South Viet Nam: Pulling Itself Together

WEEK'S ACTION

AS the President began speaking to the nation on prime-time evening TV, it was 10 a.m. on Vietnamese clocks. At that hour, Navy jets from carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin dipped low over the narrow, shallow approaches to Haiphong and six smaller ports up and down North Viet Nam's 420 miles of coastline. In a matter of minutes, the pilots splashed hundreds of deadly delayed-action mines into the Communist shipping channels, and the peril and violence of the war in Indochina escalated once again.

After the mines came the bombs and the shells. Offshore, the cruisers Newport News, Oklahoma City and Providence turned their guns on a petroleum tank near Haiphong. In the sky, flights of 150 to 175 warplanes, including big B-52 bombers, began a systematic pounding of bridges, barracks, trucks, barges, rail junctions and other military targets in North Viet Nam's Red River Valley heartland. Some of the raids struck within 60 miles of the Chinese border. Daily, sometimes almost hourly, loudspeakers on Hanoi's streets screeched instructions: "Take to your shelters. The enemy is near."

In size and scope, the new air war on the North exceeded the heaviest bombing of Operation Rolling Thunder, the program of gradually escalating air attacks that the Johnson Administration pursued so doggedly for three long years. By March 1968, when Thunder was finally cut back, the U.S. was losing 20 planes a month, and North Vietnamese civilian casualties, by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's estimate, were running as high as 1,000 a week. In the days following Nixon's TV address, the U.S. lost three planes and four crewmen. Ten MIGs were brought down by U.S. jets. One U.S. Navy Phantom destroyed three of the MIGs in a fierce dogfight over Haiphong before it, too, was knocked out of the sky. The Phantom's flyers, Lieut. Randy Cunningham and Lieut, (j.g.) William Driscoll, who were subsequently rescued, thereby became the first American air aces of the Viet Nam War, since they had two previous "kills" to their credit.

Perhaps as Nixon had intended, the strikes had more impact in Saigon than in Hanoi. The tough decision to mine the harbors helped lift the gloom that had settled over President Nguyen Van Thieu and his South Vietnamese general staff in the wake of the abject ARVN collapses at Quang Tri and in most of the Central Highlands. The disasters had frozen Saigon into a paralytic numbness--the sort of debilitating shock that can quickly translate into a sudden and mortal collapse of morale. In order to boost the sagging spirits of the capital, ARVN set up a display of captured enemy equipment, including two huge North Vietnamese tanks, in the square outside city hall.

The malaise had apparently infected even Thieu. Except for a few trips out into the field, he had moodily confined himself to his Saigon palace almost since the Communist offensive began seven weeks ago. Last week, under prodding from the U.S., Thieu began to take a more visibly vigorous role. To instill a sense of national urgency, he went on TV to ask "the entire nation to do all that can be done, to sacrifice all that can be sacrificed." Nixon's decision to lay the mines, he told his Cabinet, ought to "dissipate any rumors that the U.S. might abandon us." From the National Assembly, he requested a grant of sweeping emergency powers for six months. He also declared a state of martial law, thereby giving his government the right to take over food supplies, forbid strikes and demonstrations, conduct unlimited police searches and close down everything from universities to race tracks if the need arose. Thieu continued his shake-up of ARVN generals, in the inexcusably weak commands of the two northern military regions.

No Static. Last week Thieu flew north to the imperial city of Hue, which is poised for what is widely expected to be the decisive battle of the offensive. There he conferred with Lieut. General Ngo Quang Truong, the newly appointed boss of ARVN's war in Military Region I (the northernmost provinces). Truong, who was pulled up from the Mekong Delta after the ARVN 3rd Division broke at Quang Tri, 24 miles north of Hue, is said to be the most competent field commander in the South Vietnamese army. U.S. generals say that "any situation improves when Truong arrives."

Evidently Truong aims to live up to his reputation. Too often, fretful South Vietnamese commanders have adopted what is generously known as a static defense; they have simply sat back and waited for Communist attacks. At Hue, Truong has begun to break that pattern. He sent a three-battalion infantry probe into Communist-held territory northwest of the city. With a lift from 16 helicopters based on a U.S. assault carrier standing at sea off Hue, three marine battalions were sent north to occupy a town near Quang Tri. The 1,700 marines probably would not try to retake

Quang Tri, which the 8,000-man ARVN 3rd Division had abandoned in terror, leaving behind a shockingly large arsenal of unused weapons: more than 200 tanks and armored cars and nearly 200 artillery pieces. But the appearance of movement was psychologically important to the Vietnamese. As one U.S. adviser in Saigon said: "They need to go out and whip somebody."

Can ARVN pull itself together? Saigon's 492,000-man regular army is suffering from more than battered morale. There are fewer than 150,000 Communist soldiers committed to the invasion; nonetheless they have not only tied up all of ARVN'S reserve strength but have also knocked out an ever-growing list of South Vietnamese units--one full infantry division, a third of another division, five infantry regiments, six armored regiments, three artillery battalions, nine ranger battalions, two airborne brigades and three battalions of marines, Saigon's best troops. The South Vietnamese have admitted to heavy casualties: 4,610 dead and 14,093 wounded. U.S. military men hope that, with unstinting American air support and Nixon's morale-boosting moves, ARVN can hold up at least through May, when monsoon rains are expected to dampen the action in the southern two-thirds of the country.

