Demoralization Leaflet 26 is a 1966 two-panel cartoon credited, per Wikimedia Commons, to U.S. forces psychological operations. A heavy seated man, whom Commons identifies as Mao, sits on sacks of "North Vietnamese rice" before two soldiers with a buffalo's and a horse's head, who then march toward a sign reading "the South" and a skull in blood.
The two panels
The cartoon is printed in orange, black and grey. In the left panel a heavy man sits on sacks of rice holding a rifle and a trident, facing two figures in uniform; one has a buffalo's head and the other a horse's. Wikimedia Commons identifies the seated man as Mao. In the right panel the same two figures march with the rifle and a trident dripping blood toward a signpost. Beneath the sign lie a skull and bones in a pool of blood. The only words are labels.
GẠO BẮC
GẠO BẮC VIỆT
GẠO BẮC VIỆT
[signpost] MIỀN NAM
Who made it
The maker line reads "U.S. forces psychological operations (JUSPAO/MACV), per Commons." The archive's copy comes from Wikimedia Commons, which took it from psywarrior.com, retrieved 2 October 2026, with a PD-USGov tag. The audience is enemy forces and the purpose is coded as demonizing. FRAME's source category is "Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosure." The archive has no NAID or drop area for it.
How to read it
FRAME tags it name-calling and fear appeal. Its reading: the enemy's soldiers are drawn as livestock, fed and driven to their deaths for the benefit of another power. The leaflet works without a sentence: the seated man on the rice sacks, the animal heads and the skull by the signpost carry the whole argument.
The animal heads are the insult, but the argument underneath is closer to pity. That is the demoralization method: persuade a man that he is being used, and he may stop fighting. It is a fair line of argument in war. The leaflet offers no evidence for the relationship it draws, and the archive does not test it.
A different U.S. leaflet reaches for Vietnamese history instead: the Sacred Sword leaflet with Le Loi, issued in the name of a league that did not exist. Fear in the opposite register, a promise of death with a named exit, is in Viet Cong Beware!. The Vietnam War messaging hub collects the rest.
Sources
FRAME object record, Demoralization Leaflet 26: Gạo Bắc Việt (North Vietnamese Rice) cartoon, 1966. U.S. forces psychological operations (JUSPAO/MACV), per Commons. English translation in the record is machine-assisted and not verified by a fluent reader.
Wikimedia Commons, File:Demoralization_Leaflet_26_Vietnam.jpeg (copy via psywarrior.com), retrieved by the archive 2 October 2026. Rights as recorded: PD-USGov per the Commons page.
