CRUMBLING BEFORE THE JUGGERNAUT

Reeling, stunned, confused, the army of South Viet Nam was in disordered retreat last week in the face of a continued Communist offensive. Government positions were abandoned with scarcely a fight. Leaderless, demoralized troops dropped their weapons and joined hundreds of thousands of civilians in a panicky southward flight. In the most stunning Communist victory in more than two decades, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops and tanks on Sunday overran Danang, the country's second largest city. According to reports by South Vietnamese officials, this victory gives the Communists nearly complete control of the entire northern half of South Viet Nam; Saigon's forces now hold only a number of coastal enclaves, and it is only a matter of time before they, too, fall. The abrupt collapse of government resistance in Danang climaxed a week in which Communist troops advanced almost at will down the central plains of South Viet Nam. In Saigon, President Nguyen Van Thieu was under pressure to yield powers to a more broadly based government.

What was astonishing was the speed and suddenness of the South Vietnamese collapse. The country that had fought the Communists to a stand-off since the Paris Accords of January 1973 now seemed to have lost the ability and will to resist; its defenses simply melted away before North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces. The Communists had not yet penetrated the vital Saigon region, and there was still hope that the government would be able to defend the capital. But many Viet Nam experts, who two weeks ago were predicting only limited losses for Saigon during the current dry season, now could not entirely discount the chance that the Communist momentum would carry them to total military victory in a matter of weeks.

Even if South Viet Nam survives, at best it will be in truncated form, having shrunk to the provinces around Saigon and the Mekong Delta. Even so, it was abundantly clear that Thieu's decision two weeks ago to abandon some outlying hard-to-defend provinces to the Communists had started a rout of his forces.

The loss of territory continued to be heavy; five provinces fell to Communist control last week alone, raising the total number of lost provinces to thirteen (out of 44). First to go were Quang Tin and Quang Ngai in the north. They were followed by Thua Thien; its capital, the old imperial city of Hue, easily fell to the Communists early one morning at midweek. That left only the city of Danang, swollen grotesquely with panicky refugees, as a final enclave in the entire five-province northern area that is referred to as Military Region I (see box, page 33). Some of the government's best units -- such as the rangers and the First Division -- were defending the city against about 35,000 Communist troops. When the attack came early Sunday, a heavy artillery and rocket barrage apparently forced the defenders to flee, allowing the Communists to roll easily over the sprawling city. They captured thousands of Saigon's troops and an enormous amount of U.S.-provided equipment, including warplanes, tanks and artillery. At week's end Lam Dong, a sparsely populated tea-growing province 85 miles northeast of Saigon, also fell. There seemed little doubt that the Communists would soon engulf practically all of Military Region II, the twelve provinces in the middle of the country.

Most disastrous from Saigon's point of view was the unexpected weakness of its army's defense. In Tarn Ky and Quang Ngai City, government forces simply evaporated before the Communist advance, often dropping their arms and supplies in the process. In Ban Me Thuot, the provincial capital 160 miles northwest of Saigon, panicky troops fled a Communist offensive three weeks ago, abandoning 1 million gallons of gas, 3,200 tons of ammunition and 10,000 tons of rice. Three days before the city's collapse, 100 trucks arrived with supplies that were soon captured.

A key reason for this painful loss of precious materiel was the very suddenness of Thieu's decision to abandon several provinces. Soldiers had no time to organize orderly retreats. In northern Quang Tri province, one of the army's best regional defense groups suffered a 15% desertion rate just before the Communist attack on the once lovely Hue; most of the deserters were concerned about the fate of their families. The retreat from Hue reached the frightening proportions of a stampede. Soldiers left behind 105-mm. howitzers and threw away rifles.

The swiftness of the retreat was not the only problem. Discipline among retreating troops in some cases collapsed completely as officers left their men leaderless or troops simply refused to obey orders. In the coastal city of Tuy Hoa -- the destination of tens of thousands of refugees -- unruly rangers roved around aimlessly, shooting into homes and further terrifying the people. By midweek the police had gone, the banks were closed, and it was impossible to buy bread or rice.

Worse still, the disorderly retreat of the troops helped create a psychology of panic that led tens of thousands of civilians to abandon their homes. Indeed, the dissolution of authority seemed as important in touching off the tidal flow of refugees as fear of the Communists or a preference for Saigon.

By the end of last week, estimates of the number of refugees in South Viet Nam ranged up to one million (in a population of 19.5 million). In Danang, the day before the city fell, some 400 Vietnamese air force men firing pistols and grenades forced their way past women and children onto a World Airways 727 chartered to fly refugees from the city. Several people were crushed as the plane took off; others fell to their deaths after trying to cling to the still open stairs and wheel wells. The incident and the unruly mobs at the airport caused the U.S. to suspend its program of evacuating refugees by air. The chaos and hopelessness in Danang moved President Ford to order four U.S. Navy transports to stand off the Vietnamese coast to pick up refugees and take them to safety. "I have directed that U.S. Government resources be made available to meet humanitarian needs," declared the President. He also called upon "all nations and corporations that have ships in the vicinity" to help with the evacuation.

