To Eradicate the Cancer

When he arrived last week in South Viet Nam, U.S. General Paul Donal Harkins, 57, found familiar scenes. Saigon's streets are thronged with U.S. soldiers clad in off-duty slacks and Hawaiian shirts. White-helmeted U.S. military police stroll in pairs past the bars and nightclubs of the Rue Catinat. In the high blue sky lie the geometric patterns of contrails from U.S. jets, and at Saigon's busy docks, U.S. ships unload wheat, flour, trucks and military hardware--all the material needed to complete Harkins' mission.

To newsmen, General Harkins crisply described that mission as "doing all we can to support the South Vietnamese efforts to eradicate the cancer of Communism." Over the past five years, the U.S. has spent $2 billion to that end in South Viet Nam, but it has not been enough. Harkins' appointment as commanding general of the newly created U.S. Military Assistance Command is the first step in a more broadly based anti-Communist campaign. With a staff of 200, Harkins takes over an advisory and supply service manned by 4,500 U.S. soldiers (soon to be boosted to 7,000). His units range from war dogs for patrol duty to medical outfits to U.S. fleet units in the coastal waters, which will intercept saipans and junks bringing down men and supplies from Communist North Viet Nam.

Count or Kill? Harkins will not only have to help South Viet Nam's President Diem reform his regime; he will have to do some reforming of U.S. operations as well. The first U.S. military mission in South Viet Nam dates from 1954, when Lieut. General John ("Iron Mike") O'Daniel helped organize the Vietnamese army for pro-Western President Ngo Dinh Diem. Next came Lieut. General Samuel ("Hangin' Sam") Williams, a leathery, irascible veteran who was convinced that when war came it would be a Korean-style invasion from the north with the Communists pouring tank columns and road-bound infantry divisions over the border. Williams was succeeded in 1960 by Lieut. General Lionel McGarr, who many critics think was too chairborne and conventional-minded to deal with the hit-and-run tactics of the Communist Viet Cong insurgents. During one briefing session with Presidential Emissary General Maxwell Taylor last year, McGarr gave a detailed report on the numbers of Viet Cong guerrillas infiltrating the Mekong delta region. Taylor reportedly grumbled: "Why don't you kill 'em instead of counting 'em?"

Harkins, a onetime cavalryman and deputy chief of staff in World War II to hard-driving General George Patton, was nicknamed "Ramrod" because it was his job to see that Patton's orders were obeyed swiftly and efficiently. Boston-born, Harkins has a reputation for tact and diplomacy as well as drive and discipline, all of which he will need in the job ahead. The U.S. is committed to a three-stage "pacification" program in Viet Nam that calls for 1) anti-guerrilla training and military re-equipment of the Vietnamese army, 2) swift-moving offensive operations against the hard-to-find Viet Cong guerrillas, and 3) reconstruction of the nation's staggering peasant economy.

To accomplish this design, Harkins and the Vietnamese commanders will draw on lessons learned in the successful anti-guerrilla campaigns fought in Malaya, Burma and the Philippines. Many ideas for erasing the Communists come from the Communists themselves, in textbooks of guerrilla fighting by China's Mao Tse-tung and North Viet Nam's General Vo Nguyen Giap, the vainglorious but talented commander who defeated the French at Dienbienphu.

Vertical Drop. According to Giap, the most important point in guerrilla fighting (as in other forms of warfare) is to retain the initiative. The most immediate U.S. problem is getting the 180,000-man Vietnamese army off dead center. Except for a few battalions of paratroopers and Rangers, most of the army is pinned down in static operations--garrison duty in Saigon or guarding bridges, towns, road junctions, border defense posts. Harkins must convince the Vietnamese that their best hope of whipping the Viet Cong is to launch repeated attacks that will force the Red guerrillas to scatter their forces and make possible the recapture of Communist-controlled zones. But any regular army sweep into rebel country also involves what Expert Giap calls the "contradiction of leaving the rear exposed"-- as the army moves forward, the Communists reoccupy the villages in the army's wake. To hold the villages, the U.S. will finance and direct the arming of 68,000 civil guards and 50,000 self-defense forces.

In Saigon, U.S. Marine and Navy advisers assist in the building of some 200 shallow-draft plastic boats capable of navigating the estimated 2,543 miles of South Viet Nam's inland waterways.

U.S. flyers in two-seated T-28 trainers instruct Vietnamese pilots in bombing and strafing techniques. Each of the three corps areas has a U.S. company of 20 helicopters to help in "vertical envelopment" of the Viet Cong. Using the choppers, army units can reach in 30 minutes areas that used to require a four-day jungle march.

Sober Reminder. This week, as General Harkins confers with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in Hawaii, he can report that the Vietnamese army and its U.S. advisers are well launched upon the anti-Communist campaign. But Harkins will also make the sober reminder that the task will not be easy or swift -- the lowest current estimate of the time required to eliminate the Reds is five years. Harkins' staff is guardedly optimistic that Red China will not massively intervene to help the Viet Cong. One reason: because of strained Moscow-Peking relations, the Russians seem unlikely to back the Chinese as they did in Korea. Another reason: the staggering problem of supplying any large body of troops over 20,000 miles of single track Chinese railroads and through hundreds of miles of jungle paths.

One complicating factor in the war on the Viet Cong is the special situation of the U.S. advisers in relation to the government of touchy President Ngo Dinh Diem. The U.S. involvement falls in a grey area somewhere between outright alliance and avuncular advice. To avoid offending national pride, U.S. staffers must always be careful to make "suggestions," not give "orders" to their opposite numbers in the Viet Nam army and administration.

Most Vietnamese officers are eager to absorb U.S. techniques and combat tactics, and on the military level, U.S. suggestions and Vietnamese orders mesh efficiently. In politics, the situation is more difficult. Last week a government plane flew over Red-held territory to drop prop aganda leaflets bearing Diem's New Year's message to his people. The plane crashed, killing eight Americans and two Vietnamese. Another plane was scheduled to take off later and scatter more leaflets, this .time bearing a good-will message from President John Kennedy. Both sets of leaflets could not be dropped from the same plane, it was said, because in South Viet Nam, Diem takes precedence over Kennedy.

Whatever the difficulties, the U.S. is sticking with Diem. Speaking last week to Rotarians in Saigon, U.S. Ambassador Frederick Nolting Jr. urged critics of Diem to be boosters instead of naysayers.

"The divisions among patriotic. anti-Communist Vietnamese, which are no secret to anyone here," said Nolting, "are in my judgment a great barrier to your country's progress and a real danger to your country's survival." Conceding that Diem was taking his own sweet time in instituting reforms, Nolting said that he agreed "to a certain extent" with those Vietnamese who complain that "the real benefits of a free society are not getting through to the people." But he also praised Diem's "dedicated and courageous leadership," added that reforms "could be accomplished relatively quickly if only more people were willing to work and sacrifice to accomplish them."

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