A Tale of Two Broken Cities

Despite the cessation of bombing in the North, a war still goes on in South Viet Nam--a bitter, stalemated war of attrition, fought mostly on the ground between North and South Vietnamese troops struggling for favorable positions prior to a possible ceasefire. Recently, TIME Correspondents David Aikman and Donald Neff visited the sites of two of the longest and bloodiest battles that stemmed from the Communists' Easter offensive: Quang Tri, capital of South Viet Nam's northernmost province, and An Loc, another provincial capital 60 miles north of Saigon. Their reports:

QUANG TRI province, according to a Vietnamese proverb, is a place where "dog eats stone and chicken eats salt." It is easy to appreciate this bit of folk wisdom, writes Aikman. The ugly garbage of war still sprawls obscenely on either side of Highway 1, Viet Nam's major coastal artery. Thousands of U.S.-made shell casings are piled in dull gray heaps. Now and then a refugee village, with its ludicrously colored wooden packing-case houses, appears on the horizon. As one drives closer to Quang Tri city, however, nothing but the rusting carcasses of trucks, ambulances and tanks--both American and Russian--litter the landscape.

Quang Tri city itself is total desolation. As far as the eye can see there is nothing but rubble--this and the protesting skeletons of former hospitals, offices and shops, as well as the blanketing mud that seems to follow lasciviously in the wake of war. Once home for 15,000 people, Quang Tri looks like Berlin in May 1945. It does, however, contain about 4,000 South Vietnamese troops, who are holding what General Lam Quang Thi, deputy commander of Military Region I, calls "the northern front." Although secure for the moment, it is a narrow front indeed. Across the Thach Han River, barely 100 meters away, are sandbagged North Vietnamese positions.

Suicidal Attacks. Two crack South Vietnamese units hold the front: the airborne division and the marine division. Opposed to them are some of the best troops Hanoi can put in the field: elements of the 304th, 308th, 312th and 320th NVA Divisions, recently reinforced by regiments from the 325th, which had been stationed in Laos. Both sides have suffered heavily in the fighting. During October and November, Quang Tri was shelled by 2,000 to 3,000 rounds of artillery and rocket fire every day; more recently, 500 rounds a day has been the average figure. The South Vietnamese estimate that their losses have been around 200 a week; air strikes and suicidal attacks against well-held South Vietnamese positions, they claim, killed an average of 1,862 North Vietnamese troops a week in November and 1,745 a week in December.

The North Vietnamese, whatever their personal courage, are clearly having considerable difficulty getting supplies up to forward positions. A recent batch of wounded prisoners taken by the ARVN airborne had not eaten for four days; they cried out for rice more loudly than for medical attention. U.S. Lieut. Colonel Charles C. Pursley. an

American adviser, remarked that one prisoner brought before him recently was only 17 years old. "Do you want to interrogate me?" the boy asked, trembling. "No," replied the colonel. The youth, astonished, blurted out that he had been told that his division was fighting Americans. Other North Vietnamese prisoners said the same thing.

The South Vietnamese seem to be winning the battle for Quang Tri city, but they still have some major problems. The airborne division and the marines are the only strategic reserves that Saigon possesses. If there was a troop breakdown in other sectors of the South--the Delta, say--both units might well have to be pulled out of Quang Tri and thrown into the breach, thereby calling into question the gains so far attained on the northern front. Supplies and reinforcements must be flown from Saigon by U.S. Air Force C-130s operating out of Thailand. Reason: there are not enough South Vietnamese crews trained to handle these transport aircraft that have been given to Saigon by the Americans.

Nonetheless, South Vietnamese troops in Quang Tri are prepared to fight hard in spite of the peace talks, about which they remain highly skeptical. Said one lieutenant: "It is all a game to deceive us."

Nine months ago, when the North Vietnamese first attacked An Loc, President Nguyen Van Thieu ordered the city held "at all costs"--and it was. An Loc never fell, reports Neff, but neither did it exactly survive. Once a prosperous commercial hub for the area's rubber plantations, An Loc before the siege had a population of 20,000; today it is a Goya-like portrait of the horrors of war, inhabited by perhaps 250 civilians.

Like its people, most of An Loc was blown away. Only one or two buildings remain, and they are heavily damaged.

The hospital, the church, the girls' school--all are gone. Nobody knows how many people died at An Loc, but what catches the eye is the graves. They are everywhere. The citizens and soldiers in the city were buried where they fell. One grave contains 600 bodies that were hastily covered over in an effort to rid the city of their stench. Another contains only the body of a young girl who used to joke and laugh with the troops; it is well tended.

Still another burial ground is neatly marked with the names of some 80 men of the famed 81st Special Airborne Ranger Brigade, which held out against massive Communist attacks within the city. Five crumpled Russian tanks lie like slaughtered beasts near by, a testament to the unit's determination. Says Lieut. Colonel Laddie Logan, one of six American advisers in An Loc today:

"The 81st never gave up an inch of ground, and they never left a single one of their dead unburied, even under the heaviest artillery fire."

Amidst all the destruction, a small statue of the Virgin Mary remains unscarred among buildings, trees and tanks that were smashed and gutted; it has become something of a symbol of An Loc's agony and endurance. Another statue, of Jesus with arms out stretched, did not fare so well. Although most of it survives, the Saviour's right arm has been blown off.

During the height of the siege, at least 1,000 artillery, rocket and mortar shells a day rained down on An Loc; one day the number reached 8,000. Colonel Nguyen Van Biet had 1,115 men in his Ranger Group 3 when the Communists launched their first attack last April. After three months of fighting, all but 346 were either dead or wounded. The shelling of the city has stopped, but An Loc is still surrounded by enemy troops, and the fighting continues.

One morning a Jeep sped through An Loc carrying a wounded Vietnamese Ranger sprawled across the hood; two of his comrades had just been killed in a nearby firefight. Highway 13 from Saigon has been closed for nine months; supplies for An Loc are brought in by air--usually dropped by parachute.

Of the city's civilian population, at least 1,000, and perhaps as many as 7,000, have been killed. Most of the others braved Communist mortar and artillery fire to escape last summer, and today are sheltered in refugee camps.

Another 3,000 were lifted out by helicopter in August. Those who chose to remain did so with the fatalism of a people who have known war most of their lives. There is no running water, let alone electricity, in An Loc. Yet the survivors have opened small shops in the shells of buildings and are eking out a living by catering to the Rangers. Nonetheless, according to Lieut. Colonel William Nolde, another U.S. adviser, a majority of the city's refugees are anxious to return. "Most of them are living in crowded camps, with little to do and less to eat," he says. "They want to come home."

Plans are already being made for them to do just that, even though the Rangers defending An Loc are still reinforcing their bunkers against renewed enemy attack. The outline specifies that within 30 days after the area is once again considered safe, bulldozers will begin to sweep away the rubble and the hundreds of unexploded shells. Then the people of An Loc will return, and the city will rise again. But its agony will not be eradicated.

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