15-Year-Old Boy Is Prisoner Of War

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31676, 11 May 1968, Page 19

15-Year-Old Boy Is Prisoner Of War

(N.Z.P.A.-Rsutsr—Copyright) DONG TAM (South Vietnam), May 9. A 15-year-old boy lay tucked in the hospital bed, a smiling child with wondering eyes. His medical tag read, incongruously, “Prisoner of War.”

Military accounts of tough North Vietnamese soldiers and gruelling jungle marches somehow seemed ridiculously remote from the smoothcheeked boy with the bandage on his right arm. But three months ago, Nguyen Van Qui was uprooted from his North Vietnamese village, hastily trained to fight, and then marched 1000 miles to a war he understands hardly at all. American intelligence officers say this boy is typical of the replacements Hanoi is feeding into the Viet Cong. But in the hospital of the United States 9th Division at Dong Tam, young Qui is a minor celebrity. Generals and colonels ask about his progress and his “guards” keep him well supplied with the menthol cigarettes for which he acquired a taste. “I am lucky,” the young soldier said through an interpreter. “If I had not been captured I would surely have lost my arm.”

Until he was captured, Qui had never seen an American. Indeed, until he was drafted he had never even seen a foreigner, had never been outside his district, and knew only vaguely that a war was going on. He recalls that on January 15, soldiers came to his village of An Thanh, about 50 miles south of Hanoi.

“My mother cried and tried to stop them,” he said, "but they said 15-yearolds now had to serve.”

Indoctrination left few marks on the 15-year-oid peasant boy with only five yean schooling and a hankering to be a carpenter. He knew that Ho Chi Minh was the leader of North Vietnam, but the name of Vo Nguyen Giap, the North Vietnamese military chief, meant nothing to him.

He does recall that he was told the cities of South Vietnam were under Viet Cong control and that the people would welcome him. “They lied to me,” he said. When the first battle came and he was wounded, he was left behind, which made him angry; now he says he is glad it was so.

After more than two weeks in hospital, Qui says he likes the Americans and is willing to fight for South Vietnam.