BATTLE OF INDO-CHINA: Next Move: Giap's

BATTLE OF INDOCHINA

A cold rain was falling. On the west bank of the Black River, the French were loading an ambulance with wounded. Into the top shelf went a Frenchman with face wounds; into the middle shelf, a Vietnamese whose left foot had been blown off by a mine. Around his head lay grimy salvage from his pockets: a wallet, a watch, a rosary, bits of candy. Into the bottom shelf went a Moslem with a shattered leg, his bared, shaven head showing the tuft of hair by which Allah would raise him to heaven after death. The guy ropes of the medical tent sagged under a load of bloodstained surgical linen. As a handful of visitors, including TIME'S John Dowling, approached the tent, a weary French surgeon stepped out and said, with exquisite sangfroid: "I am enchanted to see you, messieurs."

After the fall of Nghialo Nov. 3, some 20,000 Viet Minh (Communist) guerrillas, supported by an equal number of pack coolies, fanned out in the tube-shaped area between the Red and Black Rivers, as if their commander, General Vo Nguyen Giap, intended to force the Black in strength. Last week France's General Raoul Salan countered this move, which had alarmed the French, by an airlift of troops, arms and supplies to the Black's west bank. He also dispatched a force from the Hanoi perimeter to the confluence of the two rivers. This force occupied the war-battered village of Hunghoa, cut two Communist communication lines, and threatened the left flank of Giap's three divisions between the rivers. It seemed possible that the Reds would have to retreat or come out and fight in the open, where French planes and artillery could get at them. In any case, the next move was General Giap's.