NORTH VIETNAM'S
[The ingenuity of the Vietnamese people in turning to advantage even the most improbable "resources" in their struggle against the U.S. imperialist aggression is strikingly shown in a report sent by Agence France-Presse from Hanoi October 7. The account, which tells how a kind of "war" industry is being created in North Vietnam, is as follows.]
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The air war over North Vietnam has given rise to an entire industry in which North Vietnamese artisans produce useful objects from the scraps of downed U.S. planes and spent rockets and shells.
Combs, letter~openers and ashtrays are already in production, based on metal from the downed planes, to such a degree that it is nearing the export stage, but the North Vietnamese application of the axiom that "nothing is lost" doesn't stop there.
Parachute-shrouds from flares dropped by the American planes are turned into hammocks for children. The Plexiglass cockpits of downed planes are turned into two-man water-scoops for use in the rice paddies. Parachutes go into pillow-slips, bedspreads, camouflage covers and scarves.
Each of the supplementary fueltanks jettisoned by American pilots can make, when cut in half, two small boats capable of carrying a man, his weapons barriers and a cordon of West German police, he said, but hundreds of servicemen came out of curiosity and talked with English-speaking students across the barrier.
"WAR" INDUSTRY
and his equipment. Bomb-casings, napalm cannisters and the girders from wings and tails are turned into shovels and picks. Containers from ball-bearing bombs are made into plates, saucepans, bowls, surgical instruments, sterilization trays, and splints for broken limbs.
The North Vietnamese make tankards, flutes and one-stringed musical instruments from flare and rocket tubes.
Mudguards and chain-guards for bicycles come from small pieces of wing.
Agriculture also profits, since bomb fragments can be forged into ploughshares. The fragments, ranging in weight from a few hundred grams to many pounds are gathered in the fields by farm workers and children on their way to school.
The story is told of one lone bridge in the Ky Anh district, 340 kilometers south of Hanoi, which was so heavily bombed that the surroundings produced thirty tons of bomb fragments.
A forge run by the neighboring farm cooperative used them to turn out 60,000 ploughshares, furnishing them not only to farmers in the Ky Anh district but in two neighboring districts as well.
Perhaps the most unexpected use to which the North Vietnamese put the metal from downed planes is the manufacture of the medals used to decorate North Vietnamese soldiers and militiamen.
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