Their Own Battle

Over rutted jungle roads and through remote mountain villages, General Maxwell D. Taylor Jeeped and walked last week on a first-hand inspection tour of South Viet Nam's hard, ugly war against the Communist Viet Cong. Taylor, who takes over as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff next month, last visited Viet Nam a year ago; from that trip came the stepped-up program of U.S. military and economic aid to the embattled nation. Last week, in talks with President Ngo Binh Diem and General Paul Harkins, boss of U.S. forces in Viet Nam, hardbitten Maxwell Taylor sought to assess the results. His conclusion: "We are making progress."

Since last October, the U.S. has boosted its force of military advisers to more than 10,000, and is now spending $1,000,000 daily to beat the Viet Cong. This year the U.S. will help arm some 130,000 members of the Civil Guard and the Self-Defense Corps, and train them both to defend their villages and to make short-range thrusts against the Viet Cong. The regular army will be boosted from seven to nine divisions, with a total force of 200,000 men; U.S.-backed training programs will also double the size of the army's officer and NCO corps.

Clear & Hold. With the growth of the militiamen, the army is being released from static holding operations to make major offensive sweeps against the Viet Cong, sometimes clearing them from areas where no government forces have been in 15 years. In Kien Phong and Vinh Long provinces, where the Reds once dominated up to 65% of the population, swiftly mounted government raids against guerrilla training centers and supply depots have reduced the Communist-controlled populace to less than 30%. In the past year, the army's striking power has been massively enhanced by U.S. helicopters that can airlift Vietnamese troops in hours to isolated areas that once took days to reach--if they were not ambushed en route. In the next month, the four helicopter units now ferrying troops will be reinforced with three new companies, including a number of new models armed with machine guns and rockets.

Taylor and Harkins were particularly encouraged by the government's ambitious strategic hamlet program (see map).

Its aim is to concentrate the rural population in fortified villages that are guarded by Self-Defense Corpsmen, and thus deprive the Viet Cong guerrillas of the supplies and shelter they have long exacted from the terrified peasants. To date, nearly 3,000 of the 11,500 strategic hamlets that the government expects to build have been completed, and 2,700 more are under construction. In Phu Yen province alone, 200 miles northeast of Saigon, 170,000 Vietnamese out of a population of 345,000 have been relocated in strategic hamlets. Though the Viet Cong have repeatedly attacked the strategic hamlets, they have been unable to subdue any of them. In 60 attacks last month, the government claimed that the Reds lost 109 men while only twelve Self-Defense Corpsmen were killed.

But the country is under considerable and mounting strain.

Politically, despite the pleadings of U.S. officials--and rumbles of discontent from his opponents--Diem is in no mood to relax his authoritarian rule. Economically, the war has taken a heavy toll. The Viet Cong have cut off rice shipments from the interior and rubber production is down sharply. Gold and foreign exchange reserves have dipped from $222 million in 1960 to $158 million, and export earnings will drop this year from $70 million to $55 million. Nearly $2.5 billion in U.S. aid has only made South Viet Nam more dependent on--and more critical of--its friends.

A National Character. Yet U.S. aid is essential not only to South Viet Nam's survival as a free nation; it is also helping subtly to foster what General Taylor called a growing national character, a great national movement." The strategic hamlet program alone has given thousands of peasants their first experience of self-government; bolstered by U.S. economic aid, the experiment has also brought teachers, doctors and agricultural advisers to large areas that, in consequence, are undergoing what a top Vietnamese official calls "a social revolution, with a whole new scale of values." As the Vietnamese clear and hold the countryside. Taylor said last week, ";the emphasis will shift more to economic and social activities." In this realm alone, U.S. advisers admit, a vast amount remains to be done. Militarily, also, South Viet Nam still faces a long, hard fight. But the national effort is gathering momentum. Declared Maxwell Taylor: "South Viet Nam is moving toward victory because the South Vietnamese are fighting their own battle."

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