Poge Two THE MICHIGAN DAILY Tuesday, October 3, 1972~ 4 Pdge Two THE MICHIGAN DAILY trip Our destination was Nam Dinh City and the Phat Diem Cathed- ral, both severely bombed, and showplaces of the destructive power of the American air cam- paign.' Jane Fonda and Ramsey Clark had been there. Now it was the turn of the three pilots just. released from a prisoner- 4f1war camp -- Navy Lts. Mark Gartley and Norris Charles, and Air Force Major Edward.Elias- and myself. But long before we reached our destination we were shaking our heads in wonder, not at the destructive power of the bombs from the sky but at the survival power of the people on the ground. The pilots' previous view of North'Vietnamfrom the kies above, For' years I had watched from the vantage point of South' Vietnam.n No here on the ground as we" rolled alongthe narrow highways in the dark hours before dawn, the cliches came true. Here was the "ant power" that Pentagon experts theorized lay behind fanoi's ability to keep supplies and men moving to the southern war front.'Where bombs had scored. direct hits on rail- way cars on the tracks parallel- ling the road, dark shapes ham- mered at twisted wreckage, while other figures -carried ma- terial and dumped it into the craters. As dawn came and we passed through the railroad junction of severely bombed Phu Le, we saw' that the dark shapes were wo- men and they weren't even using buckets; they were carrying mud in their bare hands to fill the craters in, and they seemed to be enjoying it. When our old Russian Volga se- dan bogged down at one point, the Women swarmed out of the mud and gathered around us, laughing and gesticulating. This "ant power" was every- where. Whereas in South Viet- bam the war has denuded the countryside of population and sent people scrrying into the -cities, in the North it is the re- verse and they swarmed on the highway. Walking or riding bicycles along lonely roads in South Viet- nam at night can mean death or capture. But in the North, nighttime is the logical time to travel for the faint-hearted, or for the supply convoys, because it affords protection from the planes that fly above. The key to the use of the night is simply that there are no guer- rillas to harass the conveys or blow up the supplies. In North Vietnam the war is only from the air. That is why I observed no barbed wire anywhere, no bar- ricaded milita outposts or for- tified bunkers. Except for when the planes came over, the North Vietnamese countryside looked positively bucolic. But few things are ever what they seem, and Elias, who piloted a reconnais- sance plane before he was shot down five months ago, enlighten-. ed me. "See those grave mounds?" Elias asked as we waited under the trees for a ferry to cross a river where a bridge had been destroyed. About 100 yards away, 'ANT POWER' through North F Vietnam S MICIJGAN UNION BILLIARDS Today and Every Tuesday Special Rates for Couples SUNDAYS 1 P.M.-6 P.M. SPECIAL RATES .1 I E Register To Vote Deadline: FRIDAY SGC Voter Registration Comm. buffalo grazed quietly around the heaps of earth. "They're antiaircraft pits with the muzzles down," Elias said. "Let a plane come over and they'll stick up their snoots and blast away. And those things are difficult to spot in pictures. It would take a very expert and very lucky PI photo interpreter to see them." As we sped into the rising sun, Elias's head was twisting to left and right. "See that flak site? They're 85s." Or he would say, "There's another one, half a dozen .51-calibers." To me they looked like banana trees. dumped by trains and would soon be moved to where the railway lines were usable again. In the evenings as the trucks began to move south loaded with supplies, the whole operation re- minded me of a huge glacier forcing itself slowly but surely down a mountain valley. Reflecting 'on -the scene one evening at a rest house in Ninh Binh province, Gartley said, "I used to fly over this place and it seemed uninhabited. But look, it is teeming with life." Gartley later said, "All the pilots really have for targets are the cities, the bridges and the enormous efforts" to beat the American blockade of the ports. "We have spirit and courage. We have used many measures and we can continue our trans- portation to the south. These methods cannot be calculated by an electronic computer." I was wondering how a com- puter could determine the num- ber of handfuls of mud required to fill a bomb crater, or the man- power needed to load and un- load supplies that are leapfrog- ged from train to train across the bombed portions of track each night on the way south. But all those bombs raining on "I was wondering how a computer c o u 1 d determine the number of ' handfuls .mud required to fill a bomb crater, or the manpower need- ed to load and unload supplies that are leapfrogged from train to train across the bom bed out portions of track each night on the way south." ..:..,., .. . Wryr: ...........:: r: _ . . rM : :":: S: :::"::: ::Mr:::rrJ.1:rJ :"r:...,..,...................r... .,. and rocked across filled-in bomb craters and careened by the am- munition boxes stacked like cordwood along the roadside, I got the feeling that the world of the cities and the world of the countryside supply routes were separate. We were given no information about where these supplies origi- nated, but we presumed they came down the highways from China to thetnorth. I got the im- pression that as long as those supplies were pumped down through the arteries of North Vietnam the war would go on even if the cities were