World: AFTER TET: MEASURING AND REPAIRING DAMAGE

In the first shock and confusion that followed the Communists' country wide Tet offensive six weeks ago, it was difficult, dangerous and, in remote areas, impossible to assess accurately the damage done by the enemy. Now, with roads, communications and security gradually being restored, a firmer measure can be taken — even though the final, definitive picture may not emerge for some months yet. For military and administrative purposes, South Viet Nam is divided into four corps areas that run from north to south, plus the special capital zone of Saigon and surrounding Gia Dinh province. Last week TIME sent a team of five correspondents from its Saigon bureau, one to each of the corps areas and the capital zone, to find out just how much havoc the Communist at tacks had wrought, and what the allies are doing to repair it. Their reports:

I Corps

Viet Nam's northernmost corps, unwilling host to some 55,000 North Vietnamese invaders, is less a pacification prospect than an open battlefield. It was there that the 24-day battle for Hue took place, the most determined of the Communists' 35 attacks on South Vietnamese cities. Some 5,350 civilians were killed in all, including 4,100 in Hué; another 4,500 were seriously injured. The existing refugee ranks of 250,000 were swelled by an additional 107,000, some 90,000 of these from Hue alone—out of the city's pre-Tet population of 130,000. Three-fourths of the 12,000 houses destroyed and the 10,000 heavily damaged were in Hue; destruction was made easier, of course, by the fact that in many parts of I Corps, as elsewhere in Viet Nam, houses are often primitive and fragile structures.

Largely because of interdicted roads and waterways, business and commerce throughout I Corps is down some 20%. Pre-Tet, me pacification program embraced fewer than 300 of the corps' 4,000 hamlets. Even so, two-thirds of the Revolutionary Development pacification teams had to abandon their assigned hamlets when the shooting started. Some 80 R.D. teams have since gone back to their hamlets.

The allies are making major efforts to improve security along the highways and waterways; two weeks ago the first truck convoy since Tet, bearing relief goods for Hué, moved up the vital Highway 1 from Danang to the stricken city. In the face of the massive Communist threat throughout the corps, little else but mobile defense is being undertaken. Some 2,000 civilian volunteers are being armed in Hué, Danang, Quang Tri City and other cities as "people's self-defense forces."

II Corps

Despite the savage fighting in Kontum and Pleiku during Tet, the early evidence indicates that the large central part of Viet Nam—the Highlands—may have escaped with less damage than any of the other corps areas.