"Babe, That Was Too Close for Us"

DAY after day, Air Force Captain Thomas Hammons, 32, chatted with the U.S. adviser sweating out North Vietnamese attacks on the besieged rubber town of An Loc. But Hammons learned neither his name, rank nor serious feelings about the situation; their conversations were carried on over a radio link between the ground and Hammons' tiny O-2A observation plane and confined to business. Hammons' job as forward air controller was to hover over the city, receive ground requests and direct the air armada of F-4s, A-7s, A-37s, A8s, and Cobra and C-130 gunships dispatched to help the beleaguered garrison.

"I'd like napalm south of town, napalm and CBUs [cluster bomb units] in town and hard bombs seven klics northwest of town," the adviser on the ground would order in a typical conversation. Or occasionally, after a bombing run, "Babe, that was too close for us. Keep your stuff at least 600 meters to the east, O.K.?" During one attack on NVA positions around An Loc, a Cobra pilot complained when F-4 Phantoms running short of fuel were assigned his target. The man on the ground blew up. "We ain't playing no goddam game, boy. If you can't take it, you get your ass back to base until you cool off. You hear me, babe?" Hammons gauges a day over An Loc hopeful or hairy by the voice of his unseen colleague. "When he's calm, he stutters a little bit. When things are hot, he shoots those words out without a pause."

Hoai An's peasants, many of whom have relatives on both sides of the war, trembled when the North Vietnamese soldiers arrived two weeks ago, neatly dressed in olive uniforms and soft hats covered with leaves and straw. As refugees who escaped the town explained last week, many families had sons in local militia units and were un certain what would happen. The NVA were firm but polite. "Do not worry," they told villagers. "Continue to work your fields." Teen-aged schoolchildren were presented with AK-47 rifles and told, "We shall all be liberators." Some soldiers jumped on Honda motorcycles owned by townspeople and gaily raced up and down the streets. Others rounded up stray pigs and cattle, and slaughtered them for a party to which villagers were invited.

In a house-to-house search nearly 600 men were rounded up. "Many of you have committed crimes against the people," an NVA officer said. "The police have been the biggest offenders. Village leaders have committed the second greatest offenses. Government cadres have been the third biggest offenders. The crimes of local soldiers, forced to fight, have been the least grave." The men, roped together, were led off toward the hills. Villagers were told that they were being taken away for "re-education."

The fall of Tan Canh last week meant that Kontum, one of the major Central Highlands cities it was built to protect, would soon be under siege. Kontum almost immediately took on the appearance of a ghost city. A U.S. pilot flying in could not raise the airport control tower and had to land on his own. The pilot liberated a motorbike from the abandoned airstrip and drove into Kontum through nearly empty streets. "The airport's not closed," said another U.S. officer holding on in his Kontum assignment, "but it's a good place to get killed."

Sensing that fact, Kontum's civilian population (30,000 in normal times) had prepared for the worst. The rich had padlocked homes and negotiated trips out on planes sent into Kontum to pick up "priority dependents." The poor merely waited behind closed doors for whatever was to come. They had no place to go. There were already 4,000 refugees in camps around the city, and another 1,500 had sought safety with relatives in Kontum itself.

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