The Communists apparently had not anticipated the civilian stampede, and they certainly did not welcome it. It is, after all, an empty victory to capture the land and lose the people. Armed troops were also mixed with the refugees. Thus last week North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces were deployed to try to block the exodus from the Central Highlands to the coast. On a stretch of road in Phu Bon province, a refugee column was harassed again and again by enemy fire, taking heavy casualties. At one point part of the column crossed the Song Ba River but soon ran into a Viet Cong blockade that stopped its advance. Perhaps as many as 50,000 people and 500 trucks found themselves jammed between the river and the Communists. On the other side of the Song Ba, meanwhile, the caravan began to pile up on itself. A jumble of people, motor scooters, trucks, buses and cars congealed until 5,000 vehicles turned the riverbank into a gigantic parking lot. Then Communist mortar and rocket fire slammed into the riverside, setting vehicles alight in a fire that 24 hours later was still raging. In the end, the 50,000 who had crossed the river pushed on to the sea in reckless disregard of the danger from the Communists. But continued sniping on the road by the Viet Cong made it impossible for more than 100,000 others to cross the Song Ba.

Of all South Viet Nam's major cities only Saigon has so far been spared mass panic, though nerves were frayed by the news from the north. The only clear sign of unease was the precautionary actions taken by many people. Hoarding pushed up the price of rice by some 10%. Housewives were stashing away three-month supplies of Nuoc Mam, the redolent fish sauce. Businessmen were transferring piasters from Vietnamese banks to the local branches of U.S. banks, hoping they would prove safer if the Communists came.

Close enough, it seemed, for some extraordinary political events to take place in Saigon. On Wednesday a group of leading anti-Communists met for tea at the officers' club at Tan Son Nhut Air Base. Their host was Nguyen Cao Ky, the flamboyant airman who was Prime Minister from 1965 to 1967. Among Ky's 30-odd guests were such prominent figures as Dr. Tran Van Do, former Foreign Minister and head of the South Vietnamese delegation to the Geneva Convention of 1954, and Father Tran Huu Thanh, leader of the Catholic anticorruption movement that has sponsored several popular anti-Thieu demonstrations in the past several months. The group's first move was to put pressure on Thieu to cede his power to a new, more broadly based government. Thieu could remain as President, but he should preside over an entirely new Cabinet.

Thieu's response was swift and characteristic. He had a handful of lesser-known dissidents arrested, including two who had been at the tea meeting, as well as a number of journalists and politicians who tend to support Ky. The arrests were clearly meant to frighten the bigger fish in the opposition and demonstrate that Thieu not only was still in power but also intended to remain there.

Still, given the collapse of the military effort, opposition to Thieu's government is bound to increase, especially among Saigon's strongly non-Communist conservative groups. The day after the arrests, Ky and Father Thanh held a news conference to announce the formation of an Action Committee for National Salvation that would press Thieu to relinquish his near absolute power. None of the action committee sponsors favored an overthrow of Thieu; indeed, they seemed to believe that a coup would only further lessen public confidence in the government. But the conservative opposition argued that South Viet Nam now needs a strong, broadly representative, anti-Communist movement while reorganizing the army to defend a smaller perimeter around Saigon and part of the rice-rich Mekong Delta. "The present atmosphere of panic is like China in 1949," said one of the country's most respected political leaders. "We can no longer count on the American forces, and we must act quickly to save ourselves."

The emergence of Ky's action committee and the arrests of right-wing oppositionists helped start a flurry of coup rumors in Saigon. But in fact there is only an outside chance of Thieu being removed by his present opponents. For one thing, the action committee is still not united with Saigon's other main non-Communist opposition force, the most militant Buddhists, who favor entering directly into a coalition government with the Communists. Neither Ky nor General Duong Van ("Big") Minh, an ex-chief of state who now leads the Buddhist opposition, seems to have enough of a personal following to succeed in replacing Thieu. Moreover, if government forces stop the Communist advance in Military Region III, the eleven-province area around Saigon, then much of the pressure on Thieu will evaporate.

More crucial to Thieu than the opposition moves is whether the U.S. Congress will approve the $300 million in additional military aid requested by President Ford. That approval seems as unlikely as ever. Nor does the "compromise" described by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at his news conference last week -- a threeyear, $5.5 billion aid program -- have a much better chance.

Virtually everything in Viet Nam now hinges on ARVN's ability to stem the Communist advance. Most military analysts feel that the decisive battle will be fought in Military Region III. Though three or four full divisions fell apart during the retreat from the north, South Viet Nam still has three divisions, plus five groups of rangers and three airborne brigades deployed around the capital. Many of these troops are highly regarded by Pentagon analysts and apparently have not been badly demoralized by the military reverses suffered in the north. Moreover, the capital area's supply dumps remain well stocked.

Thus most military experts predicted that Saigon -- and South Viet Nam -- would not fall this year. "But its long-term future is not promising," said a U.S. Government expert.

Of that there was little doubt. The Communist advance has been more devastating than anybody expected.

Even if Saigon regroups its defenses and forms a tight perimeter around the capital, holding off the attackers until the summer rainy season slows the fighting, the Communists are likely to be on the capital's doorstep when the dry season arrives; they already have seven divisions and at least 200 tanks in the area. Without some political solution -- meaning a coalition with the Communists -- Hanoi and the Viet Cong will press for the military victory that they have been seeking for ten years. Saigon can probably hold out for quite a while, at great cost to any attacker. Eventually, however, it is hard to imagine South Viet Nam decisively reversing the defeats suffered in the past three nightmarish weeks.

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