Artificial Respiration

"What we're trying to do is give the district chiefs in Camau Peninsula a chance to breathe," said the South Vietnamese colonel. "Until now, they've been asphyxiated." With these words, seven South Vietnamese army and marine battalions, aided by U.S. helicopters and military advisers, began artificial respiration on South Viet Nam's Red-infested southern tip. Last week, government officials and U.S. military leaders in Saigon exulted that the campaign was the most successful operation yet carried out against the Communist Viet Cong.

Instead of merely sweeping the countryside in an effort to round up the elusive Red guerrillas in a dragnet, government forces leapfrogged around the peninsula, moving past burning villages in the chase, destroying known Viet Cong supply dumps and training centers. By concentrating on such specific targets and keeping up a triphammer succession of attacks, the government hoped to force the Communist forces onto the defensive. To harass the Reds still further, several companies of Rangers, dressed in black peasant garb, infiltrated the Red areas and kept jabbing them off balance.

This time field commanders were in complete control of the operation, without the usual interference from President Ngo Dinh Diem's palace in Saigon. Provincial chiefs, who sometimes acted independently of the army, were under orders to cooperate with the operation's commanders. And. instead of operating from a set battle plan mapped out in Saigon, the mission was kept flexible and aggressive with day-to-day, on-the-spot planning on the basis of field intelligence. Flexibility paid off. In the first eleven days of the operation, government forces killed 200 Viet Cong troops, captured 45 more, and collected 13 tons of Communist medical supplies and ammunition.

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