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Learning to Fight. Then the U.S. stepped in with its dramatic buildup of American troops. Victory was snatched away from the Communists; Hanoi and the Viet Cong were presented with vast new problems, both military and political. When word spread through village and hamlet grapevines that the Americans were coming in force, suddenly the Viet Cong no longer looked like such sure winners. As a result, the V.C. had to start working overtime to keep large areas of the countryside from drifting out of their control.
To learn how to cope with their new military problem—the heliborne mobility, the massive artillery and air support that the U.S. had brought—Hanoi devised a costly experiment, which was conducted in the la Drang Valley in November of 1965. During six weeks of bloody fighting, the North Vietnamese commander was instructed to accept battles he could not possibly win. He was ordered to keep up the fight longer than any good hit-and-run guerrilla army should. "We had to learn how the Americans fought," explained a high-ranking defector later.
One month after la Drang, a top-level meeting of main-force Viet Cong and North Vietnamese officers convened in a jungle auditorium to assess the results purchased at the cost of over 1,500 of their men.
Much of the news was bad: U.S. mobility and firepower did indeed pose difficult problems. But la Drang also demonstrated that Communist soldiers would stand and fight against the Americans; Hanoi had had considerable fears that they might not. Eventually, the jungle colloquium worked out an important new tactic: the use of bunkers manned by a small force to screen main-force units and inflict casualties on U.S. infantrymen while the main-force fighters escaped. The Communists have been using that tactic with considerable success ever since. Last month, for example, a company of the U.S. 173rd Airborne ran into a small group of Red soldiers and gave chase. The pursuit led them into a crossfire of massed machine guns concealed in 30 sandbagged bunkers; 25 Americans were killed and another 35 wounded.
In a variation of the same maneuver, instead of running, a small V.C. force stands and fights a larger U.S. unit. Then, while the Americans are busy but not overly concerned about their safety, a larger Communist force slips in to surround the U.S. unit. That tactic worked all too well last month in the jungles just north of la Drang, where a company of the U.S. 4th Infantry Division was enveloped by a force of 1,000 Communists. U.S. casualties were 44 dead and 27 wounded.
Defense against helicopters was developed too. Choppers bringing U.S. troops to the rescue may be greeted by sharp, 6-ft. stakes pointed skyward to rip open their bellies, or electrically detonated mines sown beneath the sod. So prized is a helicopter kill to the Viet Cong that a soldier who shoots one down is rewarded with a month's leave, a bicycle, a pen and a watch.
Sand-Table Practice. The arrival of the Americans intensified the Viet Cong penchant for rehearsing every attack in advance. Sand-table models of fortresses are used to brief each man on his mission. Sometimes a unit will go off into the deep jungle and construct a full-size replica of a critical