Changing of the Guard

(See Cover)

Even as Washington and Hanoi conducted the delicate diplomatic exchanges that could lead to negotiations, the U.S. last week announced a major shift in the strategy of the Viet Nam war and named a new commander to carry it out. The strategy, set forth in his first press conference by Defense Secretary Clark Clifford, is a decision by the U.S. to turn the war gradually over to the South Vietnamese and to give them the firepower and backing to wage it effectively. The new man in Viet Nam is General Creighton W. ("Abe") Abrams, 53, who will succeed General William C. West moreland, soon to return to Washington as Army Chief of Staff.

For the new task and role of the U.S. in Viet Nam, Abe Abrams' appointment represents a rare mating of man and mission. As Westmoreland's deputy commander, Abrams has spent the past ten months working with ARVN (the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam) to shape up its structure, stiffen its spine and improve its performance. In their extremely violent Jet offensive, the Communists unwittingly showed that Abrams has had some success: to the surprise of many Americans and the consternation of the Communists, ARVN bore the brunt of the early fighting with bravery and elan, performing better than almost anyone would have expected.

Their War. The notion that the South Vietnamese must ultimately take responsibility for their own defense is hardly new. To John F. Kennedy, it was an article of faith that he repeated often: "It is their war and they will have to win it." But the fact is that for the past three years, U.S. troops have taken charge of the war, making virtual wards of the South Vietnamese and consigning a third of them to pacification guard duty. That strategy was originally built on the assumption that the massive infusion of half a million American fighting men would enable the allies to win a clear-cut victory over the invading North Vietnamese and decimate the indigenous Viet Cong.

The reason for the shift in emphasis back to ARVN is that Hanoi has proved able to match the U.S. buildup through proportionate infiltration into the South, and that President Johnson has concluded that total military victory in Viet Nam is not possible at an acceptable cost in men or years. The result is a fundamental decision, reached in the past several weeks during a post-Tet "A to Z" reappraisal of the war by the Administration, to get the South Vietnamese ready to fend for themselves, as they would have had to do sooner or later. The decision was made possible by the improving ARVN itself, and by President Nguyen Van Thieu's recent general mobilization of Vietnamese men between 18 and 40, which will eventually create an ARVN of some 900,000 men.

President Johnson's decision to authorize only 24,500 more Americans for Viet Nam, rather than the 135,000 to 200,000 that Westmoreland had wanted, thus represents a tacit de-escalation of the war by the U.S. Since Lyndon Johnson has no intention of handing over South Viet Nam to the Communists, the new strategy depends on ARVN's ability to learn to fill the combat boots now being worn by the U.S.

The general who will preside over this shift is a tough, plain-speaking New Englander and onetime tank commander who could inspire aggressiveness in a begonia. Retired Army General Bruce C. Clarke, who commanded Abe Abrams in World War II, bluntly calls him "the No. 1 fighting general in the Army." Moreover, Abrams will have the advantage of knowing ARVN better than any American in Viet Nam ever has. The South Vietnamese are unlikely to be able to put much over on him, or promise what he knows they cannot deliver. And by temperament and the terms of his new assignment, the cigar-chomping Abrams will likely be his own man in Saigon, running things largely his own way with more on-the-spot freedom than Westmoreland enjoyed. That, in a way, will represent a personal sort of de-escalation by President Johnson, who feels keenly the criticism that he has kept the reins of war too tightly in his own hands.

On the Offensive. One way or another, through a negotiated peace or a phased U.S. withdrawal, Abe Abrams will likely also be the man who presides over the end of the massive American presence in South Viet Nam. But for now, he must prepare to take over in that awkward age of wars, when negotiations seem about to begin and no one can know when or where they will end. In preparation for talks and bargaining stances, both sides are drawing up as favorable balance sheets as they can on where the war stands today.

As Westmoreland and Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker read the ledger, the U.S. position looks encouraging--and the Pentagon insists that the readings do not represent the sort of optimism that flowed all too easily before the shock of Tet. As the military experts see it, the Communists took crippling losses in the 40,000 of their soldiers killed during the Tet campaign and the 15,000 chewed up during their disastrous siege of the U.S. Marine base at Khe Sanh (see box). The Tet onslaughts failed to topple Thieu's government, failed to shatter ARVN, and, in fact, left it with more confidence than it had had before. The pacification program in the countryside turns out not to have been hit so hard as at first suspected: out of the 629 pre-Tet Revolutionary Development teams, 545 are back in the field, 449 of those in their planned 1968 locations. Tet also brought home to the South Vietnamese the deadly earnestness of the war. That realization has produced not only the general mobilization but also a closing of nightclubs and black markets, a wholesale housecleaning among province chiefs and corps commanders, and a vigorous attack on corruption, reinforced by public executions of the worst offenders.

