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Part of the reason lies in the vast areas of countryside they still control. The countryside is what Mao Tse-tung called "the true bastion of iron" for a revolutionary and guerrilla war, and from that bastion, particularly the populous, rice-rich Delta, comes food for the ten or so North Vietnamese divisions fighting south of the DMZ as well as fresh recruits for the V.C. main-force units. V.C. women assemble hand grenades in jungle factories, stitch uniforms, care for the wounded. Small boys dig trenches and bunkers, carry messages, build booby traps and learn to throw an occasional grenade. The V.C. tax collector is everywhere levying piasters to pay for the war. Even in neutral or government-controlled areas, Allied pilots have learned that a line of trucks stopped on a road below usually means that the V.C. have set up an impromptu but effective tollbooth. With the piasters that their taxmen collect, well-dressed V.C. agents in Saigon buy medicines, cement, cloth and food for their troops.
A Cache of Insights. For all the heavy fighting and numerous Allied victories of the past two years, progress in wresting that green bastion away from the Viet Cong has been painfully slow —and some of that progress has recently been undone by the necessity of freeing U.S. Marines from the day-today chores of pacification so that they can face North Vietnamese regulars newly active in the DMZ. The South Vietnamese government's guess—and it is admittedly only that—is that 60% of the national population is now "under government control," up from a little more than 50% when the U.S. buildup began in mid-1965.
That slim decline in strength has not noticeably disheartened the Viet Cong. To Americans, who are often troubled by a feeling that "our Vietnamese don't fight as hard as their Vietnamese," the Viet Cong's motivations and methods have long had an aura of mystery and mystique. How and why do they hang on so persistently under constant harassment from bombs and artillery, while their manpower dwindles and their food supplies shrink? A large part of the answer was supplied when the U.S. captured a massive cache of fresh insights into the activities of an exasperatingly stubbon enemy. Last winter and spring. Operations Junction City and Cedar
Falls turned up literally tons of enemy documents, many of them thought to have come from the top secret files of COSVN (Central Office for South Viet Nam), which is Hanoi's command post for all enemy operations in South Viet Nam. Ranging from requisitions for maternity pay to top-level speeches to a blueprint for creating a Red labor union, the captured papers and photographs—together with recent prisoner and defector interrogations—gave U.S. intelligence a clear and reliable view of the Viet Cong from the inside. They added up to both a history and a handbook on V.C. operations.
Creatures of Bureaucracy. In depth and detail, the seized documents spell out how the Viet Cong have gone about their four primary occupations: organizing themselves, fighting, terrorizing and governing the peasants they control. Paper after paper proves that the Viet Cong rank among the most thorough plotters in history. With their compulsion for keeping notes, records, vouchers and receipts, they are the model organization men of conspiracy. Whether