Frontier Offensive

Clad in combat fatigues, with a dagger and a revolver buckled to his waist, Major General Olinto M. Barsanti marched up to General William C. Westmoreland at Bien Hoa airbase northeast of Saigon and declared: "The 101st Airborne Division is present for combat in Viet Nam." Arrival of the fresh troops last week marked a new and potentially crucial phase in the war. Westmoreland believes that allied troops have succeeded during 21 years of fighting in pushing the main body of Communist regulars to South Viet Nam's frontiers. Now, in response to the enemy's delaying action there, he has launched a new strategy of border battles aimed at keeping the large, organized units of invaders out of South Viet Nam.

The addition of 7,000 Screaming Eagle paratroopers was accomplished during a month-long secret airlift, largest of its kind during any war, and boosted U.S. strength to 477,200--topping the peak American force of 472,800 in Korea. More G.I.s are on the way, as Westmoreland presses to achieve a total force of 525,000 promised by President Johnson for next June, several months ahead of schedule in order to press his new offensive.

Optimism & Perplexity. In the past two months, the Communists have also adopted a new strategy, but with such disastrous results that cautious U.S. field commanders are torn between optimism and perplexity. Since last October, when North Vietnamese regulars launched the war's most inept attack at Loc Ninh, losing 926 dead to 50, enemy forces have repeatedly hurled themselves against heavily fortified positions from their frontier redoubts.

Their losses have been large. In clashes last week alone, the Communists lost 54 dead at Gio Linh near the Demilitarized Zone in the northern province of Quang Tri, 56 near Danang, 471 at Bong Son in the center of the country along the coast, 143 north of Saigon, 39 northwest of the capital, and 501 in the Mekong Delta in the south. In all, 65 Americans and 78 South Vietnamese died in the battles. Meanwhile, Ho's homeland was heavily pounded last week by U.S. fighter-bombers. As monsoon clouds cleared for the first time in three weeks, American jets blasted downtown bridges and railyards in both Hanoi and Haiphong for three straight days.

"Attack & Attack!" The Communist tactics puzzle U.S. strategists, who wonder how long the North can sustain them. Says one high officer: "In our terms we would call it desperate, but I give the Communists far more credit in their planning and thinking than to tag their actions as desperate." In the past, enemy units have refrained from attacking until they had spent weeks planning the battle and scouting the fortifications, and then they took the initiative only when they had a fair chance of winning. Now all that has changed. Documents captured after one battle detailed orders to "attack and continue to attack" and score a "quick victory" even if it meant fighting "to the last man."

"They really don't like these sharp actions like Dak To," says one American general. "They prefer the drip, drip, drip of so many American casualties every week, every month. But they can't have both the drip, drip, drip and the sharp actions."

Nonetheless, it is the North Viet namese who are provoking the head-on clashes. What does it mean? Viet Nam veterans have been stung so often over the years by misplaced optimism that most have become cautious to a fault; yet some cautiously conjecture that the Communists' aggressiveness just might be the next step to negotiations (see ESSAY). "They're trying to pull off one last offensive and then talk peace," said one U.S. official. If that is so, however, the Viet Cong message to the United Nations last week gave no hint of it. More propaganda than proposal, it repeated the National Liberation Front's latest program, which suggests that after the Communists win the war, a coalition government be established in Saigon.

Lingering Suspicion. A more likely explanation of the enemy's aggressiveness is that he continues to hope to capture a village or town to convince the South Vietnamese--and the U.S. public--of his strength. The Communists have never hesitated to sacrifice lives in hope of inflicting casualties that might spark war protests or win a psychological victory.

There is, of .course, the lingering suspicion and secret hope that Ho's regime simply does not know how poorly it is doing. Lacking the ability of their U.S. counterparts to tour the battlefield regularly by helicopter, North Vietnamese commanders are at the mercy of reports from the field. How fanciful those reports can be was illustrated by the captured enemy summary on the battle of Loc Ninh. Instead of admitting disaster, the Communist commander reported that his forces destroyed "a U.S. armored battalion, a U.S. rifle battalion, a U.S. artillery battalion and one puppet (South Vietnamese) regiment." In fact, only 29 Americans and 21 Vietnamese were killed.

Hanoi's Americanologists seem to be equally misinformed about events in the U.S. Instructions issued to Communist cadres three months ago in Viet Nam, and since captured, advised that "many U.S. divisions are held up in the U.S.A. because of the Negro movement. There is a shortage of copper in the U.S.A., limiting the production of ammunition. No more taxes can belevied on the American people."

Washington Rumblings. Regardless of the enemy's motives, modus operandi, or misinformation, the U.S. high command believes it has the winning combination for the main-force, frontier type of war. It has only been in the past year and a half that U.S. forces have been able to put sustained pressure on the Communists, Westmoreland points out. Previously, the massive logistic base to supply the troops had to be established in a primitive country. Yet in that time, Westmoreland asserts that many of the enemy units have been pushed back to the frontiers, or prevented from crossing them. Large Communist forces are now in three bor der areas: in North Viet Nam along the DMZ; at the junction of Laos and Cambodia near Dak To; and along eastern Cambodia near Loc Ninh. With the extra U.S. troops expected early next year, the majority of them destined for combat instead of support duties. Westmoreland is convinced that he can keep the Communists there.

Though critics claim that U.S. forces are being lured to the frontiers and thus give an undue advantage to the Communists, who enjoy the sanctuary of national borders, Westmoreland is convinced that it is a worthwhile handicap. When the enemy forces do succeed in entering South Viet Nam, he points out, they disrupt the local population, strengthen guerrilla activities, and become harder than ever to root out. It is far better, in his view, to fight the main-force units in the comparative emptiness of the frontier areas, where civilians are not endangered and the full might of U.S. firepower can be employed. Besides, if Cambodia does not soon police its own borders, U.S. commanders may some day be allowed to chase the North Vietnamese right to their Cambodian sanctuaries.

But the war in the populated provinces continues unabated. Sizable North

Vietnamese units remain in the country, stretched from the outskirts of Hue and Danang in the north, southward to Quang Ngai, Binh Dinh and Phu Yen provinces, and northwest of Saigon in Hau Nghia and Tay Ninh provinces. To ferret them out, says Westmoreland, will take twice the time and twice the cost in casualties it would have taken to stop them at the frontier.

Tweet, Tweet. Unless the Communists sharply intensify the war, the U.S. strategy in coming months will be to press the fight at the borders and to find and destroy the main-force units inland. The tough First Air Cavalry and the 101st Division will become Westmoreland's mobile reserves, ready to meet major Communist moves anywhere in the country. The optimistic hope is that as inland areas become cleared and the remaining main-force units are pushed to the frontiers, the South Vietnamese will be capable of taking over and holding the territory against local guerrillas. Next year they will be getting 225,000 new M-16 rifles and other modern U.S. armaments.

Eventually, the Vietnamese forces are scheduled to guard their own frontiers and U.S. troops should be able to withdraw gradually. Westmoreland has set 1969 for the start of a phaseout.

Though American forces, when available from the battlefield, will continue to attempt to dig out the Viet Cong infrastructure in the hamlets and pacify the population, this also is seen as primarily a Vietnamese chore. The ultimate goal of the war is for the allegiance of the people of South Viet Nam, says a Pentagon general, "and as long as the guns boom in the distance, the war is still on for the people. I would like to get rid of the boom, boom." In its place, he wants to hear the tweet, tweet of a train engine. "That's a sound," he said, "that will say something to the people."

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