Vietnam Pressure Point

...Like most of the five-province area, the landscape of Hieu Nhon is jagged with barbed wire, sandbagged bunkers and bombed-out houses...

...The locals' performance has been, to say the least, erratic...

...The enemy attacks are not designed to gain territory...

...All this has been built since then...

...He is particularly troubled by the plight of refugees, about 10,000 of whom are housed in Hieu Nhon's two major resettlement compounds, with another 5,000 scattered in smaller camps in the district...

...In fact, they seem to derive encouragement from these developments, especially the enemy's infliction of civilian casualties...

...Touring Hieu Nhon is reminiscent of tripping through a carnival house of horror...

...The Vietnamese would rather use our latrine, and if we let them, they'd start stealing the toilet paper...

...Well, maybe...

...The target was Phu Thanh (see "Rising From the Rubble in Vietnam," NL, July 20), a three-hamlet complex hit without warning in the dead of night...

...Says Johnson: "The people here are fed up with the fighting, but the vci [Vietcong infrastructure] is too strong...

...There have been thousands of assassinations and abductions, as well as increasingly bold attacks against such opportune targets as isolated outposts, military dependents' quarters and government-controlled villages...

...Many U.S...

...Last vear, they leveled just about everything...

...An estimated total of 9,000 nva regulars and hard core vc operate in this single province, aided by more than 6,000 supporters...

...Every turn is a potential trap...

...Then there's also the matter of sanitation...

...Responsibility for security, the district's overriding problem, lies largely with South Vietnamese territorial units: Regional, Popular and People's Self-Defense Forces...

...I don't think the progress we make will ever outweigh the enemy's efforts—not by enough, anyway, to end the war...

...The team's two optimists also happen to be the two who are planning military careers...

...That may already be happening in villages theoretically under Saigon's control, he adds...

...Hieu Nhon's American advisory team is in unanimous agreement on one basic point: There is a lot of killing left in this conflict, and much of it is going to take place right here...

...So we avoid problems by keeping the latrine locked...

...But they don't have officers who will kick them in the ass and tell them to go out and get the job done...

...There is a message in this," notes the American officer...

...This wave of indiscriminate killing means only one thing...

...Just neutralizing them through intimidation is enough...

...The sight of one-legged persons on the village streets, a large number of them children, is so common as to suggest a genetic mutation ravaging the district...

...An estimated 100 hard core vc and 700 enemy supporters work the district...

...Sometimes, if you really keep after them, something will get done...

...Allied troops may control this territory, but they hardly have the people...

...Guthrie also believes better days are not beyond reach...

...some still in use have walls or roofs partially blown away...

...If travel by night is unthinkable, daylight provides no guarantee of safety...

...Maybe in a few years security will get to the point of stopping them, but that point is not in sight now...

...The Vietnamese, he pointed out, are not allowed to use the Americans' latrine...

...The enemy is desperate...

...More Americans may leave the region soon afterward, for President Nixon has committed himself to pulling out another 100,000 troops between October and next May...

...I don't think the enemy is desperate," remarks one pacification officer, a military man with 12 years' field experience in Asia...

...I asked facetiously, "Are you afraid of having something stolen...

...Relations between allies in Hieu Nhon are basically good, but delicate...

...about 5,500 allied troops, including a brigade of Korean Marines and a company of U.S...

...Like their country, the American advisers at Hieu Nhon have divided views on the subject...

...The Vietnamese don't lack guts, and they know how to get things done...

...Marine 1st Division, already are stretched thin (of South Vietnam's 44 provinces, Quang Nam rates about 40th in security...

...The most savage terrorist act occurred in mid-June at a government-controlled village several miles from here...

...The same is true, they point out, of the situation throughout the district...

...Its populace goes grim and unseeing in the presence of pro-government troops...

...nva troop strength in this area has increased 25 per cent since January, according to intelligence reports...

...While the Americans try to help, they are, after all, only advisers...

...Just look at the figures," says one top-level pacification administrator, thrusting forward a fact sheet outlining the increase in terrorist acts...

...produced fewer casualties but caused Saigon considerable embarrassment...

...Users must obtain a key...

...While the world was watching Cambodia, an upsurge of enemy terrorism gave the ongoing war in the five-province sector a new and brutal turn...

...What's the matter...

...Lieutenant Joe Webb, 24, believes the South Vietnamese will continue to strengthen security and eventually drive the vc out...

...South Vietnamese officials listen and say they are good ideas...

...He has Arnold Abrams regularly reports in these pages from Southeast Asia...

...An agricultural specialist from Oklahoma, Webb wants to stay on and help them do it...

...its children don't wave when a jeep passes...

...The results were devastating: 300 homes destroyed, more than 130 persons killed, over 150 wounded...

...Hieu Nhon's homes are pocked with bullet holes and shrapnel...

...Manifestations of other gaps between allies crop up, too...

...I'd say that is common sense, not desperation, and I don't see anything particularly comforting in it for us...

...Well, yes," Guthrie replied with some embarrassment...

...Since early spring, though, the new orders have been implemented with a vengeance throughout the five provinces...

...There are good reasons for apprehension...

...Two say there is litde relation between all the ongoing progress and a satisfactory conclusion to the fighting...

...I'd call his tactic a logical step...

...They always listen and say they are good ideas...

...While the war has taken a heavy toll among Vietcong ranks, they are being bolstered by a steady flow of North Vietnamese replacements...

...The most pertinent question, though, is how this progress relates to prospects for ending the war...

