Copyright © 1996, by: Don Poss

Da Nang . . . August, 1965: A few of us Airmen wanted to go downtown Da Nang and check out the sights. Gary Eberbach, J.B. Jones, Tom Baker, and I caught the blue Air Force bus. I was still unused to the anti-terrorist screened windows. Dropped off on the main street, we were immediately surrounded by a horde of begging kids that we waded through, to shouts of Numba Ten thou G.I.. We continued sauntering along looking at the open shops and girls in Vietnamese attire, and computing the unofficial exchange-rate for the U.S. dollars which troops were still paid in at that time.
      A young woman suddenly came up to me and held out a "package" for me to take. Instinctively, I took the cloth package which was a light bundle about the size of a baby. I looked down---and there was a dead infant with an elephantiasis head. The mother pleaded for us to help as she needed beacu-P for the baby's funeral. Young American G.I.s are easy targets because of their natural generous nature and desire to help. We emptied our pockets and the girl moved on down the sidewalk.
      Encountering some buddies from the Air Base, I began telling them about the tragic scene and turned to point out the woman with the dead baby---just then the woman handed the baby to another woman and walked casually away. The second woman assumed a devastated expression and began panhandling GIs. Neither woman was starving or underfed. The simple truth was self-evident:they were just walking a beat and using a dead infant to con American servicemen ... and it was working.
      I realized that I had just been had---played for a genuine sucker, and resolved never to fall for another sympathy scam to separate me from my too few dollars.

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