The War: Period of Adjustment

THE WAR

Viet Nam resembled a huge chess board. Both the allies and Communists reassessed one another's strengths and weaknesses, continued to build up manpower and resupply lines and jockeyed their units into fresh positions. The shifts inevitably touched off some fierce skirmishing, but both sides were, for the most part, waiting to see who would make the first major move. There were signs that, after almost six weeks of near-static defense in which General Giap has enjoyed all the initiative—and subsequently failed to exploit it—the move might well be made by the allies.

Not that the Communists were idle. At South Viet Nam's southern tip, the Viet Cong slashed into the town of Ca Mau, seized the provincial hospital and held it for eleven hours before finally being driven out, leaving 275 of their dead behind. North Vietnamese troops wiped out a small U.S.-South Vietnamese camp only six miles from Danang, but U.S. troopers, with the aid of air and artillery, caught and killed 129 of the Communists south of the city. U.S. Marine and ARVN troopers, sweeping northeast of the DMZ Marine supply base of Dong Ha, found a battalion of the enemy and killed 164. The Communists kept up their deadly tattoo of rocket and mortar attacks on allied bases and towns, inflicting "moderate" damage on the Danang airstrip in one attack and for the first time dropping shells into the center of Cam Ranh Bay, the U.S. base long considered the most impregnable bastion in Viet Nam and twice chosen for Viet Nam touch downs by Lyndon Johnson. The North Vietnamese also kept up their artillery pressure on the Marine garrison at Khe Sanh. One shell hit a troop-carrying C-123 circling to land; all 49 on board were killed when the plane crashed and burned in Communist-held territory.

Saigon announced that in the previous week 542 Americans had died in action, only one short of the record toll set only two weeks before. So far this year, 3,254 Americans have been killed v. 9,353 for all of last year—and, at current casualty rates, this week the 20,000th U.S. serviceman will fall on the battlefields of Viet Nam.

The Big Target. Enemy troop movements of late have led the command of General William Westmoreland to revise its estimates of the likely next big move of North Viet Nam's General Vo Nguyen Giap. North Vietnamese army units along the DMZ appear to be shifting eastward, away from Khe Sanh, toward Quang Tri City or Hué. The 304th NVA division, which was south of Khe Sanh, has been moving with truck convoys through the A Shau valley toward Hué. If Hué rather than Khe Sanh is the enemy's big target, that will not bother the allies. Surrounded by open country, Hué sits amid far easier terrain for fighting. Naval guns can reach it for fire support. It lies between two major U.S. bases, and thus can be reinforced from two sides.

It is also far easier to supply from the sea via the Perfume River. The U.S. and the South Vietnamese army have some 20,000 men within a dozen-mile radius of Hué. They hope that Giap will try to take the city again.