"To Liberate from Oppression"

(See Cover)

The war in South Viet Nam is a deadly game of hide-and-seek--with the fate of Southeast Asia at stake. It is a game that the U.S. is grimly determined to win.

Each hour, radio reports on battle progress pour into the headquarters of the U.S. Military Assistance Command on Saigon's Tran Hung Dao Street. Here, in a spare, map-hung office, behind an uncluttered grey desk, sits the new chief of the U.S. military mission, General Paul Donal Harkins, 57, who holds the top command in the one spot in the world where U.S. troops are involved in a shooting--if undeclared--war against Communists. Symbolic of his task are the three flags behind his desk: the U.S. Stars and Stripes, the yellow and red banner of South Viet Nam, and his red general's flag.

Tall, trim, with grey hair, steely blue eyes and a strong nose and chin, Harkins looks every inch the professional soldier. Under him serve some 5,000 U.S. troops (soon to be raised to 8,000) including the U.S. Special Forces, who are all volunteers, all former paratroopers. Their elite status is marked by a bright green beret with a badge bearing crossed arrows and knife blade, and the legend De Oppresso Liber--roughly, To Liberate from Oppression. It is General Harkins' demanding job to fuse these few thousand experts with the willing but incompletely trained armed forces of South Viet Nam's President Ngo Dinh Diem--170,000 regulars, 68,000 Civil Guard troops, and 70,000 Self-Defense Forces.

The U.S. Commitment. Harkins has behind him not only the full weight of U.S. power but the pledged word of the U.S. Government, which is now determined to back Diem all the way and to win in South Viet Nam even if it takes a decade--as well it may. Speaking for President Kennedy, his brother Robert said in Saigon last February: "We are going to win in Viet Nam. We will remain until we do." Defense Secretary Robert McNamara has South Viet Nam at the very top of his daily agenda. He has made monthly visits to Hawaii for briefings on the progress of the war, and this week he is scheduled to arrive in Saigon for a firsthand look. He intends to climb into khaki work clothes and set off with Harkins on an intensive field inspection, ranging from the new "strategic hamlets" in the highlands to the training camps of the Mekong Delta, where the Green Berets--the U.S. Special Forces--are instructing Vietnamese soldiers in everything from march discipline to weapons assembly.

What McNamara will find is a remarkable U.S. military effort, mounted in the few short months since Washington decided last October to hold South Viet Nam at all costs. At Saigon airfield a steady stream of huge Globemasters unloads tons of electric generators, radar equipment, trucks and Quonset huts. More than 80 H21 Shawnee helicopters at four airbases are serviced by U.S. ground crews, flown by U.S. pilots--including such colorful types as Lieut. Colonel Archie Clapp, who has lent his name to his squadron, "Archie's Angels." The converted aircraft carrier Core steams regularly upriver to Saigon, carrying men, munitions and more helicopters. The 1,000-mile stretch of the South Viet Nam coast, from the 17th Parallel to the Camau Peninsula, is patrolled by ships of the U.S. Seventh Fleet to intercept sampans or junks carrying Red supplies down from North Viet Nam.

The Face of the Enemy. All this vast deployment of men, minds and munitions is aimed at destroying the Communist Viet Cong, some 25,000 guerrillas who are as difficult to find, and as dangerous, as a scorpion in a haystack. No one knows what the U.S. is up against in the jungles of South Viet Nam without knowing the nature of the enemy.

The typical Viet Cong soldier is a thin, unkempt young man hardly reaching a G.I.'s armpit and weighing scarcely 100 Ibs. Instead of riding in a Jeep or a helicopter, the Viet Cong private travels up to 40 miles a day through jungle on rubber-soled canvas shoes. His uniform is the same black calico shirt and trousers worn by all Vietnamese peasants; on his long, stringy hair he wears either a floppy jungle cap or a pith helmet covered with netting into which he thrusts camouflage appropriate to the terrain through which he is moving. His full field pack contains only a waterproof nylon sheet, a mosquito net, a hammock and some rope.

