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At night, Saigon turns into a honeycomb of private prison cells, the result of a dreary curfew; people withdraw into their houses, or hovels, in nervous anticipation of the next attack. The lights often dim and fade out, air conditioners collapse with a rattling whisper, and the streets outside lie dark and silent. Hundreds of wealthy South Vietnamese have forsaken the city for the seaside resort of Vung Tau. The Japanese government has ordered all its citizens who are not indispensable to leave the country. Many American civilians have taken to spending their nights at the heavily guarded, although frequently rocketed, Tan Son Nhut Airbase. The Vietnamese who remain behind in an atmosphere of fear, bewilderment and anger have begun to call this rainy season "heaven weeping on our misfortunes."
Changed Tactics. The strategist behind the siege is Colonel Tran Dinh Xu, the Communist commander for the capital district. At night, his rocketeers slip to within range of the city, often using, for the sake of speed, crude earthworks and bamboo racks rather than unwieldy launcher tubes to aim their whispering death on Saigon. Easily broken down into sections—a 2-lb. fuse, a 41-lb. warhead and a 59-lb. motor section—the rockets can be carried by porters, are quickly assembled and fired by a crew of only three men. The missiles are not notably precise—at a maximum range of about seven miles, gunners are lucky if they hit within 400 yards of their target—but the lack of accuracy, if anything, enhances their terrorist effect. Despite allied ground and air patrols and radar-guided counterbattery fire, the Communists have thrown almost 400 rocket and mortar rounds at the capital since early May. The gunners have rarely been caught; last week, when 12,000 U.S. and Vietnamese troops fanned out to sterilize the rocket belt, they found little besides scarred firing positions and a few unlaunched missiles, some ingeniously cached in submerged sampans.
Colonel Xu's infantry tactics reflect the lessons he learned during the Tet offensive when he threw whole battalions into the city only to see them badly battered. Now he slips small, squad-size units—ten infantrymen and two or three women who handle the cooking—past South Vietnamese defense perimeters and the cordons formed by the U.S. 9th and 25th Divisions. Once inside the city, the team deploys in three sections—one to fight, a second to dig a maze of underground tunnels for quick movement and escape, a third to rest. On a rotation basis, the system allows round-the-clock fighting. If the squad discovers a sizable hole in the defenses, Xu can easily infiltrate a company or even a battalion to join the fray. His troops have played that game all too successfully in recent weeks, moving in and out of the capital, keeping allied defense units on the go, and forcing them to use heavy firepower in densely populated sections of the city.