Death in the Delta, Intrigue in the Cafes

It was a grim tale of Viet Cong tactics. By night, clad in black, 200 Communist guerrillas stealthily forded the moat surrounding the sleeping outpost of the government Self-Defense Corps, snipped the barbed wire and charged. Inside, Red agents, who had infiltrated the garrison disguised as recruits, machine-gunned loyal troops in their bunks, set off secretly placed charges that toppled the fort's three watchtowers. By dawn, 28 government men lay dead, 36 wounded, and the Viet Cong had made off with virtually every weapon on the base. Looking about the ruins, a Vietnamese survivor gestured at pools of coagulating blood, said smilingly to an American visitor: "Very bad, yes?"

Yes. And what made the surprise assault worse was its location: barely a half-hour's drive from Saigon, in an area filled with government troops. It was the closest attack yet to the South Vietnamese capital.

Abolish the Holidays. Heating up the war anew, the Viet Cong opened a barrage of almost daily attacks, concentrating on the rice-rich Mekong Delta south of Saigon. Boldly, an 800-man guerrilla force ambushed an infantry battalion near Mocay, shot down a T-28 fighter plane that swooped to the rescue --killing its American pilot--and simultaneously lobbed .81-mm. Red Chinese-made mortars into Mocay itself. But the government got in its own licks, several times counterattacked with refreshing aggressiveness. On a forested ridge near the Laotian border, troops overran a Viet Cong staging camp for infiltrators coming down the Ho Chi Minh trail from Laos, claimed 75 enemy dead.

Such reminders that South Viet Nam is engaged in a struggle for survival might be expected to galvanize support behind the country's new ruler, General Nguyen Khanh, who seems sincere and energetic in his efforts to press the anti-Communist war. But Saigon's politicians are once again engaged in their petty intrigues, which prompted the late President Ngo Dinh Diem to keep them under firm control. Sipping coffee at sidewalk cafes, Saigon's intelligentsia carp about Khanh's attempts to rally the capital into the backlands war it has so long regarded as something apart. The Premier has ordered all male university graduates to report to military school, plans to assign able-bodied male civilians in Saigon to part-time guard duty; even more shocking, he has abolished four of the government bureaucracy's twelve annual holidays.

Official Optimism. Of late, Khanh has had to remind his civilian collaborators that they are essentially window dressing in a military regime. Last week Interior Minister Ha Thuc Ky, whom Diem found it expedient to jail for four years, indignantly resigned because he could not load the provincial payrolls with stalwarts of his Dai Viet Party (membership: 2,000). Khanh has filled such posts with battle-hardened army officers. The malcontents spread rumors of possible coups and sneer that Khanh is "becoming a dictator like Diem."

U.S. spokesmen remain resolutely optimistic--at least officially--that no new coup is in sight. The optimism is based on the fact that despite sporadic rumblings in the barracks, Khanh up to now has enjoyed the support of the bulk of the military. Perhaps the best thing that Khanh could do to preserve his position would be to become, if not precisely a strongman like Diem, at least like him in determination.

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