DIFFICULT THING TO SAY"
Are the U.S. troops who carry out orders to risk their lives to bomb North Vietnam immune to normal human feelings? The question received a tentative answer in the case of Lt. Commander John Sydney McCain 3d, the youngest careerist in a family of professional military men.
listed as "missing in action," Mc- Cain was reportedly shot down in an air raid. Because of his lineage, front-page articles were devoted to him. Among the stories was his reaction to what happened to the Forrestal, his mother ship, when an accidental explosion occurred.
"It's a difficult thing to say," he told his friends the next day, according to the New York Times. "But now that I've seen what the bombs and the napalm did to the people on our ship, I'm not so sure that I want to drop any more of that stuff on North Vietnam."
Perhaps it was only a temporary flickering of his conscience, for he very shortly resumed flying his Skyhawk in new raids. But if a person so thoroughly indoctrinated in the U.S. military tradition was finally able to experience a twinge of revulsion when he saw his own buddies accidentally suffering from the fearsome effects of napalm, it can be imagined what the emotions are of the GIs who are conscripted against their will and sent into the dirty war in Vietnam.
HELMET-WEARING