Picking Up the Pieces

Still stunned by the speed and brutality of the Communists' countrywide onslaught, South Viet Nam and its allies last week began the enormous task of recovery. The job was not made easier by the fact that no one knew for sure exactly what had happened, or why; nor was there any certainty that it would not happen again. The full significance of the Communist general offensive still hung on the next move by North Viet Nam's Defense Minister Vo Nguyen Giap--and whether he would or would not mount an assault on the U.S. Marine position at Khe Sanh.

Whatever Giap is up to--and weeks may pass before the outline of his campaign becomes apparent--he has already undeniably succeeded in devastating a large part of Viet Nam. With roads out and bridges down, telephones dead and all other kinds of communications clogged, the South Vietnamese are still painfully piecing together the extent of their human and material losses. At least 3,000 civilians were killed and another 350,000 made homeless, adding to the country's already overburdened refugee rolls. Hospitals overflowed with some 7,000 wounded civilians. Food was in short supply in some places, private businesses and public services at a standstill in others. The roll of cities and towns nearly literally leveled to the ground reads like a grim Vietnamese gazetteer.

Pleiku, a highland town of 66,000, was 50% destroyed and 11,000 of its people made homeless. Ban Me Thuot was 25% destroyed, had over 500 civilian dead and 20,000 refugees. In the Delta, Vinh Long was 25% destroyed and burdened with 14,000 new refugees. Ben Tre (pop. 35,000) was one of the hardest hit towns in all Viet Nam: 45% destroyed, nearly 1,000 dead, and 10,000 homeless. Many sections of Saigon were heavily damaged and 120,000 people left homeless. Estimates of the damage to Hue ran as high as 80%. One out of five of Dalat's 82,000 people was without a roof over his head.

The U.S. Naked. If the instructions and exhortations to his soldiers before the battles can be credited, Giap's ambitions in the general offensive were boundless. The attackers were led to be lieve that they were really going to take and hold the cities and towns and bring the war to a quick and victorious end. The South Vietnamese government was to be smashed. The Army of the Republic of Viet Nam (ARVN) was expected to desert to the Viet Cong in wholesale units. The Communists confidently anticipated that the population would welcome the attackers in a great popular uprising. The result would leave the U.S. naked as Giap's only remaining antagonist in Viet Nam.

Nothing of the kind happened. And to further coat Giap's pill with bitterness, he took losses that most other states' armies would consider unacceptable. The allies estimated that more than 27,000 Communists died in the attacks and, even allowing for considerable inflation of the figure, the ratio of enemy dead to those of the allies was worse than 7 or 8 to 1. Of the 28 provincial capitals seized across the country, not one remained totally in enemy hands. An astonishing total of more than 5,000 Communist suspects were taken. By contrast, the allied dead numbered 2,707--920 of them Americans, 1,733 South Vietnamese and 54 other allied soldiers.

A Matter of Mystique. On the other hand, Giap scored some very substantial gains. Ever since the U.S. came in force to Viet Nam, General Westmoreland's oft-reiterated strategy has been built on denying the Communists a major victory and assuring the South Vietnamese that the Communists could not hope to occupy even a district capital for more than a few hours. In their assault on the cities, the Communists did better than that, and nearly two weeks after the initial attack, the Viet Cong flag still flew over portions of Hue, with all its symbolic significance as the country's ancient capital.

In his blitzkrieg, Giap showed that not even American power could protect urban Vietnamese from Viet Cong guns. The demonstration equally undermined the South Vietnamese government's stature in the minds of many South Vietnamese. Whatever the harsh military facts of the campaign's outcome, the attacks enhanced the mystique of the Viet Cong as a stealthy, dedicated foe, unmindful of death. The V.C. took the initiative away from the allies and, temporarily at least, reversed the image of allied momentum in the war. Pacification will inevitably be set back by the immediate priority of reconstruction. Most important, perhaps, Giap managed--whether ultimately for his good or ill--to create in Washington and across the U.S. a fresh and profound agonizing about the war.

Asking for Arms. As damaging to Giap as his losses was the failure of the populace to rise--a failure that prevented him from consolidating his early gains in the streets. In some places in Saigon, Hue and Dalat, networks of sympathizers aided the raiders' infiltration and guided, fed and hid them until they struck. But the great mass of the country's city dwellers, long accustomed to thinking of war as something that happened only to peasants out in the paddies, rejected the Viet Cong call to arms. Their first and human response was to take no sides at all, simply to lock their doors and hide in order to stay alive.

But now that the bulk of the street fighting is over, growing numbers of civilians are coming out angry and incensed at the Viet Cong. South Vietnamese police are receiving an unprecedented number of telephone calls and scribbled messages tipping them off to Viet Cong hideouts. Some civilian groups such as the Confederation of Vietnamese Workers came for ward and asked for arms to aid in the defense of the cities, and the government is considering the creation of a home guard, provided that a way can be found to keep its weapons from falling into the hands of the Viet Cong. In Qui Nhon, more than 1,500 townspeople gathered to demonstrate in support of the government. And defeated Presidential Candidate Dr. Phan Khac Suu, accused of being a Viet Cong sympathizer, led a host of Vietnamese politicians usually at bitter odds with the government in condemning the Communist attacks and calling for national unity.

