Assessing the Attack

As rocket and mortar fire continued to pound up and down South Viet Nam and the Communists' post-Tet offensive of 1969 ended its third week, it bore some superficial resemblances to its predecessor at Tet last year. There was scarcely a major city or military center in the country that had not suffered some enemy fire. The numbers of provincial capitals that came under attack this year and last were identical: 29. "If you plotted the action by throwing up darts at a board," said one U.S. officer, "they'd look about the same." Outwardly the most distressing comparison turned up in U.S. casualty figures: in the first two weeks of the offensive, the number of American dead reached 783, just 33 men short of last year's two-week total.

Yet in the strategy of the Communist fighting, the two offensives so far have proved very different in means, targets and goals. The 1968 push was a total, countrywide assault, a general offensive involving nearly every ground trooper that North Viet Nam's General Vo Nguyen Giap could muster. By contrast, most of the darts on this year's board were the result not of ground attack but of "indirect fire"--shooting and shelling from safely remote points. Almost nowhere did Hanoi commit troops in more than company strength. Moreover, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong concentrated attacks on military rather than civilian targets, bypassing all but 138, or only 1%, of South Viet Nam's 12,900 hamlets.

Heavy Blow. By thus avoiding contact wherever possible, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops have been able to cut their own losses by nearly two-thirds of last year's fearful toll: so far, their dead have numbered about 11,000 (v. nearly 30,000 after two weeks of fighting during the last offensive). Though still a heavy penalty, U.S. officials believe that Hanoi considers it within range of "acceptable" losses.

South Viet Nam's civilians have fared far better this year. Despite the occasional shelling of cities, the ordinary life in the country continues almost normally. Communications and roads are largely unimpaired, and the vital pacification effort--dealt a heavy blow in last year's assault--is unaffected in 36 of the country's 44 provinces. Saigon, which became an urban battlefield in 1968, has so far felt the offensive's blows only in the form of rocket salvos. There are no new curfew restrictions, no hoarding, no staggering price increases. Acts of terrorism, while still a threat, are well below last year's level, and the number of civilians made refugees in the current offensive is 23,877, less than 5% of the total last year.

Even so, the strategy of noncontace lasted only up to a point. Some of the fiercest close-in fighting came at Landing Zone Grant, a U.S. fire-support base in III Corps near Saigon. The camp was hastily installed last January to block a vital junction in the Viet Cong's "Saigon River" infiltration route from Cambodia. Two weeks after the offensive began, no fewer than 800 Communist troops stormed Landing Zone Grant, charging through three rows of concertina barbed wire. In the battle, a rocket crashed into the command post, killing the base commander, Lieut. Colonel Peter Gorvad. Last week, armed with machine guns, satchel charges and flamethrowers, they tried again. This time the Americans were waiting; cranking down their huge 105-and 155-mm. guns, they opened up on the attackers pointblank. The two extended battles took the lives of 17 Americans and 285 North Vietnamese.

The vehemence with which Communist troops tried to take Landing Zone Grant indicated to some that they desperately wanted to reopen the infiltration route that leads toward Saigon. Other reports also suggested that key enemy units --including the elite 7th NVA Division and the 9th VC Division, which had taken part in every recent attack on the capital--were moving out of their sanctuaries and toward Saigon. Did that mean the offensive was about to enter a new phase of heavy fighting? Intelligence experts could not be certain. Some captured evidence pointed strongly to just that--as did a fresh shower of rocket and artillery attacks at week's end. Other evidence showed that the Communists thought they were already in the attack phase; and to confuse the picture even further, one high-ranking prisoner insisted that the present offensive is not phased at all and will last into the summer.

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