MEKONG DELTA, Republic of Vietnam — There's nothing very nice about any kind of war, whether it's global or just an "untidy little war" like the battle against communism here.

War picks no favorites — it makes its mark on young and old, friend and foe.

Take a walk along a palm-lined canal bank in the flooded Mekong Delta, through a Viet Cong hamlet.

On your left, you see two crying mothers clutching dirty-faced infants and pleading with a Vietnamese soldier. Their Viet Cong husbands have just been marched off after taking pot shots at government troops from a tiny dirt cave.

The sergeant listens for a moment, then tries to explain why he cannot release the two husbands who have chosen to fight for communism.

Further up the canal, you hear small-arms fire. Then a fighter streaks in to drop a deadly load. You hear its whine getting louder, then a faint whooshing sound as rockets leave pods under the wings. There's three seconds of silence before you hear the dull, thud-like explosions.

Climb into a shaky sampan, cross the canal and run a few hundred yards up the bank to see what has happened.

You see smoldering ashes of what had been a house. In front, beneath a shattered coconut palm lies a whimpering teen-aged girl, comforted by crying companions.

A few yards ahead, a medic is attending a gaping wound that had been the left shoulder of a pretty peasant girl.

Nearby, naked and half-naked children help their mother dash water on the smoking ruins — a futile attempt to save a few belongings from their demolished house.

You learn that the Viet Cong guerrillas, more than likely husbands and fathers of these villagers, had been firing on landing helicopters from the dark interior of the thatched huts.

You also learn, in barely 30 minutes along a Mekong Delta canal bank on a sunny day in October, that this is just another side of any war.

The enemy has been silenced. In their wake lay the unfortunates; the inevitable innocents that come with all wars.