The Delta War

South Viet Nam's President Nguyen Van Thieu now regards the Mekong Delta as the "main front" of the current war--even though the Delta does not have, in the strictest sense, a battle front. Long considered the country's most secure region, the Delta is crucial to both sides; more than a third of South Viet Nam's population lives there, and it grows 80% of the country's rice. As the conventional war to the north remained stalemated last week, attention shifted to the south, where Communist guerrillas are still waging what TIME Correspondent Rudolph Rauch calls "a Graham Greene kind of war, of weak outposts overrun at night, of ambushes and infiltration, of contested villages and safe roads suddenly cut." Rauch and TIME Pentagon Correspondent John Mulliken toured the Delta last week. Their report:

The Communist offensive has reduced the government-controlled portion of the region from 90% to about 75%. Out of 5,000 government outposts, 100 have been overrun by the enemy and another 250 have been "consolidated," meaning abandoned. The abandonment of many of these outposts makes sense militarily, but it has drastically affected the pacification program as well as the population's morale.

At one village in Kien Hoa province, for example, the inhabitants, who returned to their homes only last year, had recently harvested their first crops and held their first local elections in more than a decade. But since February, 500 of the village's 5,000 residents have drifted away because they no longer felt secure.

At the marketplace in Giong Trom, an old woman complained that her nearby village was "no longer quiet." Did she mean that the Viet Cong came from time to time? "Not because they come from time to time," she replied, "but because they're there right now --all the time."

The Viet Cong resurgence in much of the Delta has been made possible by the transfer of ARVN troops to beleaguered regions elsewhere. The veteran 21st Division and one regiment of the 9th Division were pulled out in April to relieve the forces at An Loc; five other regiments in the Delta have been assigned to guard the major infiltration route from Cambodia, where two North Vietnamese divisions are trying to cross the frontier into South Viet Nam. "If I can contain the enemy to the north," says Lieut. General Nguyen Vinh Nghi, 39, commander of Military Region IV (the Delta), "I will have no problem with the forces inside the country."

Planting Time. Nghi has his hands full contending with an estimated 56,000 Communist troops and cadre, despite his numerically superior force. He has 255,000 men under his command, but the majority are the young and inexperienced troops of the Regional and Popular Forces. One outpost manned by Popular Forces was abruptly abandoned when the mother of one of the defenders ran in screaming that 1,000 Viet Cong were about to attack. She simply wanted her son out--and he and the others hastily left.

The hardest-hit province in the Delta is Chuong Thien, near the U Minh Forest, which was cleared of enemy forces by the 21st Division last year but is now a Communist stronghold once more. Four villages and 23 hamlets have been lost in Chuong Thien during the past month, though many were later retaken. The village of Hoa Thuan was held by the Communists for only a short time, but it was long enough for them to murder as many as 20 local officials. "We've lost roughly 25,000 people from such areas," says Colonel John Meese, the senior U.S. adviser in the province. "They have simply dispersed. They'll come back because it's planting time, and they'll come back regardless of who controls them. We have to get back before they do."

When we visited one village in Chuong Thien last week, a young woman told us: "If you journalists from Saigon would bring us peace, I would prostrate myself for a month. In fact, I would kill a pig and give you a feast." The interpreter raised his right hand and said, "Brothers, I wish peace for you all." Immediately two other hands went up, the first clenched, and everybody said it: "Hoa binh. Peace."

In some overrun hamlets, the Communists are imposing a tax of two-thirds on this year's rice crop--up from. 50% a year ago, a trend that apparently indicates growing confidence. "They are trying to reoccupy villages and hamlets where they used to work," says Colonel Duong Hieu Nghia, the Vinh Long province chief. "They are preparing for a ceasefire. They want to be in place if it comes, and ready if it does not."

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