a special feature the Sunday daily by howard kohn Number 16 Night Editor: Jim Neubacher November 16, 1969 Harvey Schiller flew more than 1000 missions over Viet- nam - dropping supplies, evacuating wounded and defoliating jungle cover. He volunteered for Vietnam and spent a year X based at Ton Son Nhut, near Saigon. New York-born, Schiller graduated from The Citadel in 1960, a distinguished graduate of the Air Force ROTC programs and an honors student in chemistry. After earning his mas- ters degree in chemistry at the University, Schiller entered pilot school in 1962. He returned from Vietnam in 1967 and taught for a year at the Air Force Academy. Today Harvey Schiller is back at the University, working on his doctorate in chemistry and playing with the Rugby Club. He is still an Air Force captain, though, and is a liason of- ficer for several lieutenants who are also studying here. Schil- ler has two years of directed flying assignments left to go and expects to do some of them over Vietnam. "I would hesitate to volunteer for Viet- 2>, nom now. It's a pretty morbid sight sometimes. But I believe strongly in 4 service to my country." Lon Louty wanted a military career because his father had been 4-F during World War II. "I felt I had a job to do for two people," he says. A After high school graduation in Columbus, Ohio, he en- rolled in the Coast Guard. He dropped out when "I found out I'd have to spend two years with icebergs." Transferring to Ohio University, he joined Army ROTC and was voted the out- standing cadet in the program. He won several medals and a promotion to batallion commander before graduating in 1968 with honors in architecture and design. Today Lon Louty is a graduate student and teaching fel- low in A & D at the University - still appalled at his nine months of active duty. 7. He does not regret his resignation from the Army. 44 "I could not order my men to get killed for a war that wasn't moral. In ROTC, we learned to lead. In the Army, they teach you to order." A -Daily--Jay Casddy -Daily-Jerry Wechsler CAPT. HARVEY SCHILLER flew C-123's, slow-moving planes left over from pre- vious wars, in the 309th Air Commando Squadron-air counterpart of the Green Berets. His squadron was hit more times than all the others combined. Once he was hit 60 times on a single mission. Perhaps that is why Schiller can be non- chalant about the fighting which perpetuates itself each day in Vietnam. This is a war where men die from bullets that seem to come from nowhere for reasons that seem to go nowhere, and the only sanity is in staying alive. Schiller saw Vietnam in 1966, just before the fiercest fighting of the war. He had volunteered for Vietnam almost two years before, when the United States was com- mitted only to an advisory role. Now 30, married, father of a year-old daughter, prematurely gray but still lean and athletic, Schiller is the picture of the Air Force captain in recruiting brochures. His spare time is devoted to rugby prac- tice, and he is captain of the University's Rugby Club. BUT SCHILLER is still very much aware of the war. And he is still convinced of the need for the military in Vietnam. "Sure, I believe in the domino theory." he says. He argues this, knowing and understand- ing the arguments pro and con. "I can't really make any value judgment on which government is better for Vietnam, North or South," he admits. "And I know life isn't going to change much for the people there, whether we win or lose . . . except for those who have their hands in American pockets." Schiller harbors neither romantic nor chauvinistic views on Vietnam; he is con- summately pragmatic. He does not begrudge his time or even the lives of his comrades if American foreign policy or government orders it. He does not, for instance, bicker about the "-rule which forbids servicemen in the Vietnam war zone from visiting the con- tinental United States on leave. "It's a rule just like any other rule," he says, discoun- ting the suggestion it keeps pfc's from get- ting another perspective on Vietnam. In fact, the rule really is designed to curb desertion, he reasons. Ideally, Schiller would like the military to be a uniformed peacekeeping corps- "keeping a finger in the dike against Com- munism"--the original, containment ra- tionale for involvement in Vietnam. WTHAT UPSETS him about the war is the military's disrespect and disregard for the boots in the field. American, Filippino, Korean and South Vietnamese top hats are getting fat on the black market. "Some guys make $100,000 a year while us weenies are getting ourselves killed." Schiller joins in criticizing the service clubs (along, incidentally, with the Senate subcommittee of Abraham Ribicoff which has drawn headlines by interviewing leggy Austrialian blondes and investigating peanut suppliers). Although the clubs are run by enough fuel to take them one stop at a time so they could load more people or supplies. Schiller's squadron strung out a life-and- death line to the GI's. In return for the food and ammo shipped in came the bodies of the American and Viet dead. He had to wear a surgeon's mask or rub Vick's ointment on his nose to endure the smell. Once again, he found, the Army doesn't always care about its infantrymen-- especially dead ones-as it should. Instead of medical corpsmen, the Army assigns quartermasters-to cart out the dead. "I got chewed out by some hospital com- mander because I called him to fly out a body," Schiller says. "He didn't want any- thing to do with it." Sometimes Schiller helped move troops as the battles shifted. Only 44 Americans could fit in a plane, but almost 200 Vietnamese could squeeze in. "They're very tiny people," he explains. Vietnamese wives and children, who live with their men wherever they go, are flown in separately to keep desertions down. But even in 1966, Schiller agrees, Vietnamese desertions were extremely high. "Guards were often too sympathetic or too sleepy to stop them," he says. AFTER EACH flight, Schiller had to clean out his plane, since saboteurs-in the guise of Viet regulars-would leave behind time grenades or bombs. "Most Vietnamese don't like the Amer- icans, and most Americans don't like the Vietnamese," he acknowledges. "They're re- sentful because we carry our social ills t'ith us. "The guy who beats up kids in alleys over here does the same thing over there. The same goes with the guy that yells 'nigger' over here-he's just as bigoted over there." "The Vietnamese make us very aware we're there at their