The War: A Time of Uncertainty

One morning last week the citizens of Tay Ninh awoke to find Communist soldiers roaming the streets of their provincial capital, 55 miles northwest of Saigon. Three regiments of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops had maneuvered around Tay Ninh in the shad ow of Nui Ba Den, the Black Virgin mountain. Some Communist units hit outlying defense posts. Others slipped into the city before dawn under cover of a rocket and mortar barrage and dug into foxholes.

In the early morning sunlight, Viet Cong agitators harangued crowds routed out onto street corners at gunpoint. They had free run for only a few hours. Two battalions of South Vietnamese troops were hastily airlifted from Saigon. Street by street, they drove the enemy out of town and back into the surrounding paddies.

Baffling Questions. It was the second time that the enemy had briefly made it into Tay Ninh in less than a month. What quite baffled General Creighton Abrams, the U.S. commander m Viet Nam, and nine other top U.S. and Vietnamese officers who visited Tay Ninh after the attack, was why the Communists came and why they gave up so readily. They had apparently planned to hold the city for at least three days. They had forces enough to do so but changed their minds.

Tay Ninh was only the latest in a series of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese moves that have been puzzling to the Allies. The Communists continue a buildup of forces around Due Lap, a district capital of little strategic importance that was the scene last month of the summer's heaviest fighting. Though they have already lost more than 800 men in their unsuccessful attacks on Due Lap, they keep plugging away.

The most baffling question of all about the ground war is raised by the Communists' much-heralded "third offensive" against Saigon. Anticipated as a follow-up on the February Tet offensive and the second-round attack against the capital in May, it has been thought imminent since mid-August. Yet there is still no clear sign that it is coming; in fact, the pressure is off Saigon and the other major cities. Saigon has not been shelled in three weeks.

The most hopeful estimate of the recent lack of pattern in Communist strategy is that Hanoi's aims are being consistently thwarted. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese took heavy casualties at Tet and during the May offensive. Allied forces claim to have killed more than 13,000 Communist troops within the past month, almost four times the enemy casualty rate during the early-summer lull in fighting. One seasoned Marine general believes that the Communists no longer intend a third attack on Saigon for just this reason. "They don't have the capability," he argues. "They have lost too many men."

The U.S. military machine in South Viet Nam is technically more efficient than ever before. Improved gathering of physical intelligence by sensor devices, long-range reconnaissance patrols, helicopter cavalry squadrons and snooper aircraft may well have headed off the Communists' plans for late August attacks. New emphasis on night patrolling and staking out ambushes has broken the Viet Cong's mastery of the night in parts of South Viet Nam.