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In the Central Highlands, known to the generals as Military Region II, North Vietnamese troops were maneuvering around Kontum, thought to be a prime Communist target. On the coast, sappers struck the big U.S. base at Cam Ranh Bay, killing 3 Americans and wounding 15. Far to the south in the Mekong Delta (Military Region IV), there was a rash of shelling, and attacks hit airfields outside two provincial capitals. For the moment, however, the Communists had really opened only one new "front"; that was in Military Region III, the mid-country region that encompasses Saigon. That area was rapidly becoming the main worry of the U.S. and South Vietnamese commanders. At Loc Ninh, a rural district capital 75 miles north of Saigon near the Cambodian border, North Vietnamese troops routed the South Vietnamese defenders, organized "people's committees," and set up antiaircraft positions. Other enemy troops were moving, in regimental strength, to areas west, north and south of Saigon, which was braced for its first rocket attacks in two years.
Despite the speed with which it spread, the fighting was still indeterminate. There had been no big set battles, certainly none with crack ARVN outfits like the 1st Division. "The ARVN hasn't stopped the [North Vietnamese] drive," said a U.S. officer in Saigon last week, "but the initial surge has ended. So far, continued this thing has had peaks and valleys. But the peaks haven't been too high, and the valleys haven't been too low." The big peaks, evidently, were still to come.
Back in 1969, when Vietnamization was put into effect, the Nixon Administration had realized that the policy would eventually be put to a violent test. The time, it reckoned, would come after the U.S. had ceased to have a significant ground combat capability in Viet Nam, and before the November 1972 elections. More recently, U.S. intelligence had forecast that the Communist assault would come some time between February and April or May, when the monsoon rains begin the annual conversion of much of Indochina into a sea of mud.
Like the Rhine. For their part, the North Vietnamese were obviously poised for an unprecedented effort. In the words of a White House official, they had "a lot of chips in the pot." In the past, the North Vietnamese commander, General Vo Nguyen Giap, had always kept at least half of his 480,000-man army within North Viet Nam. Now 14 of his 15 divisions (or about 350,000 men) were deployed all across Indochina's battlefields; elements of ten divisions—including many units that had been operating in-country or on the borders for months or years—were committed to the adventure in South Viet Nam. Some 35,000 North Vietnamese troops were present in the provinces south of the DMZ in Military Region I; there were perhaps 25,000 in the Central Highlands, 16,000 in the hard-pressed provinces around Saigon, 6,000 in the Delta. Counting Viet Cong soldiers, the total Communist troop strength in South Viet Nam is well over 100,000 men—the highest total since the months before the convulsive Tet 1968 attacks. Against them stand 492,000 South Vietnamese regulars and about 513,000 militia troops. The U.S. forces remaining in South Viet Nam are not directly involved.