The Key Arena

All eyes in Saigon were still staring to the North. In the wake of the U.S. retaliatory blow against North Vietnamese bases, government officials and civilians alike waited with a kind of horrible fascination for some sign of things to come. Crews of workers carved up the city's parks, preparing air-raid shelters for 400,000 of Saigon's 1,500,000 residents, while government pencil pushers cranked up a plan to evacuate hundreds of thousands more in the event of an attack.

Forward in Force. There seemed little possibility that such preparations would soon be put to use. Both Red China and North Viet Nam continued to bellow against the U.S. retaliation, and Peking announced that more than 20 million people on the mainland had taken part in angry demonstrations against the U.S. Breathlessly, the Reds disclosed that in Fukien province alone 150,000 Chinese militiamen were limbering up with grenade-tossing exercises, target practice and river-crossing drills--and produced carefully posed pictures to prove it. But in terms of actual military support to North Viet Nam, Peking provided only 15 to 20 obsolescent MIG-15 and MIG-17 jet fighters, which would prove no match for the supersonic F-102 Delta Daggers now in South Viet Nam. And even "Hanoi Hannah," the syrupy-voiced English-speaking propagandist of North Viet Nam Radio, was mild-toned. Speaking of U.S. Navy Pilot Everett Alvarez Jr. who was downed in the attack on Hongay, she dwelt on his youth, his wife and family, and his chances of meeting them again if Washington stops its "acts of aggression and provocation."

Meanwhile the grim, grinding battle against the Viet Cong within the borders of South Viet Nam ballooned to bigger-than-life proportions last week--and was as quickly exploded. Over the Communist-dominated district of Ben Cat rendezvoused the largest helicopter armada in the history of warfare--96 choppers carrying rockets, machine guns and 1,000 assault troops. Supported by 4,000 infantrymen, Rangers and counterguerrilla squads, the attack force hoped to encircle an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 Viet Cong "main force" troops who two weeks earlier had mauled four government battalions in a carefully executed ambush.

Back in Focus. The big airlift was the war's worst-kept secret. In Saigon, government information officers alerted photographers several days in advance. When the troops hit the Ben Cat touchdown, most of the Viet Cong had already slipped away. One U.S. helicopter pilot was killed, as were 20 Communists.

The deflation at Ben Cat seemed to snap South Viet Nam's war back into focus. Air and naval battles north of the 17th Parallel, major confrontations between Washington and Peking, all of that was in a different arena. There still remained the unspectacular, but key arena of South Viet Nam itself. In view of that fact, Premier Nguyen Khanh set out at week's end to reshape his Cabinet with an eye toward a more unified war effort. As U.S. Ambassador Maxwell D. Taylor flatly put it last week: "The status of the pacification program is uneven." As far as real pacification was concerned, this was not only a euphemism but an understatement.

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