The Berets, who often made jokes about the Yards eating dogs and seemingly unpalatable vegetation, saw something of their own values in these ways. The nickname “ snake eater” stuck to the Special Forces. Bridges, a Green Beret who was at Fort Bragg when Kennedy came to visit in 1961, remembers that as part of their demonstration for the visiting president, the men caught, prepared, and ate a snake. The tribal customs were strange but then, the regular Army found Special Forces’ ways odd. When they talk of the Montagnards-uncorrupted by the cities, physically superior to most South Vietnamese, less sophisticated in their outlook-the Americans are fiercely possessive … Because the Green Berets enjoy their own toughness, they appreciate some of the more primitive aspects of the Montagnards’ habits. The Green Berets there were uninterested in being interviewed, but she managed to ask them some questions about the Yards:
In 1970, Gloria Emerson of the New York Times visited a CIDG camp at Dakseang. In interviews, Special Forces often described the people they were training as loyal, honest, and friendly and compared them favorably to Vietnamese allies.
0 kommentar(er)