Viet Cong fighters come in three types. At bottom are the popular forces, including all ages and both sexes in a village; they are scantily armed and used mostly as porters. Promising young men from the villages graduate to the regional troops, who are charged with defending a specific district, and here the basic military training begins. At the very top are the tough, deeply indoctrinated Viet Cong regulars, usually hoarded by their Red masters for specific missions and almost never risked in battle where the issue may be in doubt.

Red Devices. The Viet Cong regular swears to a ten-point soldier's oath stressing instant obedience, dogged courage, and a complete willingness to sacrifice his life for the Communist cause. From experience, and from the manuals of Red China's Mao Tse-tung and North Viet Nam's crafty General Giap, the Viet Cong learns the tactics of speed, surprise and security. Says General Harkins: "They are a hard, tough bunch. I don't think their leaders care how long it takes, but they want to take over the world. They are resourceful and use all sorts of devices." Among the devices: in planning an assault on a Vietnamese fortified post, the Viet Cong regulars often build a replica and stage mock attacks on it day after day until every man knows his job by heart. While the regulars practice, the Viet Cong forces from nearby villages are engaged in "preparing the battlefield." Children play near the fort in order to note the arrival and departure of government troops or when and how the guard is changed. Adult villagers hide caches of food and munitions at prearranged spots near the fort so that the regulars can travel light. On the day set for the attack, the Viet Cong regional troops take positions on roads leading to the fort in order to harass and slow up government columns moving to the rescue.

If all goes well, the sound of a bamboo drum will break the jungle silence just before dawn. At the signal the "firepower" detachment of regulars hammers the fort with mortar shells and machine-gun fire. From another direction come the Viet Cong assault troops. Blasting a wray through the barbed wire with explosives tied to the end of a pole, they swarm over the rampart screaming "Tien-len [Forward]'" and pour a withering fire into the startled defenders.

As swiftly as they appeared, the Viet Cong vanish. The regulars slip into the jungle, taking with them the prisoners, guns, munitions and medical supplies they have captured. The popular forces vanish, too, going back to their villages and resuming the role of ignorant peasants who have seen nothing and heard nothing. The regional troops remain long enough to cover the withdrawal by ambushing rescue columns, mining the roads, littering the jungle trails and footpaths with concealed and deadly panjis--sharpened, poisoned bamboo spikes that stab through the soles of unwary pursuers.

The Greek Example. This is the kind of war the U.S. faces in South Viet Nam. How can it be won? The Communists have made a mystique of guerrilla war by winning a dozen brilliant campaigns from Yugoslavia to the mainland of China. But the Communists have lost. too. especially in Greece, Malaya and the Philippines. Says one Washington official: "In Greece 15 years ago, the existing government was reactionary and a lot of people screamed that we could not win with it. But we did. and the political situation took care of itself." Says Averell Harriman. the key Washington official in shaping U.S. policy in Southeast Asia: "The Truman Doctrine was designed to help people who were attacked by Communist guerrillas in Greece. With our help the Greeks were able to throw them out--to conquer them. Today Greece is playing an important part in the Atlantic community."

As a matter of fact, the situation in Greece was easier. The Greek government, with U.S. help, did defeat the Red guerrillas--but only after Marshal Tito closed the Yugoslav borders to Communist supplies after his epic quarrel with Russia's Stalin. The other great victories over Red guerrillas took place in similar isolation.

The Red Hukbalahaps in the Philippines had no friendly sanctuary just over the frontier, and their strength evaporated when the late President Magsaysay fought them economically as well as with guns. In Malaya, the Communist guerrillas had no contiguous border with a Red country and. being mostly Chinese, they were distinct from the Malays, who disliked them on principle. Even so, it took twelve years and 350,000 soldiers, police, and militia for Malaya to wipe out 12,000 isolated Communist guerrillas.

