To Clear & to Hold

SOUTH VIET NAM

A term much advertised in Saigon and Washington nowadays is "clear and hold." It is the concept under which South Vietnamese Premier Nguyen Khanh proposes to roll back the Viet Cong by painstakingly securing small areas, then winning over the peasants through reforms. Last week TIME Correspondent Eric Pace visited one clear-and-hold project deep in the Mekong Delta, saw what the strategy can accomplish--and the huge obstacles to its success. His report:

Jouncing along the dusty, crushed-rock ribbon of road behind the wheel of a green Ford pickup truck, Hatcher M. James Jr., 41, an American AID officer in Dinh Tuong province, surveyed with satisfaction the peasants on either side peacefully tilling fields of green beans, tomatoes, melons. He waved at Vietnamese small fry, moonfaced boys and graceful schoolgirls in black sateen pants, who broke into excited smiles as the truck sped by and called out in English "hello hello" and "okay okay."

"Some successes are by accident," AID Man James philosophized in a Carolina drawl. "Well, this represents a planned success."

Past Terror. Only weeks before, one traveled the road, which runs six miles from Tanhiep to the village of Phumy, in terror if at all. Last November, a Viet Cong unit armed with mortars had occupied Phumy, evidently emboldened by the confusion that followed the coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem. To intimidate the people, the Reds smashed the marketplace, assassinated two village councilmen and a health worker, used the crucifix of a church for target practice.

Phumy was soon isolated. Merchants closed shop; 130 tons of processed rice piled up at the village mill for lack of transport. Viet Cong cadres took over the schools, charged taxes--500 piasters on each of Phumy's thatch-roofed houses, plus eleven pounds of rice from each family per month. They also erected a 15-ft.-high concrete monument to Communism at the village gate.

Fresh Water. In January, the military junta that preceded Khanh moved to retake the area. A massive force of 600 troops, backed by a dozen armored personnel carriers, pushed into Phumy against only sporadic fire. Surprisingly, a mere 18 hard-core Viet Cong troops held the village, and they withdrew, expecting the army to stay only a few days. Behind the soldiers, however, came a team of civilian officials and American AID men, who plunged into an ambitious recovery program.

The road was patched and made the linchpin of a hold area extending for more than a mile on either side. In Phumy itself, U.S. Army medics opened health stations, government teachers repossessed the schools, workers began slapping a new aluminum roof on the market. With a donated U.S.-made drill, the government began sinking fresh-water wells (traditionally, the peasants have trapped rain water in great earthenware crocks, or drawn water from filthy canals). Inhabitants flocked back to the village in droves, and within a week the streets swarmed with mobs of children, eagerly accepting Life Savers from U.S. advisers and schoolbooks distributed by the province chief. With the Khanh takeover, things brightened further; the Viet Cong monument has been repainted as a government monument, and walls have been plastered with propaganda slogans, including a poem: "I am a girl of the countryside. If you follow the Viet Cong, I will never love you."

Lurking Fear. The civic-action program to date has cost a half-million piasters ($70,000), big money by Vietnamese standards. But Phumy is far from secure. In the sun-baked flats and clumps of jungle outside the main towns, the Viet Cong still control 70% of the province. In Phumy and elsewhere, the Reds have their agents. Soldiers with fixed bayonets guard the new water wells to keep them from being poisoned. For all their appreciation, Phumy's citizens remain understandably timorous; they remember what the Viet Cong warned on pulling out: that "when we return" villagers would be treated in accord with how much they cooperated with the government.

The government has so far kept the Reds from returning by keeping an outsize force, composed of one infantry battalion, a Ranger unit, and a company of engineers, pinned down in the area. A few weeks ago, the troops beat off two Viet Cong companies that attacked a hamlet west of Phumy and burned down several houses, leaving 400 peasants homeless. Government officials concede that the Communist guerrillas could overrun Phumy again should they mount enough strength. All the government can vow--and what it does vow--is to make any such onslaught extremely expensive for the Reds, and ultimately to drive them out again.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.