SOUTH VIET NAM: Settling In for the Third Indochina War

AT first, Hanoi's offensive was viewed by many in Saigon and Washington as a desperate move, designed to score a few quick "spectaculars" and win some easy headlines. Last week,jas the Communist drive entered its second month, that early optimism had all but vanished. In Saigon, the U.S. command grimly foresaw "an all-out effort" that could run through the monsoon season that usually begins later this month —possibly on a reduced scale—and then be stepped up well before the U.S. elections and continue on into the new year. Certainly there was no letup in the Communist attacks, which by now were taking on a grimly familiar pattern. Each time the thinly spread South Vietnamese forces shifted troops from one location to bolster defenses in another, a weak spot was exposed—and the North Vietnamese pounced.

Thus, while only half of the twelve North Vietnamese divisions in South Viet Nam had yet been committed to battle, Saigon's forces were desperately defending three perilous fronts:

AROUND SAIGON. As Communist artillery continued to pound the besieged city of An Loc north of Saigon, other enemy forces edged closer to the capital itself. Fighting broke out near Cu Chi, an ARVN headquarters astride the "Saigon corridor" between Cambodia and the capital, and enemy troops briefly occupied the nearby village of Trung Lap, only 20 miles from Saigon. At week's end, rocket teams were reported to have slipped into positions north and south of the tense capital.

THE NORTH. The Communists resumed with a vengeance their offensive just below the Demilitarized Zone, where South Vietnamese troops had stopped the initial invasion four weeks ago. Charging at night and under clouds that held U.S. and South Vietnamese air attacks to a minimum last week, enemy armor and infantry overran Dong Ha and encircled Quang Tri city. Farther south, battered ARVN troops were driven from long-besieged Firebase Bastogne, opening the way for an enemy drive on Hue, the ancient imperial capital. A drive on Hue, in turn, could pose a direct threat to U.S. troops guarding an American base at Phu Bai.

THE MIDDLE. A drive in the Central Highlands had been forecast as long ago as last December. But when North Vietnamese troops and upwards of 50 tanks finally struck in force last week, they met shockingly weak resistance from the poorly led ARVN troops, who abandoned a string of 14 firebases northwest of Kontum in what Saigon euphemistically called a "tactical withdrawal." At week's end U.S. advisers remaining with the slender garrison at Kontum were ordering supplies for a two-day siege —two days because, as one adviser said, "You're never going to get enough ammunition into this place to give you automatic weapons fire for much longer." With some 20,000 Communist troops tearing up Binh Dinh province on the coast, it seemed likely that the Communists might try to accomplish one "spectacular" that narrowly eluded them in 1965: slicing the country in two.