Medieval War. Despite the promise of Truong's moves around Hue, the military initiative still belonged to the canny North Vietnamese Defense Minister, General Vo Nguyen Giap. Last week, after a lull of ten days, Giap resumed the offensive. The new Communist thrust was pure Giap--methodically prepared, lavish with firepower, and at an unexpected point. The U.S. and South Vietnamese commands had been awaiting attacks on Kontum or Hue. Instead, Giap once more drove on An Loc, the shell-torn rubber town near the Cambodian border, 60 miles north of Saigon. As usual, Giap's troops fought an almost medieval war of siege and attrition. North Vietnamese artillerymen rained some 7,000 shells and rockets on the ruined city during a 15-hour barrage --a rate of one round every eight seconds. The U.S. Air Force responded in kind by laying on 21 strikes by B-52s, which dropped nearly 2,000 tons of bombs on the city's perimeter. Despite several ground assaults, An Loc's tenacious 6,000-man garrison was still in control of most of the city at week's end.

When the North Vietnamese first launched their offensive, they issued the call for a national "uprising" of South Vietnamese against the Thieu regime. That uprising has not materialized, and the flood of some 600,000 refugees from embattled areas suggests that the NVA soldiers have not been received as liberators. It is doubtful, though, that Hanoi seriously expected the South Vietnamese to revolt. The current campaign is obviously intended to produce a military victory, regardless of the cost in lives to the NVA.

In past offensives, Giap rotated his regiments in and out of the fighting. This year there has been no rotation to rest areas, and units are receiving replacement troops right on the battlefield. At times, Giap's commanders have let 3,000-man regiments fight down to 400 or 500 men before pulling them back to refit. Giap, moreover, has been uncharacteristically reckless in his use of tanks. A U.S. officer in Saigon who saw tank duty in World War II says: "I never saw the Germans or ourselves expend armor at a rate comparable to the North Vietnamese. Last week they moved 25 tanks east of Quang Tri in broad daylight. All of them were destroyed or damaged. That's kind of foolhardy."

Gaping Holes. What are the North Vietnamese after? Ultimately, they would like to wreck ARVN and bring down Thieu. Short of that, their maximum goal could be to seize Hue and the entire top third of the country and use them as a bargaining chip in any peace negotiations. If the battle for Hue occurs, it is universally agreed, it could prove to be crucial--to the shape of a settlement, if there is one, and to the future of Thieu and the Nixon policy in any case. Strategically, the fall of Hue would put Communist artillery within range of nearby Danang and its sprawling U.S. airbase. Psychologically, Hue's loss could lead to demoralization and collapse of South Viet Nam. "The impact would be like that of Dien Bien Phu," a high South Vietnamese official told TIME Correspondent Herman Nickel last week. "It would make clear that not even the best ARVN troops can defend the major cities and population centers. That's why the whole war may be decided in the next two or three weeks." Thieu is known to fear that if the Communists were to take Hue, they would immediately offer an in-place cease-fire--and the U.S. would accept, despite Thieu's opposition. As the Thieu scenario continues, political chaos would follow and the regime would fall.

The U.S. generals rate Hue's chances as only fair, even though it is defended by the esteemed Truong and 30,000 to 35,000 troops, including the highly rated 1st Division, three marine brigades, and airborne and ranger units. Opposing them are three Communist divisions and several independent regiments. When TIME Correspondent Stanley Cloud visited Hue last week, Communist guns were not far off. Cabled Cloud: "You can hear artillery in the distance, and from time to time the thunder of B-52 strikes rolls through the city to remind people how close the attackers are. The population --200,000 in normal times--has shrunk to about 100,000, including the troops and 40,000 refugees who were too poor, too tired or too sick to continue the flight south. The imperial palace stands in decaying splendor, surrounded by ancient walls through which gaping holes were blasted in the bloody fighting of 1968. Now the old city sits under a blistering sun and waits for war to come to it again.

"The town was very quiet, as it had been under the French when it was soft and sweet as a tropical fruit. On the main streets the traffic was mostly military. On the side streets there was no traffic at all. Houses were closed and shuttered. Schools were deserted, shops closed, restaurants barricaded. Only a few sampans plied the Perfume River. Some of the buildings of Hue University were used to house refugees. Once a day a dump truck arrived loaded with loaves of flyspecked 'welfare' bread. Each family of five was given one loaf a day, and nothing more. 'All the people with enough money have gone,' one middle-aged refugee told me. 'Only we are left.'

"Inside the Citadel, American Marine advisers have slung their hammocks in the Hall of the Royal Dancing Virgins. General Truong has his headquarters in the former residence of the Emperor. Outside, South Vietnamese soldiers laugh and eat watermelon under shady trees in the hot afternoon. They seem relaxed and happy. But, as one senior American officer told me, 'Normal indications of high morale can disappear very rapidly in an attack.'

"One day about 1,000 of Truong's local volunteers, wearing everything from black pajamas to sports shirts, marched through the city to the wall of the Citadel. A band was playing, and a few refugees and children gathered to watch. But there were no cheers."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.