South Viet Nam has twice as many Red guerrillas in a country only slightly larger than Malaya. Just across the 17th Parallel lies Communist North Viet Nam, which eagerly sends men and munitions down jungle trails to the south. Beyond North Viet Nam lies Red China, and to the west, sharing a 150-mile jungle border, lies chaotic Laos, where last week the Reds took another stronghold. In Laos, U.S. policy appears exactly opposite that in South Viet Nam. The border is held by the Communist Pathet Lao, and Soviet transport planes daily land supplies at Tchepone. close to the frontier. It is madness, argues Columnist Joseph Alsop among others, for the U.S. to believe that it can gain victory in Viet Nam without holding Laos. The State Department's answer is that the U.S. is willing to settle for "neutrality'' in Laos because even a costly Western triumph there could not make secure the thickly forested, almost trackless border. As in nearby Cambodia, says Washington, supplies will leak across no matter who controls the capital city.

Lessons Learned. General Harkins and his M.A.C. staff admit that their job would be even harder should Laos fall, but they are nevertheless determined --to win. They know that they must move fast to make up for wasted years. Diem's army, with the concurrence of U.S. military missions, was built up as a conventional force geared to fight off a Korean-type invasion from Communist North Viet Nam. In the bitter Indo-China war, the French army had tried everything in the book, from armored columns to fortified posts to mobile units to recruiting local militia. Diem's Vietnamese army vainly followed suit--placing guard details at bridges and factories, leaving garrisons in loyal villages, building watchtowers along vital roads. U.S. officers tried to win the ideological war with technology, coming up with such win-the-war gadgets as electrified barbed wire, special chemicals that were supposed to strip the jungle of foliage, and self-generating electronic guns. Some of the gadgetry even got a thoughtful appraisal from President Kennedy in the White House.

After scarcely three months on the job in Viet Nam, General Harkins knows that a different approach is needed. He has ordered Special Forces men in the field to send in memos regularly on "Lessons Learned." which are distributed to all officers, warning against tactical errors.

Example: in one case, artillery was sited on an exposed hill, aimed at the area of a prospective army attack. Said a U.S. officer drily: "Whatever the Viet Cong are, they're not dumb. When the attack was launched, they had all decamped." Among the most important lessons learned and urgently taught to the Vietnamese: abandon the "blockhouse mentality," in which static troops defend only themselves; give up moving in large units and in big "sweeps." which accomplish nothing in the Vietnamese terrain; develop "quicker reaction time," i.e., hit back faster. The U.S. effort is aimed at helping the Vietnamese to do this themselves.

Def & Lem. Since Harkins' February arrival, the Vietnamese and his own staff have learned that the general's own "reaction time" is pretty quick. On a typical day last week, Harkins rose at 6 a.m., did the setting-up exercises that replace his favorite sports of riding, squash, golf and swimming, which he no longer has time for, and dressed in freshly pressed suntans, had breakfast with his attractive wife, the former Elizabeth Conner of Ewing, Neb. Arriving at Saigon airport at 8 a.m., Harkins climbed into his small L23 transport and the pilot took off, cruising at 13,000 ft. above the rubber plantations in the rolling foothills north of Saigon.

While in flight, Harkins put on his glasses, made notes on index cards for a speech to be made to a new contingent of U.S. officers arriving next day. In clear block letters he jotted down such phrases as "Remember you are not commanders," "Diplomat discreet," and "Def . . . Lem . . . Felt . . ." In other words, he intended to tell the new men not to give orders to the Vietnamese, only to advise; they are to work hard to get along with their Vietnamese counterparts; and Defense Secretary McNamara, General Lyman Lemnitzer and Admiral Harry Felt were all arriving in a week.

Reaching Due My training camp 170 miles northeast of Saigon, Harkins reviewed an honor guard, climbed into a Jeep with U.S. Adviser Captain William Berzinec of Newark, N.J., and drove to headquarters for a briefing by the camp commander. Vietnamese Colonel Dang Van Son. During the rest of the morning, Harkins saw Vietnamese trainees make a sham attack with blank ammunition on a mock Viet Cong village and then repulse an attempted ambush by "guerrillas." Amid the clatter of machine guns and explosions of "noise" grenades, Harkins commented. "These guys are really good." In one of the final demonstrations, Ranger trainees plummeted down a wire from an 80-ft. tree, screaming "Rangers kill! Rangers kill!"

