Shrinking Sanctuary

Few places remain in South Viet Nam where Communist forces enjoy anything like a sanctuary and can operate with relative impunity. One is the A Shau Valley in northernmost I Corps, which was taken by the North Vietnamese two years ago when they overran a U.S. Special Forces camp and has been held by them ever since. The other is the U Minh Forest deep in the Delta, a Viet Cong domain since the end of World War II. Last week U.S. airpower--with, in one instance, a major assist from nature--was put to work to destroy those sanctuaries.

The valley of A Shau lies south of Khe Sanh on the Laos border, 30 miles southwest of Hue--only a night's march beyond the protective jungle for an enemy force aiming to launch a surprise attack on the ancient capital of Viet Nam. After seizing the valley in March 1966, the North Vietnamese brought in artillery, antiaircraft guns and tons of supplies, built bunkers and fortifications all the way in from the Laotian border.

At least some of the North Vietnamese troops that abandoned the siege of Khe Sanh are believed to have filtered down into A Shau, where they have increased the threat to Hue's security. Though the valley has been repeatedly bombed, the U.S. last week turned loose on A Shau the giant B-52s that had helped lift the siege of Khe Sanh. In ten waves averaging six planes each, the eight-engine jets hit the valley with 500 tons of explosives during a 24-hour period and kept coming back throughout the week. They blasted truck parking lots, weapons sites and bunkers, possibly preparing for an allied ground assault to retake A Shau.

Arsonists in Pique. The U Minh Dark Forest has served as a refuge for pirates, fugitives and guerrillas throughout Vietnamese history. Crisscrossed with hidden canals and with vegetation so thick it has resisted all attempts at defoliation, the 1,550-sq. mi. U Minh is a tangled swampland crawling with snakes, boars, tigers--and virtually untouchable Viet Cong. It has been a prime enemy redoubt since 1946, and what the Viet Cong have built in it no one but they know: no non-Communist troops have ever dared venture in, and its masters even kept villagers living on the forest fringes from entering their lair.

But by last week 85% of the Dark Forest lay in smoking ruins, the result of a monumental five-week fire that, as An Xuyen Province Pacification Chief William Barrett said, was the result of "a set of circumstances that could never be duplicated in a million years." One factor was the weather: the dry season had started two months early last fall, and dried U Minh's peat turf to tinder. Then, on March 8th, a group of fishermen, who had been forbidden by the Viet Cong to fish in the forest ponds, turned arsonists in pique and started a forest fire. At almost the same time fires accidentally started in other parts of the forest. Whipped by changing winds, the fires met, melded, and ate their way through the U Minh at one-third of a mile an hour.

Complete Denuding. It was three weeks before the allies realized the importance of what was happening--and made the burning of U Minh a matter of military policy. While the Viet Cong frantically tried to dig firebreaks and move their supplies to safer ground, U.S. jets roared down over the Delta to feed the fire with napalm and white-phosphorus rockets. U.S. Navy guided-missile cruisers aimed hundreds of rockets at suspected enemy positions. But the greatest damage was done by the fire itself. It destroyed 20 years' worth of Communist building and hoarding, setting off secondary explosions of ammunition or fuel at a rate of three an hour, denuding the enemy's protective cover completely. It will take at least a year for the forest to turn green once more, and five years before anyone, including the Viet Cong, can hope to use it as a hiding place again.

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