Not a Single Unit. Communist hopes that the South Vietnamese army would crumble under the onslaught proved equally hollow. Although nearly half the ARVN soldiers were away from their posts throughout the country on four-day Tet leaves, those on duty fought bravely and well--and in fact bore the brunt of the subsequent battles in the streets and took the majority of allied casualties. There was not a single instance of an ARVN unit surrendering or going over to the invaders.

The crisis also brought about a stepped-up mobilization, which the U.S. military command has long encouraged. President Nguyen Van Thieu announced that henceforth every able-bodied man over 17 years of age would receive military training, also ended deferments for students and civil servants.

The demobilization of soldiers who have completed their military service will be stopped, and veterans mustered out will be recalled to active service. The measures would add some 65,000 men to the 650,000-man ARVN. Thieu also announced that the nation's taxes would be raised.

Dossiers & Photographs. The city dwellers learned in the Communist offensive what South Viet Nam's peasants have long recognized: the Communists' ruthless application of terrorism in waging war. The attackers were ordered to seek out and kill the families of all South Vietnamese officers they could find, as well as police and government officials and their families. In Saigon, a band of Viet Cong seized several civilians, including a Korean newspaperman and the information officer of the Korean embassy, blindfolded them and summarily shot them in a Cholon street.

In Ban Me Thuot, the attackers used civilians as human shields, pushing from 1,000 to 4,000 people ahead of them in four separate marches. In Hue, U.S. Marines found two executed Americans, their testicles cut off. The North Vietnamese units who took Hue were ac companied by political commissars wearing gold-colored Ho Chi Minh buttons and special arm bands. Armed with complete dossiers and photographs of government officials to be arrested and executed, they methodically went from house to house with clipboards and notebooks, looking for their quarry.

The problem likely to plague South Viet Nam the longest is the widespread destruction of its cities, its towns, its homes. It was the Viet Cong's decision to bring the war into the midst of the cities, and the initial damage was wrought by Communist guns and mortars. But the bulk of the actual destruction occurred during the allied counterattacks to oust the Viet Cong. For allied commanders, these posed a grim dilemma that was summed up bluntly--and injudiciously--by a U.S. major involved in the battle for Ben Tre. "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it," he said. The Viet Cong had nearly the whole town under their control. The ARVN defenders were pinned down in their barracks, the U.S. advisory compound was in danger of being overrun, and the Viet Cong were within 50 yards of the provincial tactical operations center. "They are our friends in there," said one of the Americans ruefully. "We waited until we had no choice."

For bringing such destruction into civilian areas, the Viet Cong lost more people than they gained. But the South Vietnamese government undoubtedly was tarred by the same brush. Saigon was blamed for not being able to keep the Viet Cong out of the cities in the first place--and then for having to devastate wide areas to get rid of the enemy. Who lost the more remains to be seen. "It depends," says the I Corps U.S. commander, Marine Lieut. General Robert E. Cushman Jr., "on how fast the government provides assistance to rebuild homes, offices, roads and bridges."

Mobile Rice. The government is moving to do just that. While fighting continued on the outskirts of Saigon, some 2,500 Revolutionary Development workers were brought into the city to help collect garbage and assist at 73 emergency refugee centers that had been hastily set up. Trucks loaded with rice have been scattered throughout the city to serve as mobile grocery stores, by week's end were daily selling more than 300,000 Ibs. of rice at official prices to head off incipient hoarding and black-marketing of food.

Vice President Ky's National Recovery Committee was allotted $5,000,000 to begin to heal the wounds of the enemy attacks. Architects are already at work mapping plans to rebuild the most heavily damaged cities, and aerial photographs to speed their designs have already been taken of each city. Each refugee family has been promised--and some have already received--20 sheets of roofing, five bags of cement, several yards of lumber and $50 to rebuild and refurnish their blasted homes.

A fresh round of Communist attacks could, of course, upset all the recovery efforts. Despite his high losses, Giap still had considerable Viet Cong strength left, as the bloody fighting still going on in Saigon and Hue demonstrated. In fact, large numbers of NVA units were never employed at all in the general offensive. If Giap tries a second-round countrywide assault, though, he will have a far tougher fight on his hands than that of the last two weeks.

There will be no Tet truce hamstringing the allied response, and no element of surprise. The allies have learned some lessons in the art of street fighting with guerrillas and in the use of artillery and air support over urban areas. The allied command is carefully rethinking the deployment of its troops to defend and reinforce the cities and towns in the event of attack. Next time around, the allies will be as ready as they can be. Knowing that, Giap may well not try again, or at least not in the same way. After all, Hanoi's general has built his reputation on surprise.

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