pleasure." Schiller laughs now at some of the ab- surdities which cropped up in his missions to the villages. Several times he flew 10,000 lbs. of rice grown on the Mississippi Delta to people whose rice paddies had been bombed. Another time he dropped peanut oil, with the various instructions written in Spanish because it had been intended as South American aid. Schiller travelled as far west as Duong Dong, an island off Cambodia, and as far north as Hue and saw almost all visages of Viet life. He has a feeling for Vietnamese mores. "If a popular election were held right now, General Ky would win," he remarks suddenly. "You know why? Because he's the handsomest man in the government and the Vietnamese are a vain people. Everything else has been taken away from them, so they have only their vanity left." Schiller says the South fears potential persecution from the North, should the Viet Cong win militarily. But already in 1966, he says, many Southerners felt they couldn't be persecuted anymore than they were by the war. If called upon to go back to Vietnam, as Vietnam parallel ;. ,. - ,. ; A ,,.. 0... ' ' . .: iil .,.. 72L- --a- LAST FALL seven non-coms at Ft. Ben- ning, Georgia refused to go to Vietnam. Two were courtmartialed for smoking pot; both are still in the Army, one is still in the Army, one is still in the brig, Two suffered mental breakdowns; one stood up on a live firing range but still hasn't been discharg- ed, the other was released. Three were giv- en general discharges. Lon Louty was on of the fortunate three whose resignations were accepted without penalty. Louty had been in the Army only four months when he quit. He had always been anti-Vietnam. Now he is anti-military, too. But he is still pro-establishment. Louty, who expected to work in cities as a commissioned civil engineer after grad- uation from ROTC, explains he "thought the military was more than a slaughter- house." "I thought you could be a military man without being a butcher." HIS ARCHITECTURE professors at Ohio University were the first to challenge that idea. "They said ROTC stood for the forces of destruction, while architecture stood for creation," he recalls. "But I ra- tionalized it all away. "My ROTC instructors had told me, 'Don't worry, you won't have to fight, not with your grades and expertise.' That was bullshit." Later, after he'd been commis- sioned a second lieutenant, Louty was told he'd have to serve time in Vietnam. Confronted with Vietnam as a personal dilemma, Louty decided to get it over with and then get out of the Army. He resigned his commission in June, 1968, shortly after graduation - over the protests of his ROTC commander who earns demerits every time a junior officer resigns. As a non-coin, Louty had to deal with the Army's kick-'em-in-the-kidney corps, rather than ROTC's "effete" academicians. The regular Army officers crawled through the underbrush of Guam or the swamps of Vietnam to get on top.- "HEY DO NOT like anyone who resents going to Vietnam. The 54th Infantry at Ft. Knox, Kentucky, where Louty w a s sent in June, turned into a perplexing hell. No one met him and his wife with cheer- ful greetings. In fact, no one had even ar- ranged housing for them. His first assign- ment was funeral duty with several Viet- nam veterans. "We were supposed to comfort bereaved mothers and widows," he laughs derisively. "They gave us prepared speeches where we just filled in the names. Most of these guys were so calloused after being in Vietnam they would bet on when the women would start to crack up. Usually it was when they played taps or when they put the flag on the casket. "Once a woman ripped the flag off and spit on it and swore at us. That wasn't supposed to happen. It was pretty hairy and shook up everybody." Louty was put in charge of a company pregnant with young draftees, many from "I couldn't shoot a man for stealing a television set," he says. "That equates the value of his life to the price of the TV." Feeling the cross-pressures at having 'copped out" on his first mission, Louty decided to confide in his chaplain. With- in an hour, a report censuring him was on his captain's desk. "I was chewed out for expressing moral doubts about the military," Louty says. "That wasn't so bad, but the chaplain was supposed to listen to me in confidence." What was supposed to be, as recorded in ROTC textbooks, was seldom what was, Louty found out. He became embittered and disillusioned. Especially infuriating was the Army's re- enlistment practice. Instead of having been told, Louty discovered he would have to serve at least five years and two terms in Vietnam. Most of all he resented officers who bribed pfc's into signing up for an extra two years with the bogus promise they wouldn't go to Vietnam. Although widely known and ap- plied, the ruse still works, according to Louty. The gullible joe is first shipped out to England or Germany, and then inevit- ably transferred to Vietnam - sometimes as quickly as three weeks. IN SEPTEMBER Louty and his company were ordered to Ft. Benning to train as Rangers. "Every day there, you live with the 'rah, rah, kill, kill' business. One day, I thought, my God. where am I?" He appealed for a transfer to his im- mediate superior, who told him. "Unless you serve in Vietnam, you aren't fit to live in this country." So he went to Lt. Col. Wilbur Thiel. "Thiel thought I was part of the Communist con- spiracy," Louty says. "I though Dr. Strange- love was a funny movie until I met Thiel." "Then I found out he was in the major- ity among the officers." Once he revedled publicly his objections to Vietnam, Louty was at the mercy of his superiors, who have virtually unlimited methods to make his decision unbearable. Thiel, a 23-year veteran, was so furious he threw Louty out of his office and filed a report with the base commander charging Louty was " a disgrace to his country, the U.S. Army and Officer Corps." Louty resigned in October. "I began thinking, hell's bells, five years in prison can't be any worse than this." He was re-assigned to Thiel's secretarial pool, where he spent 12 hours each day mimeographing handouts for new recruits. Another secretary "got so sick of the half- truths" that he mimeographed his own handouts to countermand the official line. He was caught, courtmartialed and booted out. LOUTY'S DISCHARGE, wnich finally came through in March, was not that ignominious. In fact, it wasn't even dis- honorable. Despite peer pressure, more and m o r e officers are asking to be excused f r o m