The War: Testing Vietnamization

THE top priority of U.S. fighting men in South Viet Nam is no longer killing the enemy. It is teaching and equipping South Viet Nam's army to do so. Since last June, when President Nixon announced his plan to turn the burden of the ground fighting over to the South Vietnamese, the U.S. has conducted cram courses in modern combat, completed equipping almost all of South Viet Nam's 877,000 soldiers with new M-16 rifles, and provided 50,000 vehicles and 50,000 radios.

Still, the question remains whether ARVN (Army of the Republic of Viet Nam) will be able to hold its own against the battle-seasoned North Vietnamese. Because of the reduced level of enemy activity, ARVN has not yet faced a major test. Yet in the one sustained battle that it has fought against the North Vietnamese since the U.S. withdrawal got under way in earnest, ARVN performed encouragingly well.

Presidential Pressure. The battle was an eight-week engagement involving the Special Forces camps of Bu Prang and Due Lap in the Central Highlands along the Cambodian border. At least eight battalions under the command of the ARVN 23rd division, which had failed twice in the past two years to repulse enemy attacks, fended off three seasoned North Vietnamese regiments, numbering about 5,000 men. Last week, as the Communists withdrew to base camps farther north in Cambodia, the

South Vietnamese claimed that they had killed 1,519 enemy soldiers while losing only 285 themselves. Though the enemy casualty figures were probably inflated, there was no doubt that ARVN troopers had blocked the North Vietnamese from accomplishing their goals: 1) to take one or both of the camps by Christmas; 2) to force the U.S. to commit ground troops to the action, and 3) to discredit the ARVN.

In late October, when the Communist troops began to mass around Bu Prang and Due Lap, American commanders warned Colonel Vo Van Canh, the commander of the 23rd division, that they would give him air and artillery support, but that he would have to handle the ground fighting himself. Under personal pressure from President Nguyen Van Thieu to seize the initiative, Canh ordered the 23rd to ferret out the North Vietnamese before they could mount an attack. In a series of daily skirmishes, Colonel Canh's troopers swept the wooded ridge lines of the Central Highlands, preventing the enemy from concerted attack. The enemy's closest penetration in force fell a half-mile short of the perimeter wire at Due Lap.

During the fighting, the South Vietnamese ran their own supply line and conducted the evacuation of their wounded by air--tasks that Americans would have been performing only a few months ago. The count of American casualties in the eight-week engagement reflected the reduced American role: 24 killed and 86 wounded.

Delta Doubts. In another place, Vietnamization remains a promising but untried theory. As part of the Dong Tien (literally, Progress Together) program, ARVN's 5th infantry division has been undergoing intensive training by the U.S.'s 1st Infantry Division. When the Big Red One departs, probably under President Nixon's third round of withdrawals, scheduled to be completed by April 15, the Vietnamese will assume responsibility for guarding the critical northern approaches to Saigon.

The most severe challenge may well occur in the Mekong Delta in southern Viet Nam. The U.S. 9th Division, whose men were among the first Americans pulled out by Nixon, had helped the Saigon government to establish its presence in an area previously controlled by the Viet Cong. The 7th ARVN division, which replaced the American unit, has abandoned the 9th's practice of keeping the enemy on the run with constant small patrols and ambushes. The U.S. and South Vietnamese commands now view the 7th as ARVN's biggest problem. In the meantime, the North Vietnamese have sent three regiments into the Delta for the first time. If the next test of Vietnamization comes there, some U.S. experts fear that the grades may be somewhat lower than they were at Bu Prang and Due Lap.

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