Border Recessional: The Return of Con Thien

THE Leathernecks who set up the McNamara line--the string of forward posts just below Viet Nam's Demilitarized Zone--used to describe their shell-pocked bases as "machines for killing Marines." The wry echo of Le Corbusier's famous line was morbidly appropriate. To counter enemy infiltration into South Viet Nam, the outposts had to be close to the DMZ--and therefore within easy range of Communist artillery in North Viet Nam and of mortars and rockets illegally positioned inside the six-mile-wide zone.

Last week, in a further Vietnamization of the war, the last of the bases that made up the McNamara line were turned over to the South Vietnamese army (ARVN). Six of the seven bases along the 40-mile stretch below the DMZ, from the South China Sea to the blue-tinged Annamite mountains of western Quang Tri province, are now manned by ARVN 1st Infantry troops and Marines. In a month or two, G.I.s will be pulled out of the seventh position, an outpost near the coast called Alpha 1, and the U.S. 5th Mechanized Division will leave its headquarters in Quang Tri city. A few Americans will stay on at the DMZ fire bases to tend complex optical and radar equipment. But the South Vietnamese will be substantially defending their own northern border for the first time since heavy North Vietnamese infiltration across the DMZ began in 1966.

One of the two outposts turned over to Saigon last week was Charlie 2, a barren hilltop four miles south of the DMZ. Last May, when it was still the home of 500 G.I.s, a single Communist rocket slammed into one overcrowded bunker at Charlie 2, killing 30 and wounding 32 inside.

Alpha 4, the other base turned over to ARVN last week, is only three miles from the southern edge of the DMZ. Better known as Con Thien--the name that was still lettered on its tactical operations center when the 300-man G.I. garrison pulled out last week--it is a small triangle of dusty hillocks that long ago earned a pivotal niche in the history of the war. In 1967, the North Vietnamese put such relentless pressure on Con Thien and inflicted so many casualties that the American public's confidence in its government's management of the war was badly shaken. In July of that year, two Marine companies ran into an ambush outside Con Thien, suffering 83 dead and 170 wounded. In September, the Communists began a long artillery and ground siege that in one murderous three-week period killed 196 and wounded 1,917 on and around the base.

Four years later, South Viet Nam's northern borders are still about as leakproof as Saigon customs. Since mid-March, when the Laotian incursion ended in muffled ignominy, 30,000 North Vietnamese troops have slipped into South Viet Nam's Military Region I, raising NVA troop strength in the five northern provinces to 52,000 troops (plus 24,000 Viet Cong guerrillas). Despite the presence of 180,000 South Vietnamese troops and the ready availability of U.S. airpower, the Communists seem capable of inflicting embarrassing losses in Quang Tri and Thua Thien, the two provinces just south of the DMZ.

Saigon is thus uneasy about reports that Washington is anxious to accelerate the U.S. withdrawal. During his stop in Saigon last week, Henry Kissinger assured President Nguyen Van Thieu that the U.S. is not about to "pull the plug." But he also warned Thieu that the U.S. withdrawal rate, now 14,300 a month, will probably jump to 20,000 after South Viet Nam's presidential elections in October.

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