On the battlefields, the allies have once more moved out to the offensive. Operation Pegasus, in the northernmost I Corps area, opened vital Route 9 for the first time since last August, relieved Khe Sanh, and last week recaptured the outpost of Lang Vei, which was overrun by the North Vietnamese in February. Last week, too, in the eleven provinces around Saigon, the allies mounted the largest campaign of the war, which consisted of some 100,000 men in an operation ambitiously called Complete Victory.

But, as always in the war when the Communists do not choose to fight, the allies for the moment could find few of the enemy. The explanation lay neither in a purposeful de-escalation by Hanoi to abet peace talks nor the possibility that the Communist forces were so shattered by their recent losses that they could not fight at all. Instead, there was every indication that the Communists were simply hiding out while they got resupplied for fresh offensives. Down the Ho Chi Minh Trail poured a steady stream of North Vietnamese trucks, headlights brazenly ablaze in the night. The infiltration of men from the North is running far above the usual estimates of 6,000 to 6,500 a month--perhaps as much as twice that number. From February to mid-April, U.S. intelligence believes some 44,000 fresh soldiers have been pumped down the trail toward South Viet Nam.

Guerrilla at the Point. As a result, peace talks or not, General Abrams is certain to encounter considerably more heavy fighting in the South when he takes over from Westmoreland. Fortunately for the U.S., intensive fighting is an art at which Abrams has long demonstrated both instinctive mastery and uncommon zeal. Born in Feeding Hills, Mass., the son of a repairman on the Boston & Albany railroad, Creighton Abrams grew up learning to drill tin cans with a rifle, raising baby beef as a 4-H farm boy, and driving around in his Model T. In high school he was both an outstanding student and captain of a championship football team that went unscored upon in his last season.

At West Point, Abrams found the lowly estate of a plebe demeaning, and retaliated with his own guerrilla war against upperclassmen, aiming potshots with his BB gun judiciously due south of retreating backs and once smearing an upperclassman's radiator with Limburger cheese. His pranks found more acceptable outlets in stage-managing the academy's 100th Night Show, and his aggressiveness was more usefully employed on the football field. He graduated a mediocre 185th in his class of 276, but one course in which he excelled was horsemanship. That led him into the cavalry and, with the army's mechanization, ultimately into the tank corps. There he came into his own metier, just in time for World War II.

As a lieutenant colonel commanding the 37th Battalion of General George S. Patton's 4th Armored Division, Abrams was Patton's point man, led the victorious Allied sweep across Europe from France to Czechoslovakia in 1944-45. Abrams was the only tanker, in fact, who Patton ever admitted might be his equal. In the lead tank of the 37th sat Abrams himself, often far out in front of the nearest U.S. units that could provide aid if his tanks got into trouble. "I like to be out on the point where there's nothing but me and the goddam Germans," growled Abrams, "and we can fight by ourselves." It was Abrams in his Sherman tank who led the relief column into Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge. It was Abrams again who led the dash to the Rhine, moving so fast that he once surprised a German general and his staff with their boots up on their desks.

Abrams soon developed a distinctive combat style that General Clarke characterizes as "careful planning and violent execution." Abrams articulated it himself during World War II. "We don't want the Germans to fall back," he said. "We want them to try to defend their positions so we can destroy them and their equipment. We've got to set our minds to destroying them--that's the only way to get this job done and done fast. Our operations are all based on violence."

Ole Miss & Birmingham. So impressive was Abrams' brand of calculated violence that after the war he was assigned to rewrite the Army's armored field manuals as director of tactics at the Armored School. After a stint at the Command and General Staff College, he went back to Germany as a tanker for a time, then found himself in Korea as Bruce Clarke's chief of staff in the I Corps area while the Panmunjom peace talks were going on. That experience is likely to stand

Abrams in good stead if he must wind up the war in Viet Nam. During the Korean talks, which went on for two years while the fighting continued in the field, Abrams saw the U.S. lose 12,700 men killed and 50,000 wounded. He is unlikely to have any illusions about an early end to the fighting in Viet Nam, or to suffer similar losses in Viet Nam without massive punishment of the enemy in return.

