DEPSPITE all the millions of words of reporting and the thousands of pictures that have been sent out of Viet Nam, despite all the discussion and analysis and debate and controversy, there has not been an adequate public understanding of the shadowy and determined enemy that U.S. servicemen are fighting there.

It is in the hope of contributing a new dimension to that understanding that the editors of TIME decided to do this week's cover story.

Gathering the facts was a massive research job carried out over a period of several weeks by Correspondents Robin Mannock and Dan Coggin and Saigon Bureau Chief Simmons Fentress. Their sources, in the main, were captured documents, defectors from the Viet Cong ranks, captured suspects in the field, and military and civilian experts. Much of their work involved long, tedious probing into material that did not seem to mean much by itself, but which made up important pieces of the puzzle that is the Viet Cong.* The correspondents, as well as Senior Editor Richard Seamon and Writer Jason McManus working in New York, combined their efforts toward one end: to illuminate the face of the foe, to show how he thinks, fights, taxes, recruits, terrorizes, organizes, propagandizes and, above all, to show why he does these things.

Our goal will have been achieved if, now, TIME readers around the world have a clearer focus on the complex structure of the immensely complicated war.

"THE dust jacket of a new book ' that has just landed on the shelves of book stores in the U.S. shows the marching feet of a group of G.I.s and, among the soldiers, a marcher in nun's habit. Inside, the book opens with a first chapter that is largely about TIME. This rather unlikely combination occurs in GI Nun (P. J. Kenedy & Sons; $4.50), the story of Sister Mary Xavier Coens, B.V.M., and a troupe of girls she took to Europe for the U.S.O. in the summer of 1964 to entertain U.S. servicemen.

The girls were from the Coffee House Theater troupe of Clarke College in Dubuque, Iowa. TIME gets into the book because our EDUCATION section used the occasion of that tour three years ago (Sept. 4, 1964) to tell the story of Clarke, a small but remarkable girls' college that aims to educate its students for a fulfilled and rewarding life as wives and mothers in a modern world. Following a well-established pattern in such cases, Clarke found that a story in TIME was quite a landmark in its life. It got inquiries from prospective students and interested parents all over the country; since September 1964 its enrollment has increased 50%, from 800 to 1,200. Happily, contributions from supporters have also increased. Since 1964, Clarke has built three new buildings, including a $2.3 million science classroom-laboratory structure which houses a new department of computer sciences that has attracted computer specialists from around the nation to its seminars.

Last week Sister Xavier, now an honorary colonel in the U.S. Army, and the girls of Clarke's Coffee House Theater were back on U.S.O. tour, this time a six-weeks-long foray through armed-forces camps in Greenland, Labrador, Newfoundland and Iceland. The troupe is doing folk singing, modern-jazz dancing, sing-alongs, satirical skits and, our reporting indicates, living up to the way we described the girls of three years ago: "Vigorous and venturesome." In picking up that description for the title of Chapter 1 of GI Nun, Sister Xavier carefully added a word of her own: "Virtuous."

* Depicted on the cover by Painter David Stone Martin carrying the makeshift lamps they sometimes use when moving at night.

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