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‘wld Bo or --e hee vee . we elle ae re! . TESTIMONY ON VIETNAM BY STEWART MEACHAM - oT National Peace Education Secretary American Friends Service Committee - -..--.- In August and September of this year I visited South Vietnam representing the American Friends Service Committee. My primary mission was to make firsthand inquiry into the general situation in Vietnam so that the peace education work of the AFSC could be better informed and bring more accurately into focus the essen- tial facts and issues about the war in Vietnam. Also, I visited the service activi- ties which are being carried on in South Vietnam by the AFSC. These include a . “ prosthetic center in Quang Ngai and a variety of individual service assignments in the Saigon area. ; - During the course of my visit I talked with many Americans and many Vietnamese, both military and civilian. I talked with religious leaders, with journalists, with refugee officials, with students, with social workers, and with Americans working for voluntary service agencies. I visited the Central Vietnam city of Hue, as well as Quang Ngai. I spent two days traveling by motor vehicle and helicopter to refugee camps, provincial and district headquarters, and remote hamlets, I crossed a river by canoe because a highway bridge between Hue and the airport had been blown up thet same morning by the forces of the National Liberation Front. I was in Quang Ngai on September 3 and observed the balloting there in the South Vietnam election. On one occasion I watched American helicopters and dive bombers attacking a line of hills near a hospital I was visiting. Nightly, whether I was in Saigon or ina , more remote area, I heard the sound cof H & IJ (harassment and interdiction) Fire, sometimes close by, sometimes in the distance. From the things that I saw ) and the people 1 I talked with I (gained these im- ° pressions: : 1. The U.S. armed forces and U.S. civilian employees are beleaguered in South Vietnam. Everywhere one goes whether it be out in the countryside where active military operations are in progress, or in Saigon itself where the U.S. military presence is most apparent, U.S. armed forces and U.S. civilian employees are billeted and they work in heavily guarded enclaves, in buildings surrounded by barbed wire, sandbag barricades, cement-filled oil drums, grenade protection screens, and machine guns. 2. The Vietnamese population gurrounds the Americans wherever they are, end in every city and every part of the country the Americaré cannot assume for 4 moment’ that the V.C. will not emerge from amongst the civilian population, carry out hit- - and-disappear propaganda meetings or armed attacks, and then melt back into the population, secure and unbetrayed. ~ _ . * 3. Though the U.S. forces and civilian workers are constantly attempting to improve their security arrangements, they move about with a constant awareness of - insecurity. . 4. The Americans generally do not have a sense Of clear purpose or of accom- — plishment. The military personnel are there for # year and it is the goal of most ” — 5L oo