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The last time U.S. Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara visited South Viet Nam, the Viet Cong Communists posted a crude wooden sign in the Mekong Delta: "That Man McNamara Stay Out of Viet Nam." Last week, as McNamara headed back to Viet Nam, the

Reds may have tried to make their warning more emphatic. Only hours before McNamara's arrival, a Boeing 707 jet approaching Saigon's airport was winged by a .30-cal. bullet that punctured an oil line, forcing the craft to land on three engines. Playing it safe, McNamara's silver Air Force jet swooped in at a steep angle to avoid ground fire.

Huddles & Hikes. Greeted by U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge and General Paul Harkins, commander of the 14,000-man U.S. military mission, McNamara and General Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, plunged into their assignment: to find out whether the war on the Communists has been hurt by the Diem regime's barefisted handling of dissident Buddhists. In a windowless, soundproofed room of Saigon's cream stucco

U.S. military GHQ, McNamara and Taylor first got a daylong briefing from 30 embassy, CIA and military officers. Then the two VIPs set out aboard Harkins' C-54 for four days of on-site inspection in the boondocks. They began their tour in the north, where the war is doing relatively well. So tight was security that their movements were announced only a few hours in advance. In the air they were protected by T 28 fighter-bombers and armed UH-1B helicopters, on the ground by machine-gun-carrying Jeeps.

Clad in open-necked suntans and Army clodhoppers, with Harkins always at his side, the poker-faced McNamara would begin by hearing from the local Vietnamese commander, then he would sit down before the U.S. detachment, firing incisive questions and scribbling notes in his lefthanded script on a white pad. At Hue, where the whole uproar began when government troops killed nine Buddhist demonstrators, the Defense Secretary listened to a half-hour briefing. At Tamky, under a faded tent, he was told about a search-and-clear operation designed to flush the Viet Cong out of hill country 20 miles away. Then he visited a field post that had been under fire only the day before. Inspecting a pile of Viet Cong weapons, McNamara spied a 57-mm. recoilless rifle, remarked, "I suppose that's Chinese," was embarrassed to learn that it was an American model originally captured from government troops. McNamara also interrogated two guerrilla prisoners.

Sound of Music. Near Plei Mrong, McNamara tramped through red mud to visit a village of Montagnard tribesmen that had been nearly destroyed by the Viet Cong last January; surrounded by goats, pigs, chickens and barebreasted women, the Defense Secretary observed the villagers voting in the national election being held that day, which was carefully arranged to sweep back into office a new Diem-ruled National Assembly. Then the Secretary, Taylor and Ambassador Lodge headed south into the Communistinfested Mekong Delta, where the war has always been an uphill struggle, and where the Reds have recently increased activity. As they were being briefed at Camau, gunfire was audible on the village outskirts--normal "background music" in the area, they were told.

What were the official visitors learn ing? Skeptics suggested that junior officers would hardly furnish them with anything but a rosy view so long as the boss--General Harkins--was hovering within earshot. But McNamara and Taylor are tough-minded men, with long experience at sorting fancy from fact. So far, they were keeping their counsel, doing lots of listening, little talking, as they moved from one military field headquarters to another.

At week's end it was announced that they would see President Diem at his office at Saigon's Gia Long Palace, later meet him and others in the government at a black-tie dinner. Back in the U.S., President Kennedy was waiting for the answers.

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