An Alltime High for Action

What effect has South Viet Nam's sputtering political crisis had on the war itself? Surprisingly little on the activities of the Vietnamese armed forces, and as far as the Americans are concerned, virtually no effect at all. Last week U.S. ground action reached an alltime high.

Up in the "Happy Valley" of Viet Nam's Central Highlands, the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) once again came to grips with the elusive Viet Cong--this time a battalion that ran and fought for four days. Operation Crazy Horse was triggered when four Reds walked into an ambush, and documents on their bodies told of an impending Viet Cong attack on the Happy Valley Special Forces camp. From its nearby headquarters at An Khe, Air Cav choppers quickly dispatched a company of Flying Horsemen to the valley. The company was not long in finding the enemy: it drew withering mortar and machine-gun fire from a Red outpost hidden by shoulder-high, saw-edged elephant grass.

Upping the Ante. It was the first test for the Air Cav's new boss, Major General John Norton, 48, who relieved Harry W. O. Kinnard early this month. Norton, a veteran of North Africa, Sicily and Normandy in World War II, swiftly upped the ante by sending in three battalions, then kept tight contact with the enemy despite drenching thunderstorms and frantic Red attempts to flee. By the time the Viet Cong broke contact, 122 of them were dead in the elephant grass, another four were prisoners, and 17 weapons had been seized.

In the Mekong Delta, South Vietnamese Rangers on Operation Dan Chi (People's Determination) used American helicopters to trap another Viet Cong battalion. The Reds were part of the crack Soctrang Mobile Force, an outfit whose mobility failed it last week. Caught in a vise by three Ranger battalions, the Communists made their stand in a mangrove swamp near the village of Vinh Chau and suffered 262 dead.

Too Scared to Fight? Even in the rebellious I Corps area around Danang and Hue, the majority of the Vietnamese troops were still operating aggressively and effectively. Though the 1st Division--loyal to its dissident, dismissed commander, Lieut. General Nguyen Chanh Thi--has all but stopped operations for the moment, the 2nd Division at Quang Ngai is fighting hard and well. Countrywide, the Vietnamese have increased their weekly number of battalion-size operations from 51 in January to 77 in the first week of May. Simultaneously, U.S. forces have mounted more small-unit and battalion-scale operations than ever before--4,077 in the nine-week period from March 13 to May 14.

Red-initiated incidents during the same period fell to a low of 798, a sign that the Communists were off balance and lying low. As a result, the kill count has dipped to a six-month low of 832 Reds a week.

"The goddam V.C. are too scared to fight," snorted one American general last week. He had just returned from Operation Birmingham, a sweep by the U.S. 1st Infantry Division through the jungled hills along the Cambodian border in South Viet Nam's War Zone C. For nearly a month, the 8,000 men of the Big Red One had bulled their way through triple-canopied rain forest, often recklessly planting small units of their own men as bait. There were no takers.

360DEG Jungle. "The game in the jungle," says the Big Red One's commanding officer, Major General William E. Depuy, "is to send in a small force as bait, let the enemy attack, and be able to react with a larger force in reserve near by. But if the enemy doesn't want to fight, then the jungle goes off in 360 directions. There just aren't enough landing zones in the jungle to corner Susie in the roundhouse."

Not even with 255,000 American troops, the force level now in South Viet Nam. Six months ago, many had expected that so large a surge in manpower would produce dazzling results. But fully three-fifths of the U.S. force is tied down in administering and guarding the American bases. Of the remaining 100,000 combat troops, only two out of every three units can safely be committed in any single sweep--the reserve must be ready to strike in relief or as a blocking force. Moreover, as Birmingham demonstrated, thousands of Communist troops use "neutral" Cambodia as a convenient hideout whenever American troops push into the vicinity.

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