The Face of the Enemy

The rainy season was over. Under clear skies and sharp sunlight, the Communist Viet Cong guerrillas last week prepared the major offensive that they hope will topple the unsteady regime of President Ngo Dinh Diem.

In a running fight along the canals of Ba Xuyen province, army patrols killed six Viet Cong guerrillas, and in similar incidents, South Vietnamese often gathered to stare curiously at the dead guerrillas. In the coastal jungles of Phu Yen province, the Viet Cong ambushed and wiped out 40 civil guards. A rickety train chugging up from Saigon to Nhatrang was derailed; in the confusion seven government soldiers vanished, either captured by the Viet Cong or deserting to them. Day after day, the war--formless, ferocious, without front lines--grew in intensity.

Deep Suspicion. With it grew the grumbling in the cities and villages and in the army. Because of floods and civil war, rice stocks in Saigon are down to an alltime low of 20,000 tons, and prices have jumped 50% to 100%. Defeatism is widespread in the middle class, as the black-market rate on the piaster has dropped 30% to more than 100 to the U.S. dollar. Along with increased military action, the Reds are stepping up subversion with front organizations headed by respectable sympathizers. Many Saigon university students, who supposedly went to their villages during vacation, actually entered the Communist-controlled zones for indoctrination, and are now back in the capital as a potential fifth column.

In this crisis situation last week, U.S. Ambassador Frederick Nolting finally found President Diem in a receptive mood to take U.S. advice. Diem acceded to the U.S. request that he meet twice weekly with a new National Internal Security Council, which will include prominent people not now in Diem's clique-ridden, narrowly based government. He also reluctantly agreed to:

>Set up a joint intelligence board, which will include U.S. advisers, to revamp South Viet Nam's intelligence system.

>Give pay raises to the army and civil guard.

>Accept U.S. experts in all major governmental departments to help untangle the current bureaucratic mess.

> Allow seven-man teams (four Vietnamese, three Americans) to investigate Communist-infested areas and determine within three months what local steps can be taken to combat Red infiltration of the countryside.

Reforms on paper are not necessarily reforms in practice, but the U.S. was cautiously optimistic. An aircraft carrier sailed from Okinawa bringing the first U.S. helicopters to enable Diem to spot his elusive Red enemies, and aid, mostly military, to Saigon in 1962 will reach $400 million, nearly double this year's. At the same time, Secretary of State Dean Rusk appealed to the U.S.'s allies to share in the anti-Communist struggle in Southeast Asia. To illustrate the nature of that struggle, the State Department issued a 35,000-word White Paper, documenting in detail Red intervention in South Viet Nam--and illuminating the methods and motivations of the estimated 20,000 Red guerrillas.

Dead Teachers. The Viet Cong, reports the White Paper, is divided into three types of soldiers: 1) part-time fighters based on the villages, who work as farmers during the day, are available for emergencies at night; 2) half-time forces, who number up to 200 men in each district, often alternate work in the fields with periods of combat; 3) the hard-core regulars, who are well-trained, highly disciplined and receive full pay.

Some recruits are volunteers, but many are kidnaped into service or forced to join for fear of reprisals against their families. Viet Cong "taxes" are extorted from the population, with the heaviest share falling on landlords and plantation owners, who often pay tribute to save their lands from devastation. Assassination is a favored Viet Cong tactic, directed mostly against government officials, schoolteachers, village chiefs and their wives and children. Businessmen and the rich are seized and held for ransom.

The toughest and most dedicated Communists are those trained in North Viet Nam. Some were ordered into neighboring Laos, to fight with the Pathet Lao against the Royal government (see following story). Others, like captured Lieut. Duong, came into South Viet Nam by sea in junks posing as fishermen but carrying arms and medical supplies to Viet Cong bands. Many have died rather than surrender, but brief glances into their lives remain in the scribbled pages of their diaries and journals. These diaries are not only added evidence of North Vietnamese intervention in the South, but a full reading of them reveals the nature of the enemy. The guerrillas are far from being supermen; they suffer cold, hunger and other hardships. But they are fiercely indoctrinated, to the point of thinking and writing in Communist jargon, and in their idealism, however misguided, lies much of their strength--a strength the U.S. must understand in order to fight it.

In the Fatherland. Among the guerrilla-diarists was Captain Nguyen Dinh Kieu, who, with 60 Viet Cong guerrillas, slipped into South Viet Nam last July. "From this day," he wrote, "I am in the fatherland again." He was a fretful commander. After noting that he had punished two guerrillas for getting drunk, he worried that deserters or poor march discipline might alert South Viet Nam Rangers. Some of his men balked at bloodshed, and Kieu wrote pedantically: "This can be remedied only by intense political activity during rest periods."

He also filled his diary with admonitory phrases that echo the books on guerrilla fighting by Red China's Mao Tse-tung and North Viet Nam's able General Giap, conqueror of Dienbienphu: "Be extremely friendly with local comrades and very parsimonious with the food supply they give us . . . Respect the local population and never touch their property . . . Observe absolute secrecy and discipline . . . Only attack when victory is certain."

In September Captain Kieu violated that last principle by dying in a reckless frontal assault on the government-held village of Dakakoi.

Boiled Oil. Another guerrilla leader, Do Luc, a veteran Communist with a flowery style, sat down on a hilltop near the South Viet Nam border last August, and wrote a brief account of his past "for my sons and grandsons of the future to know of my life and activities during the revolution." Originally from the plateau country of South Viet Nam, Do Luc briefly served under Ho Chi Minh in the war against the French, then in 1955 moved up to North Viet Nam where, as an army regular, he happily worked at construction jobs "under a bright sky and under the superior socialist regime." In December 1960 he was sent to Laos to help the Pathet Lao "annihilate the reactionary clique of Phoumi Nosavan and Boun Oum."

On his hilltop, Do Luc wrote: "For the third time my life turned to war again. For the liberation of our compatriots in the south, a situation of boiling oil and burning fire is necessary! A situation in which husband is separated from wife, father from son, brother from brother is necessary. Now, my life is full of hardship. Not enough rice to eat, nor enough salt to give taste to my tongue, nor enough clothing to keep myself warm. But, in my heart, I keep loyal to the [Communist] Party and to the people. I am proud and happy." Last September, in a brisk skirmish near Daktrum village, Do Luc was shot dead.

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