Less Frigid. On departing, General Harkins asked his customary question: "Is there anything you need?" A U.S. chaplain requested a Jeep. "I can't promise I'll get you one up here this afternoon," replied Harkins. "I'll try to get it here by tomorrow." It was past noon when Harkins flew back to Saigon, his shirt dark with perspiration from the scorching tropical sun. After a light lunch, he held a staff meeting at headquarters and was filled in on the day's events and military actions, then hurried off to a conference with Diem's State Secretary Nguyen Dinh Thuan to discuss the progress of the war. At Thuan's request, these discussions will occur weekly, and it represents for Harkins a favorable breakthrough in the sometimes frigid relations between the U.S. mission and the Diem regime.

The sun was dropping behind Saigon's tree-lined streets, and Harkins had worked a 13-hour day when he returned to his white stucco home for dinner with his wife. After some talk in the cool of the evening, Harkins checked over his schedule for next day and went early to bed.

Friendly Army. The People's Daily of Red China heralded Harkins' arrival in Saigon by thundering that the general "recently held secret consultations" with U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and others in Hawaii, plotting aggression against South Viet Nam on a larger scale, and that Harkins would in effect take over the whole show in South Viet Nam. The U.S. task might be a good deal easier if the situation were as simple as that. But as Harkins puts it: "This is South Viet Nam's war. Our role is advice and guidance, and we have tried to make them take more initiative in going out and finding the Viet Cong."

Neither in numbers nor character do the 5,000 U.S. troops resemble an army of occupation. In Saigon, leading hotels overflow with U.S. personnel--civilian as well as military--and G.I.s in Hawaiian sports shirts crowd the Blue Angel and La Boheme bars, and officers ogle bikini-clad girls at the Cercle Sportif pool. But Saigon is not typical, and the bulk of the men are hard at work in the countryside.

At Danang (Tourane) last Christmas, a Vietnamese family gave a roast-duck dinner for 39 U.S. officers and men. "We want to show our appreciation for your efforts," said the Vietnamese housewife, "and we know you must be lonely away from your families." On the day that John Glenn orbited the earth, a Vietnamese captain threw his arms around a U.S. major, cried, "We put a man in space!" At scores of jungle command posts, U.S. advisers eat the same food (rice and fish sauce), sleep in cots in the same rooms, and share the hazards of the same patrols with their Vietnamese counterparts. Says a U.S. officer: "I have confidence in the Vietnamese soldier. I'd go anywhere, any time, with him." Adds another: "It will be a long, tough haul, but we'll make it."

The Maverick. In three months, General Harkins has contributed greatly to this sense of confidence. He seems to have the qualities of stability, imagination and guts that should pay off in Viet Nam. His war service has ranged from staff posts to the front line, and his chestful of decorations includes France's Croix de guerre, Russia's Order of the Fatherland, and South Korea's Military Order of Taeguk, as well as the U.S. Distinguished Service Medal with oakleaf cluster. Harkins seldom shouts. If an officer does not measure up, he is quietly shipped out. One colonel remembers that the worst dressing-down he ever received was when Harkins looked him in the eye and said coldly: "You didn't do your job."

Harkins got into the Army by accident. Born in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston in 1904, he was the second of five children of Edward Harkins. a reporter and drama critic on Boston newspapers for 50 years. The elder Harkins, who is now 90, had his own ideas of what was culturally best for his three sons, and for Boston. Paul's brother, Philip, now a novelist in California, remembers grimly that "every Friday afternoon he made all of us go to the Boston Symphony, where we had to sit without moving or wriggling on the hardest wooden seats in the world. One at a time, we each had to go with him to operas, plays, and all performances of the Handel and Haydn Society. But the symphony was toughest. God, how we suffered on those hard chairs!"

