REBUTTAL OF HAMBURGER HILL

SO dearly won in American lives the week before, Ap Bia Mountain was abandoned last week by troopers of the 101st Airborne Division. Their aim, as always in the long war, had been not to seize ground but to disperse or destroy their enemies. Mission accomplished, they moved on to resume their sweep through jungled A Shau Valley, searching for Communist troops and stores. But the battle for Hamburger Hill, as G.I.s had christened Ap Bia while taking casualties of 84 dead and 480 wounded, continued to be refought far from A Shau.

On one side were the critics of the current conduct of the war. Their first volley was fired by Senator Edward Kennedy two weeks ago when he condemned the series of assaults up Ap Bia as "both senseless and irresponsible." Senator George McGovern agreed, and last week in a Memorial Day address Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield suggested that critics had not merely the right but also the duty to question the progress of the war. "Areas are won and lost many times," said the majority leader. "Lives are lost but once."

A Gray Area. President Nixon moved to counter such criticism, sending one of his top advisers to brief the press. There had been, said the adviser in a background session, no significant (meaning not more than 10%) increase in battalion-size operations. Continuing high U.S. casualty totals in Viet Nam were the result, rather, of continued Communist offensives. Though admitting that figures on U.S. military operations in Viet Nam have always been of an "illusionary nature," he nonetheless cited some. In a typical week, when 35 to 40 enemy attacks are launched, some 150 to 200 Americans are likely to die. When, as in a recent week, the Communists make 211 attacks, the grim toll of 453 U.S. dead is the result. But, asked a newsman, was Hamburger Hill an example of a U.S. attack or a Communist assault? The North Vietnamese had been sitting more or less quietly on top. of Ap Bia when the 101st discovered them and moved to dislodge them. Ap Bia, replied the adviser, fell into a "gray area"--it was one of the few times in the war when the U.S. had been able to make opposing troops fight when they had not chosen to.

Sting-Ray Tactics. In one important sense, this response sidestepped the point of what is going on today in Viet Nam under U.S. Commander General Creighton Abrams. By last week the Army had mustered its case and through a number of spokesmen was spelling it out in Saigon. As so often before in the baffling, complicated war, it was a case easy to fault but difficult to refute, possessing an interior logic of its own, but lacking in reference points to reality on which all reasonable men might agree.

True enough, say the military, the number of battalion-and brigade-size sweeps against the enemy has not increased since the peace talks started. But they insist with pride that overall pressure on the Communists has increased--in the form of many more smaller-scale actions. Abrams has found that forays by sub-battalion-size units --companies, platoons, even squads --can be mounted more quickly, more often and in more places. Such surprise sweeps also achieve better results. Thus the general's sting-ray tactics, designed to interdict the movement of North Vietnamese units and supplies, involve the same number of men but hundreds and sometimes thousands more of what Abrams prefers to call "initiatives" rather than "offensives." As Abrams explained it last week to TIME Correspondents Marsh Clark and Burton Pines in Saigon: "Since the beginning of last fall, all our operations have been designed to get into the enemy's system. Once you start working in the system that he requires to prepare his offensive operations, you can cause him to postpone his operations or to reduce their intensity or length."

Not only do sting-ray tactics unsettle the Communists, U.S. commanders in Viet Nam claim, but they also keep down casualties better than the defensive war that some critics would prefer the U.S. to fight now. A recent study shows that the ratio of Communist to U.S. casualties is 12-1 when U.S. troops take the initiative. When they remain in defensive enclaves, the ratio drops to 3-1. Those figures may have an "illusionary nature" too, but they doubtless have some basis in fact. Sting rays also keep the Communists away from cities and reduce civilian casualties, Saigon argues.

In Operation Dewey Canyon two months ago, the 3rd Marine Division lost 121 men killed in action. But the Marine sweep turned up a cache of rockets, mortar shells, artillery rounds and other weapons that could have killed, by roughest estimate, 2,250 Americans in defensive positions. Whether and under what circumstances the armaments in this small arsenal would have been used, of course, is a question beyond such statistics.

Smelling Like a Rose. The Administration argues plausibly that military pressure must be maintained in Viet Nam in order to assure progress at the peace table--although there is room for dispute about this. The question remains whether the right kind of pressure was presented by the battle for Hamburger Hill: a costly fight for a piece of real estate that was to be abandoned before the blood had hardly dried on it. There are U.S. officers who will privately admit that, given hindsight, Ap Bia should have been handled differently. Perhaps, they say, the 101st moved up too close before ascertaining how many Communists were dug in atop the mountain. Perhaps the peak should have been more thoroughly blasted by air and artillery bombardment before the soldiers assaulted it. But, says one officer, "in nine out of ten operations, quick reaction and recharge up the hill would have been the best thing to do and the commander would have come out smelling like a rose." Ap Bia was the tenth case, one remarked on by Karl von Clausewitz. "It would be a great mistake to conclude that a blind dash must always gain the victory over cautious skill. An unskilled dash would lead not to the destruction of the enemy's forces but our own," he wrote. Now if ever in the war, when peace at last is possible, it would seem to be a time for cautious skill.

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