Buzzing Flies

Savannakhet is a handsome, quiet, palm-shaded town on the banks of the broad Mekong, on the border between south-central Laos and Siam. Nearby is the big Seno airfield, which can handle B-26 bombers and C-47 transports. Last week, while the B-26s roared out with bombs and napalm, the transports unloaded supplies. Gangs of French Union troops, stripped to the waist, toiled feverishly to build log bunkers and put out mines and barbed wire.

After last fortnight's quick thrust by the Communists east from the Vietnamese coast to the Mekong River, General Henri Navarre, the French commander in Indo-China, guessed that the Reds might turn south and attack Savannakhet and Seno. But last week Communist General Vo Nguyen Giap, who directed the Communist thrust to the Mekong, was biding his time. Meanwhile, various spokesmen pointed out that the military value of the enemy operation was almost nil. Secretary Dulles pooh-poohed it in Washington; so did the Ministry of the Associated States in Paris. The fact indeed was that headlines--to the effect that Indo-China had been cut in two--had given a false impression. Yet the headlines marked a victory of another sort for the Communists: in France, the chorus of defeatist voices rose to a shout.

In Saigon, French Commissioner General Maurice Dejean, an able man who is not given to undue optimism, tartly observed: "We have the situation well in hand . . . The major difficulty of the French command in Indo-China is to come to grips with the Viet Minh. They are like a swarm of flies buzzing around a tree. If you shake the tree they fly away in all directions . . . The Viet Minh tried to win a cheap, spectacular success to compensate for their failure in the vitally important Red River delta, where they have been unable to gain any substantial advantage." General Navarre, in a special message to his troops, said that he "fully expects" to beat the Communists and end the seven-year war in six months of hard fighting. Presumably, both hoped they would be heard in Paris.

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