Paul Harkins admits that he was the "maverick of the family." His grades were so bad that he dropped out of school at 14 to work as a delivery boy for Paramount, trotting around from theater to theater with movie reels. Several years ago at a New York dinner, Harkins met Film Maker Adolph Zukor, who said, "General, you're a handsome man. We could have used you in the movies." Replied Harkins, "Hell, I worked for Paramount years ago, but no one made me an offer."

From Point to Point. Harkins had long been addicted to horses, and he joined the Massachusetts National Guard when he discovered that he could get free rides in the cavalry troop. This led to diligent cramming for West Point, where he played hockey and polo and graduated a respectable 134th in his class of 299.

World War II found Harkins assigned as assistant chief of staff to General George ("Blood and Guts") Patton, serving under that skilled, flamboyant leader from North Africa to the bloody slash into Nazi Germany. Outwardly, the two were totally different: Patton, a shootin', cussin' swashbuckler; Harkins, quiet, firm, invariably polite. But a fellow officer says, "I really think that inside, he and Patton were the same." The same, certainly, in their drive for victory.

In the postwar years. Harkins had a tour as commandant of cadets at West Point and a year in Korea, serving first as Taylor's chief of staff and then as commander, respectively, of the 45th and 24th Divisions. He was on duty in Hawaii when Army Chief of Staff George Decker recommended him to President Kennedy for the Saigon post.

Barrier Against Aggression. In Saigon Harkins joined forces with U.S. Ambassador Frederick Nolting, 50, a big. ruggedly handsome Virginian, who before joining the State Department in 1946 was a teacher of philosophy, an investment broker, a peanut planter, and a wartime Navy lieutenant commander. Ambassador Nolting is the senior U.S. policy spokesman in South Viet Nam. In practice he lets Harkins run the military side, while the general defers to the ambassador in political matters. But both men recognize that the two fields are inextricably interwoven, that the West cannot win a purely military victory in South Viet Nam.

Nolting has probably done more than anyone else to persuade Washington to stick with Diem. He knows all of Diem's familiar shortcomings--his authoritarian rule, which has 30,000 political prisoners under arrest, his inability to delegate authority, his refusal to allow any political opposition, the excessive powers vested in his family. But Nolting sees no alternative to Diem, insists accurately that he is a man of personal honesty, high courage and deep dedication. In Washington last January, President Kennedy bluntly asked Nolting whether we could win with Diem.

His reply: "Yes, but it will be difficult." Since then, Nolting has defended Diem against all comers, has reproved U.S. correspondents for not taking a "constructive" approach to Viet Nam's problems, above all has decided that Diem cannot be pushed around but must be persuaded.

Not long ago, he went hunting with Diem's influential brother, the No. 2 man in Viet Nam, Ngo Dinh Nhu, and stayed up talking philosophy and politics with him till 6 a.m. After such experiences, Nhu calls Nolting "the most intelligent ambassador the U.S. has ever sent here." Diem and his brother now seem more responsive to U.S. advice.

Says Nolting: "NATO was formed as a barrier against overt attack, and it has held up for 13 years. We haven't yet found a barrier against covert aggression.

If we can find such a technique, we'll have bottled up the Communists on an other front." Better Life. Some top Vietnamese officials think that they have found such a technique in the strategic hamlets. This U.S.-backed plan had its origin in Malaya's winning war against Communist guerrillas. Its purpose is to isolate the Reds in the countryside by moving the peasants from their scattered huts into a central location. In some cases, the peas ants have been shifted to totally new areas and given new land. In most, those dwelling on the outskirts of a village are resettled inside it. The village is then sur rounded by a ditch, earthen ramparts and barbed wire, and admittance can be gained only through two gates where villagers are checked as they come and go.

Some 2,000 strategic hamlets are being set up, many with U.S. aid, and Diem's government -- perhaps too optimistically--is planning another 10,000 before year's end. The primary object of the scheme is to cut off the Viet Cong from the food, shelter and general assistance that they have long received from the peasants--either through sympathy or intimidation.

