Diagnosis: Battle Fatigue Rx: Transfusion

The need for new blood in South Viet Nam's grim war is best argued by the reluctance with which old blood is shed. Last week, as if to confirm the pressing reasons behind Washington's decision to replenish its forces in the country (see THE NATION), Saigon's troops gave a clinically perfect demonstration of battle fatigue.

A Chunk of Junk. As three battalions of South Vietnamese infantry pushed toward Viet An, an outpost 31 miles south of Danang, they passed a sign erected by the Communist Viet Cong. It read: "A 250,000-man French expeditionary corps came this way and was destroyed. Don't let it happen to you." They didn't. Though wave upon wave of U.S. fighter-bombers swept in before the attack with bombs and rockets, the weather turned bad for air support when the assault actually began. By midday, the attack force had reached the Viet Cong's main line of resistance--a low mudbank at the far side of open paddyfields affording a clear field of fire to the enemy.

Suddenly the rice came alive with bursting, 4.2-in. mortar shells. "It was the biggest pile of junk I've ever seen," said Associated Press Correspondent John T. Wheeler, an ex-Air Force officer now covering the war. When a chunk of the junk slapped through the throat of a U.S. adviser, Wheeler picked the wounded man up and began searching for a medic. But the South Vietnamese were already on the run, and armored trucks went bumping wildly across the hills in retreat without regard for the fleeing troops on foot. None would stop for Wheeler and his wounded cargo. "I'd give him a drink of water, and it would come out his throat," Wheeler told fellow reporters later. "We could see the Veecee coming across the paddies--some in khaki, some in mustard yellow, some in black pajamas. They were traveling light and were freshly rested. We were dead tired."

No More Grinding. Wheeler finally got the wounded American officer out, and though U.S. sources later described the retreat from Viet An as "a break from contact" with the Viet Cong, it was clearly a bug out. The main reason was simply that the Vietnamese soldiers had been in steady action for more than a year with hardly a break. Even with the artillery and air support that was lacking at critical moments in Viet An, troops so weary could hardly be expected to perform with skill in the grinding day-in-day-out war. The only sure cure for battle fatigue is a transfusion of well-rested, eager combat troops like the 6,800 U.S. marines currently patrolling Danang airbase. Though the marines last week were finally blooded in their first real firefight with the Communists, they have yet to tangle with Viet Cong main force.

Ranging out from Danang airbase, Marine patrols had a series of run-ins with the Communists that ended nominally in victory but actually in absurdity. One contingent bumped up against a Viet Cong patrol and caught a burst of machine-gun fire. A private was hit five times, but the bullets were spent, and he limped off to a helicopter for evacuation. Another marine caught a slug right up the barrel of his M-14 rifle--a one-in-a-million shot that burst his weapon and gashed his face. Yet another private stepped into the gaping steel jaws of a Viet Cong mantrap, and when a fourth marine rushed to his aid, the rescuer stumbled onto a sharpened bamboo stake--injuring his leatherneck pride more than his derriere.

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