Waiting for No. 3

In the forests, rice fields and marsh es that ring Saigon, they wait. No one in the city knows exactly when they will come again, but everyone expects them. Saigon is bracing for a new on slaught by Communist troops, fearing that this time it may be even more pro longed and vicious than either the Tet or early May offensives. High-level defectors have said that a major Communist drive is in the making, and last week's relative silence on the battleground around the capital ominously underscored the point. As always when girding for a big campaign, the Communists had turned elusive, building up their strength and avoiding villages they knew to be swarming with South Vietnamese government agents.

They broke the pattern only once, seemingly unable to resist a Fourth of July attack somewhere on U.S. troops. Early on the Fourth, they opened up with a 500-round mortar and rocket barrage on Dau Tieng, a U.S. fire base 38 miles northwest of Saigon. They followed up the barrage with a ground assault, but were repelled by a quickly assembled crew of U.S. infantrymen, cooks, clerks and drivers. For their part, allied forces probed the countryside around the capital in sweeps and ambushes, but turned up mostly arms and ammunition. They have found several important caches in a wide arc around the city, including more than 60 rockets cleverly hidden and ready to be fired on the capital.

Such stockpiling leads allied intelligence officers to believe that the next attack on Saigon will be longer, better coordinated than before and aimed at striking deeper into the capital--at the First District, the downtown seat of commerce and government. They also believe that attacks will be made at the same time on smaller cities the length of South Viet Nam, as in the Tet offensive. Allied units have reported buildups of Communist troop concentrations, for example, in the vicinity of both Hue and Danang.

Major Buildup. The invisible ring the Communists have drawn around Saigon includes, according to intelligence estimates, 50 to 52 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong battalions. The Communists have divided the area into six military subdivisions--one comprising Saigon and Cholon, the other five wedges pointing at the heart of the city--and parceled out their troops among them. Not all of the Communist units are at full strength, but each of the five wedges harbors an infantry regiment, an artillery battalion, four autonomous main-force battalions and guerrillas. Already inside the capital, say intelligence sources, is the so-called A2/C 10 Special Action Command of perhaps 1,600 undercover troops, including both longtime operators and men recently infiltrated.

Along the belt where the city merges into the countryside, the Communists have deployed the lightly armed 165-A Regiment, comprising six battalions of troops who will act as guides and scouts for regular forces flooding in from the countryside once the offensive begins. Farther out in the countryside--an area that they consider already "liberated"-they have ordered their forces to establish "G.I. killing belts" around U.S. installations. Near the tiny Vietnamese militia outposts, their favorite ploy is to use loudspeakers to sympathize with men "drafted for an unjust cause" and invite them to move out of the camp.

Reconnoitering. Their two earlier offensives against Saigon have taught the Communists some valuable lessons about attacking a large, strange city. For one, they do not intend to let their troops wander aimlessly through a city with which they are not familiar; deputy regimental and battalion commanders have been given strict orders to personally reconnoiter targets assigned to them. Communications have also been much improved. Each of the six subdivisions, for instance, has its own signals company, supplied with radios comparable to the U.S. Army's pre-Viet Nam PRC-10 model; Communist platoons keep in contact with each other by walkie-talkie.

To check the offensive when it eventually comes, the allies have deployed more than 100,000 U.S. and South Vietnamese troops within a radius of 25 miles from Saigon. Arrayed in an inner ring--up to six miles from down-town--are 15 battalions. Farther out, another 20 to 30 battalions scour the area, running as much as two-thirds of their operations at night, when the Communists normally do their moving. In Saigon itself, allied troops are even checking the sewers and systematically searching whole blocks of houses in districts known to be friendly to the Communists. Checkpoints have been set up on roads, paths and waterways leading to the capital. Anti-personnel radar sweeps the terrain, and a dozen radar towers and constantly patrolling helicopter gunships and spotter planes keep stringent watch. They are looking for the brilliant, telltale flares of rocket launches that might signal the start of a new offensive.

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