North Viet Nam: Year of the Dog

A rare treat is in store for North Viet Nam's citizens when the lunar year 4668 begins next month--a 1 1/2-day holiday. Even so, there is a hitch. To compensate for time lost, all workers have been ordered to report for duty the following Sunday, which is normally a day off. In the end, the Tet "holiday" will amount to no more than half a day. The curtailed celebration may be symbolic of Hanoi's troubles as it prepares to wind up the Year of the Rooster and begin the Year of the Dog. Nevertheless, North Viet Nam's leaders appear as grimly determined as ever to press the war in the South.

Hanoi's mounting problems are not likely to keep it from marking Tet with a military offensive similar to those that have disrupted South Viet Nam in varying degrees on past lunar new years. Allied intelligence experts point to a tenfold increase in truck traffic through eastern Laos in recent months as proof that some action is planned. Neither at home nor on the battlefield have pressures grown to the point where the North's leaders feel compelled to negotiate a settlement. The 50th session of the Paris peace talks was held last week and produced no progress.

Cold Snap. Still, there are signs in Hanoi of worn morale, reduced capabilities and painful reassessment. Aside from the war, North Viet Nam has borne more than its share of nature's blows in the past year--a summer drought and a fall flood, an epidemic of deadly hemorrhagic fever, an earthquake, and last week a cold snap that plunged temperatures in Hanoi to freezing. There was the loss of Ho Chi Minh --and, with him, the vision of Uncle Ho entering Saigon in triumph and presiding over a united country.

An indication that Hanoi is thinking more than ever of a protracted struggle rather than a quick victory came recently from Defense Minister Vo Nguyen Giap, hero of the victory over the French at Dienbienphu. Writing in two North Vietnamese political journals, Giap offered no hope for the swift, decisive victory he had promised in his 1961 book, People's War, People's Army. "Our people will certainly win," he wrote, but he cautioned that "we must have time." North Viet Nam, he said, was fighting under severe disadvantages and would have to settle for a strategy of "fighting many with few" and "fighting strength with weakness."

Strange Accent. Giap's biggest headache is manpower. The Communists have lost nearly 600,000 men since January 1961--comparable to a U.S. loss of more than 6,000,000 troops. Viet Cong units are so depleted that Giap must furnish at least 70% of the guerrillas despite his dwindling reservoir of manpower. Increasingly, both North Vietnamese and Viet Cong units are composed of teenagers. What is more, many of the Northerners are being sent to the southernmost Mekong Delta, a sector that is unfamiliar to them but is rapidly becoming one of the most crucial areas of the war. To bolster South Viet Nam's defenses there, President Nguyen Van Thieu last week replaced two top military commanders in the Delta. The North, determined to discredit President Nixon's Vietnamization plan, has ordered two full regiments and possibly parts of three others into the area to confront Saigon's forces. The result has indeed posed a problem for Vietnamization-- but for Hanoi's brand as well as Washington's.

Viet Cong fighters resent the intrusion of the Northerners, who often assume command positions despite their youth and inexperience. Delta peasants mock their strange accent, and resent their condescending manner. Captured Communist documents tell of locals who refuse to give shelter, medical treatment and even directions to Hanoi's soldiers. One document mentioned a shop owner who raised food prices 15% whenever a Northerner walked in. A defector interviewed by TIME Saigon Bureau Chief Marsh Clark said: "Not only was my unit not welcomed by the peasants; we weren't even allowed near them."

North Viet Nam has not yet recovered from the effects of the four-year U.S. bombing that ended 14 months ago. Military target areas in Hanoi's suburbs are still strewn with rubble. Industrial production in 1969, which was supposed to increase by 16.4%, actually rose only 6.6%. One reason: bombing strikes have left North Viet Nam with only one-third the electrical capacity it possessed in 1965.

Woman Power. The government has managed to meet the monthly rice ration of 30 pounds for the average worker, but the staple is now mixed with large amounts of Soviet wheat. Many find the result unpalatable. Domestic rice production takes about 40 times the number of man-hours per pound that it does in Russia or Japan--partly because women workers, who now constitute more than 80% of the labor force, tire quickly in the paddies. According to Hanoi Moi, the capital's main daily, food lines have grown so long that some stores pass out "appointment numbers," assigning the customer a specific time to shop.

The annual ration of cloth is enough for two everyday outfits, but not enough for an ao-dai, the ladies' flowing tunic-cum-trousers, or for a winter coat. There is little local transportation except for bicycles. One recent visitor to Hanoi reported that the only nonessential goods he saw for sale were some Chinese-made pingpong balls. Hanoi's beer gardens frequently sell out before closing time. Hanoi Moi recently carried one letter from a cigarette-factory worker who apologized for the number of cigarettes that were "only half full of tobacco," and another from a smoker who complained: "You have to strike more than ten matches before one will light."

Nothing summarized the North's woes as graphically as a letter written by a 14-year-old schoolboy to his father, a soldier fighting in the South; it was reprinted in Nhan Dan. "I eat rice mixed with wheat. The shirt I wear is full of patches. The paper I write on has many lumps. I have only rubber sandals to ward off the winter cold. Grandmother is still working in the fields. Mother still digs irrigation ditches."

With every account of hardship, there is an exhortation to greater work and sacrifice. Nowhere has there appeared an official suggestion that Hanoi should alleviate the suffering by calling a halt to the fighting. The power to make that decision rests with the triumvirate that succeeded Ho--Premier Pham Van Dong, Party Secretary Le Duan and Assembly Chairman Truong Chinh. Analysts in the South and elsewhere are convinced that Truong now ranks first among equals. Those with hopes of a quick end to the war can hardly take comfort from the fact that his name translates as "Long March."

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