Background For War: REPORT ON INDO-CHINA

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Take René Dupuis, the 25-year-old engineer who drove me from Langson to the fort of Dongdang, on Viet Nam's northeast frontier. "I like it out here," said Dupuis. "It's adventure, I feel I'm useful, and I like the Vietnamese." His rifle was propped against the seat beside him. Every mile along the road a French fortress of brick and bamboo dominated the countryside. Between them we passed patrols of bearded men, four or five in a group, wearing jungle-green uniforms and broad-brimmed, shapeless felt hats, snaking in single file along the hillside.

Even so, Dupuis carefully examined the undergrowth. "This road is well held," he said, "but you never know. It's when you expect them least that they strike. They wriggle out of the bushes with grenades or a light machine gun—pam-pam-pam-pam —and they're off before a patrol can reach you. If they capture you, it's worse."

Goums and French Foreign Legion troops are holding the outpost of Dong-dang. The Goums—bearded, bemedaled, fierce-eyed North African troops—are savage, close-quarter fighters whose physical courage seems to have no limits. Many of the legionnaires are German—lean, hard-mouthed, blond men in white kepis, their pockets stuffed with grenades. Among them are veterans of Rommel's Afrika Korps. I asked Dupuis how he got on with them.

"Can't stand them," he replied promptly. "They don't have any feeling about France or democracy, but they have the 'esprit de la legion.'' "

How Strong Are the Reds? The military situation in Indo-China is not bad. A bleak way of putting it would be to say that the situation in southeast Asia has deteriorated so much that Indo-China emerges as the West's strong point in this part of the world.

Viet Nam, as the Indo-Chinese call their country, is shaped like the load which millions of her barefooted peasants carry over their shoulders: two bulging baskets at either end of a thin pole. One bulge is northern Viet Nam (Tonkin), and the other southern Viet Nam (Cochin China). In the slender central region (An-nam), the mountains ripple almost down to the coast. Ho Chi Minh's Communist forces terrorize the coastal plains. In the south, terrorists make life unpleasant in the crowded Saigon region, and the Communist Vietminh haunts the marshes between the numberless arms of the Mekong River. In the northwest and southwest, as in the relatively unimportant kingdoms of Laos and Cambodia, the country is calm.

The Communists have a regular army of some 80,000 men, plus up to 100,000 guerrillas organized in small bands. Half the regular forces are concentrated in a triangle of mountainous country in upper Tonkin, the base of which lies between the French frontier posts of Caobang and Laokay, giving the Reds poor but uninterrupted lines of communication with Mao's forces in China.

No mistake should be made about the quality of Ho's regular forces. They are well disciplined, and in five years of war they have learned much from their adversaries, the French. For months, arms and ammunition from China have leaked through the mountain paths that riddle the Sino-Tonkinese frontier. The regular Communist battalions now have as much firepower as their French equivalents.