In 1959, Abrams went back to Germany and moved up to command the 3rd Armored Division there, the keystone of NATO's land defense line (TIME cover, Oct. 13, 1961). By 1962 he was back in the Pentagon with quite a different command. He was put in charge of the federal troops deployed to the riot-torn Ole Miss campus in the fall of that year, and later sent to Birmingham to quell civil disorder in May of 1963. Soon thereafter, Abrams became a lieutenant general and the commander of V Corps in Germany. Scarcely a year later he got his fourth star and a promotion to Vice Chief of Staff of the Army. Abrams held that post until April of last year, when President Johnson made him deputy commander of U.S. forces in Viet Nam under Westmoreland, who assigned him to the difficult task of shaping up the South Vietnamese army.

A Caste of Officers. Upgrading ARVN is--and will continue to be--as prickly and difficult a job as any that a U.S. officer confronts anywhere in the world. There are Vietnamese sensitivities to be considered. There is a long, blood-wearying legacy of continuous national warfare to be overcome. There are problems inherent in the traditions of Vietnamese society and its military elite. In his ten months of working with ARVN, Abrams made more progress in some areas than in others. The problems and the progress:

sbLEADERSHIP. ARVN officers traditionally represent the cream of Vietnamese society, a social caste preserved by stiff educational requirements for officer candidates. Thus, unlike the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong armies, ARVN offers little opportunity for skilled soldiers to rise up from the ranks. The result is that it suffers both in loss of potential talent and in its political image among the peasantry. Until recently, Abrams had made little dent at all in opening up the military establishment, but just last week he won a promise from the government to promote between 4,000 and 6,000 from the ranks, based on individual performances during the Tet fighting. If Saigon does so, that will be a major breakthrough.

sbRELATIONS WITH THE PEOPLE. Because an army emulates its leadership, ARVN all too often runs roughshod over the people it is defending while in the field. The offenses range from chicken thievery to rape to the indiscriminate use of artillery. Corruption has long been a way of life, with tribute exacted all along the chain of command until the squeeze reaches the peasant at the bottom. Again, only since Tet can Abrams count much progress: 18 province chiefs and two corps commanders have been fired, several dozen officers arrested and tried for corruption.

sbTACTICS. ARVN has tended to be defensive-minded, interested only in setting up a perimeter and then sitting back inside it and waiting. ARVN soldiers did little night patrolling, fought the war on a five-day week, with officers whipping off to Saigon for the weekend. In the populous Mekong Delta, local ARVN commanders were suspected of occasional "accommodations" with their Viet Cong counterparts, aimed at preserving the status quo and holding the fighting to a minimum. In this area Abrams sees notable improvement. Of ARVN's 149 maneuver battalions, he regards only nine as really unsatisfactory any longer; he rates 41 superior and the rest satisfactory. In the Delta, the new corps commander, General Nguyen Due Thang, has mounted nearly 40 company and multicompany sweeps since he took over less than two months ago.

sbARMAMENT. Unit by unit, ARVN, when Abrams arrived in Viet Nam, was hopelessly outgunned by the enemy--undoubtedly a factor in its lack of aggressiveness. Armed with World War II-vintage M-1 and .30-cal. Brownings, an ARVN company was no match for a Communist company fitted with AK-47 automatic-firing Chinese assault rifles. Long before the decision to move ARVN toward taking over the brunt of the fighting, Abrams fought to rearm the South Vietnamese with the best U.S. weaponry, and the first ARVN units received M-16 rifles late last year. Now the supply will be speeded up--and broadened. Defense Secretary Clifford announced last week a dramatic increase in the U.S. production of the M-16 so as to equip all ARVN units by midsummer. The South Vietnamese will also be issued a new type of improved mortar, more armored personnel carriers, better communications equipment. They will also get more helicopter support to increase their firepower and mobility.

Whatever ARVN's specific faults--and they are still considerable--the test of an army is its ability to fight when the chips are down. That test came for the South Vietnamese in its supreme form at Tet, when the Communists, bypassing American installations for the most part, hit directly at ARVN units, relaxed for the holiday and only at half-strength because of furloughs. Hanoi expected ARVN to crack, but the South Vietnamese held--and more. Though almost all ARVN battalions were caught up in the fighting, not one of them broke or ran and, except in Hue, they successfully threw back the attackers. No one believes that would have been the case in similar straits in 1966; more than anything, that is the measure of how far Abrams has brought ARVN. Even more important, steeled and proven in the fires of Tet, the South Vietnamese soldiery has a newly confident image of itself. It will be up to Abrams to continue to nurture that confidence, and build up the prowess that justifies it, for the greater responsibilities that lie ahead.

