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The Nation: The fierce War on the Ground

9 minute read
TIME

BEYOND the obvious political goals, the massive North Vietnamese ground offensive was designed to test the will of the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam—to bloody and punish it, to destroy it if possible. Last week both armies had certainly been bloodied, in a war of attrition that raised casualties to the highest levels in months. By conservative estimate, 10,000 South Vietnamese were killed or missing during three weeks of fighting; American losses were 28 killed and 108 wounded. Despite the fearsome losses inflicted by U.S. and Vietnamese air strikes, the estimated 110,000 to 130,000 NVA troops in the South kept the initiative, even though they had yet to capture one major city. But they had also taken control of chunks of territory, and the 492,000-man South Vietnamese army was overextended as it sought to protect the widely scattered fronts.

Many ARVN units fought well—notably the Rangers and Marines, and sometimes even units of the often-maligned Regional and Popular forces. But the South Vietnamese had yet to mount an effective counteroffensive anywhere. The primary reason was the excessive caution of ARVN generals, who apparently preferred to let airpower do the job rather than risk their troops, even when risks were mandatory.

Nowhere was the South Vietnamese failure more evident—or more costly in military and civilian lives—than in the siege of An Loc, a provincial capital of approximately 17,000 people 60 miles north of Saigon. Its population had been swollen by 6,000 men of the battered South Vietnamese 5th Division and some 2,000 refugees who had fled south after the fall of the district town of Loc Ninh three weeks ago. North Vietnamese troops threw a cordon around

An Loc. South Viet Nam’s President Nguyen Van Thieu ordered the city held “at all costs” and sent a crack armored column of 20,000 men northward to relieve it. Fearful that the column might be trapped and cut off from the rear, the area commander, General Nguyen Van Minh, halted the majority of his troops 15 miles from An Loc.

By decreeing that An Loc be held, President Thieu had inadvertently given it a symbolic importance far beyond its actual strategic value. It bestrides the highway to Saigon, but the city itself is of little military worth. After a two-week siege, An Loc was a shattered city of rotting corpses and walking wounded. From tree-covered cliffs and rubber plantations overlooking the town, North Vietnamese gunners poured in round after round of artillery, mortar, rocket and tank fire. Several shells landed on the overcrowded hospital, located near the South Vietnamese army headquarters. “The wounded were everywhere,” said South Vietnamese Captain Le Van Tarn, one of the fortunate ones to be evacuated. “Children, pregnant women bleeding, the old. They were dying and no one was able to help them. There were just too many.”

Another 1,000 refugees crowded into the town’s Catholic church, where they had little food and water and were under constant bombardment. The city’s defenders buried in a mass grave 350 soldiers who had been killed during the siege. “During the first week we just stacked up the bodies, 60 or 70 to a pile,” said a U.S. adviser who had helicoptered in and out of town. “But eventually the smell just got too bad.”

Holed Up. The North Vietnamese, meanwhile, had penetrated the north side of An Loc, where most of the civilian population lived, and holed up there against daily aerial bombardment that marked the town’s location with a continuous pillar of smoke. The defenders, lacking supplies, could do little to drive them out. At one point a besieged ARVN fire base was down to twelve 105-mm. howitzer rounds. Vietnamese air force helicopter pilots, fearing antiaircraft fire, declined to go in with more. Finally, U.S. Chinooks dropped the needed ammunition and food.

Meanwhile, the column sent to relieve An Loc remained stuck on Highway 13. The reason: the terrain was open and flat, ideal for bombing enemy troops and for taking up a defensive position should the North Vietnamese choose to attack. The NVA declined the bait, and only harassed the column while the troops’ morale and supplies dwindled. Minh, who has built up a reputation as the most successful of Saigon’s generals at avoiding a set battle, kept insisting that he was on the verge of “a great victory.” His apparent reasoning: since An Loc had not yet fallen, “our reinforcements saved the city.”

“If the U.S. had been running this operation, the whole province would have been secure a week ago,” fumed one American adviser. “Minh is the most insecure man I’ve ever seen.” Time and again, U.S. and South Vietnamese fighter-bombers cleared an area in preparation for a South Vietnamese advance that never came. That left the choice to the North Vietnamese. As long as Minh refused to move, they could leave a small force behind to keep the An Loc relief column pinned down and slip southwest for an attack on the provincial capital of Tay Ninh—to which elements of the ARVN 25th Division reportedly repaired last week in a “tactical retreat” from their position four miles away, even though they had not been attacked. U.S. intelligence estimated that five North Vietnamese regiments in the area had not yet surfaced—and could attack at any time in any of the three provinces north and west of Saigon, or even hit the capital itself.