Each strategic hamlet is to be equipped with a medical clinic, a school, and an office to disburse badly needed agricultural credits. Where this has been done so far grumbling died out after a week or two as the peasants realized that life actually was better than it had been before.

Deep Penetration. As security improves, the U.S. hopes that the villagers will stop supporting the Viet Cong and that desertions from the Communist bands will rise. An important gain would be in intelligence. For years, peasants kept their mouths sealed for fear of having their throats cut by the Communists. But if the strategic hamlets and the self-defense forces can end the Viet Cong terror, the peasants will be far more willing to give information to the side that looks like the winner.

While supporting the plan. Harkins warns of dangers ahead. If too many strategic hamlets are built, particularly in areas where they cannot really be defended, they would merely serve as convenient targets for the Reds. Says Harkins: "You cannot put the whole country in strategic hamlets." If the country-wide strategy of "clean-and-hold" is to succeed, says Harkins. the Vietnamese army must take a far more aggressive role. U.S. helicopters enable troops to land smack in the middle of Viet Cong headquarters deep in the jungles or on marshy islands. The Vietnamese high command is now listening to a U.S. veteran of Merrill's Marauders who argues for "deep penetration" battalions able to exist for weeks on end in mountains and forest. The Viet Cong are expected to react with well-planned assaults on the new strategic hamlets, but improved communications--each hamlet will have its two-way radio--will bring, within minutes it is hoped, swift reinforcements in the ubiquitous helicopters.

Hearts & Minds. It has become a truism of the Viet Nam situation that in the long run the war will be decided by the peasants. Says Harkins again and again: "What is needed for victory is to win the hearts and minds of the people." The hearts and minds do not come cheaply, because so much has been promised them --by both the Viet Cong and Diem's government--that their level of expectation is relatively high. Basically, they do not want night raids and terror from the Communists, but neither do they want widespread conscription in the Vietnamese army or forced labor on government roads and fortifications. What they do need desperately is medical care, maternity and pediatric clinics, educational opportunities, and such practical items as water pumps.

U.S. economic assistance in the past has been almost exclusively channeled through the government, was painfully slow to reach the village level. Both Nolting and Harkins want to change this (Arthur Gardiner, chief of the aid program, is being replaced), and Harkins would like to see field commanders have available "extra equipment, extra food and extra medicine to give the peasants right away."

If an inspection trip reveals an economic instead of a military need. Harkins is quick to ask for it--recently he transmitted to the U.S. economic officials a request for water buffaloes from a hard-pressed coastal village in the south. Says Harkins: "Nobody ever won any medals for keeping things stored in a warehouse. Washington is certainly cooperating. Never in my years in the Army have I seen such support as I get here." Secretary McNamara's trip is itself a part of an attitude that says, "See what the people need and get it to them."

Vertical Drop. No one. least of all General Harkins. argues that the tide of battle has turned against the Viet Cong. No timetable for victory has been established, and no accurate assessment of the up-and-down guerrilla war is yet possible. Some hopefully point to the fact that the usually resourceful Viet Cong have not yet developed a way of coping with the "vertical envelopment" by the U.S. helicopters. Others recall that the Viet Cong still get most of their weapons simply by capturing them from U.S.-supplied self-defense forces.

Harkins has at least won a breathing spell. Viet Cong raids and ambushes last month averaged 100 a week, as against 135 the month before. Communist casualties reached 6,000, double those of the Vietnamese army. Within weeks, the rainy season will engulf South Viet Nam in torrential downpours, and the fighting seems certain to diminish even further. During the next six months, therefore, the strategic hamlets will have full opportunity to prove themselves. Says Harkins: "I am an optimist, and I am not going to allow my staff to be pessimistic." Echoes Ambassador Nolting: "We are not out of the woods. But we think that the Vietnamese and we have found a way to get out of the woods one of these days."

*Aboard the U.S. submarine Bluegill in Saigon harbor. Right: Lieut. Commander James H. Barry.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.