Not a Good Move. When Abrams takes over from General Westmoreland, he will have a new responsibility of his own: the leadership and welfare of the American servicemen in Viet Nam. No matter what happens at the conference table, most of those men will be around in Viet Nam for quite a while to come. Their morale is one of Abrams' chief concerns, and, like Americans everywhere in the world, they have been buffeted by the swift surprises of recent weeks. There are very few doves in a foxhole--or anywhere in the ranks of the U.S. services in Viet Nam. By and large, the troops are disturbed of late by the news from Washington.

The matter that hits closest to home is the bombing pause, which most G.I.s believe can only aid North Viet Nam's ability to fight them. "Militarily, I don't agree with it," says Captain Robert Kesler, 37, of Minneapolis. "It's not a good move. I've got the lives of my men to think about." Says Captain Thomas R. Boulton, 37, of Phoenix: "We don't like the bombing pause, that's obvious. It will affect us by giving the enemy a greater tactical advantage by reducing his supply chain by a tremendous amount." "We're giving North Viet Nam more time to act and forcing allied forces more into a position of only reacting," complains 1st Lieut. Albert E. McCloe, 23, of Philadelphia.

Similarly, Lyndon Johnson's decision not to run for President is widely read as an admission of failure in Viet Nam, or at the very least heralding a new Commander in Chief likely to be less hawkish. Understandably, the men under fire resent any restriction laid on their commanders and the use of their firepower, feeling that such restrictions are sure to prolong the war. All along they have resented, for example, granting the enemy sanctuary in Laos and Cambodia and not fully closing the harbor of Haiphong. Most will admit that there are political considerations involved that are beyond their ken to evaluate. But, as soldiers, they feel that the disadvantages of limited war make their task more difficult and dangerous. If there is not an all-out peace, most of them would prefer a President who would escalate the war.

The Only Practical Way. At this stage, the prospect of the enemy's calling it all off at the conference table is greeted by G.I.s and Marines in the field with marked cynicism. Even should it be true, they have mixed feelings: they want to go home, but not if it means throwing away the investment of their comrades' blood. Most, with the same cynicism, suspect that, were the war to end now, South Viet Nam would sooner, rather than later, wind up in Communist hands. "I'd hate to see it happen," says Lieut. Ray Robinson, 23, of Baltimore. "We've lost a hell of a lot of good men's lives here." "It's the only practical way, but it seems so unfair after all the fighting we've done," says Lieut. Ray Dempsey, 22, of Wichita. "It kind of makes you mad. It makes most of our work here seem so useless."

The death of Martin Luther King Jr. has added to the sense of unease of the American in Viet Nam. "That whole situation is terribly detrimental to the morale of the people out here," says Lieut. Barry Epstein of Pennsylvania. "Everyone is worried about their families, their homes. And it is causing friction." "Sometimes I feel a lot safer over here," says Corporal Jerry Hellet of California. Negro soldiers are particularly outspoken and bitter about the militant blacks back in the U.S., like Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown. "I've made up my mind," says Air Force Staff Sergeant Gordan Fain, 38, a Negro from Baltimore, "that no one is going to hurt me, my wife, my kids or my property when I get home, no matter what race he is. I've worked for years for what I have, and no Negro militant can get me to tear up someone else's place either."

Tough Guy & Expert Cook. The mood and tenor at the new metal-walled headquarters of MACV (Military Assistance Command-Viet Nam) are also bound to undergo alteration with the changing of the guard from Westmoreland to Abrams. Even in appearance the men are opposites: Westy, the handsome, squarejawed, picture-poster image of a U.S. general; Abrams, a kind of middle-aged Joe Palooka, an ever-present Dutch Masters cigar between his teeth enhancing the tough-guy image. His manner follows his face. Where Westy is a softspoken, courtly gentleman from the South, Abrams is the no-nonsense hard guy from Massachusetts who, unlike Westmoreland, lets the god-dams fall where they may. Where Westmoreland has gained a reputation for caution, the troops in the field look to Abrams to jump in and chop up the enemy as he did at Bastogne.

