Saturday, June 3, 1972
North Vietnam Pep Pills Are Full Of B And Sugar
SAIGON (AP) --The generals now know what's in those mysterious little pills that seem to make North Vietnamese soldiers ignore fire and fight like tigers. Vitamin B and sugar.Front-line commanders in past weeks have reported some attacking troops appear drugged, with glazed eyes and boundless endurance. Then they found strange-looking tablets left on the battlefield."They look just like candy drops," said a U.S. intelligence officer. "And I saw an analysis that discovered that's just what they were..."He said the North Vietnamese also took vitamin pills, rich in B complex.Other officers, and separate analyses, back up his information. Communist troops are taking glucose pills for quick energy, and they are going into battle sucking large vitamin pills."Well, it's pretty easy to understand," said one U.S. Marine on the northern front. "It's awfully easy to work an 18-year-old up to a good fight."They're probably telling them it's some kind of hefty pep pill and squeezing one last psychological effort out of them."The pills come in several types. Some are in plastic sheets glued together, with one section, containing a pill, torn off at a time. Others are dark brown, about the size of a dime."Some of the ones we saw are real horsepills," said a Marine officer. "I don't know how those little guys get 'em in their mouth."Sugar's quick-energy properties are widely accepted, officers said, noting that American C-rations contain chocolate bars for that purpose.The various vitamin B pills offer a number of medical benefits, including aid to digestion which fights diarrhea. They supplement the basic rice diet and prevent deficiency diseases.Vitamin B1 is essential for converting glucose into energy, doctors say.The North Vietnamese army's pharmacopoeia includes an array of folk medicines that would stock a Chinatown drugstore: balms, herbs, powders and elixirs. Officers say there is no evidence of any regular issue of amphetamines, barbiturates or anything else of that type."These guys fight like they're drugged," said a senior U.S. adviser who has seen them in action in the two-month offensive. "But it's indoctrination, they don't need pills.""North Vietnam Pep Pills Are Full of B and Sugar", by (AP), published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes Saturday, June 3, 1972 and reprinted from European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes.