From Hanoi, a city generally closed to American journalists, Correspondent Joel Henri of Agence France-Presse last week cabled the following report for TIME:
ON several occasions in the last few days, the B-52s could be heard "at work" south of the capital. The earth trembled for a few seconds [in Hanoi], houses shuddered. Then silence; even the crickets ceased to chirp. But then MIGs, returning from their mission, swept over the rooftops wing to wing, with jet engines screaming, and disappeared toward their airfields and underground shelters. At first, Hanoians stopped to look up at the sky, listened and wondered, "Are they ours or the Americans'?" Now they just carry on. Ears have become attuned to MIGs, Phantoms and B-52s, even when the B-52s are far off, invisible at over 50,000 feet. "They cheer you up, those MIGs," the Vietnamese say.
Hanoians are not awed by the giant eight-engine B-52s with their 30 tons of bombs. People who spent several years in the vicinity of Vinh Linh, near the 17th parallel, where B-52s were operating practically every day, explain to us: "Of course, if you're just underneath, you haven't much of a chance. But when you get used to them, you know how not to be underneath. Just look at Quang Tri. With their thousands of tons of bombs, they didn't stop our troops." And they add matter-of-factly: "Do you have a flashlight?" You reply, "No, why?" And they explain: "It's important at night when you have to get away." That suggests that you can get hurt more readily by falling than by being hit by a B-52 bomb.
Future Plans. Pham Van Dong, the Premier, who has stayed on in Hanoi, told a journalist: "Of course they can blow all of this up [meaning his offices]. And then what? That's not what's going to change the course of history." Then he talks about the future: plans for travel abroad to establish ties for cooperation with all those who showed understanding for [North] Viet Nam during these terrible, decisive hours. In ministry files, partly evacuated to caves on high plateaus, are plans for the Viet Nam of tomorrow, "reunited by the Vietnamese alone," as Pham Van Dong puts it. Joke or political gesture, some people here claim: "The Premier is quite ready to organize a 'political tea party' with a President Nixon who has finally understood the wisdom of the seven points of the P.R.G. [Provisional Revolutionary Government]." Peking, Moscow, why not Hanoi?