SOUTH VIET NAM: A Tale of Two Broken Cities

Despite the cessation of bombing in the North, a war still goes on in South Viet Nam—a bitter, stalemated war of attrition, fought mostly on the ground between North and South Vietnamese troops struggling for favorable positions prior to a possible ceasefire. Recently, TIME Correspondents David Aikman and Donald Neff visited the sites of two of the longest and bloodiest battles that stemmed from the Communists' Easter offensive: Quang Tri, capital of South Viet Nam's northernmost province, and An Loc, another provincial capital 60 miles north of Saigon. Their reports:

QUANG TRI province, according to a Vietnamese proverb, is a place where "dog eats stone and chicken eats salt." It is easy to appreciate this bit of folk wisdom, writes Aikman. The ugly garbage of war still sprawls obscenely on either side of Highway 1, Viet Nam's major coastal artery. Thousands of U.S.-made shell casings are piled in dull gray heaps. Now and then a refugee village, with its ludicrously colored wooden packing-case houses, appears on the horizon. As one drives closer to Quang Tri city, however, nothing but the rusting carcasses of trucks, ambulances and tanks—both American and Russian—litter the landscape.

Quang Tri city itself is total desolation. As far as the eye can see there is nothing but rubble—this and the protesting skeletons of former hospitals, offices and shops, as well as the blanketing mud that seems to follow lasciviously in the wake of war. Once home for 15,000 people, Quang Tri looks like Berlin in May 1945. It does, however, contain about 4,000 South Vietnamese troops, who are holding what General Lam Quang Thi, deputy commander of Military Region I, calls "the northern front." Although secure for the moment, it is a narrow front indeed. Across the Thach Han River, barely 100 meters away, are sandbagged North Vietnamese positions.

Suicidal Attacks. Two crack South Vietnamese units hold the front: the airborne division and the marine division. Opposed to them are some of the best troops Hanoi can put in the field: elements of the 304th, 308th, 312th and 320th NVA Divisions, recently reinforced by regiments from the 325th, which had been stationed in Laos. Both sides have suffered heavily in the fighting. During October and November, Quang Tri was shelled by 2,000 to 3,000 rounds of artillery and rocket fire every day; more recently, 500 rounds a day has been the average figure. The South Vietnamese estimate that their losses have been around 200 a week; air strikes and suicidal attacks against well-held South Vietnamese positions, they claim, killed an average of 1,862 North Vietnamese troops a week in November and 1,745 a week in December.

The North Vietnamese, whatever their personal courage, are clearly having considerable difficulty getting supplies up to forward positions. A recent batch of wounded prisoners taken by the ARVN airborne had not eaten for four days; they cried out for rice more loudly than for medical attention. U.S. Lieut. Colonel Charles C. Pursley. an