Nation: U.S. GUERRILLAS: With Knife & Strangling Wire

FREE-WORLD historians may one day record that victory over Communism was won not by the conquest of space or the big bomb but by the rapid-fire rifle, armed helicopter, the knife and the strangling wire. The U.S.. at least, is betting so heavily on that possibility that guerrilla warfare training has become the nation's fastest-expanding field of military activity.

This new U.S. zeal for an ancient art stems mostly from the impression made on President Kennedy by Nikita Khrushchev's flat declaration that Communism will seek to expand through nasty little undeclared "wars of national liberation." Explains Defense Secretary Robert McNamara: "These wars are often not wars at all. In these conflicts, the force of world Communism operates in the twilight zone between political subversion and quasi-military action. Their military tactics are those of the sniper, the ambush and the raid. Their political tactics are terror, extortion and assassination. We must help the people of threatened nations to resist these tactics."

In That Twilight Zone. To this end, the U.S. is so stressing guerrilla training for itself and its Allies that a top Army general recently warned: "If you read everything on the subject and listen to some of our military, you might easily begin to think all our armed forces will soon be going around with knives in their teeth." Such is the pace of the effort that for once the reality has outraced the rhetoric. The services have not even agreed on what to call this kind of fighting. To the Army, it is "special warfare," and its guerrilla experts are tabbed "Special Forces"; the Air Force calls it "COIN" (for counter-insurgency), and has its "Air Commandos"; the Navy terms it "unconventional warfare," is training its "SEALS" for sea. air and land capability. The Marines are inclined to scoff—in public. Says Assistant Marine Commandant Lieut. General John C. Munn: "Some 35 years ago. when I entered the Marine Corps, we were engaged in counterguerrilla operations in Nicaragua. This is neither new nor sensational." Yet the Marines have quietly stepped up their guerrilla training, now require all recruits to spend nearly half their time acquiring the skills of the twilight zone.

In that zone, the fighter is unlikely to worry about nomenclature; he is more concerned about how to avoid catching a bullet in the groin from ambush, or a blade in the back.

The Army. The pine-forested acres of North Carolina's Fort Bragg provide a rugged training ground and home for the 5,600 men of the Army's Special Forces. These men, who wear distinctive green berets, fashion crude villages of thatched huts, canvas and pine logs in the woods, act out roles as insurgents or villagers battling for control. Defenders whittle branches into spikes, set them upright under leaves to lame invaders. To show the "natives" how to treat wounds, a friendly medic snaps the neck of a rabbit, slits its belly open for a blood-and-guts anatomy lesson. "This is the liver." he explains. "These are the intestines."