From the S&S archives: A dull story? Not when their eyes told it ...

SAIGON — The assignment was the kind that can make a reporter shudder.

A civic action project.

Some U.S. servicemen had done something for a Vietnamese school, and there was to be a small ceremony. Check it out. It's a slow day anyway.

It was the kind of story some newsmen call schlock — not news, not a feature, no action, no conflict — of interest only to those involved in the event.

Heading downtown, I was feeling cynical and depressed. I had just come off a month's leave and had missed much of the action in the north, and now things had settled down again. It was more difficult to get the kind of hard news stories reporters like.

Then there was the traffic. Any man who has put up with Honda drivers floating in front of his bumper for two years becomes irritated easily.

Ben Marcus had phoned the office and requested the school story. He is the engineer adviser for the city of Saigon and, I thought, couldn't be blamed for calling us. He's obviously one of those men who simply doesn't know what's important to a reporter.

By the time I got to Nguyen Khoi Elementary School, a two-story cement blockhouse in the teeming Saigon suburb of Khanh Hoi, I was an hour late. Maybe it was over and we could forget the story. Nope. There was Marcus, talking to a Korean officer. Other Koreans, shirtless, sweating, pants rolled up, were shoveling mud out of a large hole.

Marcus, a middle-aged man in sunglasses, extended his hand and said I'd missed the ceremony, but was still the only newsman who had come. A Vietnamese television station had canceled out at the last minute, he said.

He explained that he was a member of the Saigon Civic Action Team and that this organization tried to get projects done without being allotted any men, money or equipment.

"We have to find volunteers," he said. "Like the Koreans here. They're building an annex for the school."

What happened here an hour before, Marcus said, was that a group of U.S. Navy Seabees brought more than 320 desks and benches that they had built for the school.

Before, the children had been sitting on the floor, Marcus said. Now, even though the enrollment is more than 3,000, they could sit and write at a desk because there are split shifts and three or four students can sit at one desk.

"If you could see the faces of the little ones, you'd understand," Marcus said. "They appreciate what they're getting."

But he was not out to get publicity for himself, Marcus explained. He wanted the Seabees to get some recognition.

The only ones who hadn't already left were a group of four at an outdoor coffee stand across the street. They were gathered around a table with a group of Vietnamese whose white shirts, open at the neck, showed them to be middle class. There was much laughing and joking in a manner which, upon close inspection, was genuine.

The Seabees said they were part of the 32nd Naval Construction Regt. in Saigon and that all 24 men in the unit had worked on the desks. The men got the lumber through a civic action fund and finished the desks in six weeks.

PO 3.C. Rich Mariette answered most of the questions and PO 3.C. Joe McGlynn and Seamen Gary Ginn and Tom Andi nodded agreement.

"Didn't your officers 'request' you to do this work?"

"There was no coercion to get the job done, and that's the straight skinny," Mariette said. "We could have sat in an office all day, but most of the men like to get out in the sunshine. It's good exercise."

He said even their commanding officer, Capt. William Zobel, and their supervisor, W03 Lawrence Allemand, helped with the work.

The men said they trucked the desks to the school, and the children had everything unloaded and into the classrooms in 15 minutes.

The principal then called the Seabees into his office and told them how much he appreciated what they had done, and how much the students appreciated it and how much the parents appreciated it, and then they went for an inspection of the classes.

The Seabees said they had done projects for other schools, and when they were stationed near Da Nang, they had spent a lot of time working with orphanages.

They said other Seabee units also donated time to civic action projects. "It's done on a local basis," Mariette said. "It's not something you'd get publicity for."

Marcus led us into a classroom, and the 75 children jumped to attention. They remained standing until told to sit down by their teacher. As the Seabees looked over the classroom, the eyes of the children said it all. When we left, they applauded.

Outside, the Seabees shook hands with the Vietnamese officials, and the Vietnamese officials shook hands with Marcus and Marcus shook hands with the Seabees and there was a lot of good will as everyone parted and went different ways.

Driving back to the office, down tree-lined Pasteur Street, I noticed the bougainvillea in bloom, and other flowers were beginning to open, and maybe the traffic wasn't so bad after all.