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Whether or not such a political factor was involved, the troops obviously needed to rest, regroup and refit. South Vietnamese recruits were getting harder to find, forcing the Communists to fill Viet Cong units with up to 80% North Vietnamese soldiers. Buried supplies needed replenishing. Since at least some of this overhauling process was going on, General Abrams scoffed at the "lull" that settled over Viet Nam for the last part of the year. "It is a period of feverish activity on the enemy's part," he said. "So it's got to be a period of feverish activity for us." It was—and critics of U.S. toughness now argue that the decision to continue to push hard on the ground during the Communist stand-down invited retaliation, which finally came in the current Communist offensive.
Under the direction of Abrams, the U.S. has evolved a potent mix of tactics for keeping Communist troops consistently off balance. The most vital ingredient in the mix is maneuverability —specifically the knack of dividing or multiplying with nearly the same speed as guerrilla troops. "We work in small patrols because that's how the enemy moves—in groups of four and five," says Abrams. "When he fights in squad size, we now fight in squad size. When he cuts to half squad, so do we." Since the Communists have always been able to dart in and out of privileged sanctuaries in North Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos, mobility has been a prime objective of every U.S. commander. But between the vast, multi-division-sized "search-and-destroy" missions of General William Westmoreland and the sting-ray "spoiler" raids that Abrams has specialized in, there is all the difference of a zone defense and a full-court press. Abrams, a tank man with a deserved reputation as a "fighting general," is obviously willing to wage war man for man, if necessary.
As a result, U.S. fighting men are more active than ever in Viet Nam. In northernmost I Corps, men of the 101st Airborne Division constantly patrol infiltration routes to Hue, cleaning out caches of food and arms and pushing Communist base camps, mile by mile, out of easy striking distance. To screen the vital western route that leads to the capital from Laos and Cambodia, Abrams moved the 1st Air Cavalry Division (Airmobile) out of the north and into III Corps. From 40 semipermanent base camps—called landing zones—the reinforced division has placed a Communist-infested border area the size of New Jersey under overlapping artillery range, and prowls through it relentlessly in small groups. In the Delta, long a Communist stronghold, the 9th Infantry brigade has developed a whole repertory of "night-raider" tactics utilizing every thing from giant spotlights to tree-borne sniper teams.
Followed individually, few of these actions produce any spectacular battles.
But they are calculated to cripple the Communist fighting man's whole style.
They strike at his political base in the countryside (the "infrastructure"), his staging bases, his buried supplies. In hun dreds of patrol actions, for instance, the allies last year unearthed 2,270 tons of Communist ammunition — more than three times the total for the previous year. Abrams' dragnet tactics are partly responsible for this, as is a bounty of up to