...It is expected to include at least one regiment of the 1st Marine Division, which works in this area, and part of the Army's 4th Infantry Division, based in the Central Highlands, just below the five-province sector...

...It's a matter of leadership," explains Lieutenant Robert Johnson, the Princeton graduate and commander of a 100-man Marine company whose members work with seven South Vietnamese platoons...

...Anyone who associates with the government, or seeks the protection of American or government forces, is going to be fair game...

...Yet even now, with the invasion uproar subsided, little attention is being focused on these guerrilla actions...

...Americans on the scene are less loose with adjectives, more cautious in their conclusions...

...Since 1963, there has always been progress...

...Nearly all of its nine villages, with a total population of approximately 93,000, are nominally under government control, according to findings of the computerized Hamlet Evaluation Survey...

...Guthrie's team is an informal but efficient unit of young men with specialized duties and varied backgrounds—a philosophy major from Princeton, a former farmboy from Oklahoma, a college dropout from Pennsylvania...

...The refugees lack sufficient housing, medical facilities, drinking water, and land to work...

...The war is still very much on...

...The land is laced with mines and scarred by sites of past ambushes...

...But the fact is," says one intelligence officer, "that they are there and we don't know what they are up to...

...Marines, are aligned against them...

...Let us say," comments an American adviser, "that we in Quang Nam are somewhat apprehensive...

...American advisers in the field believe that progovemment forces, backed by the 15,000-man U.S...

...This in itself was no surprise...

...The government forces are going to get strong enough, and the general public is going to get tired enough so that this thing can finally be ended," he says...

...American stuff always seems better than anything else in this country," he said...

...Some reputable authorities, however, view them as a possible forewarning of the crunch to come...

...Another sudden strike, further south in the resort city of Dalat...

...But whatever the individual members' disagreement about the future of the war...

...It has too much of a hold...

...We make suggestions," says Lieutenant John McDowell, the team's intelligence specialist...

...I don't see any end to it," says McDowell, a 24-year-old Lafayette College dropout who intends to drop back in after completing military service...

...He has passed airborne and ranger qualifying tests, and is seeking a transfer to combat duty...

...commitment to this country, and seems genuinely concerned about the fate of its people...

...Still, the Americans point out, some progress has been made in the refugee program: Drinking wells are being revamped, more medical treatment is becoming available, land is being cleared...

...I was surprised, for example, to find the outdoor latrine in the district headquarters locked...

...Similar attacks have been only slightly less brutal...

...The next round of cuts, scheduled to be completed in the fall, will involve 50,000 men...

...The enemy has the capability of making good on this threat anywhere and anytime," he observes...

...rather, their intent is to inflict maximum casualties and psychological trauma by demonstrating an ability to strike in government-controlled areas...

...The Marines strongly resent having equipment and personal items stolen from them by the South Vietnamese, and this happens frequently...

...The shift had been delineated for almost a year in directives from the Central Office for South Vietnam (cosvn), the elusive headquarters only editorial cartoonists were able to capture in the Cambodian campaign...

...He believes the message has come across to the more than 2 million inhabitants of the five-province area...

...Many of Hieu Nhon's thousands of war victims were killed or maimed when the sun was shining and the road seemed secure...

...Desperate" is the catchword often heard now in the air-conditioned, wood-paneled, well-removed offices of senior civilian and military officials in Danang...

...It could be mentioned, of course, that the same is also true of the war itself...

...officials maintain that they are not disturbed...

...Strangely, the buildings in the military compound of the district headquarters are unmarked and seem almost new...

...That's because they are," says Captain Charles Guthrie, district senior adviser and commander of the American advisory team stationed here...

...The prospect of continued American troop withdrawals adds to the uncertainty...

...military strategists doubt a major enemy offensive of Tet 1968 proportions is in the offing...

...This is part of a traditionally rebellious, perpetually contested sector encompassing the three lower provinces of I Corps (Quang Nam, Quang Tin, Quang Ngai) and the two upper provinces of II Corps (Binh Dinh, Phu Yen...

...Out here in the boondocks of Quang Nam, 20 miles below Danang, where the war is not a compilation of statistics, the situation is not so clear-cut...

...Guthrie, 26, is a college graduate from Colorado, a career soldier on his second tour of duty in Vietnam who believes in the U.S...

...The enemy has switched from company- and battalion-size drives to "phase I" guerrilla tactics involving small hit-and-run units...

...And the enemy doesn't have to win the population over to his cause, either...

...One took place in June at Pleiku, where Vietcong sappers chalked up over 100 casualties—including 31 killed—with nearly all victims being wives and children of South Vietnamese soldiers...

...A look at life in Hieu Nhon, an average Quang Nam district, illustrates the problems...

...Six nva divisions, totalling more than 50,000 men, are believed to be operating in I Corps and upper II Corps...

...GUERRILLA ACTION IN QUANG NAM PROVINCE Vietnam Pressure Point BY ARNOLD ABRAMS Hieu Nhon The allied drive into Cambodia, which helped make the southern half of South Vietnam safer than it has been for almost a decade, was hardly felt farther north—particularly here in Hieu Nhon, a Quang Nam provincial district about 350 miles northeast of Saigon...

...Its functions are strictly advisory...

...come to realize that government strength here has grown too strong, so he is switching back to guerrilla methods...

...Targets of terrorist attacks and enemy infiltration efforts, they pose a growing security problem, but the ponderous provincial government machinery is slow to act on their behalf...

...His back is up against the wall...

...This headquarters has been overrun three times in the last three years...

...Ash and litter-filled foundations also dot the landscape, bearing few traces of the structures they once supported...

...two say there is...