The War: Communist Step-Up

The diplomatic flurries around the world over fresh peace probes during the past two weeks have all but obscured a grim new reality in the actual warfare in Viet Nam. The fighting so far in 1968, as General William Westmoreland observed last week, has been "the most intense of the entire war." Moreover, most of the initiative in the fiercer fighting since New Year's Day belongs to the Communists, despite the inevitably heavy losses such aggression means in the face of the allies' overwhelming superiority of firepower. Some 2,800 Communist troops were killed during the first week of January, the highest weekly toll for the war. Nonetheless, U.S. commanders readily admit that the enemy is firmly on the offensive and the allies almost entirely on the tactical defensive, reacting to preplanned enemy attacks.

Since Jan. 1, the Communists have shelled 49 district and provincial capitals and attacked eight of them. Twice in three days they temporarily occupied provincial capitals within 30 miles of Saigon. In northernmost I Corps, the Communists have already made 98 separate attacks on the U.S. Marine-ARVN Combined Action Platoons and overrun two of their outposts so far this year. Though they have won no major victories, the Communists have made a sizable show of force and demonstrated their ability to fight hard, if they choose to, in nearly every province in Viet Nam. Lieut. General Bruce Palmer, Deputy Commander of the U.S. Army in Viet Nam, calls the pressure "heavy and sustained" in I Corps, in the area around Saigon, in the Chu Lai area and around Bong Son on the coastal plains—and "sporadic" all over the rest of the country.

First in the Delta. Some captured documents suggest that just such an enemy escalation would accompany any move to the conference table. The U.S. command in Saigon does not interpret what is happening now in that optimistic light. Rather, it thinks that the Red offensive, emphasizing hit-and-run attacks in populated areas, reflects Hanoi's need to refurbish its once awesome image among the Vietnamese peasantry and to regain control of vital coastal areas and rice bowls, such as Binh Dinh province, that growing allied success has denied its troops.

The new aggression also reflects Hanoi's increasing control over the whole war in the South. With recruitment of fresh Viet Cong growing increasingly difficult, more and more North Vietnamese are infiltrating the South in order to fill the ranks. Westmoreland estimates that the average Viet Cong main-force unit is now 10% North Vietnamese. NVA units have lately been found operating as far down the command ladder as squad-size in hamlets. And two weeks ago in the Delta, hitherto the exclusive preserve of indigenous Viet Cong, the first North Vietnamese soldier was captured.