WITH the next-to-final phase of the U.S. withdrawal from Viet Nam in sight at last, the war suddenly appeared to be not dwindling down but rapidly building up again. Last week, even as President Nixon was announcing the pullout of 70,000 more G.I.s by May 1, the North Vietnamese were carrying out an ominous new offensive in each of Indochina's major battlegrounds. > In Laos, Communist troops scored a stunning victory by forcing the evacuation of Long Cheng, the celebrated CIA base near the Plain of Jars. They also scattered the battered remnants of the U.S.-backed army of Meo tribesmen that was, until recently, the only force that could keep the Communists in check in Laos.
> In Cambodia, government troops continued to give ground to the North Vietnamese troops, who now control most of the northeastern countryside. At Krek, 2,500 Cambodian troops simply fled when the 10,000 South Vietnamese troops that had been operating with them in the former Communist "sanctuaries" were abruptly called home by Saigon. The Cambodians reportedly left so much equipment behind that U.S. aircraft were called upon to bomb it before it could be captured by the North Vietnamese.
> In South Viet Nam, Saigon forces took up defensive positions, primarily astride infiltration routes and around major cities and military bases, to await a sizable flare-up in Communist activity that is expected to peak at the time of the Tet holidays, which fall in mid-February. Meanwhile the North Vietnamese moved mobile missile launchers right up to South Viet Nam's northern frontiers, and the air war continued. The U.S. last week conducted its seventh "protective reaction" strike of the year against SAM sites in North Viet Nam.
Despite the poor results of the recent bombing, U.S. military officials insisted that the enemy was capable only of "cheap victories" in unimportant territory. Perhaps so, but the renewal of the ground war should dispel the notion, widespread in the U.S., that the fighting is over, at least for the American G.I. Technically, U.S. troops are indeed in a "defensive" posture, as the Administration calls it, because their main job is to protect American facilities. But for a good number of the 139,000 G.I.s still in Viet Nam, that job means endless patrols out in the boondocks under conditions that look very much like war.
In all probability, the last U.S. Army combat unit in Viet Nam will be the 7,000-man 3rd Brigade of the First Cavalry Division (Airmobile), which is responsible for the security of a vast area of Vietnamese countryside surrounding the huge American installations at Bien Hoa, Long Binh and the Tan Son Nhut airbase outside Saigon. Recently, TIME Correspondent Rudolph Rauch joined one 3rd Brigade company as it pushed off from a fire base 35 miles east of Saigon to begin a patrol in search of North Vietnamese infiltrators. His report: