Hard Months on the Ground

President Johnson's de-escalatory approach comes at a troublous time for allied ground forces in South Viet Nam. Two months after the Tet attacks, they are still largely on the defensive, and in many places in a virtual state of siege. In all probability--regardless of Ho Chi Minh's response, or nonresponse, to Johnson's new terms--U.S. forces in coming months will have to continue their effort to regain the initiative on the ground. South Viet Nam's major population centers are still gravely menaced.

In attempting to go back on the offensive, the allies have found that the war has become even more frustrating. There are fewer big battles, but many more small firefights; the enemy seems to have scattered across the length and breadth of the country. Since many U.S. battalions are tied to defensive duties, the U.S. has fewer troops to cope with the war's new context.

The best index of the conflict's new phase is the casualty rates. The allies have been killing more of the enemy--55,000 since Tet--but they have also been losing more of their own men in the skirmishes that mark the harsher new character of the war. Though U.S. battle deaths dipped to 349 last week, they had been reaching record rates--sometimes above 500 weekly--since the Communist offensive.

Beating the Bushes. From the lush, Mekong Delta to the sterile Demilitarized Zone, the U.S. is hard-pressed to root out the enemy. In fact, the allies have managed to take the offensive in only one region--the 10,000-sq.-mi. Ill Corps area that arches around Saigon. In the war's largest operation, a three-week-old campaign called Resolved to Win, 50,000 U.S. and South Vietnamese troops are beating the bushes. Last week they stirred a series of sharp firefights; 527 Communists were killed, raising the sweep's total to some 2,400. Though the operation has failed in its aim to trap and destroy major Communist units, it nevertheless has forced the three Viet Cong and North Vietnamese divisions that threatened Saigon to disperse.

Elsewhere, the Communists pose a constant threat. The allied military presence has never been strong, for example, in the southernmost IV Corps, which comprises the rice-rich Delta; now it is weaker than ever. The ARVN and Popular Forces fled from the countryside at the onset of Tet, and have been slow to return. The U.S. has only two brigades of the Ninth Infantry in the Delta. Their energies have been fully taxed by the patrols required to keep open Route Four, over which food supplies flow to Saigon.

The U.S. position is even less favorable in the two northern corps. There the enemy continues to roam almost at will in large units, forcing the Americans to stay holed up in their bases most of the time. In the Central Highlands of the II Corps last week three battalions of North Vietnamese regulars managed to break through the perimeter wire of a U.S. artillery base and overran one howitzer position.

On the Prowl. In the northernmost I Corps, 60,000 allied troops are tied down in static positions along the DMZ and in defense lines around Hue, Quang Tri and Danang. There is some sign that General Vo Nguyen Giap has withdrawn one of the two divisions that originally encircled the 6,000 Marines at Khe Sanh. One reason Giap may have chosen to shift a division out of the Khe Sanh vicinity is that U.S. air-power has turned the area into a distinctly inhospitable place.

In a single day, pilots have sometimes counted as many as 300 secondary explosions set off by bombing and strafing attacks, an indication that ammunition dumps or gasoline supply depots were hit. Marines in Khe Sanh sometimes see bodies of North Vietnamese troops flung into the air by the explosions when the bombs are dumped directly on the enemy trenches. As Major Billy F. Nunley, an observation pilot who directs the bombing of targets around Khe Sanh, describes the scene: "It looks like the world caught smallpox and died."

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