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Dehumanizing the Enemy
April 12, 2011
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I was explaining to some friends how I didn't get
the “Dehumanizing the Enemy” indoctrination before I
went to Nam when I remembered an incident that
happened in Tay Ninh City when I wandered away from
my friends. It was late in the afternoon and I was
in a small jewelry shop looking around when these
two little Vietnamese teenagers came in. They
scowled at me and one of them slapped the butt of my
loaded rifle as he passed behind me. The rifle was
slung over my shoulder, and I probably shouldn't
have let them walk behind me, but they were so
little – I figure I easily outweighed both of them
together with pounds to spare – and so young looking
that I didn't really feel any danger.
At any
rate, with a few glowers over their shoulders, they
continued on their way through the shop and
disappeared through a door at the back. The
proprietor, who had been very affable up until then,
suddenly became agitated and nervous and urged me to
leave, saying, “You go now,” because he had to close
up. First time I ever saw a Vietnamese back away
from a potential sale. I left and he closed and
locked the door almost before I got outside, so I
took my dumb ass back to the truck where the others
were waiting.
When I related what had just
happened to me, I was told I was lucky that all
those two innocent looking “kids” had done was slap
my M-16. They could just as easily have slipped a
knife into one of my kidneys when they walked behind
my unsuspecting, unprotected back, and made off with
the weapons and ammo that I carried. God does indeed
have a soft spot for babies and fools.
Chalk
it up to the drawbacks of a sparse two weeks of
training, with no “dehumanizing” of the enemy. All
the Vietnamese folks I had seen during daylight
hours, up until then, had always been smiling and
friendly. It finally occurred to me that some of
them were not all that happy about the fact that
big, oversized Nimnulls like me were in their
country and that they had probably been through some
“Dehumanizing the Enemy” indoctrinations of their
own. |
 By
Thurman P. Woodfork
Copyright 2002
About
Author...
Thurman P. Woodfork (Woody) spent his
Air Force career as a radar repairman in places as disparate as
Biloxi, Mississippi; Cut Bank, Montana; Tin City, Alaska; Rosas,
Spain and Tay Ninh, Vietnam. In Vietnam, he was assigned to
Detachment 7 of the 619th Tactical Control Squadron, a Forward Air
Command Post located on Trai Trang Sup. Trang Sup was an Army
Special Forces camp situated about fifty miles northwest of Saigon
in Tay Ninh province, close to the Cambodian border.
After Vietnam, Woody remained in the Air Force for nine more years.
Visit
Thurman P. Woodfork's site for more information |
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