into a ditch a yard from the road." [Two soldiers the author flew in with approached him] "The two men stood still for a while, with folded arms, and stared down at the dead man's face, as though they were giving him a chance to say something.. Then the engineer said, with a tone of finality, 'That's a V.C. for you. He's a V.C. all right. That's what they wear. He was leaving town. He had to have some reason." (p36)

"Over near the copse, the man who had fired first, also a young soldier, had turned his back to the road. Clenching a cigar in his teeth,he stared with determination over his gun barrel across the wide field … Upon being asked what had happened, he said, 'Yeah, he's dead. Ah shot him. He was a fuckin' V.C." (p37)

"The American soldiers showed only a technical interest in identifying the planes that passedd overhead and guessing the kind of explosive used from the sound of the explosion and color of the smoke. The American arsenal is so varied that this game requires a subtle ear and considerable experience. 'There goes a B-52 raid,' a soldier would say. Or 'That's outgoing artillery.' Or 'That's napalm.' (p45)

"The men listened with quiet faces, looking at the ground. 'No, there's very little fanatic stuff here,' [Major Charles A. Malloy] went on. At that moment a middle-aged Vietnamese wearing the customary black floppy clothing was led by, his arms bound behind his back. Major Malloy looked over his shoulder at the prisoner and remarked, 'There's a V.C. Look at those black clothes. They're no good for working in the fields. Black absorbs heat. This is a hot country. It doesn't make any sense. And look at his feet.' The prisoner had bare feet, like many of the villagers. 'They're all muddy from being down in those holes." In a bust of candor,he added, "What're you going to do? We've got people in the kitchen at the base wearing those black pajamas.'" (p64)

[Repeatedly, the soldiers refer to the 'black pajamas' as evidence that someone is 'VC'. A thin rationalization for the utter confusion of soldiers attacking a civil society which is defending itself.]