(2 of 10)
Last week U.S. officials disclosed that 16,000 Red troops had been killed in the first four months of 1966, nearly equal to the 19,000 that were infiltrated down the Ho Chi Minh trail from North Viet Nam in the same period. Down the trail must also come nearly all the ammunition to supply the Czech and Chinese weapons of the 30,000 North Vietnamese regulars now in the South. Whether by truck, oxcart, bicycles carrying up to 500 Ibs., elephant or pack, it is an increasingly perilous journey, taking three to four months at times, under daily U.S. bombing and strafing. Perhaps as much as 50% of the materiel intended for what Hanoi calls "the big front line" (as distinguished from "the big rear" in North Viet Nam) never reaches South Viet Nam, thanks to the relentless bombing of the route.
For the first time, Communist prisoners and defectors are reporting hunger as a problem in Red ranks. The Allies are capturing their rice hoards and denying them the rice harvest of the peasants. Defections under Saigon's Chieu Hoi (open arms) amnesty program are running at a record 1,000 a month—and some 25% of them are officers. Above all, the massive infusion of U.S. troops, now some 275,000 strong, has taken the initiative away from the enemy. Not since the bloody battle of la Drang last November, when the U.S. 1st Cavalry (Airmobile) destroyed 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers, have Communist troops ventured out in regimental strength to do battle of their own choosing.
A Legend like Uncle. The relative quiescence of the Communists on the battlefield is less satisfying than it is annoying to U.S. commanders, who are spoiling for a fight they are confident they can win—and for an end to the suspense as to what the Reds will do next. The North Vietnamese eminence grise with the answer to that question is tiny, plump General Vo Nguyen Giap (pronounced Zhop), 55, Commander in Chief of the North Vietnamese army, Hanoi's Defense Minister and Deputy Premier, who shares with China's Mao Tse-tung a reputation as the world's foremost practitioner of the dark art of insurgency warfare.
Giap earned his reputation with victory against the French in 1954, when he became the first modern commander to drive a white European nation out of Asia. Then he was largely unknown, except to his French adversaries, who dismissed him with St.-Cyr-bred contempt as a sometime schoolmaster who had been awarded his general's stars by Communist bush politicians. But Giap's native army defeated his far-better-equipped foe by entrapping a French force of 12,000 in the mountain fortress of Dienbienphu and liquidating it, thus destroying the will of the politicians back in France to fight on. It made Giap nearly as much of a legend throughout Viet Nam as Uncle Ho, and if Giap was underestimated by the French, he is possibly overstudied today.