destroyed. And the North Vietnamese can rationalize anything. Standing on one of the broad, tree-lined thoroughfares in the Hanoi that the French took so much pride in building, one of my guide- in- terpreters commented, "This is just a remnant of colonialism, anyway. If it is destroyed we will build a new, better city. Our city." Editor's Note: AP special corres- pondent Peter Arnett has been cover- ing the war in Indochina for eight years. He recently went into North Vietnam for the first time and toured the country south of Hanoi with the three recently released U.S. prisoners of war. The following is an account of his experience. To help farmers produce the largest possible yields of food and fiber per acre, U.S. manufacturers turn out about $350 million worth of chemical insecticides a year, Arthur D. Little Inc., reports. Monday 4 p.m. & 6:45 p.m. Pocket Billiard Exhibition Steve Mizerak, Jr. UNION BALLROOM admission free Thurs., Oct. 12, 7-9 p.m. free billiard instruction 4dotLM'iAd w!w .. DIAL 668-6416 "Far this trip, one must fasten his seat belt and hold on tight!" -Saturday Review WINNER 1972 CANNES FILM FESTIYAL JURY PRIZE AWARD I 0 '0 *r 0 Z LL r bow I ,. c a u 0 LL. .- +V 0 I HA a. -J w Cie w Z. 0L O U. I TUES. WED. Bunuel s h r e d s Spanish Catholicism, exposing the inadequacy of good in- tentions. F u n n y a n d shocking throughout and famous for the outrageous blasphemy of.a "L a s t Supper" staged by drunk- en beggars in 'the. do- gooder heroine's mansion. Viridiana Dir. Luis Bunuel, 1961 Architecture Auditorium. 1 z Q Fz Qu U' 0 uj z 0 VI) I The discovery of the flak sites and the industrious people were possibly predictable e n o u g h. Enough American planes get shot down each week to adequately suggest the extent of the anti- aircraft fire. And "people pow- er" has long been known as North Vietnam's most important commodity. What was mindbending to the freed pilots was the extent of North Vietnam's visible supply chain. From the time we left the outskirts of Hanoi at 4 a.m. one morning to our return at 8 p.m. the next niglt we constantly en- countered vehicle convoys, rows of stacked ammunition alongside the roadsides a n d gasoline drums. They were stretched out and other foreign visitors in Ha- along the 180 miles we drove, noi at the time attested they saw similar s c e n e s on different roads.1 During daylight the vehicles were casually parked under the inevitable line of trees at road- side. On some long, straight stretches of highway we counted as manry as 40 trucks. They seemed extremely vul- nerable, but Charles commented, "We could never see those things from the air. And the moment someone comes down to get a better look at them - blam, man." This simple roadside cover hid ammunition caches upto 1,000 cases in size, aceording to my fast counts from the moving au- tomobile. Particularly noticeable were concentrations of supplies at bombed-out railway crossings. The pilots figured these had been The Michigan'Daily, edited and man- aged by students at the University of Michigan. News phone: 764-0562. Second Class postage paid at Ann Arbor, Mich- igan 420 Maynard Street. Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104. Published daily Tues- day through Sunday morning Univer- sity year. Subscription rates: $10 by carrier (campus area); $1 1local mail (in Mich. or Ohio); $13 non-local mail (other states and foreign). Summer Session published Tuesday through Saturday morning. 1ubscrip- tion rates: $5.50 by carrier (campus area); $6.50 local mail (in Mich. or Ohio); $7.50 non-local mail (other states and foreign), An irreverent spoof of doctors & hospitals . . . with the sexiest nurse in military history. rainways. Yet the North Vietna- mese move out from the cities and use these back roads." Elias said, "It is technology against ideology. I just wonder how far technology can go be- causethe Vietnamese habitually beat it." He mentioned that Ha- noi has found a partial answer to the threat of the laser-guided "smart" bombs that can zero in accurately on targets. "The North Vietnamese put up smoke around the target. If you don't see it you can't hit it," Elias said. The North Vietnamese glorify in their ability to outwit the U.S. planes. "You have to fight this war with intelligence, not with com- puters," Prime Minister Pham Van Dong" told the antiwar acti- vists who went to Hanoi to pick up the released pilots. "The computers m e r e 1 y multiply man's stupidities thousands of times," he said, rocking for- ward in his chair with a know- ing smile. The editor of the Communist party newspaper Nhan Dan told the activists that "we have made ~-ister To Vote Deadline: FRIDAY SGC Voter Registration Comm. - North Vietnam are dropping somewhere, and in interviews with top officials I got the im- pression that severe damage is being done. "Whole cities have been de- stroyed. Hospitals, schools, chur- ches have been destroyed. There have been so many victims," said Premier Dong, when the an- tiwar activists asked if the Amer- ican people could help contribute to reconstruction. "I fear that no city will, be left intact in the North if President Nixon is re-elected. Nixon's war is ten times more barbarous that his predecessor's," the editor said. But as our old sedan bucked KURT VONNEGUT JR.'S. Great Novel 7 & 9p.m. 75c A UtJv.s.I P~ctIrtTFCru" ,' q' W~ . A U OPEN DAILY at 12:45 Shows at 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 p.m. Feature 5min. later " " "Every Wed. " 1 ' -5 p.m. 75c PG 2nd HIT WEEK! 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