"You Tell Me When the War Will Be Over"

Since the signing of the cease-fire agreement ten months ago, by Saigon's count more than 50,000 North and South Vietnamese have been killed in a series of small but bloody skirmishes. In the Central Highlands province of Quang Due, bordering on Cambodia, outnumbered and outgunned Saigon troops are currently locked in a bitter struggle to retake key outposts lost to North Vietnamese units earlier this month. A deadly war of attrition continues in the soggy green Mekong Delta, where the rice is ready for harvest. TIME Correspondent Gavin Scott visited both combat zones last week and filed this report:

"Welcome to Quang Due, the most remote place on earth," says the briefing officer. A quick 40-minute hop from Saigon in a C-130 transport, it is hardly that. But the filmy gray clouds wafting across the silent blue hills and the weathered faces of Montagnard tribesmen staggering along the airstrip with their worldly goods on their backs certainly convey a sense of primitive isolation.

Two weeks ago, eight North Vietnamese tanks routed ARVN (government) troops guarding the highway junction of Dak Song, two miles from the Cambodian frontier. Since then the province has been cut off from the rest of the country except by air. Most of the fighting has focused north of Gia Nghia, the dingy province capital. Some 4,000 North Vietnamese are entrenched near by at Bu Prang, an advance outpost lost by the South Vietnamese at a cost of 150 killed and missing.

ARVN confidence is not great. A relief column headed for Gia Nghia has been stalled to the north of Dak Song. Streams of UH-1 (Huey) helicopters, laden with troops, take off from the provincial capital only to return half an hour later because they cannot penetrate the low clouds and land in the combat zone. The loss of Bu Prang was a bitter blow to ARVN because it lies astride the new infiltration route stitched together by the North Vietnamese since the cease-fire and running from the DMZ along the western rim of South Viet Nam. The military insists that the province will not fall. Others are not so sure. The few local people who can afford it are reportedly paying up to eight times the official price for tickets on Air Viet Nam's twice-weekly flights to Saigon.

Some 225 miles to the south, the Delta presents a vivid contrast. Driving down Highway 4, which links Saigon with its rice bowl, buses and military convoys vie irritably for space on the narrow asphalt road, amidst foul-smelling cyclones of black exhaust. There is a dull thud or two of mortar and a burst of machine-gun fire in palm trees half a mile to the south. Women stooping in the paddyfields don't even bother to look up. "Just a couple of guerrillas," sighs the driver.

The apparent lack of fighting is deceptive. While ARVN and enemy clashes elsewhere are short-lived but fairly easily defined, the war in the Delta is like a slow hemorrhage. Casualties on both sides are vastly higher than anywhere else: an average of ten ARVN troops and 30 enemy killed daily since the cease-fire went into effect.

"Enemy strategy is to keep us pinned down protecting our hamlets," says Major General Nguyen Vinh Nghi, the commander of Military Region IV (the Delta area), who is rated as one ofARVN'S top generals. One typical fire-coordination center at Trung Ngan resembles a medieval fortress, with its thick walls towering over watery rice fields. Operating from such outposts, Nghi hopes to drive the enemy completely out of the region.

"Only ten of 4,343 hamlets are still in enemy hands," says Nghi, and only 243 hamlets are in "contested areas." He predicts that the government will gain control of 100 more of these hamlets by the end of the year.

Almost universally, ARVN's officers believe that a major offensive is coming next year and that it will be fought mainly by North Vietnamese troops, who, according to Nghi, make up the bulk of enemy forces in South Viet Nam. The Viet Cong, Nghi claims, have all been "killed or have deserted. I believe that there will be an offensive early next year," he says. "Hue is a military target and a political target. Saigon is a political target. Their goal of a 'third Viet Nam' [a separate Communist state in the South] is very real." Although his sector is seemingly quiet, the war is real here too. Noting the endless rolls of concertina wire surrounding the Trung Ngan bunker, I ask: "General, what are you going to do with all that barbed wire when the war is over?" Nghi smiles thinly. "You tell me when the war will be over and I'll tell you what we'll do with the barbed wire."

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