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cumulative U.S. effort in the fighting war, and the steady bombing of supply lines from North Viet Nam, is taking its toll on the Viet Cong. It has, after all, jeen only a year since General Westmoreland got sufficient manpower to begin to apply genuine pressure. With average losses as high as 15,000 a month this year, the Communists may be starting to feel a manpower pinch of their own. Recruitment for the Viet Cong in South Viet Nam is down to between 3,000 and 5,500 a month. Infiltration from North Viet Nam has been held steady at 6,000 to 7,000 a month, and the Communists may at last have reached the "crossover point" where they can no longer adequately cover their losses. Moreover, U.S. bombers have made the Ho Chi Minh trail such a highway of death that the desertion rate for units moving southward has gone up significantly. One former North Vietnamese soldier told his interrogators that his unit left North Viet Nam with 300 men—and arrived in the South with only 30. Eventually, if the U.S. keeps up the pressure, Hanoi, for all its boasting, might find the prospect of a long and losing war too wearing to endure.
