The War: Not Yet Peace

Five U.S. Army veterans of Viet Nam stood before their Commander in Chief in the White House last week to receive the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for valor. Lyndon Johnson chose the occasion to caution that "other bitter days and other battles still lie ahead." He added: "I cannot emphasize strongly enough that we have not attained peace—only the possibility of peace."

That possibility continued throughout last week to be stymied by the unwillingness of South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu to agree to send a delegation to Paris and sit at the same negotiating table with the National Liberation Front of the Viet Cong. There were reports and rumors that he was about to change his mind. But the delay brought to nearly a month the elapsed time since the bombing halt. Meanwhile, the war on the ground in South Viet Nam sputtered on.

Quiet in the Delta. The level of fighting, to be sure, did not nearly approach the intensity of battle that had prevailed earlier in the year. Whatever tacit understanding to lower the level of violence that had been reached be tween the U.S. and the North Vietnamese seemed to be working, at least in part. Nonetheless, almost 500 Americans and more than 450 South Vietnamese have died in action since Nov. 1. The weekly average of 144 U.S. battle deaths since then is admittedly considerably lower than the average of 293 for the year prior to the halt. But it is still a high toll for a time when there is talk of peace.

For the most part, the Communists have been avoiding big-unit encounters, a fact that U.S. commanders, wary though they should now be of optimistic evaluations, translate into the belief that the war is going in the allies' favor. The middle part of the country, II Corps, is quiet. Communist forces have either gone into hiding, drifted further south or slipped across the Cambodian and Laotian borders. Except for a massive, six-battalion attempt by the South Vietnamese last week in Chau Doc province to take a vital Viet Cong stronghold, the fertile and populous Delta area of IV Corps is equally calm.

U.S. commanders see the main Communist threat now aimed at III Corps, the region comprising the ten important provinces around Saigon. Earlier this month, the highly mobile First Air Cavalry Division with its complement of more than 400 helicopters was shifted from northernmost I Corps into the Cambodian border fringe north and northwest of the capital, to strengthen allied defensive screens there. The U.S. command estimates that the jungles along the sievelike frontier harbor as many as four Communist divisions, some sheltered in newly built base areas. Throughout III Corps, the Communist order of battle has risen from 60 main and local-force battalions last summer to about 70 this month.