The U.S. had a Christmas gift for each of the men in South Viet Nam's 1st Regiment of the 1st Division, based just south of the Demilitarized Zone. It was the lightweight, fast-firing M-16 rifle, which packs far more punch than the older and heavier weapons that the ARVN (for Army of the Republic of Viet Nam) troopers had been carrying. The 1st Regiment soon had a chance to use them. During the Christmas truce, its scouts spotted a large North Vietnamese force moving into the Quang Tri coastal flats. As soon as the truce had ended, the ARVN moved to the attack, boxing the Communists into a four-sided trap with the help of a U.S. Marine blocking force. In a fierce day-long battle, the ARVN soldiers, using their new M16s, killed at least 100 of the North Vietnamese v. only 15 ARVN dead, while allied air, artillery and helicopters killed another 100. A day later, another ARVN battalion flushed a Viet Cong unit in Quang Ngai province to the south and killed 40.
For the ARVN, such victories are quite a change. It was not so many months ago that General William Westmoreland felt obliged to pass the word down the U.S. chain of command: if you can't say something good about the ARVN, don't say anything at all. The resulting silence was almost as damaging to the ARVN as the heavy shellfire of criticism it replaced. Of late, however, the ARVN has been doing some pretty effective firing of its own on the battlefields. Its performance has enabled U.S. officers to talk about the ARVN again, this time in terms of results and performances from the DMZ to the Delta, including victories in 37 of the ARVN's last 45 major contacts with the Communists.
Men in Mud Forts. Whether fighting well or poorly, the ARVN has always borne the brunt of the war in casualties. Last week Saigon reported that in the previous week 234 South Vietnamese soldiers and 166 Americans had been killed. In 1966, the U.S. lost 5,000 dead, the ARVN 11,500. This past year, government forces suffered 12,000 killed, the U.S. 10,000. South Vietnamese in uniform have, of course, always outnumbered American servicemen in Viet Nam. Today there are ten ARVN regular divisions, totaling some 321,000 men. Manning the vulnerable mud forts and watchtowers across the country are an additional 142,000 Regional Force (R.F.) troops and 143,000 P.F.s, or Popular Force militiamen.
The bulk of government forces is now assigned to pacification: 54 of the regular ARVN's 154 battalions, nearly all the R.F.s and P.F.s. It is not a task that the ARVN has yet mastered; in 1967, the Viet Cong killed more pacification workers than in 1966. The ARVN regulars constitute South Viet Nam's military spine, and on them the U.S. has expended its greatest training efforts. Those efforts, too, need improvement. Of the ten regular divisions, only three are considered "good" by U.S. commanders: the 1st in northernmost I Corps, and the 7th and 21st in the Delta. One division, the Delta's 25th, is rated virtually a disaster; the other six divisions range from "spotty" to "promising."