The Devils of Tef

The Vietnamese festival of Tet combines the qualities of Christmas and the end of Ramadan, the Hindu feast of lights and the pagan rites of spring. To welcome the Lunar New Year, Vietnamese housewives last week prepared mounds of hanh chung -- rice cakes covered with a stew of pork fat, pickled onions and rancid fish sauce. Fathers wrapped money in red paper for the children and raised the cay neu, a 30-ft. bamboo pole topped with offerings of betel nuts to propitiate the spirits. Before Tet begins, the good spirits of forest and stream, garden and hearth, head for the stars to report to the Emperor of Jade, thus leaving the world to the evil offices of fork-tongued devils and scaly trolls. In defense, the Vietnamese must plant apricot shoots outside his home, scatter lime powder around the yard and set off giant strings of firecrackers (which caused some combat-weary soldiers on leave in Saigon to dive for cover).

As South Viet Nam celebrated the arrival of the Year of the Goat* amid an international flurry of peace talk, neither noise nor nostrums seemed to have much effect on the true devils of the South: the Viet Cong and their North Vietnamese allies. During the four-day Tet truce, the Reds who were not fighting doubtless paid heed to the Liberation radio's directions about how to celebrate the festival: "Organize collective entertainment--including bayoneting the effigies of Americans, Thieu and Ky." But despite their own announcement of a seven-day truce (the U.S. and South Viet Nam agreed to only four days), a lot kept right on fighting. They managed, by Allied count, to violate the cease-fire some 370 times and kill 20 Americans while losing 101 of their own men.

Steady Surveillance. Viet Cong guerrillas fired on two separate units of American paratroopers patrolling northeast of Saigon, then poured bullets into the MEDEVAC helicopter that swooped in to pick up the wounded--but failed to bring it down. Individual Red riflemen took potshots at passing choppers and reconnaissance planes throughout South Viet Nam, or chucked hand grenades at Allied positions.

Well aware that the Reds would use the truce to reposition their forces--as they did to move men and supplies southward--U.S. troops kept up a steady surveillance. In War Zone C 75 miles northwest of Saigon along the Cambodian border, the U.S. mounted "Operation Gadsden" shortly before Tet to prevent the buildup of the Viet Cong's tough 9th Division. Though two companies of American infantrymen were lured into an ambush and took "moderate" casualties in escaping, the U.S. sweep gained good field positions for the post-truce period. It also turned up and destroyed two camouflaged bridges crossing into Cambodia that the Communists had been using for infiltration.

A Gift Outright. Other Americans fought their way into a Red prison camp in the jungles northeast of the capital --discovered by accident when Viet Cong snipers opened up on a U.S. patrol--and rescued 51 South Vietnamese prisoners. The camp, a 21-building complex replete with wooden stocks and bamboo cages for prisoners, had been in use since 1964. The malariasapped prisoners, many covered with sores, said that at least 30 of their number had been executed by the Reds in the past year. Another 50 prisoners were dragged away while the Americans fought their way in, but the camp's commander died in the battle.

For all their assiduous patrolling during the Tet truce, Americans showed that, in a way, they grasped the meaning of the festival. When they captured a Viet Cong field hospital intact near An Khe, troopers of the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) found medicines from France, Russia and East Germany, along with 20 beds and deep-storage bunkers. Ordinarily, they would have destroyed the hospital but, because it was Tet, they left it intact as a peace offering--and possibly as a gesture toward the Emperor of Jade.

*One of twelve animal symbols derived from the Chinese lunar calendar, the goat denotes a year of patience and devotion. Other symbols: mouse (vacillation); buffalo (strength): tiger (courage); cat (independence); dragon (sagacity); snake (cunning); horse (tenacity); monkey (success); cock (diligence); dog (honesty); and pig (health).

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