On to Hanoi

For six days last week, Red General Giap was able to move his infantry, his field artillery and his rocket-launchers down unobstructed roads toward the greatest single objective in all IndoChina: the teeming, rice-rich Red River Delta and its center, Hanoi.

The strategic delta is one of the world's most densely populated areas; in this flat alluvial plain live 7,000,000 people. A phantom Red army of some 90,000 guerrillas already controls at least two-thirds of the delta by day, almost all of it by night. The 2,000 French-Vietnamese forts there are atolls in a seeming Red Sea.

For 60 successive days, the Red guerrillas in the delta had been strong enough to dig trenches and lay mines across vital Route Coloniale 5--Hanoi's only main road link with its supply port, Haiphong. Last week some 2,000 Communists stormed a French battalion position 36 miles from Hanoi and a Vietnamese outpost less than seven miles from the city.

Giap clearly intended to keep the delta Frenchmen off balance while he rested his 40,000 regulars from their pummeling at Dienbienphu and redeployed them from the malarial jungles before the monsoon set in. Giap's likely next moves: first, break Route Coloniale 5 and isolate Hanoi ; second, storm Hanoi.

The French had fewer than 20,000 in Hanoi, 50,000 (mostly shaky Vietnamese) elsewhere in the delta, and they were desperately flying in reinforcements from southern Indo-China and from France and North Africa (via U.S. airlift). Commanding General Navarre reportedly asked Paris for two fresh divisions, yet his officers did their best to appear calm and unconcerned. Said Navarre's top deputy in Hanoi last week: "The situation in the delta is serious, but not desperate." French generals said exactly that during the last days at Dienbienphu.

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