The tough guy is, however, an expert cook, and a continuous reader of serious novels. He is an excellent, aggressive poker player, and a sometime golfer and hunter. He married his West Point sweetheart, a Vassar girl named Julia Harvey, and they have six children. Two of his three sons have already served in Viet Nam: Creighton Jr., who was an artillery captain with the 1st Infantry Division, and Lieut. John, who now leads a reconnaissance platoon with the 4th Infantry Division.

Cyclical War. Few U.S. officers in MACV believe that Abrams will make any major change in overall war strategy when he takes over. For one thing, Abrams had a voice in all the major decisions that Westmoreland made last year. For another, he can expect no substantial increase in U.S. forces, indeed might be asked to begin sending some home within a year or less. Tactics, however, are another matter, and in these the commanders do expect some changes reflecting Abrams' personal style of warfare and his greater authority to act on his own.

Westmoreland evolved a kind of modified enclave theory in which he kept as many battalions as he could working in the populated areas of Viet Nam, sending troops into the wilderness only when a serious enemy buildup threatened. The result was a kind of repetitive cyclical war. The siege of Khe Sanh, 1968, came nine months after the battles fought around Khe Sanh in 1967. The Army fought the battle for Hill 875 last autumn, almost two years to the day from the battle of nearby la Drang valley. Operation Complete Victory is now sweeping through War Zone C outside Saigon, just as Operation Junction City did a year ago.

So, within the U.S. command there is speculation that Abrams might switch to a more flexible approach in areas like Khe Sanh, rather than massively digging in to create a tempting siege target. He might also reduce the massive-area type of search-and-destroy operations and concentrate instead on an increased use of reconnaissance patrols--throwing in his battalions only if the patrols hit paydirt.

No Further Step. The larger decisions on how the U.S. fights while negotiating must continue to be decided in Washington, and will partly depend on what Hanoi does. Without a reciprocal reduction of activity on North Viet Nam's part, President Johnson sees no further step in de-escalation that he can take beyond the present bombing pause. And though Johnson has publicly suggested that a cease-fire should be the first step in real negotiations, the U.S. is in no hurry for that step to come. It will take several months of fighting for the allies to recoup the countryside lost to the Communists during Tet. Even if the pacification program was not hurt as badly as was first thought, there still remains much repair work to be done behind a shield of guns. The U.S. is also worried about the problems of effectively policing a cease-fire in the rural hamlets of Viet Nam.

In order to gain back the ground lost during Tet, the aim of allied forces now is to push the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese back from the cities and toward the borders of Laos and Cambodia, keeping them off balance and hitting them while they are regrouping. There is good reason to do so--and to anticipate heavy fighting ahead. The Communists in the Central Highlands suffered very little in the holocaust of Tet, and Westmoreland expects trouble from them there. There is also great danger still in I Corps, where the North Vietnamese have the numbers to attack Hue or Quang Tri City again at any time. In fact, at the furious rate of replacements coming down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the Communists could be ready by May or June for another cycle of widespread attacks.

Spreading Slowly. Just how the U.S. turns the war over to the South Vietnamese--and when--depends on how fast Hanoi de-escalates the conflict and its pressure on South Viet Nam. If and as the level of hostilities falls, more and more of the fighting that remains could be taken on by ARVN. Most likely, the parts of the allied military machine could be transferred to ARVN one by one. If a fight loomed on a scale that ARVN could handle for example, the U.S. might provide transport, artillery and air support to aid ARVN in the battle. As ARVN's own transport and artillery support improved, the next time only U.S. air-power might be required to assure the success of South Vietnamese arms.

Through such a process, spreading slowly throughout the battlefields, perhaps over several years, the number of U.S. troops actually fighting could be reduced and gradually sent home. Eventually, U.S. military men speculate hopefully, only U.S. airpower might be required in Viet Nam. Abrams points to the parlous state of the South Korean army during the Korean War and its present reputation as a top fighting outfit, predicts that eventually the ARVN will be at least as good as the Koreans.

In any case, the U.S. has no intention of yielding the fighting to ARVN any faster than the South Vietnamese are able to shoulder it successfully. It will be General Abrams' task to prosecute the war as the gropings toward peace go forward. At the same time, whether the diplomats succeed or fail, Abrams must prepare South Viet Nam for the day when its destiny will be its own--the goal that, after all, first brought the U.S. to the jungles and highlands of Southeast Asia.

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