Suicidal Intensity

In recent weeks in South Viet Nam, Communist troops have been regularly beaten back, hurled from prepared positions, put to flight and slaughtered in huge numbers. Their setbacks have been so costly, U.S. experts reckoned, that they would need time to recover from their huge losses of both weaponry and men. Yet the Viet Cong and their North Vietnamese allies have just kept coming on, and their persistence and unpredictability have created some of the war's most bitter fighting. Instead of withdrawing and licking their wounds, the Communists last week launched another series of attacks. At the same time, the official North Vietnamese army newspaper promised that fighting in the South, where the North still does not admit it has troops, will become "more savage" in coming months.

Mindless Waves. The target of the week's first attack was no surprise. It was Bo Due, a remote district-headquarters compound within easy commuting distance of the Communists' Cambodian sanctuary. What surprised U.S. officers was the identity of the attacking force. It was the main-force Viet Cong 272nd Regiment, which took such a severe mauling at Loc Ninh last month that Major General John H. Hay, commander of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division, predicted that it would be three to six months before the 9th V.C. Division, of which the 272nd is a part, would be able to fight in force again.

Yet there they were. First laying down a mortar barrage, the 272nd skillfully used bangalore torpedoes to blow big gaps in the six layers of barbed wire that surround Bo Due's two interconnected forts. Then, charging in mindless waves, the V.C. managed to reach one of the forts. Using homemade bamboo ladders that they had carried with them, they scaled the walls and captured the fort. Their victory was short-lived. While 250 South Vietnamese defenders fought back, U.S. advisers called in artillery strikes from two miles away, brought in planes to bombard the V.C. The Communists left behind 69 bodies.

The next attack came a night later at Bu Dop, a U.S. Special Forces camp 21 miles north of Bo Due. Viet Cong intelligence was so precise that one of the first rockets dropped directly on top of an important U.S. bunker, killing the three American occupants. With suicidal intensity reminiscent of the Chinese in Korea, wave after wave of Viet Cong rolled over each other toward the camp. This time a hail of fire from a battalion of U.S. defenders and the miniguns of circling American gunships stopped the assault short of the fort's outer fences. Chalk up another 20 Viet Cong dead, plus many bodies that would be found at the end of trails of blood leading away from the camp.

Rewriting Mao. Both engagements underline a shift in Communist tactics. In the past, with few exceptions, the Communists abided by the classical precepts of guerrilla warfare as laid down by Mao Tse-tung: Do not take unnecessary losses and fight only when the odds are in your favor. Now, they suddenly seem willing to suffer almost limitless casualties and fight in adverse conditions. This was illustrated last week in a series of fights near Dak To, when South Vietnamese paratroopers engaged a battalion of North Vietnamese regulars. Instead of running for Cambodia, the Communists stood and fought three sharp battles, suffering 107 losses. Similarly, near Con Thien, a company of U.S. Marines made contact with a North Vietnamese company that held its ground even after the Marines helilifted three additional companies into action. Only when darkness fell did the outnumbered Communists withdraw and steal away.

Why the change? The North Vietnamese army paper explained the reason last week. Tacitly conceding that they have come to recognize the impossibility of defeating the U.S. in the field, the Communists are now banking on winning the war on the American home front. Said the paper: "The American people's protest against the war of aggression has spread increasingly throughout the U.S. Internal contradictions have developed increasingly in the ranks of the American ruling clique." Believing this, as they do, the Communists are willing to suffer huge losses in order to lure U.S. troops into action so that they can kill enough G.I.s to fan antiwar sentiments in the U.S.

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