At week’s end Communist forces were only about 40 miles from the capital, although on a different front. About 75 miles southwest of An Loc, North Vietnamese surrounded the Cambodian town of Svay Rieng, astride Highway 1, which links Phnom Penh to the South Vietnamese capital. The move could be a diversion, or an effort to open a new infiltration route into South Viet Nam —or a bid to mousetrap the South Vietnamese into another An Loc.

While most of the action last week centered on Military Region 1111 around the capital, the North Vietnamese made smaller and more cautious attacks elsewhere for smaller gains. Items:

— In Military Region I (the north), NVA troops and artillery were once more moving toward Quang Tri city, raising fears of an attack on that vulnerable provincial capital. Several villages in the Southern provinces of the region were reported burned. South Vietnamese troops opened a road from Hue to besieged fire base Bastogne, which last week withstood a North Vietnamese tear-gas attack.

-In M.R. II (the center), South Vietnamese troops gave up the district town of Hoai An and the An Lao valley. In the Central Highlands, the equivalent of three North Vietnamese divisions harassed South Vietnamese forces and laid siege to seven fire bases west of the provincial capital of Kontum. Other North Vietnamese cut the main supply route, Highway 19, between Pleiku and the coastal town of Qui Nhon, and inflicted heavy losses on a South Korean division that tried to reopen the road. But the North Vietnamese were also suffering heavily in this section from American bombings; B-52 raids inflicted enormous casualties on the NVA 28th regiment.

-In M.R. IV (the Mekong Delta), Viet Cong guerrillas rocketed the provincial capitals of My Tho and Can Tho, and attacked a number of government outposts near the southern tip of the country. But activity was too limited to be considered a new front. Bus drivers traveling the Mekong Delta on their way to Saigon were told by local Viet Cong that the roads were still safe.

Largely overlooked in the fighting was the fact that the North Vietnamese were gaining considerable political ground in the countryside as well. Cadres moving in behind the troops can blend in with the population in the hope of establishing themselves more or less permanently in South Viet Nam—and cause the government serious problems for years, even if the invading army is pushed back. There was evidence last week of such infiltration around Saigon, Kontum and Hue. In one village south of An Loc, Communists distributed leaflets, then bought a fat pig and treated the entire village to a “Liberation Day” feast. Next morning, after the Communists left, someone reported their presence in the village, which shortly afterward was bombed, as the Communists probably expected. They thus converted one village to their side.

While the ground war was a strictly Vietnamese affair, U.S. and North Vietnamese forces traded shot and shell on another front—the sea. Since the invasion began, a flotilla of more than a score of U.S. destroyers and guided-missile frigates and cruisers had been shelling North Vietnamese positions north and south of the DMZ. Then, last week, the North Vietnamese responded. At least three enemy MIGs swept over the destroyer U.S.S. Higbee. During two passes, they landed a bomb square atop the ship’s magazine, causing an explosion that blew out a portion of the superstructure. One MIG was shot down, but four sailors were wounded and the Higbee was forced to withdraw to Danang for repairs.

It was the first time that North Vietnamese MIGs had attacked American warships—and the first time since 1964 that the U.S. Seventh Fleet had been challenged in any way in the Gulf of Tonkin. North Vietnamese shore batteries managed to hit the guided-missile destroyer U.S.S. Buchanan, killing one crew member and wounding seven. In the heaviest sea action of the week, U.S. ships on two occasions spotted on radar a number of North Vietnamese patrol boats moving toward them at high speed. The Navy opened fire, sinking three and possibly four of the vessels, and damaging two more.

No Strength. Convinced that the ceaseless air strikes had cut into the NVA’s ability to attack at will, senior American officials in Saigon last week remained cautiously optimistic that the South would turn the tide and prevent the North Vietnamese from taking any major cities. The Communists “just do not have the strength,” said one U.S. diplomat. Perhaps not, but U.S. observers in the vicinity of An Loc were somewhat less sanguine. “If An Loc goes,” says Colonel J. Ross Franklin, senior adviser to the ARVN 21 st Division, “we lose a provincial capital, a division and a battle that has received a lot of publicity.” Could An Loc become another Dien Bien Phu? “Anything is possible,” answered the colonel. The difference was that An Loc was an entirely Vietnamese battle. The U.S. had the power to widen the war, but by withdrawal and Vietnamization it no longer had the power to win it for the South Vietnamese.

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