This conflict has yet to have an observable effect on military performance in combat situations. The close reality of common danger tends to suppress racial differences when troops are under fire and in the field. But when the shooting stops, blacks will readily speak their minds.

"The immediate cause for racial problems in Vietnam," explained Navy Lt. Owen Heggs, a black attorney from Washington, D.C., "is black people themselves. White people haven't changed. The same people in the military today were in the military in 1930, 1940 and so on. What has changed is the black population. As the military represents in microcosm the society we live in, black people today in the lower ranks represent the young black movement in our country.

"Today there is a different breed of young blacks, not satisfied being in the Marine Corps with their hair cut short. Either they say, 'Hell no, we won't go, or 'Yeah, I got to go and I'm here, but I'm not going to take any pushing around. I'm not going to come 12,000 miles from home to be insulted by some girl in the enlisted men's club who's been hanging around with some whites. She calls me nigger. Why? Somebody taught her.' They don't want to take the same pushing around they took in Philadelphia and Detroit, Hough and Watts. They're not ready for it, and they won't put up with it."

In six months I submitted questionnaires to 833 black and white men in uniform of all branches and ranks along the Vietnam landscape, asking each to answer 109 questions. I interviewed many at length. The results of that survey, some of which are included here, were recently tabulated with the assistance of Thomas Pettigrew and Kent Smith of the Harvard University faculty and Howard Zinn of the Boston University faculty.

A large majority of the black enlisted men agreed that black people should not fight in Vietnam because they have problems of discrimination to deal with at home, a striking contrast with the typical attitude of the black soldiers I talked with in 1967. "Negroes should be used in this war because the United States consists of Negroes and whites," Johnny E.Lawrence of Fuquay-Varina, N.C., told me then. "If King had any pride in his race, he ought to do what he can to support us." Said James H. Scott of Miami: "I don't think King and Carmichael are right. They live in a free country and somebody has to pay for it."

But today's black in Vietnam has a different view. "I think blacks should not be fighting here because in America there are places we can't go, homes where we can't live and jobs we can't have without chaos," said Thomas Garrett of New York City, a rifleman in the 199th Light Infantry Brigade. "Even if you have money, whites don't trust you. But as soon as a war breaks

out, we're pushed to the front lines."

Of 392 black enlisted men surveyed, 64 per cent believe that their fight is in the U.S. "I think the black man in Vietnam is definitely fighting two enemies," Ken Bantum, a black Air Force sergeant, told me. "And he should only be at home fighting one." Bantum, stationed at Bien Hoa, is from Philadelphia. One-fourth of the black officers and senior non-commissioned officers agreed.

Only 22 per cent of the black enlisted men thought they should be fighting in Vietnam for the same reasons as whites; 62 per cent of the officers took that view.

More than half of the enlisted men objected to taking part in the war because they believe it is a race war pitting whites against nonwhites or because they flatly don't want to fight against dark skin people. Only 37 per cent agreed that they were fighting a common Communist enemy with their white buddies in arms-the prevailing attitude among blacks three years ago.

"America is just fighting this war so that the white man can put boo-coo money in his pocket," Pvt. Bruce Jessup of Washington, D.C., said in Pleiku. "He just lets you die so he can send his little war materials over here. To hell with this war. We should say, come on in. Ho Chi Minh, this is yours. You can probably do a whole lot better with drove a gas truck for the 815th Army Engineer Battalion.

"I can't see dying in Vietnam to make someone else money," Marine Cpl. James E. Baker Jr. of Chicago told me. "The way whites treat the natives of this country I know they don't give a damn about their free-dom."

Less than a quarter of the black and less than a third of the white enlisted men agreed that the war should be ended by the strategy President Nixon has pursued. Only 22 per cent of the blacks and 28 per cent of the whites agreed that the best way to pursue the war was by new attacks on North Vietnam and invasions into Laos and Cambodia.

A small fraction wanted the war to continue as it was before Mr. Nixon ordered the Cambodia invasion. About three per cent of the blacks and eight per cent of the whites approved that course. Much larger groups. 24 per cent black and 46 per cent white, argued for a reduction in the battle tempo and a U. S. pullout as soon as the South Vietnamese could shoulder the full burden.

But 32 per cent of the blacks and 11 per cent of the whites answered that a withdrawal should come immediately because the U.S. had no business in Vietnam in the first place. Twelve per cent of the blacks and less than three per cent of the whites wanted an end to hostilities because the loss of American life has been too great.