Young, Bond Deplore 'Dirty War;' But Ex-Green Beret Wins the Field

A senator and a civil rights worker denounced America's "dirty war" last night--but the Green Beret stole the show.

Speaking before an SRO audience in Jordan Hall, Senator Stephen M. Young (D-Ohio) attacked the war in Vietnam with all the fervor of an old-time political orator.

"I came directly from Washington solely to meet with you and to discuss the most pressing problem facing our nation," he declared. "What we do about it may mean tranquility or sorrow for young Americans five, ten, and twenty years from now."

Julian Bond, the SNCC worker who was refused his seat in the Georgia legislature because of his views on Vietnam, talked with quiet sincerity of American Negroes' opposition to "joining a white man's army to fight a white man's war. Why should we fight for a country that has never fought for us?" he asked.

Green Beret Bites Back

But it was Donald Duncan, a former master sergeant in the U.S. Special Forces, who was the star of the evening with his biting behind-the-scenes picture of the Vietnamese battlefield.

Duncan criticized the cynicism of the Special Forces toward the "Vietnamese army, the Vietnamese government -- the Vietnamese everything." "During a march we'd begin picking up Communist suspects. The longer the march got, and the heavier our loads became, the more suspects we'd pick up. We'd put the loads on their backs and march them one and a half days from home, reach our destination -- and then the suspects would be exonerated."

Although he admitted that the Viet Cong received some aid from Hanoi, "they don't have the Seventh Fleet and the U.S. Army," he said. He called ridiculous charges that the Viet Cong controlled the countryside through terrorism. "The first thing the Special Forces learn is that you can't conduct guerrilla warfare without popular support."

"I'm concerned about the morale of our boys in Vietnam, but I'm more concerned about the morality of 200 million citizens," he declared. "I'm not opposed to our men being in Vietnam.