The villagers in Long Binh Tan were very relaxed as compared to what I experienced in Long Hung, An Hoa Hung and An Xuan. In the evenings the PFs turn on a community television set. It was contained inside a large wooden box fastened to a pole in the square just outside the outpost in a small open area. This village is one of the few that has its own generator to power just the television.

   The watching of Vietnamese television in the evening is a total community social function. The gathering would start in the late afternoon and continue until just before dark when curfew began. I can recall one evening I watched a Vietnamese musical program on their village television in the square with approximately 30 villagers, male, female and children of all ages. The story was about Vietnamese Royalty of old, a Prince who was looking for a wife. The young peasant girl who was in love with the Prince and worked in the palace kept undermining the local palace concubines that were trying to win his hand, and she won his love in the end.

   The programs were preceded and followed by routine government propaganda with the waving of flags, political speeches and slogans, and the villagers treated it just like we do the commercial breaks on American television, they leave to get snacks and drinks.

   One difference I immediately noticed between the movie audience I sat with in the rural villages of Korea and the Vietnamese villagers here was, in Korea they ate bags of snails for snacks, the Vietnamese ate rice, dried squid and peanuts. I’m for the rice, dried squid and peanuts.

   None of the other villages would have ever dared to try this type of evening gathering.

   The Journal of CPL Thomas T. Watson, B Company, 720th MP Battalion, 89th MP Group, 18th MP Brigade, March 1968 to March 1969.